He let me out in front of the Alpha Tau house at Longwood University in Farmville, dazed, confused, glad to be alive, and angryโall of those. When I'd closed the truck door, I turned to ask him through the window who he was and how I could get hold of him again, but he pulled away from me, gone, looking straight ahead through the windshield.
I don't know why I tried getting his number. I must have been in shockโor unguarded and being honest. I sometimes wonder what he would have said, and done, if he'd heard what I asked.
The guys were still heavy into their pledge hazing party. All of the lights in the house were on and I could see them cavorting inside through the windows like banshees. Probably all drunk as skunks. They probably thought I'd been too, but I wasn't.
They'd stripped me down to shorts, tied my hands behind my back, put a burlap sack over my head, and drove me in the trunk of Chaz's Impala.
"Where you leaving me?" I'd asked when they hauled me out of the trunk after what seemed like a half hour of driving over rough roads.