Buffy pushed the tangle of sheets and pillows away; last night had been another fifteen rounds with her bedding. She pulled back her hair and padded downstairs to find her mother sitting at the table, cup in hand. Joyce sat quietly as Buffy fixed toast. Silence ruled while the former Slayer took a few bites.

"Did you sleep well?" Joyce asked, rotating her cup on the table.

Buffy chewed and gave her a gimlet eye. "What do you think?"

Joyce sipped her coffee. "It sounded rough. Honey, I know you're upset about what happened-"

"That's not why I couldn't sleep… or not the only reason… but it didn't help." Buffy nipped off another piece of toast. "What did you mean last night, that stuff about I might be the only one who can do something about this?"

Joyce considered the question. "Well, I don't think anyone on that campus knows more about dealing with violence than you do." She closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head. "This young lady… do you know her name?"

Buffy nodded. "Emily. I met her at the party."

"Think about what you've gone through, not just physically, but emotionally, too." Joyce's eyes grew shiny. "Is there anyone else you can think of who could say 'I know what you're experiencing' and mean it more than you?"

"So, I should just talk to her?" Buffy frowned. "What would I say?"

Joyce shook her head. "I don't think you have to say much. This has been a terrible experience-"

"Tell me about it," Buffy muttered.

"-and she needs to get help." Joyce held up a hand. "Which you should definitely not try to provide. She probably needs therapy, and she'll need someone there for her." Joyce put her hands flat on the table. "Has she reported it to the police?"

"I don't know." Buffy's mouth twisted as though she tasted something bitter. "Not one hundred percent sure I trust the Sunnydale PD to investigate jaywalking, let alone this."

"I understand, but there's a new administration and a new chief of police." Joyce looked at her daughter for a long second. "What was your plan?"

Buffy wrinkled her nose. "I was thinking more along the lines of kicking his ass."

"I'm sure that's very tempting." Joyce took her cup to the sink and rinsed it. "But think for a minute. Do you know it's the same young man?"

"Well," Buffy said slowly, "There are similarities."

Joyce leaned against the counter and bit her lip. "Honey, 'young man spots young woman in a vulnerable state and takes advantage of her' dates back to, oh, at least my years in college." She walked behind her daughter and bent down, cradling Buffy in a loose hug around the neck. "And if you did… take matters into your own hands, what would the police charge him with? Someone has to make a complaint."

"They don't have to. Not at first, anyway."

Joyce leaned forward and whispered in her daughter's ear. "I think that beating him to a pulp before you turn him over to the police might undercut your testimony." She straightened up, patting Buffy on the shoulders.

The former Slayer scowled. "Being Sally Jesse Raphael doesn't seem like doing much."

"It can mean more than you think, but if you're really wanting to do something, didn't you say there was some kind of meeting last night?"

"A bunch of people were outside the Union. I think they might be planning something."

"Well, then," Joyce said, "you could offer self-defense training, something like that. That's certainly within your skill set." She shrugged. "It might not be as satisfying as going full Charles Bronson, but it might help more people."

Buffy twisted around to look up at her mother. "Who's Charles Bronson?"

Joyce squinted at her daughter. "I'm going to ignore that." She went into the living room; her voice floated back into the kitchen. "Do you have any plans for today?"

Buffy popped the last of the toast into her mouth. "Not really, I-" Her head snapped around at the chiming ringtone of her cell. She had left it on the kitchen counter the night before. She grabbed the black rectangle and flipped it open. "Hi."

"Buffy, it's Bryn." Pause. "I talked to Emily."

Buffy took a shaky breath. "How is she?"

Bryn sighed; the sound hissed in the former Slayer's ears. "Not good… at all."

"Uh-huh." Buffy bit her lip and plunged in. "I'd like to talk to her." Silence. "Bryn, I-"

"No, I heard you, I just…" A pause, punctuated by raspy crackles on the line. "I remember what you did in the woods. I'll ask her if she'll talk to you. Is that okay?"

"More than okay, that's… you're above and beyond girl. Thanks, Bryn. I really appreciate it." There was a long silence on the line.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Bryn finally said.

Buffy swallowed. "I do, too."

The afternoon was beautiful: bright, crystalline sunshine, blue sky with high, fluffy clouds, slight breeze. Buffy hated it; her nerve ends felt raw as she drove across town.

It had been ninety minutes before Bryn called back: Emily would talk to Buffy, but not on campus. She wanted to meet at Turn the Page, a bookstore a few blocks from UCS. The choice of meeting places puzzled the former Slayer, but she agreed.

Buffy wheeled the RAV to the curb; the store was two doors down. As she pushed open the door, she understood why Emily might want to meet there. It was quiet and dim; the shelves and shelves of used books seemed to soak up the light from the front windows. There were donated armchairs and sofas scattered throughout the space and lamps sat on scarred tables, creating isolated oases of light. The few customers there on a Sunday afternoon were absorbed in their search for a pre-loved copy of whichever author was their favorite. She wound her way through the labyrinth of words; Bryn said Emily would be near the back of the store.

Buffy came around the end of a well-worn bookcase stuffed with battered paperbacks and there was Emily. She sat in an armchair covered in a worn brocade fabric, her feet curled up under her. She looked thin and frail, different from the girl Buffy semi-remembered meeting thirty-six hours before. Emily looked up and their eyes met; there was the briefest of pauses, then Emily nodded slightly and Buffy gingerly sat down in another chair, its corduroy worn smooth in patches on the seat and arms. The chairs were separated by an octagonal wood table; a lamp with a yellowed shade provided a pool of amber illumination.

Emily's hands fidgeted in her lap. "Bryn said you wanted to talk to me." The angle of the lamp cast her face in semi-shadow. "I met you at the party, right? I don't remember you from anywhere else."

"Yeah, it was Friday night." Buffy half-turned in her seat to look at the other girl. "Thank you for talking to me. I know this must be hella hard."

"So, do you, like, want me to tell you what happened?" Emily said. She wore a black hoodie, zipped up to the neck.

"No and way," Buffy replied. "I don't need to hear any gory details."

"Thanks." Emily sighed and sank back in the chair. "So, why do you want to see me?"

"Well, first of all, I…" Buffy groped for the words, then they all came out in a rush. "I want to know if the same guy tried to feel me up."

Emily went very still. "What?"

Buffy felt her breath coming fast and shallow. She pushed her thumb into the palm of her hand, willing the pain to come forward. "I left before you, I think. A guy offered to help me get home and then he… tried to get home, if you know what I mean."

Emily's mouth twitched. "That's very circumspect."

Buffy's eyes widened as she shrugged. "I guess… Anyway, he was ridiculously good looking and he said his name was Patrick."

Emily stiffened and her eyes darted back and forth, as though saying the name might summon the monster. "That sounds like him. He, he seemed really nice and I…" She pressed a fist to her mouth. "I feel like such an idiot."

"No, he's the bad guy." Buffy leaned forward. "Have you gone to the police?"

"Are you kidding?" Emily raised her head and Buffy flinched at the pain in the other girl's eyes. "The police? No way. It wouldn't be about him." Emily bit her lip, eyes glistening. "It'd be about me… what was I wearing? How much did I have to drink? Did I want it and then change my mind so people won't think I'm a slut?" She shook her head. "No, there was a girl at my high school who went to the cops. They ended up dragging her through the mud, she was the one treated like a criminal. I won't put myself through that, I won't-" Her voice broke. "-I won't put my parents through that." She stared at Buffy, her eyes sharp. "Would you trust the police?"

A veritable Battleship Potemkin collage of images flashed through Buffy's mind: Principal Snyder, every interaction she'd had with the Sunnydale PD, Gage Petronzi's bloody nose. "Uh, not really."

"I didn't think so." Emily drew back into herself, pulling her hands inside the sleeves of her hoodie and crossing her arms.

Buffy looked down at the worn hardwood floor. "Okay, then, what do we do?"

Emily laughed bitterly. "'We'? You got a mouse in your pocket?" She shook her head. "I'm going to try and pretend it never happened."

"But people are-"

"People are what? The thing outside the Union last night?" Emily looked away and spoke through gritted teeth. "You know, no one talked to me about that, no one asked 'Hey, do you want us to do this?' They just did it." She looked back. "You can be the hero. I just want this to go away. I made a mistake, and it won't happen again." She stared at the erstwhile Slayer for a long beat.

"Okay," Buffy said. "I deserved that." She looked at the floor for a moment. "I'm gonna back up here. I'm sorry. I got ahead of myself." She thought for a minute. "You mentioned your high school, so I'm guessing you're not from Sunnydale."

"Great deduction, Einstein. I'm from over the mountains, the south end of the Central Valley."

"Did you know Bryn before?"

"No." Emily shook her head, an abrupt, snapping motion. "We're both in Hoyme, I met her at one of the activities the first week." She swallowed. "I went to a pretty small high school, I was kind of intimidated by… everything."

"You think Sunnydale is bright lights, big city?" Buffy's eyes widened.

Emily shrugged. "I know it's not a huge school, but the freshman class is, like, twice as big as my entire high school. I was pretty overwhelmed and Bryn was… she helped me a lot."

Buffy remembered Bryn's face from the night before. "Have you talked to her since Friday?"

"No, I… I haven't talked to anybody much. I'd probably still be in my room if she hadn't called and asked me to talk to you."

"I, uh, I respect that. I'm going to give you my phone number, okay, and I want you to call me if you need anything," Buffy said. She recited her number, then stood up. "I'm really sorry, Emily. If I can do anything, ever, will you let me know?"

"What's to do?" Emily looked up at her. "You can't put toothpaste back in the tube. I just… I just want to make it go away."

"You can't do that," Buffy blurted. "We can't let him get away with it."

"There's 'we' again, like this happened to you." Emily looked away, her chin uptilted.

"It has," Buffy said. "Maybe not this exactly, but I…" She took a breath, then plunged ahead before she lost her nerve. "People I love have died, people I thought were my friends have betrayed me, friends-" She choked on her words. "-friends have left me and a guy that I loved betrayed me-"

"Oh." Emily's voice was grim in the dim atmosphere. "Your boyfriend dumped you. That's not-"

"No," Buffy said. "He didn't just dump me. He tried to kill me." The words felt like spitting hot lava out of her mouth; her head swam for a moment. "So, no, this particular thing hasn't happened to me, but I know, I know what it's like to want to wish something away, and to know that you can't walk it off, even if it's not your fault. You asked why I wanted to talk to you? I wanted to talk to you because I kinda know how you feel and I… I want you to know that you're not alone."

"That's quite a speech," Emily said in a quiet voice. "But my parents-"

"I know the look you're afraid of," Buffy said, leaning forward. "The guy, that one, he stood on my front porch and told my mom we'd had sex. He was very Red Shoe Diaries about it. Not a Hallmark moment."

"So, you want to help me to make yourself feel better."

Buffy shook her head and turned. "I'm sorry. We're going in more circles than a merry-go-round." She looked down at Emily. "Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to find out who Patrick is, that's the first thing. I'll keep Bryn in the loop and she can tell you what she wants or you can ask her. Okay?"

Emily's lips quivered. "It's your life. Do whatever you want."

"Oh, I will."

Buffy slammed the car door and rested her forehead on the steering wheel, wanting to scream out her frustration. She pressed her thumb against the bandage on her hand; even with Slayer healing, it produced enough of a dull ache to distract her. She jammed the key into the ignition and looked over her shoulder as she backed out.

"Okay, Patrick Whatever-Your-Name-Is, let's see who you are," she mumbled as she dropped the transmission into drive. "And you better have a big umbrella."

"Is he older than you?" Joyce dried the dinner dishes and placed them in the cabinet.

"I don't know," Buffy replied, "but if he is, it's not much. I didn't get Woody Allen vibes off him." She sat at the table, frowning.

"Do you remember him from high school?"

The one-time Slayer rested her chin on her folded arms. "No, but I didn't know everybody."

"Well, you could look through your yearbook."

"I've got a yearbook?" Buffy's head came up like a puppy that had just smelled bacon.

"I bought a yearbook, every year, for the last three years. They're in the upstairs hall."

"Oh, um, okay, I'll go look there." Two hours later, Buffy returned downstairs. "I've looked through the senior pages a hundred times. My eyes, they bleed. He's not there."

"So, he didn't graduate with you, or in '97 or '98."

Buffy frowned. "If this is meant to be encouraging, please try harder."

Joyce rolled her eyes. "Is SHS the only high school in Sunnydale?"

"No, there's St. Michael's, but I don't have their yearbook."

"I bet they have copies in the library."

"I can't go to the high school. It's just too… too. And why would they have the St. Michael's yearbook, anyway?"

"I was thinking of the public library."

"Oh." Buffy nodded. "That's a good idea, mom. I'll hit it tomorrow after class."

"Always happy to help." Joyce shook her head and suppressed a small smile.

Coach Hyde looked at the assemblage of athletes stretching on the front lawn of Sunnydale High. "You'll be called out during sixth period tomorrow. There's no middle school or JV races at this one, so we shouldn't be out too late." She clapped twice. "Don't be late for class."

Casey hung back as the team moved toward the entry doors to the gym. There was always a crush at the door; she hated it. As the athletes filtered through into the foyer, the boys split away, headed toward their locker room. The scrum thinned enough for her to go inside.

"So, we ride a bus to the meet, right?" Casey jumped six inches high and eight inches to the right. The recently-vacated space created the slightest of buffers between her and Ophelia, who blinked twice. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

It's, it's okay, I just didn't see you, you were in my blind spot." Casey swallowed and tried to calm her pounding heart. "You were saying?"

"We all ride a bus to the meet, right?" Ophelia seemed very concerned about this detail.

"Yeah."

"Are there, like, assigned seats, do freshmen sit in the front and seniors in the back, is there a boys' section and girls' section…?"

Ophelia's brow furrowed; it was so cute Casey wanted to gag. "No, you can sit wherever you want."

The younger girl nodded. "Is it okay if I sit with you?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Thanks."

Casey frowned. "Why are you worried about it? Didn't you run cross at your old school?"

Ophelia nodded. "Yeah, but… We had, like, our own vans, and the girls rode in one and the guys in the other… I just don't want to do something, y'know, stupid or dorky."

"I don't think that's a problem." Casey glanced toward the tunnel; the last of the team was disappearing into the dark. "You had your own vans? You, what, checked them out or something?" She started toward the tunnel; Ophelia fell in beside her.

"No, the cross-country team had its own vans. The golf teams did, too."

"Huh." Casey blinked as she processed the statement. "Was your school rich or something?"

Ophelia looked down at her toes. "Yeah, I mean, it was a lab school, so-"

"What's a lab school?"

"Laboratory school… it was run by one of the universities, supposed to be a place to try out new educational theories and stuff, I think. It ended up most of the students' parents were, like, doctors and lawyers… physicists and engineers, stuff like that." Ophelia kicked the toe of her shoe against the gym floor. "The parents bought the vans."

"Oh, you mean, like, if somebody was on the golf team, the parents would pitch in and buy a van?"

"Well, most of the time one parent would buy the van. When the parents pooled their money, it was usually for something like the football team's bus."

"The football team had a bus? Like, a Greyhound?"

"Yup. Painted school colors and everything."

"Wow." Casey shook her head as they reached the tunnel. "Why did you move from there to Sunnydale?"

Ophelia looked into the shadowy distance. "I don't know. My dad just came home one day and told us we were moving."

Casey's mouth turned down. "I bet your mom was pissed."

Ophelia's voice was small. "My mom died when I was a baby."