Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Hannah was in the living room working when she got the call. She was wearing an oversized shirt and boxers that probably belonged to her boyfriend and sprawled out on the overly expensive sofa, that Garrett insisted was vital for his video game playing experience and although she’d called it unnecessary at the time her muscles were treacherously relaxed. Hannah read the same line of music again and again, trying to understand why the cello wasn’t working with the harp, and she could feel an idea whirring in her brain when her phone rang. Loudly.

Hannah completely lost her train of thought. She stared at it in dismay, like the little metal rectangle had personally offended her, then reluctantly picked it up. It was probably Allie, and nothing would boost her mood after a long workday like her best friend talking a mile a minute with wild stories from New York.

When Hannah looked at the screen the number was unknown: not her parents, or Allie, or Garrett, or any of their mutual friends. The phone kept buzzing insistently in her hands, like a metal bee, and she hesitantly accepted the call, praying that none of Garrett’s crazy fan girls had found her number and called to personally offer her the same kind of comments they left on his Instagram.

“Hello. This is Hannah Wells.” she said, and there was a moment of silence before a slightly raspy voice responded. “Hi Hannah, this is Maya Lopez. I’m calling about… I was wondering if…” she could feel the other woman hesitating through the phone. “You’re from Ransom in Indiana, right?” asked Maya at last, and Hannah started to breathe a little faster.

“Are you a stalker or something because I promise I am not an interesting person to stalk. I literally just compose music — “

“Oh my god, no.” said Maya, like she couldn’t get the words out quick enough. “I feel like I’m starting this off the wrong way. I just didn’t want to jump scare you but clearly, I already have, so I’ll cut to the brief.”

“Okay.” said Hannah, slightly relieved and wishing phones still had cords like when she was a kid so she could swing it nervously through her hands.

“I live in Las Vegas. It’s a party city, but I promise I’m not a big drinker. I know how to hold my alcohol. I know what makes me blackout.” she started defensively, like she’d said it a million times.

“I believe you.” said Hannah, and when Maya spoke again her voice was a little calmer.

“My friends and I we went to this fancy club, the kind that lets pretty girls cut the line. When we got there, there was a team of guys celebrating some big win. They were all shirtless and yelling caveman style.” said Maya, and Hannah laughed a little.

“What were they celebrating?” she asked.

“I think they called it the Steven’s Cup? No, the Stanley Cup.” said Maya, and Hannah’s eyebrows shot up her forehead, remembering how Garrett talked about winning it one day with a longing she’d only ever heard him reserve for her.

“That’s a big deal, they must have been going all out.”

There was a moment of silence down the phone line and, when Maya started talking again, her voice had lost its breezy tone. “Yeah, they really were. And one of them came up to me and offered to buy me a drink. He was cute but something about his smile made me uneasy because it didn’t match his eyes. His eyes were just totally dead inside.”

Hannah pictured grey shark-like eyes, and amber coloured whiskey, then shook her head to clear the memory from her mind. “Go on.” she said encouragingly, and Maya took a deep breath.

“My friends were talking to his teammates, and I was planning to just take the drink and go but he made me clink glasses with him and drink. And as soon as I had a few sips I started to feel dizzy, like really dizzy.”

Hannah’s chest started to feel tight, like a giant was stepping on it, like there was no air left in the world to breathe, and she pressed mute, so the sound of her panicked pants didn’t make it to the phone. She tried to remember the breathing exercises her therapist had taught her: in through the nose and out through the mouth, but all that came out was desperate, sharp sobs as the voice on the other end continued the story that was sounding horrifyingly like her own.

“And he faked concern and offered to help me sit down but the next thing I remember is waking up back in his penthouse. I was so scared and confused and he wouldn’t even look at me. It was like I didn’t exist, or I was sub-human. He just tossed my clothes at me and told me to get out, while he whizzed up some protein shake. I stumbled away from him as fast as I could, down this hallway filled with photos of him holding medals and then a cup, and it was like twenty versions of him were staring at me from the walls with those cold, dead eyes.”

Hannah remembered waking up in a field after the party, freezing cold because it was almost winter and she wasn’t even wearing the pink dress she’d been so excited to buy at the mall, as Aaron Delaney offered her a predatory grin. “I never knew you were such a little slut Hannah.” he’d said, holding up her discarded bra, and sending her a look that peeled away everything that made her feel human.

“What did you do next?” asked Hannah numbly.

“I went to the Emergency Room and they tested my blood for roofies but said that most pass out of your system in a few hours, so nothing showed up.”

Hannah remembered the test, and how sympathetic the small-town police she’d grown up with were until they heard the name of who she was accusing. After that, everyone looked at her like they’d already decided she was lying.

Maya continued, like she was afraid the words wouldn’t come out if she stopped talking. “His name was Aaron Delaney, but you’ve probably already worked that out. I felt so stupid that I had let this happen — no, he did that. He’s a monster. And the way he did it was so practiced that I knew there was no way I was the first girl. So, I made a post asking anyone to contact me if they’d been through the same thing.”

“I didn’t see that.” said Hannah numbly.

“Not many people outside Las Vegas did.” said Maya. “His lawyers made me take it down. Then, I lost my job in a dance crew, and they basically scrubbed it from the internet and told everyone I was mentally unwell. But a girl still reached out to me, and then more and more did, so there’s ten of us now. I was sure there were more out there, so I went to his hometown and asked around and a couple of drunk guys at the bar were more than happy to tell me…”

“What a lying, drunk slut I supposedly was?” said Hannah darkly, echoing the nicest of the names she’d been called a thousand times in high school.

Maya winced. “Look, they called you some awful names and I know none of what they said was true because people in Las Vegas said the exact same thing about me. He didn’t stop after you, even though you were brave enough to try, and he didn’t stop after the girls in between us, and nothing except consequences is going to stop him from hurting more girls. The lawyers said we have a much better chance if you testify with us Hannah. Will you do it?”

“I already did,” said Hannah, remembering trembling on a stand and staring out at a sea of people she’d known since she was a baby and seeing nothing but hatred looking back, “and I can’t do that again.”

She started to cry, and not softly: a messy cry with red eyes and a scrunched-up face and a dripping nose. “Everyone keeps on asking me to open up and let the world see my deepest, darkest secrets: my boss tells me to put more of myself in my songs, my parents want me to go back to therapy, my boyfriend always tells me he’s there to listen, my best friend would drop everything if I wanted to talk about it. But I feel like no one gets that the past is a closed book for me. And every time I open it, everything goes wrong.”

There was silence on the other side of the line, and for a moment Hannah was scared that Maya would hang up. “You must think I’m such a coward.”

“No,” said Maya strongly. “I don’t think you’re a coward. I think you’re braver than anyone I’ve ever known. I found the legal side of things terrifying as an adult, and I can’t imagine doing that and going against a whole town at fifteen. But it sounds to me like you’ve already lost everything you can lose. You’re never going back to Ransom, Hannah. And it’s clear you have people in your corner, people that won’t leave you this time. People that didn’t leave you the first time.”

“Yeah,” said Hannah shakily, “my mom and dad have always stuck by me. And they’re still paying the consequences of friends who’ve snubbed them, and shops that refused their business, and every job position becoming magically filled when my dad applies. I think they’d have to move towns, or even state, if I testified again.”

“Sounds like an awful town. Maybe it wouldn’t be a loss.” Maya replied, some big-city snobbery bleeding into her voice.

“It wasn’t always.” said Hannah, wistful in a way she didn’t usually allow herself to be. “There’s this bakery that does the best cinnamon buns that melt in your mouth, and a Christmas tree farm that looks straight out of a Hallmark movie, and beautiful boutiques filled with dresses from each decade and tiny silver trinkets. The music scene is great for such a small town — “

“And when was the last time you went back?” asked Maya, and Hannah’s words froze in her mouth.

“Seven years ago.” she replied.

“Do you think your parents like living in a place where their daughter can’t visit them?” pressed Maya.

“No,” admitted Hannah, “but they can’t afford to move. Garrett keeps on offering to buy them a place near us, but they have too much pride.”

“How would their pride feel about settlement money?” asked Maya bluntly. “Because from what you’ve said, it sounds like your parents have suffered a hell of a lot too.”

“I don’t know.” said Hannah. “I need to think about this, I need time to process how I’m feeling.”

“You’ve been living with this longer than the rest of us and I doubt you feel any better than we do. It’s the sort of thing that creeps up on you when you least except it, like a cloud of grief covering the sun. Time’s never going to heal us fully, Hannah, but we can stop more girls from feeling like this.” said Maya, impassioned and full of fight in a way that Hannah vaguely remembered feeling before the legal system beat it out of her.

“If you’d called a few years ago the answer would just have been a ‘no’. I’m giving you a ‘maybe’. I need you to understand that I’ve been burned by this over and over and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to go through this process again without breaking.” said Hannah, hating how much her voice trembled and how she felt the ghost of her fifteen-year-old self, the ghost she’d spent years escaping from, starting to emerge.

Maya sounded slightly regretful. “I know I’m asking a lot from you but that’s not the only reason I’m calling. We’re doing an interview, all ten of us, with the New York Times tomorrow. Once this hits the news, it’s going to be a big deal, with a capital B and a capital D. People are going to claim it’s part of a culture problem in hockey, or that we’re just after money and Aaron’s innocent. People are going to try and dig up more dirt to swing the pendulum of public opinion either way. And I’m not exactly a private investigator and I found out what happened to you after one day in Ransom, Hannah. Other people will find out too. That’s why I’m calling, to give you a head up before the article drops, because this is going to be a media storm and I want you to be prepared.”

Hannah felt rage and hurt start to bubble up in her chest because sometimes it seemed like she never got a say in her own story. “I’m angry, I’ll be honest. I know it’s irrational to direct it at you when you’re just as much of a victim as me. I just feel like this whole thing never ends, like the scandal will be engraved on my tombstone.”

“I feel that.” said Maya. “Believe me, this wasn’t my dream as a little girl either. I just wanted to be a dancer. But life has a funny way of turning your dreams into a car crash.”

Hannah frowned at that. “Music worked out for me in the end. You don’t have to give up on dancing — “

Maya cut her off, like it was too painful to discuss. “Well, it’s one step at a time. We’ll be in New York tomorrow for the interview if you want to meet us. There are women coming from Indiana and New Jersey and Las Vegas, because Aaron kept on hurting people through high school and college and now in the NHL.”

“Did you say Indiana?” asked Maya disbelievingly. “I thought I was the only one. They let me get raked over the coals in high school, although…” she shook her brown bob ruefully. “I probably wouldn’t have spoken out after seeing the aftermath either. What made them change their minds?”

“You, Hannah.” said Maya firmly. “Your critics may have been the loudest voices in Ransom, but it sounds like you taking a stand meant a lot to them.”

There were distant sounds of voices, and an electronic, airport announcement: ‘The 9am flight to New York is now boarding at gate seven.’

“I’ve got to go.” said Maya ruefully. “We’re staying at the Callisto hotel on 77th street if you change your mind. It was good to meet you, Hannah. Take care, okay.”

“Yeah, I’ll try.” said Hannah. “You too.”

She hung up the phone and stared at her discarded coffee, work laptop and blanket, positioned exactly as they were before the centre of her world shifted. Instead of crying some more or slipping back into the depths of a panic attack after that roller coaster of a phone call, Hannah just felt emotionally numb, like her heart was covered by a delicate, protective layer of ice.

Hannah's iPhone 16 A Pearl Mitski

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