Free The Last Good Girl by Allison Leotta

questions you don’t want to answer.
    So, anyway, today I was walking this dog, Fenwick. He’s one of my favorites, a big yellow mutt who smiles when you scratch behind his ears. So I’m walking Fenwick, and he’s sniffing around, and I’m not really paying attention to where I’m going. He’s sniffing these bushes for a while, and finally I look up and see we’re right in front of the campus police station. I must’ve been walking him for a long time, because that’s more than a mile from the vet clinic. I didn’t mean to go to the police station. But there I was. I tied Fenwick to a bike rack and wandered in.
    I don’t know what I thought I was doing. I’d been in the campus police station a few times before, when I was a little girl, always with my dad. He’d go for a tour of the new equipment, or to pay an official visit. The police would all coo over me, let me play with their handcuffs. The president’s daughter is everyone’s favorite kid, at least when the president is around. The last time I was in the station I was maybe nine years old. They gave me a toy police badge and a lollipop.
    This time, no one seemed to recognize me. I was just a regular girl to them, not the First Daughter. Which was kind of a relief and also, actually—I’m, like, ashamed to admit this after all my big talk about wanting to be a normal girl—kind of disappointing.
    I asked the officer at the front desk if I could talk about something that happened to “a friend.” There was a lot of waiting, and then a policeman who couldn’t be much older than me took me to a small room. His name was Officer Quentin. I told him what happened to me . . . but not really. I said maybe it happened to a friend, like hypothetically, and that my friend wasn’t sure if she wanted to press charges or anything. She just wanted to know what her options were. I didn’t tell the officer that Dad is president; I didn’t tell him my last name is Shapiro.
    Officer Quentin said it was really smart of my friend not to press charges. He said a lot of times it’s harder on the victim than the rapist. The process would be long. My friend would have to tell her story over and over, to strangers. The most intimate and embarrassing details. And even then, there’s no guarantee the guy’ll be punished. He said a lot of times the victim’s better off just letting it go and moving on with her life.
    When I went back outside, Fenwick’s whole body seemed to wag. I squatted down and scratched behind his ears and got his big toothy smile. Seriously, that smile was the best part of my day. I looked around at all the kids going back and forth to class. It was a clear, sunny day, a postcard view of what a university should look like. Diverse students. Perfect grass. Shiny, happy people holding hands. And all I wanted was to bury my face in this dog’s neck then go home and watch reruns on Hulu.
    Across from the campus police station is the admin building. It reminded me of all the red-tape crap my dad complains about—and Title IX. You know, the law that’s supposed to, like, make sure college girls get equal sports teams as boys. The last few years, Dad’s been pissed because it’s also been used to mean colleges have to protect girls against being raped. He’s all, like, how am I supposed to know what happens in every dorm room and off-campus party? He obviously doesn’t say that sort of stuff officially. He mumbles it under his breath in the house, to me and Mom—I mean, back when Mom was around. In public, he’s all like, “The safety of all our students is of utmost importance, and we’ll make sure the requirements of Title Nine are strictly enforced,” blah blah blah.
    So I walked across the street, tied Fenwick up again, and went to see the Title IX coordinator, a grandma named Yolanda Skanadowski. I never