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The taxi drops me off back in front of my dorm, Kirkland House. Back to where I was raped. People joke that Harvard is like Hogwarts, but they’re not far off. Each of its 12 houses harbors its own culture, its own rituals, even its own specific architecture. Kirkland has a colonial-style dining hall, a quaint library, and a grandiose common room—the kind of ostentatiously pretentious chamber that is exactly what people think of when they conjure up an image of Harvard. Dark, polished mahogany walls are framed by crimson velvet drapes. A grand piano sits adjacent to a sizable fireplace. The Kirkland crest and an oil portrait of a 19th-century house “master” adorn the walls. This place defines prim and proper. Nothing untoward is supposed to happen here.
Forty short paces separate the gate where I’ve been dropped off from the door to my room, but right now it feels like a chasm. I don’t want to go back.
In movies, they never depict the clean-up after the trauma. Action heroes fight, sh-t happens, and we jump to the next scene. We never see the bandages get changed, the car get repaired, or the laundry get done. But in real life, you don’t get to skip ahead. And at this moment, walking into my room feels like scaling Everest to me—insurmountable.
Someone observing me from the outside might describe me as a person still rendering. I am numb on the outside, rooted to the ground—immobile, dazed, stunned. Thick paperwork still in my hand, the rape crisis counselor’s new underwear still on my body, a hospital band on my wrist.
I find myself grateful that it’s early in the morning. No one is awake for me to run into. No friend to casually say, “Hey! How are you?”
What would I even say? “I’ve just left the hospital. I’ve just been raped.”
But I can’t go in by myself. Who is up this early? More importantly, who would understand the crushing weight of this moment?
Alex.
Alex, my Kirkland housemate, was 14 years old when he survived a drive-by…
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