Georgia must have been sent from God. The entire walk home, she kept one of Cat's arms on her shoulders, encouraged her to lean. Peter walked on the other side of her, his hands always out and at the ready in case she fell. As hard as it was to be aware of anything, she seemed to constantly be aware of how he was so close to touching her arm, but never did.

The night was so freezing; the wind howled and ruined her hair even more than vomiting in a toilet did.

The lights of the campus shone just ahead. Cat stared at them for a moment, her eyes wide, her chest still tight. For a brief moment, her heart stopped altogether.

"I--I--" she started in a panic, "I don't know how we got here!" Her head full of cotton, her palms sweaty even in the bitter breeze. Cat tried to steal her arm back from Georgia's shoulder, tried to curl into herself, but Peter's warm hand rested on her elbow, gentle, hardly there.

"It's okay, it's okay," he started to chant. Georgia stopped moving to try and help, but this only let Cat slip out of her gasp. The concrete came up faster than she thought it would; sharp pangs shot up her knees; little rocks from the pavement dug into her palms, but she couldn't even keep her eyes open long enough to pick them out. Instead, she pressed her skin further into the ground and struggled to gasp for air. The sharp pangs from the ragged edges were the only thing becoming clearer to her, even though her breath was far gone. It was like she only breathed dust and motor oil. Nothing was clear enough to actually get to her lungs; the harder she tried to breathe, the more air she needed. Deep breaths weren't working. Fast breaths weren't working. Her heart fluttered faster than her rib cage could handle--any minute now, she'd asphyxiate and die, or her heart would give out and she'd die, or she'd breathe in too much dirt and suffocate and die--

Her limbs must have frozen to the bone; someone tried to pry them open, to get her to stand, but every inch of movement was protested by each effort. Through the struggle, just beyond the loud pumping of her blood in her ears, she could hear a gentle counting. One, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. In, two, three, four. Somehow, she understood that was how she was supposed to tell herself how to breathe. That was how long her breaths were supposed to be.

Eventually, she managed to match the counting. When she tried to open her eyes, her lashes clung to her cheeks, wet and sticky from makeup.

"There you go," came the calm voice. Different than the counting. "Up, up, up.... Yes, lean into me." Georgia lifted slowly, carefully, her tiny hands so cold in the wind. Peter's was still warm, somehow, and only offered gentle support.

"Oh my God," Cat realized when they'd finally gotten to her feet. "Oh my God." She couldn't remember how they left the house. "I--I can't remember--he almost--I almost--!"

"That's not the point of the breathing," Peter said. Cat could hardly register that their feet moved. Was she doing anything to help, or were they just dragging her?

"But I--"

"You're okay now." His words just bounced right off of her.

"I didn't even want to go to this stupid party--"

"Cat," Georgia interrupted this time, "can you tell me how to get to your dorm?" Cat sucked in a breath and finally was able to glance to her. "We are taking you home so you can go to sleep, safe and sound." Safe? How was she safe? "Is it this way?" Georgia gestured with her head. Why wasn't Peter saying something, telling her where to go? Cat nodded, though.

"Does Nate--" Peter started to ask, though she flinched. "Does he know which dorm you are?" Oh, God. Did she have to worry about that now? Because he didn't actually finish what he started? She whimpered.

"I--I don't know," she admitted, high-pitched.

"Where do we go to get to your dorm, Cat?" Georgia asked quietly. They reached a fork in the road, right under a lamppost. Cat blinked into the light, struggling to force her vision to focus.

"R-right," she stammered. The walking seemed to help; despite the lack of Peter's counting, she was able to hear it in her head anyway through their very methodical and careful steps. She didn't have to lean on Georgia completely anymore.

Slowly, they made their way to Casa del Sol; dew that peppered the flowers and grass started to freeze, and their breath almost completely fogged the way to the door. Peter rushed up to the entrance and unlocked it with his key.

"I--I think I've got it, now," Cat said. Georgia let her take her arm back, and Peter stood with the door open. Her vision was still blurry, and she wasn't as certain on her feet as she was used to, but the worst had passed. Now all that was left was this awful dread in her chest she couldn't shake: a feeling close to shame and betrayal.

"You're okay?" Georgia asked. Cat nodded, keeping her gaze to the floor.

"Thank you," she said quietly. The wind was picking up; Peter white-knuckled the door to keep it open. Before she could reward herself with the warmth of inside, she looked up to Georgia. "Sorry for ruining your date."

Georgia sounded like she choked on a repressed laugh. "Date? That guy?" Cat didn't look to where she pointed. "You're more of my type." Oh. Ooooh. Rainbow shirt and a jean jacket, hanging out with Peter--

"Oh, that makes more sense." She didn't mean to say it like that, but she could hear Peter let out a small laugh behind her.

"What do you mean by that?" Georgia raised a brow.

Cat shrugged. "I mean, you're really nice, and cool to be around...."

Georgia let out a loud "Ha!" and even threw her head back from it. "Oh my God!" Her smile was massive and brilliant; distracting enough to keep Cat's breath even. "Even roofied, she's sharp!"

"Wait, that's not what I meant--"

"I know," Georgia said, recovering with a deep breath. "You're a sweet girl. Peter, text me to let me know she made it back okay, would you?" The girl let out a shiver and placed a hand on Cat's shoulder. "I need you to know you're not alone in this. You aren't the only girl to go through this, okay?" She could only blink. "You're going to be alright." As she said this, the lowness in Cat's stomach lifted just a little. Maybe she would be. Not tonight, but now she could think of something other than tonight just by Georgia's sweeping promise.

After a sad smile and a wave, Cat thanked her and turned to go into the dorm room.

Peter remained silent all the way to the elevator, until the dinging box brought them to the second floor.

"Are you going to talk to someone?" he asked. Cat flinched from his suddenness, and looked up to him. She could only shrug. "You should...even if it's just Hannah or Kelsey." Her mind automatically rejected the notion, but instead she turned away and headed to the open doors of the elevator. Hannah and Kelsey wouldn't hear anything about this from her.

"I kept your secret," was all she could manage to say.

Hannah wasn't home. There wasn't even a note as to why, and Cat was totally fine with that. She dead-bolted her dorm room, locked the window, shut the blinds, and kept her back in the corner of her room. The wall was freezing, so she instead curled in her comforter like she did the night before, this time laying on her side with her head on the pillow. She was in a tight ball, and any time she managed to fall asleep and stretch out, she immediately woke up to return to the fetal position. According to her alarm clock, there wasn't a single hour she didn't wake up to.

The fogginess took its time to lift. Even though she threw up most of whatever Nate slipped in her drink, the bits she did ingest left her with a headache she knew Tylenol wouldn't fix.

Every minute passed slower than molasses. One second, her head pounded; the next, her eyes were too heavy to keep open; then Nate's face would flash in her mind, and her heart would jolt her right out of any semblance of sleep she might have gotten. Any time she woke up from the beginnings of the nightmare she almost experienced, Cat struggled to tell herself it was only a dream.

When the sun began to peak through the edges of her blinds, she decided to give up trying to sleep off this disgusting feeling. It was more than the usual after-feel of vomiting in a toilet in a stranger's house, more than how stupid she felt for going to the party in the first place, more than the ugly shame. Shame for not listening to herself. She should have known better, she should have seen this coming--and even after deciding what she felt for Nate, she still ignored all the warning signs. And now--what would he do? There was no hiding the fact that she left so suddenly, even though she couldn't remember how they did manage to get out of the house. Would he look for her? Call her? Would he be angry?

What could she do now? At least she was only here a few more days. Then she'd be home, with her family, far, far away from him.

Cat returned from her shower feeling no different at all. That was probably the most disappointing thing. After a nightmare, a shower was a great way to shake off the sleep and start again. But this nightmare....

She took off to the library before Hannah even returned. Focusing on literally anything else was the only hope she had to keep herself together.

But then on the way there, she got an alert.

PumpkinKing started a thread!

Insomnia Hacks. Why couldn't he have posted something like that sooner? But when she clicked on the link, she found that he was asking for insomnia hacks, not giving them. She sighed. All the efforts of her walk to the library to try and focus on her finals went out the window with that one notification. Now she thought of how all yesterday, he took the time to send her funny things to help her de-stress with Kelsey and Hannah....

She didn't even know this guy she'd been talking to for months. She had no idea what his face looked like, or if he ever said anything truthful to her in the first place. The more she scrolled through their past conversations, the worse her stomach felt. What if he was like Nate? What if he just turned out to be another creep on the Internet? He might not have asked for her real name yet, but what if he wanted to meet?

Cat meandered through the surprisingly busy library to try and find somewhere to sit, somewhere in a corner where she could keep her eyes on whomever passed. She had to go all the way to the sixth floor, and even move one of the study cubes so she could press the back of the chair against a wall.

By then, she realized what she was doing, assigning all the fear to Pumpkin. It was safer, easier to assume everyone was a danger. Pumpkin didn't set off any of her alarms. Nate did. But she still found herself opening her messages on Talkative.

She couldn't keep looking at her phone to depend on someone else to give her a funny joke to make her smile. She couldn't depend on a guy to make her feel more secure. The fact was that she wasn't careful. Not at other parties, not when she walked to class. She was negligent. Never watched her own drink, never made sure someone always knew where she was, never stuck to the lit parts of the street or tested someone's trustworthiness. And this sort of thing...this habit of talking to strangers, or drinking in unfamiliar places--it would get her hurt or killed. It almost did already.

Cat sighed at the messages with PumpkinKing. Until she could be sure, she needed to back away from everything.

Hey..., she typed. I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to take a break from Talkative for a while. Cat chewed on her lip and clutched her bag to her chest.

Are you okay? came his prompt response. It made her chest ache.

I'm okay. Just need to distance myself for a while. Focus on myself. It wasn't fair to assign all of her anxiety to the only guy that consistently made her smile throughout the semester. Not when she couldn't even trust her own thoughts, or her own instincts. But it also wasn't fair to just drop off the face of the planet.

Did I say something wrong? Oh...now she felt so guilty for what she thought before. How could she just assume he was a monster like Nate? But how could she even know in the first place? Nate seemed nice. He helped her after her head injury.

No, I promise, she typed. But her eyes felt so warm, her throat so thick. You're great. You've done nothing wrong. You only ever make me laugh and smile. But she could completely understand why this felt like a punishment, like he did something wrong and she was doing this just to be nice.

I don't understand, Pumpkin replied. Did something happen? God, he was so intuitive. Cat sucked in a shaky breath. She couldn't tell him what happened. She couldn't tell anyone. It was bad enough Peter knew.

I do really like you, she admitted, but I need to delete this app for a little while. Good luck on finals.... She knew that if she waited for him to reply, that he might have been able to convince her not to delete the app after all, so she instead went straight to her settings and finished it without any other thought.

Two halves of her were at war: the panic that told her this was for the best, that distancing herself from everyone, especially if she didn't actually know them, was safest. Last night could have been so much worse if Georgia and Peter...well, she couldn't quite remember what they did or said. But they could have easily just left her there, left her to--

The other half scolded her. She looked weak, sticking herself in a corner with nowhere to go, cutting ties and cowering behind her studies. And even though there was literally nothing she could have done to prevent Nate from targeting her like he did, her mind jumped to the gossip she heard in high school. To the news about the victims of this sort of thing. "She was a loose girl anyway." Or even when she was a teenager, before she knew better, she even asked someone, "Well, did she ever say she didn't want it?" Even her father yelled at her mother one time, after her mom shared some news article about the statistics of college assault. He said, "What do these stupid girls expect? They go out to get drunk, dressed all slutty. Of course someone's going to take advantage."

She needed to focus on herself. Cat knew that at some point, she was going to have to deal with the lasting effects of something like last night...but her finals. They were a convenient distraction, and if she thought about everything too much, she didn't know if she would be able to piece herself back together.

With her decision made, Cat gave herself just a few minutes to cry. It wasn't for a deleted app or anything. Or even a direct response to the lack of sleep, the fear that struck her heart any time she thought she saw someone out of the corner of her eye, or mourning the loss of a friendship she just broke. But she knew...nothing was going to be the same after this. She couldn't undo anything or forget the ugliness she'd just seen.