Over at West Hall

After finally breaking the long drought with Jess, Mark ended up curling up in his own bed for the rest of the day, catching up on all of the sleep he had missed out on the night before.

If it wasn’t for Dirty Dale coming in and out of the room constantly, he may have slept a lot later but late in the afternoon, Mark awoke from his slumber.

Although he was awake again, he didn’t have any plans to get off his bed. He was in that sort of tired hungover mood.

‘Bzzzzzzz’

The sound of his phone vibrating on the bed side table kept him from falling back asleep. He rolled to the side of the bed to check who was calling. It was only Daniel. Not seeing any point in answering it, he let it go to voicemail.

Minutes later, it started to ring again. Really not amused, Mark was just about ready to throw his phone at the wall. It was just one of those post sex, post night out moods that wasn’t going to get better in a hurry.

He let it go to to voicemail once more. Just seconds after that, another vibration which indicated a text notification.

“Will you just turn your phone off or something? It’s getting a little distracting,” Dale then said, turning from his laptop to ask him.

Reluctantly, Mark grabbed his phone again, this time to check what the latest text said.

Daniel: Call me back ASAP. It’s about Maple.

Squinting at the bright phone screen, Mark didn’t have a clue what he was on about here. He was the one who invited Maple and the others to the Eagle Nest the night before but never saw the short busty blonde after the first five minutes of entering.

Because he was worried that something bad may have happened or she may be in trouble, he decided he should do the right thing and call Daniel back.

Picking up and returning the call, Daniel answered straight away as if he knew his good friend would be responding straight away.

“Mark, you gotta come down to West Hall right now,” Daniel spoke.

“Now? What’s the issue? You really want me to walk all the way across campus for this? Can’t you just tell me what happened?”

There was a lingering pause before Daniel finally responded.

“Maple was sexually assaulted last night at that fucking football hang out.”

Mark almost dropped his phone, he couldn’t believe it.

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah… by one of your teammates…”

It started to hit him, without even really needing to think long, Mark figured it would have been Dixon. A surge of guilt started to cloud over him, Mark felt his heart sinking inside his chest.

He invited Maple there. It may not have been his responsibility to watch over for her but he sure felt like it was, especially knowing some of the guys that resided there after matches.

Daniel continued after Mark’s thinking had stopped him from replying back, “Just come over here, I don’t know how to handle this.”

Mark agreed, putting down the phone and resting his head in his hands. Even Dale had turned from his laptop screen, sensing something was wrong.

***

30 minutes later…

“I’m so sorry Maple, that’s fucking horrible, I didn’t know any of this was happening,” Mark comforted the blonde.

In the corner of the quiet West Hall common room, Maple sat trying to hold back tears, being comforted by Mark, Daniel and Eliza.

Mark had rushed over as soon as he put down his phone. Getting here, Maple told him what had happened last night. As she spent her first Saturday night inside the Eagle Nest, Maple was offered certain drinks from a couple of different boys, one of which being Dixon. The unappealing boy with a poor excuse of a mullet set her eyes on Maple as if she was a new potential target.

At the time, she turned down all of those drinks from complete strangers. However, somewhere along the line, she went for a breath of fresh air outside and was accompanied by Dixon.

The polite and friendly girl she was, Maple didn’t turn him away straight away. Dixon used that as leverage, he sexually assaulted her away from the eyes of anyone else outside before again disappearing when he heard someone coming.

“We need to tell the board, the police, someone!” Eliza said, sitting next to her best friend, rubbing her back.

Hearing her tell the story, Mark cringed, his sneaky suspicion was right, he knew it would be Dixon, a very dangerous teammate which was no mate at all.

“Maybe you could do something Mark, get him kicked off the team first and then hopefully banned from this college,” Daniel added, looking to him.

It wasn’t that easy, he could speak to Bryce and try but the way he looked at his team, he wasn’t exactly sympathetic to girls that are taken advantage of from his guys. He would face him himself if he wasn’t afraid of being attacked himself.

“I didn’t tell you guys but we have to be careful about how we approach this,” he told them, “A couple of weeks ago, he pulled out a gun on a few players from Westmere. I don’t think he was afraid of shooting it either.”

“So what then? We just pretend this didn’t happen? We can’t do nothing,” Daniel replied.

“No. No. I’m not saying we do nothing, I’m just saying we need to be careful, the last thing we want is to have this asshole hurt or threaten Maple to keep quiet. We just have to okay this smart.”

They all understood and wanted to leave the decisions in Maple’s hands.

“What do you think Maple? We’re here for you every step of the way in whatever you want to do,” Mark told her.

She wiped her eyes, sniffling her nose, “I don’t know… I don’t know if I want to speak to the police.

The other three looked at each other, unsure what to say. It was a bleak situation that was a lot more serious than they could have imagined.

A few minutes later, the group was approached by someone walking by. Mark looked up to see Mary, a dominant Greek personality that had previously fought with Maple over the same boys.

This wasn’t a good time for the dark haired girl to interrupt. Although their rivalry had died down since, they still weren’t overly friendly with each other.

“Someone’s dog die?” she said, standing above them, looking down in confusion.

Maple didn’t want to speak to Mary at all so she remained very much quiet, her head looking down at the ground.

“What did you want?” Mark asked her, not wanting her to bring any more attention on Maple’s situation.

“Just wanted to talk to you actually, you got a second?” she asked, taking him by surprise a little.

Mark looked at Maple as if to ask her for permission, not wanting to leave his friend if she needed him at this moment. She nodded at him, letting a very small and quick smile slip towards him.

Stepping aside from the previous conversation, Mark’s mind was a little rattled. He couldn’t say he was thinking straight at this present time, he wasn’t exactly hyped up with interest in whatever Mary had to tell him.