It’s strange than even in the horror of this moment, I can feel jealousy stabbing through me like a hot blade, at the idea of her with another guy.
“We hooked up a few times. He took pictures of me one time, when we were together. I thought he was just messing around. I made him delete them, and he said he did but…”
“Oh, God.”
“He dumped me not long after. I think it was a game for him, you know? See if he could get hotshot Daltrey Ransome’s girl. The pictures started going around the school less than a week later.”
I stand abruptly, spilling hot tea onto my hands. I forgot I was holding her mug. The scalding barely registers. I don’t know what I’m going to do exactly, but I have to do something. Preferably get on a plane and go kill that son of a bitch.
“Dalt, sit down. Please.”
Only the sound of her voice, pleading and needy, could get through to me in this minute. I release a long breath and sit, setting the mug on the coffee table. “Sorry.”
She stares down at the couch. “It was… pretty bad. There were some girls who were thrilled to be able to take me down a few notches. They put the pictures all over the Internet.” She swallows hard, closing her eyes for a moment. “Then they started… they called me a lot, sometimes in the middle of the night. They’d call me names and threaten me. If I didn’t answer my cell, they’d call the house. I didn’t want my dad to hear—”
“So you answered.”
She nods. “I started getting freaked out about things. Everyone was always talking about me and looking at me. Pointing. And they’d all seen… they all knew exactly what I look like. I… I had panic attacks when people would look at me. They thought that was hilarious. It got really hard to be at school.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I ask, feeling sick to my stomach. All of this happened to her, and she’d been alone. She shouldn’t have been alone.
“At first I didn’t want you to know because I was embarrassed. And I didn’t want you to worry when everything was going so well for you. I know how important the band’s success is to you. I wasn’t going to be the one to ruin it.”
“Daisy—”
“And then you got so famous, and I started seeing you on TV. There were always crowds around you, always people. I knew I couldn’t be near that. I could barely make it through a day at school.”
“I would have come home. I would have kept you away from it all.”
“I wouldn’t have let you.” She shakes her head. “Eventually, it got back to my dad. You remember Mrs. Goodwin, the math teacher? She saw someone passing one of the pictures and realized what was going on. That was the worst part. Mrs. Goodwin went online, her and the guidance counselor, and they found everything.” A shudder goes through her body. “Once the school found out, I figured it would get better. But there was no way for the school to police how those kids talked to me. How they looked at me. And the school said they had no authority to do anything about the kids’ online behavior.”
“What the fuck?” I know my voice is too loud, know I need to calm down, but I’m so beyond angry at everyone who allowed this to happen.
She goes on as if I didn’t interrupt. “My dad got a lawyer, and there were court orders for the pictures not to be distributed. Then he made me go to therapy. When we first met the doctor, she wanted Dad to be there and she… she asked a bunch of questions about our family.” Her voice is shaking again, and I wonder what other terrible thing she could possibly have to tell me. “And I found out… I found out my mom…”
I realize what she’s going to say the moment before the words leave her mouth, and I feel a crashing wave of despair wash over me.
“She killed herself, Daltrey. That’s how she died. He lied to me all these years. She didn’t have an accident, and she wasn’t who he told me she was. She was too weak and broken to stick around for her kid.” Daisy lets out a little moan. “She didn’t love me enough. And she wasn’t strong enough.”
I can’t listen to her voice sounding so broken and anguished for a second longer. I reach for her. She falls into my arms, and I pull her onto my lap.
“All I could think was that she was weak, and so was I. I had her blood in my veins. I could hardly make it through the day. I didn’t trust anyone anymore. Everything in my life was cruel and heartless. What if it was always that way? What if there was no hope?” Her tears keep falling. “And all I could think was that if she couldn’t get through it, neither could I. She had a husband and a baby, and she couldn’t deal. I had nothing.”