"I touch the fire, and it freezes me / I died

I look into it and it's black / So many years ago

This isn't real / But you can

But I just wanna feel... / Make me feel

Where do we

Go from here?"

The cast of Buffy finished up their musical episode with the curtains closing on a kiss between two main characters, and the end credits started rolling to a jazzy song penned by series creator Joss Whedon.

Julie turned to me. "Did you like it?"

I smiled. "I did, even though I didn't understand half of it."

We'd fast forwarded to Buffy season six so Julie could show me her favorite episode, popularly known as "The Musical Episode," and though I was a little confused as to where Oz had gone, why Spike wasn't a villain anymore, and why Buffy suddenly had a little sister being played by Michelle Trachtenberg, I'd still enjoyed the episode.

Julie leaned over and kissed me, and I kissed her back. We started wrestling across her bed.

I laughingly pinned her down on the bed, hands on her wrists and body on hers, holding her lightly but firmly.

It started as a joke, as a game that could have turned into something more, but the joke was suddenly very, very wrong. Julie's playful fighting against my hands became more forceful, more panicky, and her eyes were screwed shut. "Please," she was saying, "please, baby get off."

I pulled my hands off of her wrists, rolled off of her waist where I was straddling her. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Julie? Baby?"

"I--" she hesitated.

"Did I do something?"

I'd never seen anyone act this way. I had no idea what was wrong, but something in me niggled, a little memory taken from TV shows and movies. "Baby?" I asked again.

"It's--not… you." She ground out through clenched teeth. Her eyes were open now, wide and unseeing.

I still had no idea what was going on, or what I was doing, and I reached out and put a hand on her waist.

She flinched, and I pulled back like I'd been burned. What I was seeing was starting to make hideous sense. But I couldn't quite fathom it; couldn't imagine what had happened. So I waited for her to tell me.

"I'm not--" she began, haltingly. "Remember how I told you--told you that once, I'd been--that when I was fourteen I dated--dated a guy?"

"No," I said, confused. She'd never mentioned that, ever.

"I did," she said. She was curled on her side now, arms hugging herself, gripping like she was afraid of letting something fly away from her. I couldn’t see her face; she was curled towards the wall and I was still sitting on the bed behind her.

"I dated a guy named Casey," she said.

I nodded.

"He was a few years older than me," she said, "seventeen when I was fourteen. We'd dated--dated for two years."

"I thought you'd always been gay," I said, more confused.

Julie shook her head. "You've seen pictures of me."

Indeed, I had. Pictures of Julie with much longer, straighter hair, and crooked teeth. They'd been taken before she'd ever gotten braces. Most of them were from her Confirmation, and her mother treasured those pictures like Julie was dead. I guess in a way, Mrs. O'Connor's more feminine daughter really was gone. Or maybe she was just someone else. Regardless, Julie had once been, for lack of a better word, femme. And she'd had a boyfriend, once upon a time.

"I dated Casey for two years," she said again. "Mostly I guess it was because I wanted to blend in. I thought if I had a boyfriend, I'd be popular, or I'd just be normal. And I really wanted normal."

I nodded again.

"I was over at his house with my mom, and while our moms were talking we went into the laundry room." She spoke more haltingly now, more unsure of herself. "We were in the laundry room, and he locked the door."

Oh no. No, no, no.

"He locked the door, then he pulled out a knife. I thought he was joking at first, and then he told me to take my clothes off."

God. I didn't want to hear any more of this story, but I felt like a rubbernecker, frozen to the bed as I listened to her talk.

"I asked him why, and he--he--" she said. "He said that it was what I got for saying 'No,'" she whispered.

"He raped me in the laundry room." Her voice was low, emotionless. "On Valentine's Day." Like a robot's. I was raped. Like it didn't matter, like the capital of China.

Raped on Valentine's Day, like the capital of China. Just a place, just an event, and nothing more.

God, god, god, oh god.

"And I--" she continued. "My mother opened the door after I'd put my clothes back on. She opened the door and found me crying with him there, knew that I'd been alone with him, and she didn't do anything. She just took me home and I never saw him again."

"I--Julie," I whispered, "I don't know what--I--I'm so sorry."

What did you do when something like this came up? All I could do was lie down on the bed behind her and inch up slowly, nonthreateningly, loudly. "What can I do?" I asked, because I couldn't think of anything else.

"Hold me."

It got worse from there. "I was pregnant," she whispered. "I only found out in the summer, and when I started high school when I was fourteen, I was six months pregnant."

Fourteen and pregnant from a rape. I didn't question why she'd chosen to carry it. Proof, maybe? Or maybe she couldn't bear to abort it. But I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

"It didn’t show?" I blurted out.

A hoarse chuckle escaped her. "I was a fat kid," she said.

"My friend's mom took me to a few doctors' appointments, and I found out that it was a girl. I called her Rayne, and I was going to put her up for adoption when I had her."

Her name on TRUE had been Darkrayne1985… Darkrayne. I'd assumed it was just a goth thing, like the stupid misspelling of a word that she'd just gotten used to, or maybe it was her vampire name or something, but then I'd found out she wasn't like that and I'd just ignored the Rayne thing, but now I knew.

"Half a month into my freshman year of high school I got into a fight with another girl, and she punched me in the stomach."

"Oh god," I said.

"I was lucky it was just before I left school," she said tonelessly. "I got on the bus, I got off the bus, I managed to make it into a bathroom, and my--my baby came out," she said.

"You didn't get help?" I asked. Part of me was clinically detached. Even though I was horrified at what she was telling me, the scientist part of me, the criminal justice major part of me wanted cold details.

"No," she said. "I just--I picked her up, and held her in my hand. She fit, you know. She had a face, and her fingers and toes were there. I held my daughter in my hand, called her Rayne, and I said goodbye in the bathroom."

"Did you bury her?" I asked.

"No." Julie's voice was muffled in a corner of blanket. "I wrapped her in some toilet paper, I kissed her goodbye and I threw her away."

"What happened to Casey?" I asked. If he was out there, if he was anywhere out there in Florida, he could come back for her. Eight years sometimes didn't mean anything to rapists.

"He's in jail," she said.

"For raping you?"

"No," she said. "For raping another girl and then shoving her down the stairs when he found out she was pregnant."

"Did he know you were--"

"No."

"Oh," was all I could say.

"Did you ever report it to the police?"

"No."

Why? Why, why why?" the question threw itself around the inside of my head like a bird trapped inside a building. But I kept myself from asking.

"Did he cut you?"

"No," she said.

"Good," I said, but the word was hollow. Good that he hadn't cut her, hadn't hurt her, hadn't killed her but he'd done so much else.

Something in her voice sounded hollow, broken. Like there was more.

"Did Casey ever come back?" I asked gently, holding her to me.

"No," she whispered.

"Okay."

I held her for a very long time after that, and while we lay there, a million thoughts running through my head, I decided something: If I ever saw Casey again, even for a second, and I knew for sure that it was him, he would die.

I usually made empty threats, never keeping or intending to keep them, but this one, I promised myself, I would. He deserved to be in jail, deserved fucking torture for what he'd done to Julie, but if I got the chance, he'd just be dead.

#

Brother Micah Returns to FAU! The University Press's headline proclaimed.

Across the Breezeway and on the Free Speech Lawn at my college, a crowd was gathering around a single, rather nondescript man in suspenders. As I watched, he jumped across the concrete and landed on one knee on the ground, smacking something in his hand.

Oh goody, I thought.

Julie had already organized an emergency protest of Brother Micah. Our college group--rather, my college group, since Julie didn't go to FAU--was already well stocked with posters and signs denouncing Brother Micah and his preaching.

"Hatred is the Only Perversion Here!" one sign proclaimed. Another stated, simply, "God Hates Shrimp" and included some choice Bible verse designations that supported that statement.

Colorful signs were rampant throughout the crowd, I realized as I approached, and with a swell of pride I noticed that most of them were Lambda's.

"I don't care about educating women!" Micah bellowed at the crowd. "They need to be educated on the right things, like ironing, cooking, and taking care of the children!"

That started off most of the women, especially the professors and graduate students from the Women's Studies Center, who held aloft pink shirts that said: "Feminism is the Radical Notion that Women are People" and one that said "This is What a Radical Feminist Looks Like!".

A few attacked the street preacher's wife, who stood off to one side in a video camera. I slunk around the edges of the crowd to where I could get a better look at her, and was pleasantly unsurprised; she was exactly the vision of a conservative preacher's wife: long skirt that passed her ankles, a long, loose-sleeved jacket that hid her arms to the wrist, and a hat that hid her face from the sun. Oh, and long, uncut hair that I'd bet money on that Brother Micah pulled hard on at night when they tried to be fruitful and multiply.

She stayed quiet for the most part, even when Micah's yells rose to a crescendo and he slapped the Bible multiple times as he screamed, "A woman's place is in front of the stove and behind a vacuum!", and she only roused when a few quieter women came over to ask her why she stayed with him. I snapped a couple pictures of her actually talking with my phone, took a short video of Micah screaming, and e-mailed them to myself to mess around with later.

Throughout the time I watched him, as usual his diatribe was just preaching at students how everything they did was going to send them straight to Hell. We could not pass Go or receive $200.

My phone rang, and I picked up to heard the voice of another Lambda United member, Scott. "He couldn't have picked a better week to show up?" he asked.

"I know," I said, "It's like we don't have enough to worry about."

His boyfriend Jeff grabbed the phone. "Please, he couldn't have chosen a better week than midterms?" he griped. "I'm about to graduate, here."

"I know," I said, checking my watch. "It's almost five anyway. He has to leave at five, because that's usually when his permit expires and the police escort him off."

"I know."

Someone grabbed me from behind and I spun around, automatically shaking their arms off. Julie, John, Jeff and Scott stood behind me, and Julie pulled me into a kiss.

"Hi," I whispered against her lips, inwardly frowning. Why was John here? Why was he always hanging around my girlfriend?

"Hi," she said back. Jeff pulled my phone out of my hand, hung up on himself, and started scrolling through my phone, looking for pictures.

He found the pictures he was looking for, but while I was glaring at John I heard muffled laughter, and Jeff and Scott were fighting over my phone, redfaced and choking on giggles.

I snatched it out of Scott's fingers to see what was wrong, and was rewarded with instant mortification.

A photo of me in suggestive lingerie, breasts bared to the camera, was pulled up on my phone.

I shrieked, hit delete, and found that there were more photos than that that I'd forgotten to delete after sending them to Julie. Most of them didn't involve full-nudity, but one was a photo of my freshly shaven--well, body--and I sent up a quick prayer that the boys hadn't seen that one yet.

Julie caught the phone when I threw it at her, and I jumped on Jeff's chest, pulling myself up with his shirt and wrapping my legs around his waist--not sexually, but to get a better grip--and grabbed his head with my hands. "How much did you see?" I demanded of his laughing eyes.

"Enough," he choked out around giggles.

I squeezed with my legs around his not-so-hard middle, and his eyes bugged out. "What did you see?"

"Just you… in lingerie…" he forced out. "The worst photo was the one you caught us looking at, I swear," he rushed out in a stream.

I hopped off his chest. "Good. Let's keep it that way." I smiled. "After all, you don't want the next time to involve pictures of girl pussy, right?"

Jeff nodded, nose screwed up.

"Or of me with my big… hard… plastic cock," I said, enunciating the last word clearly.

Now both Jeff and Scott looked like their brains had broken.

"That's what I thought," I smirked.

Julie leaned over. "But you don't have a strap-on," she whispered.

"How do you know that?" I whispered.

Her mouth formed an 'O', and she looked a little excited. "You've been keeping secrets," she murmured.

"Only a little one," I said. "I wanted to surprise you."

She nuzzled my neck. "That is a surprise," she said, but something in her eyes cringed. "Can we just wait a little while to use it?"

I was disappointed, but I understood. This hadn't been a decision we'd made together, and even I didn't know who the strap-on was going to be used on. I wouldn't mind trying it out, but if Julie was one of those butches who didn't mind more penetration than a finger…

I shivered at the thought.

But besides that, if she was willing to let me do that to her, it represented a huge amount of trust that she had in me not to hurt her, especially after what I now knew Casey had done.

And I was so not going to abuse that trust.

A/N: For a very long time, I struggled with the decision to post this chapter because of the essay The Plea Against Rape. Please note that this is not an attempt to write "good" rape fiction, nor is it a way to demonize Casey's character. It's just part of Julie's history, and to be fair to her this had to be included.

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