Hard Knox

  Every morning, the first thing I did when I woke up was smile.

  Life with Knox was good—never easy or without its share of challenges and complications, but always good. The guy I wouldn’t have hesitated to hurl a flaming bag of dog crap at earlier this year was the same one I shared my lunch with now. The guy who had so many things written about him on women’s bathroom stalls that a person would have thought he had to be nailing chicks by the dozens had only been with one woman in close to four months. The guy who’d been a mystery was becoming less of one, but I wasn’t sure Knox would ever not be an enigma in certain respects. Some people were naturally uncomplicated. Knox was the opposite.

  The guy who could piss me off so badly I wanted to slap him one minute could issue an apology the next minute that me want to do nothing but kiss him . . . He hadn’t changed in that regard. Knox and I had our share of spats and battles, but as hard as we argued or as high as our anger charged, we always found our way back to each other. It seemed nothing—not even the time we’d been approached at the gas station by one of Knox’s one-nighters asking if she could join us for a three-way like the last time she’d been with Knox—could keep us apart. There was seemingly nothing, big or small, that was bigger than the way we felt about each other.

  I’d just been ruminating on that thought as I poured over some notes for an upcoming test when I heard the telltale tinkle-tinkle I’d done my best to dodge most of the year echoing through the library.

  Neve was still my professor, but other than standard classroom stuff and her occasional check-ins about how the big article was coming, I kept my distance. As the weeks had ticked away, I think she started to get the message that I wasn’t eager—putting it lightly—to blame the whole roofie-date-rape pandemic on Knox. She knew I was living with him, and if she hadn’t noticed Knox and me holding hands walking across campus, or making out behind the cafeteria, or doing much worse inside the custodian’s closet in the building he had Forensic Pathology in, she would have been the only one. But whether she’d seen us or not, and whether she assumed I was only with him to get the truth out of him or not, I didn’t care.

  I wanted to wait to approach her until Knox and I had put together enough evidence to prove who had slipped the roofies into my drinks, but we had about as much of a suspect list now as we’d had at the beginning. One of these days, I’d have to suck it up and talk to her—preferably before the end of the year when she decided to give me an F for not handing in the “article to end all articles.” But as the tinkling got closer, I considered stuffing everything in my bag and sneaking out of the library undetected. Between my notes, textbooks, and highlighters, I had managed to litter a whole table though, so a quick break wasn’t in the cards.

  Neve rounded a row of bookcases and marched toward me with a look on her face that made my stomach rope into knots. “Please tell me you don’t have anything scheduled these last few months of school.”

  “Um, only minor things like finishing papers, studying for finals, writing another article for the school paper, and putting together a list of excuses as to why I won’t vie for homecoming royalty next year.” I flourished my hand at my imaginary crown. “Everyone wants me to run and won’t seem to take no for an answer.”

  From her arched brow, my attempts at sarcasm had been utterly wasted on Neve. “Well, clear your schedule. Clear it all. You’ve got work to do, and I just brought you the proverbial straw.” She slapped a manila folder down in front of me, crossed her arms, and waited.

  “The proverbial straw for what?” I stared at the folder like it could have been a land mine.

  “For breaking that son of a bitch’s back.” Since I evidently wasn’t doing it fast enough, Neve threw the folder open and smacked the photo covering part of the top page.

  It was an old mugshot. I fought my disbelief, but I could see it was him. Even in a black and white photocopy, the shadows in Knox’s eyes were present. Trying to pretend she hadn’t shaken me with this reveal, I shrugged. “So he’s got a record. Would you expect a guy with a name like Knox Jagger not to?”

  Neve raised her eyebrows. “Don’t even think about playing coy with me. This whole time you’ve been shacked up with this guy, I let myself believe you were only doing it to get the research you needed to get the job done. I believed that if you were sleeping with the enemy, there was a reason behind it other than you just liked the way he looked in a pair of tight jeans. I chose to pretend there was no way in hell you could actually feel something for this asshole, so don’t repay my blind trust with a reticent act.” She drilled her finger on a particular spot on Knox’s rap sheet. “Why don’t you read what he was booked for and try giving me that coy thing again?”

  When my eyes ran across the box she pointed at, I had to shake my head and wonder if I needed glasses. The typed letters and words were as legible as hieroglyphics at first, but when I tried again, the hieroglyphs formed letters that formed words that I wished I could un-read.

  The breath left my lungs in one great surge.

  “Feeling coy now?” Neve’s tone hinted at victory, like what rested on the table was something to celebrate. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much digging, bribing, and begging I had to do to get this record since he was a juvenile at the time, but you can thank me in the acknowledgement part of your article, because Charlie, this thing’s going to be big.”

  Her words were nothing more than background noise as I reread those words over and over, knowing that the next time I read them, they would say something else. I had to have read them close to a hundred times before the room spun as I slowly accepted those words, those charges, weren’t going to change.

  “Charged for possession and distribution of the illegal substance Rohypnol,” I read. Speaking the words made me flinch.

  “Also known on the street as—”

  “Roofies.” My eyes closed. I couldn’t look at the page anymore. I couldn’t read the charges again or gape at his photo, his eyes staring right into mine with that mix of vulnerability and strength I’d seen a million times. “Knox was charged with having and selling roofies.”

  “When he was only sixteen.” Neve sat on the edge of the table, looking like she wanted to cartwheel around the library. “Turns out the bastard was even one as a juvenile. Who would have figured?” She tapped her chin, eyes narrowed on the ceiling. “Oh yeah, that’s right. I did.”

  The library had started revolving a minute ago, but now it was whipping around with such velocity that I couldn’t decide what direction I was going. I couldn’t tell up from down anymore.

  “I can see you’re a little shell-shocked. You should have drawn thicker emotional lines when you were sleeping with the enemy.” Neve patted my hand. She actually patted my hand, like a hand pat could comfort the storm raging inside me . . . like she could be someone who could comfort me in the first place. “You can thank me later.”

  She was turning to leave, the folder still open and glaring at me, when I cleared my throat. I prayed I could still form words. “This doesn’t mean he’s responsible for what’s happening here.” It wasn’t the journalist in me who issued that statement; it was the Charlie Chase who’d fallen so hard and deep for the man in that photo she couldn’t find her way out.

  Neve broke to a stop. When she turned around, she stared at me with eyes wide with disbelief. “My Goddess. He really has blinded you, hasn’t he?”

  My palms flattened over the desk. “I’m not blind. My eyes are wide open. I acknowledge that Knox was arrested five years ago for the very crimes you’ve accused him of here at Sinclair. I acknowledge that this puts him high on the suspect list.” My breath was coming in shallow pulls, which only exacerbated the carousel feeling. “But just because this means he may be guilty doesn’t mean he is. We can’t be sure this boy is the man we’re looking for today.” I stabbed my finger at the picture of Knox while I tried not to look at it. Not that looking at it wouldn’t keep it from being permanently cemented into my
memory, but I was pretty sure if I did look at that photo again, I would break down—either in tears or sobs or in a crazed, pissed-off rage.

  “No, I suppose it isn’t enough evidence to convict him in a court of law. Jurors might think that a rap sheet like his, paired with a bloody epidemic of date rapes at Sinclair thanks to the aid of Rohypnol since Knox Jagger enrolled three years ago, is a mere coincidence.” From her tone, she was trying to make me feel stupid. It was working. “But here’s the thing, cupcake, we’re not in a court of law. We’re not jurors who have to treat the accused as innocent until proven guilty.” Her finger waved between the two of us. “We’re journalists. We have a moral obligation to publish the truth and let the readers fill in the rest. Can we, with just this, write an article outright accusing Knox of being responsible for the date rapes on campus?” She crossed her arms, lifting her shoulder. “No, not outright. But we can publish what’s been happening here, along with what we now know about Knox’s past, and that should be enough to make the students and faculty demand that son of a bitch is burned at the stake.” When my eyebrows peaked, she waved dismissively. “Or in today’s punishment currency, expulsion or, better yet, jail time.” Her gaze dropped to the file. “Or, should I say, more jail time?”

  My lunch was not doing well in my stomach. My lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup that I’d shared with Knox not even two hours ago. The lunch where he’d given me the bigger half of the sandwich, and as we kissed good-bye, he reminded me that our two-month anniversary was this weekend and he had something nice planned. The same guy who’d been responsible for . . .

  I didn’t know how long I’d been shaking my head, but it was long enough that the muscles in the sides of my neck had started to ache. “It’s not him. He’s not the one doing this. I know it.”

  Nothing like a potent dose of blind faith to piss off There’s-no-such-thing-as-faith-only-proof Neve Landry. Leaning into the desk, she flattened her hands and got in my face. “And how are you going to prove that? How are you going to prove Knox isn’t the one we’re after? You’ve been ‘spending time’ with him for over four months now. If you haven’t found anything pointing toward his innocence in that amount of time, that’s because there isn’t any.”

  My eyes narrowed. “And I haven’t found anything condemning him in that same amount of time, so if I’m to apply your same theory”—I got in her face too, not about to cower—“that’s because there isn’t any.”

  Neve shoved off of the desk, backing away like everything that needed to be said had been. “Maybe that’s because you haven’t been looking hard enough. Maybe you’ve only been seeing what you’ve wanted to see. Maybe it’s time you look a little deeper into Knox Jagger’s life, house, and drawers. Then let me know if you still think he’s innocent.”

  Without a good-bye or a wave, she disappeared around a bookcase, tinkling out of the library. I struggled to grab hold of my world that was quickly spinning away from me. The world she’d turned upside down, shaken good and hard, and thrown in the opposite corner of the universe. I was still me, but the numb version.

  The version that wouldn’t be the same until I’d proven to her, everyone else, and—most importantly—to myself, that Knox wasn’t the man she’d tagged him as. He was the one I believed he was. The one who’d never hurt me. The one who couldn’t hurt me . . . But I couldn’t ignore that he had been convicted of crimes that had no doubt hurt others. That was when I felt the tears pricking the corners of my eyes—when I realized and accepted that Knox wasn’t the saint I’d convinced myself he was. He was the sinner he’d been trying to tell me he was.

  Shoving out of my chair, I threw the file closed, stuffed it into my bag with the rest of my stuff, and thundered out of the library. I had to get to his place. I had to go through every closet, drawer, nook, and cranny so I could prove once and for all that he wasn’t responsible for what was happening at Sinclair.

  I’d have to deal with what he’d done in his past later. I’d have to sit down with him and probably shout and stomp and break a couple things to understand why he hadn’t told me and why he’d done it in the first place. But right now, I had only one thing on my mind—proving Knox wasn’t the same person he’d been five years ago.

  I walked from the library to his truck in what felt like a blur, and the trip from campus to his place was another blur. I just kept trying to keep my mind emptied of the what-ifs and concentrate on rifling through his entire life until I’d proved he wasn’t the man Neve had accused him of being.

  Knox had late afternoon classes on Thursdays, so I knew he wouldn’t be back for at least another two hours. That didn’t give me an abundance of time, but it would give me enough. If I could find something that allowed me to hold on to his innocence in this crime, I could deal with his guilt of that crime when he got home and we talked. After unlocking the door, I rushed straight into Knox’s bedroom. I’d spent plenty of time in it the past couple of months, but that time had been mainly spent on his bed . . . or up against the wall . . . or sprawled across his desk . . .

  His desk.

  Other than the time we spent together on it, and other than the rare occasion Knox actually decided to study for an exam a few hours beforehand, it wasn’t too often used. Every once in a while, though, I’d catch him staring at a certain drawer. His brows pinched together, his eyes a world away, he’d get so lost staring at it that I’d had to snap my fingers in front of his face to bring him back.

  The very same drawer that was the only one possessing a lock.

  I hurried across the room, fell to my knees in front of it, and whispered a silent plea that it would be unlocked. Of course it wasn’t. What was the point of a locking drawer if a person didn’t actually lock it? Thumping the top of the desk, I felt something I hadn’t noticed when I’d come barreling in: one of Knox’s many pocket knives. From the size of some of them, I wasn’t sure they all fell into the pocket-knife category though. Just because a six-inch swingblade could fit into a pocket didn’t mean it was a “pocket knife.” This one, thankfully, was one of the smaller, less threatening ones.

  Popping out the blade, I slipped it inside the lock. I may have popped a couple of locks in my time. As it was a skill every savvy journalist needed, I hadn’t let myself feel too guilty over it in the past . . . but it was definitely guilt clenching my insides now. Guilt that I was about to break into Knox’s private drawer and go through whatever was inside it. Guilt that I didn’t have enough blind trust to flip Neve my middle finger and tell her to get bent. Guilt that a part of me, small and meek as it might have been, believed Knox may very well be the guy we’d spent months and months searching for. Guilt that that small, meek piece was whispering how he’d blinded me to what was right in front of me, how it was no wonder no evidence incriminating anyone had come up since the person helping me was the one we were searching for. I tried to quiet it; I tried to suffocate it, but I didn’t know what piece of me it was or where it was lurking, so it kept right on whispering things that magnified my guilt.

  It didn’t take long, only a few jiggles, a gentle twist, and a sharp pop, and the drawer was unlocked. All that was left was opening it and going through the contents. Sucking in the longest breath ever, I threw open the drawer and stuck my hands inside. I wanted to get this over with.

  I grasped a cool metal box, and as I pulled it out, I saw it looked like a cashier’s box. Of course there was another lock on this box, but when I tried to open it, surprisingly, it popped right open. I was in the middle of sighing with relief, because what could be so incriminating if it wasn’t protected under lock and key, when my entire body went numb.

  Inside the box were dozens of pieces of paper: newspaper articles, private notes, pamphlets, and at the very top of it all was a stack of familiar photos. They were photocopies, but they were the same pictures Neve had shown me of the girls who’d reported their rapes to the school. Beneath each of their student ID photos was a date and location in Knox’s handwritin
g. Under Beth Lewis’s picture was September 15th and Alpha Kappa Kappa. Beneath Danielle Flores’s picture, October 12th, Delta Theta. I flipped through the stack of photos. Each one was dated and listed some frat house.

  Why did Knox have pictures of all of the date-rape victims who’d come forward? Why did he have what I guessed were the dates the incidents had happened, along with where they’d been the night they’d been drugged? Why would Knox have that information?

  That small, meek piece of me ballooned. Instead of whispers, it spoke to me in a raised voice, telling me the things I didn’t want to hear.

  My hands shook as I dug deeper into the box. What I pulled out next fell from my hands the moment after I saw what it was. It was a booklet only the size of my palm, but it was bound in black leather. The title The Get-Laid Handbook: Patented Date Rape Strategies and Scenarios was stamped in gold lettering across the front.

  I’d stopped asking myself why any of this stuff would be in a metal box, locked in a desk drawer in Knox’s bedroom. I’d stopped asking because I had the answer. My hands shook so badly I could barely rifle through the rest, but there were dozens more pieces of evidence. I found drink coasters I’d seen at parties. They were supposed to reveal if a drink had been drugged, but on them was a little yellow sticky note with the words False Tests written on it.

  I should have just stopped, gotten up, and left, but I couldn’t seem to stop going through the box. I was almost to the bottom. My fingers curled around a couple of small plastic baggies. Inside each was a little white pill. I didn’t need to read the lettering on the bags to know what they were. On each bag, a frat house and a date had been penned in black permanent marker. Knox had roofies. He was in possession of them, just like he had been five years ago. Was I to take it that the frat houses and dates listed were the when and where he’d been distributing them?