Sense of Rumor (Mount Faith Series: Book 6) (15 page)

Arnella nodded. "He is in the shower. We just got in."

Tracy nodded jerkily. "So are you two a couple now?"

Arnella stopped rubbing her hair and smiled. "Would it kill you to know? You two-faced Judas."

"Why are you calling me that?" Tracy asked innocently.

"You told Alric that I had a test called an Arnella test. What was with that?"

Tracy clutched her book bag even tighter as she realized that she was caught in a lie. She didn't even know where to look. She couldn't deny it now when Alric was right inside the apartment.

"I am sorry; I was jealous, don't know what came over me," she said quickly and insincerely.

"Jealous of what?" Arnella asked incredulously.

"Alric likes you." Tracy hissed, "and he's the one guy that I have ever really liked. You just had to snatch him away, didn't you?"

Arnella laughed, "Tracy when have I ever snatched anybody away from you? Are you hallucinating?"

A fiery anger gripped Tracy's chest. "You always do it with every single guy. You are a monster. A whoring monster."

She walked away from Arnella in a huff and headed to Block C. She didn't even care if the rain was blowing on her. She headed to her apartment slammed the door and slumped on it, an ache in her chest. She listened vaguely to the rain slapping the pavement outside and crawled toward her phone.

She dialed her house number. It was three in the afternoon; she didn't expect anybody to be home but she just wanted to talk to sympathetic listeners. Her mother and father were just that, well more her father because he hated Arnella. She had to admit that that was her fault because she had complained about Arnella to him for years.

Her father picked up on the third ring.

"Dad," Tracy said chokily. "What are you doing home?"

"Can you believe I have the flu?" he coughed for a spate. "Why are you sounding so sad?"

"It's Arnella again," Tracy wailed. "She is seeing Alric, the guy I like. I don't know what's the matter with her. She just can't see me liking someone without stealing them."

Her father grunted. "I hope you are still not having a friendship with her? She's really something else, isn't she?"

"Yes," Tracy said mournfully. "I hate her."

Her father grunted. "There are just some people you have to avoid, Tracy hun. Arnella is one of them. Don't let her know what is going on in your life. Ignore her. Soon you'll move on with your career. She'll still be mediocre. One day she'll get ugly and washed up, and you'll wonder what you were so bothered about. She'll be nothing and you'll be something."

Tracy smiled. "Thanks Dad. I can always depend on you to set me straight."

"Don't mention it," her father sneezed. "By the way, I am coming to the Medical Association Ball in December…just bought two tickets. Want to be my date? Your mother has a conference the same week and can't attend."

"Yes. Sure," Tracy said. That's Alric's school club; he'd definitely be there. Maybe if she dressed to the nines and looked really good, she could show him what he was missing by being with Arnella.

*****

"Who was that?" Alric came out of the bathroom dressed in jeans and t-shirt. He smelled really good and fresh with the remnants of a lemony scent.

"That was Tracy," Arnella said grinning. "She called me a whoring monster."

Alric looked at her diminutive figure in his sweatshirt and shook his head. "That's not even funny, Arnella. "

"It is," Arnella said. "I can't believe she told you that there was some sort of Arnella test. Now she is probably back in her apartment, crying her eyes out. I find that funny."

Alric sat in his overstuffed green chair and frowned at her, "I find your sexual life troubling."

"Why?" Arnella said, sitting across from him in a huff. "It has nothing to do with you."

"It does Arnella," Alric said exasperated. "I know you are sexually experienced, I understand that. I just don't like to think about it, you know. I get really angry when I think about it. Call me old-fashioned."

Arnella looked down at her hand, "I don't want to talk about this. What happened to us being only friends?"

Alric nodded and grabbed up one of his textbooks. "Okay. We are just friends. I don't care how many men you sleep with, or where you go, or what you do."

He leafed through one of the textbooks angrily, and Arnella looked over at his stack of books and DVD collection under his television.

"How many have you slept with?" Alric asked quietly.

Arnella looked at him, "I thought you were studying."

"I need to know," Alric said. "Yes, I know it is deeply uncool to ask, but I wonder and sometimes I do it at the most inappropriate times, and I get jealous of all those faceless guys that have been trampling in and out of your life."

Arnella sighed and got up. "I don't want to talk about this. Not with you. Not now."

Alric pursed his lips and then looked down into his book. "Okay."

"What about your sex life?" Arnella asked gruffly. "Since you are so fascinated with mine, tell me about yours."

Alric looked up from his book slowly. "My sex life is pretty simple and straightforward. I have not had sex yet. Still resisting peer pressure and societal pressure to be some sort of stud."

For some reason, that deflated Arnella and she leaned back in the couch feeling like a dirty specimen.

"That's admirable," she whispered, "waiting for the right girl."

Alric inclined his head and looked at her intently. "I don't want admiration. I don't even want to like you."

"I don't want to like you either," Arnella said brashly. "Bad boys are much more appealing. You are as straight as an arrow. You cross all your t's and dot all your i's. You are a good guy. I don't want you to like me. I might jinx you, turn you into a bad person."

Alric put aside his book and folded his arm. "You can't jinx me, and you are not a bad person. I am surprised your psychiatrist hasn't addressed that problem of yours yet."

"What problem?" Arnella snarled.

"The one where you think you are the worst person in the world, an untouchable." Alric laughed. "You are not, you know, and you don't have to try to prove that to me. You have some redeeming qualities that I like."

"What are some of those redeeming qualities that you see in me?" Arnella asked softly.

Alric smiled. "You act tough but you are a softie. You actually cried when we dissected that frog in the lab."

"Something was in my eye," Arnella said. "Allergies. That's it. I had allergies. I am allergic to dead frogs."

"You feel deeply," Alric said softly "about everything. You are passionate and opinionated and independent and talented."

Arnella shivered uncomfortably.

"And that's what I have found out in a month. I am still trying to unravel the mystery of Arnella though," Alric said, picking up his book again. "Want to ask me some practice questions and hear my deeply intelligent answers?"

Arnella rolled her eyes. "Sure."

*****

As usual, Arnella couldn't sleep. She had turned into an insomniac. She found it hard to settle her mind after she had dug up her past with Taj. All of her childhood angst and pain came roaring back afresh.

She glanced at the clock. It was six o' clock in the morning. Instead of running downstairs to paint before her class, she had taken to talking to Jesus, as Vanley had made her promise.

She told Him about her day, and she told Him what she wanted to do and asked for His help. It usually made her feel better. She had also taken to reading snippets of the Bible.

Alric had been the one to encourage her to read it. "There are no perfect people in there," he had told her seriously after one of their long talks. "Trust me, you'll find company. The one thing the Bible characters had in common is that they had a God who loved them, who went out of his way to save them, just like he is doing for you and I. He loves you Arnella."

She pushed herself out of bed and got on her knees. God loved her. The more she thought about it the more special she felt. She was not used to feeling special for anybody. She also felt sorry now that she had mocked Vanley and called Jesus his imaginary friend. He was not imaginary in the least. Whenever she tentatively asked him for peace about her situation, she really did feel it. She couldn't explain how that worked, but it did.

Her phone chirped on the bedside table and she picked it up slowly.

"Arnella Bancroft." It was her uncle. "I can't even process this madness that Kylie told me last week. You were raped and videotaped by boys attending this institution, and nothing is being done about it."

"Hello to you too Uncle Ryan," Arnella said, flinching at every word he spoke. "Glad to hear that you are back from your trip."

"And to think that you did not want to tell anybody!" Bancroft bellowed over the phone. "My office, ten o'clock today, Arnella!"

He hung up the phone in her ears in an angry huff.

It was two weeks and Arnella hadn't heard from Natasha. She had honestly thought that Natasha had forgotten her, but when she walked into her uncle's office at ten o'clock, there was Natasha and another guy sitting beside her. Jackie Beecher, the school's lawyer and Kylie's chief nemesis was there as well.

"Have a seat," her uncle said to her after the brief pleasantries were exchanged. The guy who was sitting with Natasha was a detective too. His name was Tony Beaker. That much she learnt before her uncle, like a bulldozer, started the conversation.

"I spoke to the Assistant Supe Coley last night and heard that you were looking into this case," he said to Natasha briskly.

"Yes," Natasha said. "I interviewed the guys involved."

She looked at Arnella apologetically. "They all said it had been Arnella's idea that they do a video at the party. They also said that they dumped the video. Apparently, Cory was the videographer. David had penetrative sex with her and Jeff oral sex.

According to Cory, they ran out of time because they were almost caught. They all denied giving her a drug."

Natasha shrugged. "I am sorry Arnella; there is nothing we can legally do about the situation now."

Ryan Bancroft thumped the desk. "What about a search warrant to find out if one of those cretins had the date rape drug on them?"

Natasha shook her head. "There is no evidence to get a warrant. Unfortunately, Arnella did not do a rape kit or report the rape to the police in time. This whole thing is now a matter of he said she said."

"I was not even sure if there had been a rape at the time," Arnella said weakly. "The first thing I did was bathe. I can't even remember what really happened and I refuse to watch anymore of those videos."

"About the videos," Natasha said, "I have my friend Miles in the cyber crime unit looking into it. He said we'd get results from the email company in a month or so."

"How can I expel those brutes?" Ryan turned to Jackie, who had been silent while Natasha spoke.

"Well," Jackie said, "you can't. Not without legal reason. They could sue the school for wrongful dismissal. It would be too messy and the publicity would be awful."

Bancroft sighed. "And that video. Where did the guys dump the copy?"

Natasha shrugged. "Cory explained that he took the SD card and dumped it in the garbage can at the party, before they left. According to him they panicked that anyone would see them on it so they dropped it in the garbage."

"He sounds like he's lying," Jackie said cynically. "Why go through all the effort of taping a sex scene and then dump it."

"I think we have a greater chance of finding out who is the culprit if we track that email address," Natasha said.

"You prefer to wait to find out an email address before doing good old detective work?" Jackie asked incredulously.

Natasha tensed her mouth. "We have to wait on the email service provider to give us information about the account holder of the email address. That can take a while but we'll have the exact location of whoever is sending the mail. It's much easier that way. If the person shares it online or sells it, then Arnella can sue for invasion of privacy."

Jackie sneered. "I think you are not doing your job as efficiently as you could."

"Ladies, ladies," Bancroft said snappily, before Natasha could retort. "I know you two have a personal issue, but please, let's not bring this into the current matter. My niece has been wronged. Is there anyway to make this legally right?"

Both Natasha and Jackie shook their heads.

Tony spoke up. He was all but ignored in the room. "Are you sure that the guys dumped the storage device? It's a reusable card, why dump it?"

"Explain," Bancroft said, scratching his chin.

"Some video cameras use a little card, called a SD card, to store recorded images and videos. That is not something you just take out and dump. Maybe they are lying. Maybe they didn't dump it and are tormenting Arnella with the video."