Chapter 19: Nobody Carries Me

"Margo," Paige said on the screen, "I'm so sorry you were hurt."

Nell set down her chopsticks.

Paige cried well.

She said Reid and his father had manipulated her.

She said she was a young artist who had trusted the wrong people.

She said she had made a terrible mistake.

She said Margo's pain was real.

She said she hoped Margo could one day forgive her.

At the four-minute mark the video cut to a clip of me laughing on the grass.

It was the moment after the photographer brought my leg back, when I had made a shaky, awful sound.

Paige had trimmed it until it looked like a joke.

"Oh, you little liar," Nell said.

"Three million views by tomorrow," Gideon said quietly. "She'll make that a career."

I watched Paige wipe one tear with a knuckle, carefully, off camera.

"She's going live from the quad at noon," I said. "It says so in the caption."

"You can't go out there alone."

"I won't be."

The next day the quad was full again, with a ring light on a stand.

Four hundred people were watching on her phone.

Paige stood on the gallery steps in the yellow dress and said she was taking questions.

I walked into the frame with Nell on one side.

Behind us came three boys in fraternity jackets.

They were the three who had apologized on the sidewalk in front of their neighbors.

Paige saw them and her face did something small and quick.

"Margo," she said, with her eyes bright for the lens. "I'm so glad you came."

"I'd like to answer your video," I said. "I brought witnesses."

I stepped aside.

The tallest of the three brothers took one step toward her phone.

He didn't look at me.

"I held her left arm," he said. "Paige told me where to kneel."

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