“Earn it.”

  She drives away with angry tears in her eyes and a bag of freshly baked croissants on the passenger seat.

  99 Victims

  After Beatrice disappeared Ruth was left alone again. It was worse this time because now she knew how the alternative felt. Her parents were so ashamed that they didn’t even force her to go to church, possibly because they wanted to pretend that they too had sent their daughter away, because that was evidently what you were supposed to do. Whenever they went to any of the church’s charitable events they also left Matteo at home, because people would come to those from churches in other towns and the parents were worried he might tell someone the truth about his sister. On one of those days when they were on their own at home, Ruth borrowed the computer her little brother kept hidden to send a message to Beatrice. Matteo was only eleven, but he’d hooked the computer up to the neighbors’ Wi-Fi, Ruth was amazed that he had managed to figure out their password, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said that almost everyone uses the names of their children or grandchildren, so he looked up the neighbors’ names online and tested all the combinations he could think of until one of them worked. “You’re a genius!” Ruth said, making him blush. Then he went off on his bicycle so she could talk to Beatrice in peace. He thought that was what she wanted, he always assumed that he was just in the way, and she didn’t even notice him leave.

  When, several hours later, she saw him come back, sitting frozen and terrified on the back of a strange guy’s moped, she rushed out of the house in panic and hugged him to pieces. The guys in the red jackets told her what had happened. They seemed kind but a bit weird, one of them talked all the time and the other one didn’t speak at all. One said his name was Rodri and that his friend was called Mumble because he never said anything.

  “Are you hockey guys?” Ruth said, nodding toward their jackets.

  “Yes!” Rodri said, quick as a flash.

  “Shame. I’m so sick of hockey guys.” Ruth smiled. Rodri immediately became obsessed with her.

  In the days that followed he drove over from Hed to ride past her house, he had heard that her parents were some sort of religious lunatics so he didn’t dare knock on the door, but he rode up and down the road, hoping that she was at home and would see him. One day she stopped pretending she hadn’t seen him and crept out to meet him. He gave her a ride to part of the forest just outside Hed, where he and Mumble had found an abandoned shack that they had turned into a den. Mumble read comic books and Rodri introduced Ruth to drugs she had never tried. When she threw up he and Mumble took care of her. “You’re just having a whitey, don’t worry, it’ll soon pass,” Rodri whispered, holding her hair back gently so she wouldn’t be sick on it. Afterward he drove her home and when she jumped off the moped he tried to kiss her, and when she resisted he grabbed her wrist so hard that she let out a scream. “You’re playing hard to get, I like that,” he said. She didn’t know what to say, she felt so disgusted by everything and her head was still so giddy that she just went into the house and fell asleep.

  He started texting her, sometimes fifty times in a single day, and she didn’t know what to do. She wrote to Beatrice and asked, but Beatrice merely replied that guys were just like that sometimes. A bit too horny. It wasn’t that strange, was it? And he seemed nice, so perhaps he just didn’t know how to behave with girls?

  Ruth wasn’t sure. A couple of days later it was so cold when she left school that she went to the bus stop instead of walking home. Some of the perfect girls were there, and started giggling when they saw her. “Nice clothes, is that the cult’s uniform?” one of them said, and the others burst out laughing. “They dress like that because their dads don’t want other guys to be tempted, so their dads can sleep with them themselves!” another one declared, and they giggled more quietly but more hysterically. Ruth wanted the earth to swallow her up and wanted to smash their faces into the glass of the bus stop at the same time. Then someone in the road called out, and when she looked up she saw it was Rodri. He had swapped his moped for a cross motorbike, at least that’s what Ruth thought they were called. He said he’d gotten it from one of his brothers. “Do you want to come to a party in Hed?” he asked. Ruth looked at the perfect girls and saw how scared they were, how dangerous they thought Rodri looked, so, just so she could see the stupid looks on their faces, she jumped on the motorbike and he roared off.

  He hadn’t been invited to the party, but everyone on Hed’s hockey team was invited, and because Mumble was with them no one questioned them when they showed up. The party was being hosted by a rich kid in a big house, which was so crowded with people who were so drunk that once you were inside no one cared who you were. Rodri kept giving Ruth drinks and she never saw what he put in the cups. She started to feel funny. He whispered in her ear that she was lovely. That he was in love with her. That he wanted to make her feel good. She didn’t even know how they ended up in that room, or if they were even still in the same house at the same party, he started to take her clothes off and she yelled no. She yelled at him to stop. But the music was so loud and he was so heavy. She passed out, she didn’t know for how long, and when she woke up she was naked. Her eyes kept flaring. She felt so terrible, but when she tried to crawl away from him he got her in a stranglehold and hissed that he would kill her and her little brother. She was so terrified that she froze to ice. For her the rape went on forever but for him it never even started. For the rest of his life he could never understand that he was a rapist. He thought he was a hero.

  When he eventually breathed out and groaned and relaxed, she saw her chance, tensed her whole body and kicked him away, then flew up, but she was still so drugged that she could hardly stand. She stumbled toward the door as she tried to button her blouse and pull up her panties. She could hear him behind her, she wasn’t sure if he was laughing or something else. Afterward she couldn’t describe the room, or how long she was in there, but she never forgot that when she emerged into the narrow passageway near the stairs, Mumble was standing there. She could see the horror and shame so clearly in his eyes. He had heard her scream, she was sure of that, but hadn’t dared do anything. He had just frozen to ice out here, the way she did in there while Rodri did what he wanted.

  Ruth just ran. Her head was spinning and her heart was pounding, her legs could hardly carry her. When she got downstairs the party was still going on, someone whistled at her, someone else called out: “Freshly fucked? Sweet! Do you want another round?” She elbowed her way desperately through the crowd of drunk teenagers, and it wasn’t until she got outside that she realized she was half-naked, but the cold was almost liberating. It muffled her. She couldn’t even cry because her teeth were chattering so hard on the way home.

  * * *

  In her diary Ruth wrote:

  When girls start primary school and the boys hit us and pull our hair during breaks and we go to an adult and ask for help, the adults say: The boys are only doing that because they like you!! That’s how you teach boys that they have rights over us. Then we get bigger and then they rape us but we’re just stupid little whores because we don’t take it as a COMPLIMENT? They beat us and kill us but it’s only because they like us. Why don’t we understand that?

  On the next page it says:

  didn’t even fuck that other guy in Hed but he told everyone I did and that meant I was already a whore. And whores can’t get raped.

  On one of the last pages she wrote:

  I’ve got no chance if even my own parents don’t believe me. Why would the police believe me then? Why would anyone? You aren’t going to believe me until Rodri kills me.

  On the very last page, in shaky handwriting, she wrote:

  Parents always think they have to talk to their daughters about guys. We shouldn’t wear short skirts and shouldn’t go out alone and shouldn’t get drunk and shouldn’t let guys like us too much. But you don’t have to talk to us about guys because we already know all that, for fuck’s sake, because we’re the ones they rape!! Talk to your damn sons instead!!! Teach them to talk to one another and teach them to stop one another. Raise just one fucking boy somewhere who can become a head teacher who understands that when boys pull girls by the hair, it’s the fucking boys there’s something wrong with. Tell your sons that if they have to THINK about whether or not they’ve had sex with a girl who didn’t want it, then they HAVE!!! If you can’t understand if the girl you’re having sex with wants it or not, then you’ve never had fucking sex with a girl who wants it. Stop telling your daughters. We already know it all.

  * * *

  The next morning Ruth was so sick she thought she was going to die. She almost hoped she would. She wished she could pour corrosive acid into her brain and get rid of all her memories from the night before. His breath, his hands everywhere, him inside her. “I love you,” he had whispered. “Don’t play hard to get! I know you want it! I know you’ve fucked other guys!” he hissed. After that came the threats to kill her and Matteo. Then she just lay still. Just trying to survive.

  Right before lunch the next day she received the first text: Thanks for yesterday gorgeous!! he wrote. She didn’t understand. Was he making fun of her? Was he threatening her? The next text said: Love you. See you this evening? Kiss!! This went on for several hours until Ruth picked up her phone and wrote, still dizzy and hungover: I didn’t want to. I was drunk. I didn’t fucking want to. He wrote back: Stop it!! Of course you wanted to! Didn’t I show you a good time? I can practice!!! Come to the shack and we’ll do it again!!! She wrote: Forget it you fucking creep. I’m going to report you to the police.

  Her phone was silent for several minutes. Then came a photograph. Then another one. She was wearing clothes in them, but she knew she wasn’t wearing clothes just after they were taken. A minute after the photographs arrived, Rodri phoned. At first she didn’t dare answer, but he kept calling until in the end she didn’t dare not to. His voice was totally devoid of emotion, like one of those automated computer voices: “Then I’ll post all the naked pictures of you online so everyone can see what a little whore you are.” That was what the flashes she had seen when she woke up in that bed had been. He had taken pictures of her while she was unconscious.

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. She switched her phone off and hid it under her bed, as if that would help. She didn’t dare leave the house in case he was out there waiting for her. She couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. She just lay on the floor, crying and crying and crying.

  That night he started sending more text messages. He demanded that she meet him. You can have the pictures, I’m not going to show them to anyone, just come over here!! he wrote. She didn’t dare say no. They met in the shack in the forest outside Hed and the worst thing of all was how gentle he suddenly was. Almost afraid. He whispered that he was sorry and that he loved her and that he hadn’t realized she didn’t want to. He was drunk too, he said. He didn’t know what he was doing, he said by way of excuse. But it was pretty much her fault as well, he went on to point out. Because why did she go to the party with him if she didn’t want him? Was she just using him? Did she really just want to fuck someone else there? Why wasn’t he good enough? What was wrong with him?

  He touched her cheek and she shook with fear and he interpreted that as love. “We can have a nice time. I’ll make it nice. I promise,” he said, and started kissing her neck. “I just want those pictures back,” she whispered. So he promised. He promised and promised and promised. If she just had sex with him one more time, voluntarily, then he would delete all the pictures. He’d let her watch while he did it on his phone.

  So she had sex with him. He deleted some of the pictures. But not all of them. Over the following days he sent her text messages at night and she had to do it all over and over again. He had drugs and she took them, so that she could bear it and forget and run straight home afterward. He interpreted that as love.

  In the end he fell apart and wept in front of her, saying it wasn’t his fault that he was doing this. She had forced him into it. It was her fault. When he took hold of her wrist she knocked his hand away and ran. He hunted her through the forest but she was quicker. When she got home Matteo was lying asleep in his bed, and all she could think was that it didn’t matter if the pictures ended up online, she just had to get Rodri away from here, she had to protect her brother. So the following morning she went to the police.

  She sat in a small room with a glass of water that she couldn’t drink because her hands were shaking too much. She was seventeen years old. The police suggested she call her parents. She didn’t want to. The police talked and talked, and different people kept coming in and out of the room. Ruth felt as if she was floating about in a vacuum. Someone asked her if she had taken drugs. They told her that if she told the truth, she would get help, nothing bad would happen. She made the mistake of believing them. She admitted that she had taken drugs. She admitted that she had slept with Rodri several times. She even admitted that she had almost slept with another guy at another party but that he hadn’t been able to get it up. She showed them Rodri’s text messages, showed them the pictures he had sent, but all the police saw was a seventeen-year-old with clothes on, who looked drunk and happy. As if she wanted it. Nothing Rodri had written indicated that he was threatening her. He seemed almost regretful? As if there had been some misunderstanding?

  Ruth protested and protested, but she no longer knew how to explain. After all, she couldn’t even remember all of it! She didn’t even know what he had put in her drink! The police asked why she hadn’t reported this before. She had no answer to that, other than that she had been afraid. The police said that they understood and then they persuaded her to call her parents after all. They promised that they would talk to them. That everything would be alright. She made the mistake of believing them again.

  She remembers the look on her mother’s face in that room. Wounded. As if Ruth had hurt her. She remembers her dad, uncomfortable and anxious, as if he just wanted to get out of there at any cost. “We’re not saying that you’re lying, young lady, but surely you can see how this looks?” a voice said, and it took Ruth several minutes to understand that it was her mother. Obviously she knew that her mom hated her, but this much? Her voice grew thick as tears began to fall. “He raped me, Mom!” Her mother sighed at the police with a pointed expression. “Sadly I think we’re going to have to talk to our daughter at home. Perhaps we can come back tomorrow? She’s something of a fantasist. And a junkie, as you’ve realized. She has a whole drawer full of thongs and birth control pills, so this is hardly the first boy! Perhaps he didn’t want to go out with her afterward and then she regretted it and made this all up? You know how girls can be at this age!”

  Ruth’s mind spun out of control. She ended up throwing up on the floor. She remembers one of the police officers, a young man who seemed to understand that something wasn’t right, placing a cool hand on her forehead and giving her some water and saying: “Perhaps you can come back tomorrow when you’re feeling better, and try to tell us what happened again? It all sounds very complicated. But perhaps we’ll be able to make more sense of it tomorrow, when you’re a little more… together?”

  Ruth didn’t remember how she got out of the police station. She didn’t remember much of the drive home either. All she can remember afterward is her dad saying, as they turned onto their road: “You need to bear in mind that this boy could sue you for defamation. What you’re doing is dangerous. You could ruin his whole life.” When they got out of the car, Ruth’s mother did something she had hardly ever done: she took hold of her daughter’s hand, gently and tenderly, almost like a proper parent. “Come on, young lady, let’s go in and have something to eat. We’ll pray to God for guidance for you. God will help us. Then we’ll forget this. This weekend you can come to church with us again, I think. Then everything will feel better.”

  Ruth never went back to the police. The young man at the station waited. Perhaps he hated himself afterward for not doing more. Perhaps he managed to suppress it. Everyone like him is just trying to do their job. They all say they’re just following the law. It’s just that laws aren’t written for girls like Ruth. They’re written against her.

  In the weeks that followed Ruth made herself smaller and smaller when she was among other people. She harmed herself more when she was alone. Bizarrely, her mother seemed kinder toward her than usual, as if her love was a bribe, if her daughter could only stay quiet about all that silliness, perhaps they can be a perfect family again? As if they had ever been that. Ruth’s dad hardly spoke to her at all, except to say: “We’ll just have to hope the police don’t contact the boy. Otherwise he’ll probably sue us. How would we afford that?”

  If they had had any relatives they would have sent her away like Beatrice, but they had broken off all contact with the rest of their families when they joined the church. Now they were imprisoned by each other. At night Rodri would send more text messages. Always about how he loved her. Missed her. After a while he started writing about how nice it had been in the “cottage,” as he had begun to call the shack in the forest, and Ruth began to realize that he had fantasized a whole parallel universe where everything that had happened was a love story. One evening she saw him in the street outside her house. Another time he drove past her school. She started to get messages from anonymous accounts on social media saying that she was “a conceited little whore who thinks she’s better than everyone else.” She knew it was him, of course, but how could she prove that? Who would believe her?

  A few months later a rumor started to spread around the school about what Kevin had done to Maya. Or rather, what Maya had done to Kevin. Ruth heard it in the cafeteria, everyone was talking about it. Maya was a few years younger and Ruth didn’t know her, but she had reported Kevin to the police after a party, and Kevin hadn’t been allowed to play in a crucial hockey game with his team as a result. Everyone went completely crazy.