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This video has been removed due to legal complaint.

“Thank you God.”
She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath until her lungs swelled at the first one she’d taken in seconds.  Her heart hammered at the message splashed across the screen.  “Thank you Jack.”

She immediately reached for her phone and dialed his number.

“Hello?” A bewildered female voice answered.

Lila slammed the phone down.  Reality washed over her like a wave of darkness gripping at her skin, and her heart was back to hammering once more.

--

Jack stirred awake, irritated by the sound of Kelly’s voice after he’d finally managed to close his eyes.

To forget.

He craned his neck and looked over his shoulder, trying to see her on the other side of the bed without moving his body.

“Who was it?” he grumbled sleepily.

Without turning to him, Kelly hid her hands under her pillow, and scooted to the farthest corner of the bed.

“They hung up,” she whispered harshly, slamming her fist into the pillow a few times before jamming her head into it.

Her stomach felt sick.

--

Kelly wasn’t alone, because Lila’s stomach was in the same condition the following morning.

In perfect contrast to her piss poor mood, the sun shone bright, and the sky was clear.  Tall trees and green grass surrounded her, leaves blowing pleasantly in the breeze, making the red brick buildings that flanked her stand out. Her heels clicked against the winding concrete walkway.  The walkway started in the middle of the yard and then broke off in various different directions, slicing through the grass, each leading down different paths.  Not a sign was in sight.  It was no wonder students got so lost in this massive place.  Sometimes the school felt like a giant maze, and they were all just flustered mice milling about in confusion, probably participating in some university wide experiment they didn’t know they were apart of.  Lila wouldn’t even be surprised.  This was Harvard, after all.  If there were anything in existence that hadn’t been dissected within an inch of its life, it eventually would be here.  It was only a matter of time.

Sipping her coffee, Lila gave halfhearted hellos to the students who greeted her with respect, and scowled at the ones who made it a point to check out her tits, her ass, pretty much every inch of her,
before
greeting her with respect.

She was aware that she stood out like a sore thumb.  Why in the world was the Human Sexuality lecturer stomping through the dorms in Harvard Yard, looking sleep deprived and agitated? 

If there were any way to get to Julie’s sorority house without cutting through the dorms, Lila would gladly take it.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t.

When the tenth suggestive leer of the morning hit her, something prompted her to look down at her blouse.

Yep, it had come undone.   The hot pink leopard print bra that had been so cute in the Victoria’s Secret dressing room was now feeling like a terribly uneducated decision.  Without breaking her stride, Lila worked to re-button her blouse with one hand.  She gave tight smiles to the giggling girls and wise-ass boys, all of whom had something to say as they passed her.

When the buttons proved too complicated to handle one handedly, Lila looked down, heels still clicking against the pavement as she fastened her top.

Struggling, she looked up to make sure the path was still clear, but not in time.

As she ran smack dab into a back so broad she almost mistook it for a wall, she stumbled backward, finding her footing just in time to stop herself from tumbling to the ground.

The first thing she checked was her Venti cup of coffee, because that was seriously the only thing that mattered.

Even when the mountain of a man she’d run into turned towards her with a look of distain, one that quickly dissipated the moment he got his eyes on her, she wasn’t moved, just thrilled that her coffee had survived.

“Sorry about that,” she said, but he was already turning away from her.  She continued speaking to him as if she had his undivided attention.  “I don’t really know this area of campus…” Her words slowed to a stop when a strip of yellow caught her eyes.

Stepping up next to the mountain man, the scene before her came into full view. She’d been so distracted by her own ridiculous problems that morning, her bra, her coffee cup, her catastrophic
life,
that she hadn’t even realized real tragedy had struck that morning in Harvard Yard.

Crime scene tape stretched across the grassy area, wrapping around several trees before vanishing behind the walls of Memorial Hall, not just the tallest building in Harvard Yard, but the tallest on campus.

Understanding washed over Lila, and she looked up at the mountain man.

He didn’t look back.  “Freshman,” he said, staring ahead.

Lila’s eyes went back to the crime scene tape and, for the first time, she caught sight of a foot.

There was a body on the ground, flanked with police officers.

Ice cold waves seized her.  The dove necklace around her neck came instantly between her fingers.  She clutched it for dear life.

“Climbed to the top and jumped,” the mountain man said.

Lila was already moving away from him, clutching her dove necklace and her coffee. She pushed through the crowd that had formed as she followed the crime scene tape with slow, unsure strides, eyes riveted to that foot peeking out from the other side of the building. Her heart thundered.  As she moved, bystanders made room for her reluctantly, some even forcing her to elbow her way through.  Humans were always so fascinated by death, and that was apparently true even when the dead was one of their own.  Lila thanked god it was summer, or this scene would be nothing short of a zoo.

As she moved closer to the body, she already knew she didn’t want to see what was around that corner, but she couldn’t stop her legs from moving.

The pale, delicate foot had white nail polish with specks of glitter on the toenails, a style choice of a young girl, probably still a teen.  The ankle came into view, with the emblem of the university’s largest sorority tattooed on it. 

“Please not Julie,” Lila begged.  “Please.”

The rest of the leg hit her eyes, pink panties, bare torso, pink bra and, finally, the girl’s face, unrecognizable from where it had been smashed into the pavement.  Her red hair wasn’t red enough to camouflage the blood, or the remains of her crushed skull.

It wasn’t Julie, but it was still sickening.

The coffee cup slipped from Lila’s hand, and crashed into the ground.

10

At the end of class the next day, Lila waited until it was nearly empty to call out to him.

“Mr. Almeida, can I see you up front, please?”

“Yes,
Professor James
.”  That gleam hit his eye; that hitch tightened his voice.

She hated that she loved it.

He took his sweet time putting his things away like he always did.  Lila knew he moved at a snails pace to ensure some alone time with her, even if it was just a few minutes.  As the semester stretched on, time with Lila at the end of class was becoming harder and harder for him to come by.  More students wanted to speak to her after class every day.  Some days, she was forced to give a lot of them her office hours, since she didn’t always have time to speak to them one on one.

Since age thirteen, Chase had been used to having her to himself at all times, whenever he wanted.  So as the last student finally filed out of the class, he watched them go with contempt in his eyes.

“Ever notice that most of the students who are “
so confused”
at the end of class are of the male variety?”

“I’m not sure what you’re implying.” She crossed her arms over her chest as he approached her desk.  She waited until he was on the other side, his pelvis pressing into the wood, to reach into her bag and produce his laptop.  “I just wanted to return this to you.”

“I noticed the video was taken down.”  He took it from her hands.  “You showed it to Jack?”

“I showed it to legal.”

He smirked, shoving the computer into his bag.  “So that’s why you’ve been so distracted.”

“I’m not distracted.”

“You are.  You weren’t really here today.”

Her eyes searched his.  If she’d been different today in class, he was certainly the one who would notice, since he was the only one of her students who gave her his unwavering attention.

“What are you thinking about?” He reached a long arm across the desk and tangled a piece of her hair between his fingers.

Lila turned away, moving towards the whiteboard. “The student who jumped in Harvard Yard yesterday?  Wendy?  The note she left behind said she was raped.”  She picked up an eraser and went to work on the board, spending more time than necessary wiping away the words she’d written, long after it was clean.  “She was put on a three-week wait list at the university’s Health Services Center.  Three weeks, just to speak to someone face to face.  She made the unbelievably brave decision to seek out help, someone to talk to, and they told her,
three weeks
.”  She finally dropped the eraser and turned back to Chase, eyes moist.  “I guess three weeks was three weeks too long.”

A frown had pulled between his eyebrows, green eyes filled with grief and understanding.

Lila fell back against the whiteboard, gripping the edge with one hand and her necklace with the other.

His eyes fell to the necklace, watching as she played it between her fingers.

“On top of that, three more girls came to my office this morning…” She didn’t finish.

Chase’s eyebrows raised, and he took a seat on the edge of her desk, watching her.

Her eyes fluttered shut, and her nails scraped at the whiteboard ledge.  “They must have been spooked by what happened to Wendy.  To Julie.  It spurred them to look for help.  They told me their stories about being raped on campus, hurt on campus. Some of them have kept quiet for years.  They’ve been silenced, for years…”

Chase moved to her, and this time she didn’t run.  He reached out and caught the first tear that fell from her eye with his thumb.

“They don’t want to go to the police, and the Mental Health Center has a
waitlist?
One girl that came to me said she was thinking of killing herself, and they referred her to a hospital ten miles away.  She doesn’t even own a car, how the hell did they expect her to get there?”  Lila shook her head against his hand as he cupped her cheek.  “These girls can’t even turn to their own university.”

His eyes searched hers.  “Lila, do you know the reason I brought Julie to you?”

She looked into his eyes and shook her head.

He released the piece of hair he’d reclaimed from his fingers, before running the back of them slowly along her jawline.  “I brought her to you because you’re the only person in the world I know that could make her believe she was worth standing up for.  Worth
something. 
I knew that, because that’s exactly what you did for me when I was at the lowest point in my life.  I believe that it’s what you’re destined to do.  To breathe life into people who feel like there’s no hope left.”

Lila breathed deep.  She begged for strength and feared she had none left.

Not when it came to him.

His gentle touch traveled her jaw, under her chin, then moved slowly down the front of her neck, lighting an electrical fire in each new place he touched.  He watched those fingers as they traveled. “So maybe these girls don’t want to shout from the rooftops that someone hurt them.  Maybe they just need to know that someone is willing to hear them.  To know that they’re real. That they exist.”

Lila’s eyes searched his face.  “You’re a brilliant, beautiful man; you know that?”  Her eyes traveled to his lips.

His did the same to hers. “Why don’t you start something here like what you had back at Dalton?  A place for students who’ve been hurt to come and spill their guts out?” he asked.  “It’s summer.  Most of the kids aren’t even on campus.  If three girls have shown up to your office during summer session, in a little under a week, god only knows how many more of them are out there. You should do whatever it takes to be ready to break their fall.”  His eyes fell to her lips.  “The same way you broke mine.”

Chase had no idea, but with that one sentence, he changed Lila forever.

--

In what felt like a flash, Lila was sitting across the large oak desk of the Vice Provost for Diversity, Dr. Wanda Elyse, bobbing her legs up and down.  Dr. Elyse had cocoa skin and a long gray Afro.  Her age had begun to show in her brown eyes, but her look remained captivating, almost startling, in its beauty.

Referred to Elyse by Dean Perkins, Lila was surprised to find that the Vice Provost was also a black woman.

For a university forward thinking enough to have so many African American women in positions of power, it was amazing how far they were falling behind when it came to protecting the young women on campus.

Lila cleared her throat after they said their good mornings.  “Thank you for seeing me today, Dr. Elyse.  I wanted to sit down with you and quickly discuss some student resources I had in mind for the school. Though it might be ambitious, I’m dedicated to this, and if all goes according to plan, I’m hoping to have everything rolling by fall semester.”  Lila sat a little taller, going over her planned speech in her head before powering on.  “There’s no place for students who’ve experienced abuse on campus to receive help.  They are all referred to help
off
campus, and that really needs to change.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. James.  I must be misunderstanding you.  The university
does
have an outlet for victims of abuse.”

Lila kept her voice level, even as her heart boomed to life.  “No.  The university has a department for Mental Health Services, and that department handles the entire student body. A department that has a three-week waiting list before these students are even face-to-face with an actual person, a department that will send these students to outside sources in a heartbeat.  These students need
inside
sources.”  She shook her head.  “And I’m talking specifically about students who have experienced sexual abuse.  Assault, harassment, rape.  I have a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, and I worked as Associate Director of Counseling at The Dalton School in New York City for five years.  I’ve worked directly with troubled kids.  Nine times out of ten, they won’t go looking for help from a mental health counselor when they’ve been raped or abused because that would make them “crazy.”
” She put up finger quotes.  “Of course, it would make them the
farthest
thing from crazy, but that’s just the way young kids think.  They’ll be more likely to seek out help, and accept help, if there is an outlet streamlined towards what they’re going through.  Students who are depressed have a direct outlet.  Students who are addicted have a direct outlet.  Why not students who are suffering from the residual damage that can result from sexual abuse?”