“No,” she says, “you didn’t fail me. Or, if you did, then I did, too. I knew he’d hurt other girls and it still took me years to do anything about it.” She looks up at me then, her eyes two blue pools. “What could we have done? We were just girls.” I know what she means—not that we were helpless by choice, but that the world forced us to be. Who would have believed us, who would have cared?
