Chapter 318

By a simple stroke of luck, the weekend of orientation, Jess and Melanie were singled out for an invite to a football party at a house near campus. No one could have known that Jess was a powder keg, and that party was the match that would light her fuse. Jess’s memory of that night cut out about two hours after she arrived. It wasn’t that she was drugged. It was that she turned down nothing.

She smoked her first cigarette. Did her first bong hit. And she was introduced to cocaine, just a bump at first, but it was love at first taste. She ended up in a second-floor bedroom with two football players, where she made a deal with them -- she would do what they asked in exchange for more of the magic powder.

That night could have served as a lesson; it could have shaken her out of the suppressed grief she felt about her parents splitting up. It didn’t. It was a catalyst. Jess woke up the next morning, took any hint of shame out of the walk back to her dorm room, and felt mor