Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Author: Hoop
Title: Cryptozoology
Part: 5
Summary: Somebody has taken an interest in Amy's research.  The
university field hockey team meets Boris.
Keywords: xeno, tentacles, rape, nc

   --

   Jessica watched the time display on her mobile roll over to 08:57, then
returned it to her pocket.  She hadn't managed to sleep at all, and now
everything felt cold and bright and slightly fuzzy.  There was nobody else
in the waiting room besides her, and it didn't seem that the nurse had
arrived yet.  She ran a clinic on-campus on alternate days.  There was a
notice board on the wall opposite Jessica, which bore posters about a wide
variety of issues.  Among others, they included posters about stress,
procrastination, and STDs - everything a university student could possibly
suffer from, except being forcibly violated by tentacles in a dormitory
bathroom.  Did tentacles have a collective noun?  Jessica didn't know.  It
seemed unlikely.



   The nurse arrived, a professional-looking woman somewhere in her
forties. She looked down at Jessica while unlocking the door to her office.

   "I can see you in a few minutes," she said, and disappeared inside.

   Jessica picked a leaflet up from the table beside her.  According to it,
she could have a free movie ticket if she turned up to one of the student
union's chlamydia testing sessions.  Something about the whole business
seemed vaguely distasteful, and she returned the leaflet to its stack.



   The nurse's voice came from the other side of the door.

   "Come in, please."

   The nurse didn't look at her when she entered, focussing instead on her
computer screen.

   "Name?"

   "Jessica Sanders."

   "Date of birth?"

   "April 19th."

   "Ah, yes.  From 'D' dormitory, correct?"

   "That's right."

   "And what can I help you with today, Jessica?"

   The nurse finally looked at her, interlacing her fingers and placing her
hands on the desk in front of her.



   "I was-" Jessica realised how her story was going to sound, but actually
saying it made her doubt herself even more.  "I was raped by something,"
she said.

   "Something?"

   "I was in the bathroom," she said.  "And something came up out of the
toilet.  With tentacles." She looked down at her feet.  She must sound
completely crazy, she thought.  The nurse took a while to consider her
statement.

   "Tentacles," she said, finally.  "Like a squid?"

   "I don't know, I guess so."

   "And they came out of the toilet and raped you, that's what you're
saying?  I want to be perfectly clear."

   "Yes."

   "That is definitely what happened?  That's why you're here?"

   "Yes," Jessica said quietly.



   The nurse closed her eyes, and rubbed her temple with an index finger.

   "Are you under a lot of stress right now, Jessica?" she asked.  "How's
work?"

   "It's normal, I guess," Jessica said, "What does that have to do with
anything?"

   "Problems with your friends?  At home?"

   "N-no, everything's fine, look-"

   "I just want to reiterate what you've just told me, Jessica - you've
come here to tell me that some kind of 'tentacle monster' has raped you?"

   "I know it's hard to believe," she said.  "But it happened."

   "Look at me, Jessica." The nurse took one of Jessica's hands in both of
hers.  Her expression was serious, but not unkind.  "I don't know why you
feel that you need to tell stories like this, but it's obvious that you're
having some kind of problem.  I can't help you unless you tell me what's
actually going on."

   "It happened!  It did happen!"

   "It's all right, Jessica.  You don't need to raise your voice, just try
and be calm."

   "I can't!" she cried.  The tears came suddenly, and all at once.  The
nurse withdrew her arm, looking startled, and Jessica buried her hands in
her face and let out huge, heaving sobs.



   "It was horrible," she said.  She could only get halfway through the
next sentence before it turned into more gasping sobs.  The nurse held out
a box of tissues.  Jessica used three of them, and somehow managed to calm
herself enough to take a few, deep breaths.  She looked up at the nurse,
and sniffled.

   "All done?" said the nurse.

   Jessica nodded.  She would have appreciated some more compassionate
words.  The nurse pulled out a small, white card from a drawer, and pushed
it across the desk.

   "I'm referring you to this psychiatrist," she said.  "He's very good. 
He deals with students a lot.  Call this number and get an appointment."

   "You don't believe me," said Jessica.

   "Regardless of what I believe, this man will help you more than I can.
Please make an appointment as soon as possible."

   "Why would I lie about it?  Aren't you supposed to help people?"

   "Jessica." The nurse's voice was suddenly stern.  "We're done here. 
Call them for an appointment.  And for God's sake, try and get some sleep.
You look exhausted."



   Jessica grabbed the card, not looking back as she left the office and
slammed the door.  She crossed her arms tightly and set off across the
campus towards to her dormitory, but she barely had the energy to walk. 
The encounter had left her in complete despair.  Nobody was going to
believe her about what happened.



   She dropped down onto a bench alongside the path, and swallowed hard
against the lump in her throat.  Her vision went blurry again.  As students
hurried around her to their various lectures, Jessica sobbed quietly,
watching her tears drop onto the grass between her feet as she held her
head in her hands.  Nobody even looked at her as they walked past.



   --



   Amy didn't know how much time had passed since the helicopter ride. 
They had taken the sack off from over her head once they were airborne, and
replaced it with a blindfold.  Nobody had said anything to her for the rest
of the flight.  After landing, she had been escorted across a surface that
felt like tarmac, and down several flights of stairs to a room where she
was told to sit on a bed and wait.  She had asked if they would take the
blindfold off, and they told her that they wouldn't.  Amy had protested
that the plastic zip ties were cutting into her wrists, and somebody
replaced them with fabric restraint cuffs, binding her ankles in the same
manner.



   It sounded like somebody else had been in the room with her for some
time, although they never said anything.  The only noises had been the
sounds of breathing, and the occasional rustle of paper.  Amy lay on her
side, wondering what was going to happen to her.



   There was the sound of the room's door opening.  A voice said, "here she
is." There were at least two people, by the sounds of the footsteps.



   "Are you going to tell me what's going on yet?" she ventured.  She sat
up, and faced towards where she guessed the noise to be coming from.

   "In time, Miss Peterson.  But first, some questions."



   Something scraped against the floor.  The cuffs were unfastened, and Amy
raised her hands to remove the blindfold.  Before she could do so, someone
grasped her by the shoulders, and guided her to sit in a chair.  There was
a click, and she felt radiant warmth on her face.  The blindfold was
removed.  Amy squinted into the glare of a lamp that was pointed at her
face.  She tried to stand, but the hands remained firmly placed on her
shoulders, holding her down.



   "Why are you doing this?" she said.  As her eyes adjusted, she began to
make out the form of another person standing behind the light.

   "We've got some questions about your research, Miss Peterson." The voice
was female, her accent neutral.  Something vaguely British.

   "Is this about Boris?"

   "This is about the creature B-zero-R-L-five, transferred to your
supervisor's laboratory in June of this year, Miss Peterson.  We believe it
might have managed to escape from the laboratory.  Do you know anything
about that?"



   Amy was clearly in serious trouble, and probably didn't want to be on
the wrong side of the sort of people who had access to helicopters for
abduction purposes.  She decided it would be a good idea to cooperate.

   "It escaped three nights ago," she said.  "I'm sorry!  I didn't mean for
it to happen!  Please don't tell Dr.  Bryant."

   The other voice whispered something to another person, out of view
behind the blinding glare.

   "Miss Peterson, what's the extent of the physical contact you've had
with the creature?"

   "Just...  just normal work," she said.  "We were told that there wasn't
any danger of pathogens, so we aren't taking any really special
precautions."

   "Could you please describe the events that lead to the creature's
escape?"

   "It flushed itself down a toilet," she said.

   There was a pause.  "And why the hell it was able to enter a bathroom
outside of the laboratory environment?  What were you doing?" The anger of
her voice increased over the course of the question.

   "I don't know!"

   "You don't know?" her interrogator seemed to be losing her temper.  "You
were working on an extremely rare, valuable, and highly mobile animal
specimen, and you 'don't know' what you were doing when it escaped?  What
kind of a scientist are you?"

   "I'm only a grad student!"

   "Exactly!"



   There was a sigh, and the other voice was quiet for a while.  Amy still
couldn't see anything past the glare of the light, although she could
discern the sound of a pencil writing on paper.



   "Miss Peterson, the release of this creature into the wild represents a
serious risk to the environment, and possibly to humans.  We don't know how
it responds to people, and your own notes on the matter are, I see, quite
sparse.  It seems from your presentation the other day that you believe the
creature's reproductive cycle involves depositing eggs in hosts, correct?"

   "Yes," she said.

   "And your evidence to support this is...?"

   "I did some experiments," Amy said.  "On animals.  Pigs." She had said
as much in her presentation.  How were they to know what she'd actually
done, anyway?  She always made sure that nobody saw her taking Boris from
the enclosure for one of her 'sessions'.

   "We'll need all the data.  It doesn't appear to be in your most recent
lab notes.  Actually, there's no mention of the work anywhere."

   So much for that idea.

   "I...  I haven't written out the experiments yet," she ventured.

   "Oh for Christ's-" the other voice didn't even bother to complete the
sentence.  There was the sound of more scribbling, terminated with
something being underlined emphatically.

   "So the egg hypothesis was just wild speculation?"

   "Well, not exactly..."

   "So you did actually do the experiments?"

   "Sort of," said Amy.  She shifted in the chair uncomfortably.

   "Get to the goddamn point!"

   "I- I let it fuck me, all right?"

   The pencil dropped to the floor.  It rolled until it came to rest
against a table leg.

   "There, I said it.  I did the experiment, on myself, all right?.  It
fucked me, and I know it lays eggs because I had to take them out
afterwards."

   There was a protracted silence, and then a follow-up question, delivered
very calmly.

   "You let the creature deposit its eggs inside you?"

   "Yes," she said.

   The pencil was retrieved.  More scribbling ensued.



   "All right, sounds like we'll need to examine her." The voice was
addressed to whoever was standing behind Amy's chair.

   "What?  No!  There wasn't an egg this time, if that's what you're
looking for.  He- it didn't lay one."

   "'This time?' Just how many times have you let this happen?"

   "I don't know.  Ten or so, maybe fifteen?  I wasn't counting."

   "Jesus Christ, Amy."

   "I took them out afterwards!  It's fine!  I haven't got sick from it, or
anything!"

   Her interrogator turned to the other figure.  "I want to be thorough. 
Go and tell them we need a full MRI scan."

   "Yes, ma'am."

   "I'll make a start with the more basic examinations."



   Despite her protests, no part of Amy's body was left unexamined over the
hours that followed.  They blindfolded her again, and strapped her down to
a bed.  Latex-gloved fingers probed and inspected her with excruciating
thoroughness, after which some sort of endoscope was forced down her throat
to examine her insides.  Then they performed the same investigation from
the other end.  They removed her clothes, and gave her a hospital gown to
wear instead.  She endured an hour in the claustrophobic confines of an MRI
scanner.  They had taken samples of everything it was possible to sample,
treating her more like a specimen than a person.



   She was eventually returned to the room, and told that she should rest
for a few hours.  She tried the door, but of course it had been locked from
the outside.  She lay down on the bed.  Despite her anxiety about what
might happen to her next, exhaustion prevailed, and she quickly fell
asleep. As a result, she had no idea how much time had passed when she was
suddenly woken by someone shaking her roughly by the shoulders.



   "Wake up," a voice was saying.  "Wake up."



   Her eyes were hurting from fatigue.  Amy blinked, and the shape before
her resolved into the face of a severe-looking, bespectacled young woman.



   "Get up," she said.  "You're going to tell me everything you know about
this 'Boris'."



   --



   Lucy and the others watched as the youngest member of the girls'
second-division field hockey team jogged towards them - she was called
Anna, and was a first-year.  Like the rest of them, she had changed into
her kit beforehand, and was wearing shorts and a jersey.  Alongside Lucy,
Sarah crossed her arms and gave a very deliberate sigh.

   "Would it kill her to be on time, just once?"

   "She was probably hanging out with her boyfriend again," said Lucy.

   "Oh god, she's still seeing that guy?  The one who wears that trench
coat all the time?  Fedora guy?"

   "Yep," said Lucy.  "I just wish I knew why.  There must be something
seriously wrong with her that we don't know."

   "Maybe he's secretly got a massive dick, or something."

   There were cackles of laughter from the other girls in the group.

   "Or wait, I know, I know," said Lucy, "maybe he finally convinced her to
join his World of Warcraft guild."

   More laughter.  "Ugh, I bet she would, too.  Next thing she'll be
hanging around with those guys who dress up and hit each other with foam
swords.  What were they called?  'Larpers' or something?"

   "Shh, she's getting close!"

   "Hey Anna!  Glad you could join us!  Finally!"

   "Sorry!" she called.  "I had a lecture, and stuff.  You know.  Why are
we practicing in the middle of the morning, anyway?"

   "That's when the pitch was free.  Hurry up, we need to go and get the
rest of the kit."



   The girls made their way across the wide-open sports field towards the
astroturf, domain of the field hockey team.  It was enclosed by a wire
fence, and alongside it stood the equipment shed: a squat, cream-coloured
building with a corrugated steel roof that had been built rather too large
for the meagre equipment that was stored within it.  Lucy set the pace as
they jogged over, the first part of their warm-up.  With today's practice
attendance at seven members, it was going to be another session of drills
and exercises.  The prospect didn't fill her with enthusiasm.



   The remaining functional lights illuminated the shed as Lucy entered. 
Their equipment was piled to the left of the door: a bin full of hockey
sticks, plastic marker cones, and other paraphernalia.  The rest of the
shed was largely empty apart from a stack of boxes in one corner, and some
ladders laid along a wall.  Everything smelled of dust.  The cobwebs in
some of the corners were thick enough to be completely opaque.



   To the right was a doorway that led into a shower room that was seldom
used by anyone, principally due to the lack of any hot water.  By the
sounds of it, one of the shower heads was still leaking - there was a
steady beat of droplets impacting the tiled floor.  Lucy lifted a hockey
stick out of the bin, freezing halfway through the movement at a noise that
seemed to have come from within the shower room.  She held her hand up, and
told the other girls to be quiet.



   "Um, why?" enquired Sarah.

   "Sshh!  Didn't anyone else hear that?"

   "I don't think so, Lucy."

   They waited for ten seconds.  Sarah rolled her eyes, and as she opened
her mouth to say something there was a distinct squeaking noise from the
other room, the sound of stressed metal.

   "I told you," Lucy said.

   "So what?  The shower's even more fucked.  Big deal."

   "We should probably check it out.  If the leak gets any worse then it's
a pretty big waste of water," said Anna.

   "Fine.  Go and check it out, Miss Environmentalist."

   Anna headed over to the shower room while the rest of the girls sorted
through the equipment.  There was a gap of perhaps three seconds between
when she entered, and the sound of her screaming.



   They ran over.  Anna emerged from the doorway but tripped, barely
breaking her fall with her hands.  She was wide-eyed.

   "Help me!  It's got me, it's fucking got me!"

   She was jerked through the doorway, back into the room.



   The girls exchanged glances, before hurrying inside.

   "Oh my god."

   "Don't just stand there!  Fucking help me!"



   There was a three-foot wide hole in the centre of the floor, and there
were pieces of broken tile and plaster strewn about the place.  Upon the
hole's rim there was a soft mass of something blue and white, from which
there radiated a number of flexible limbs, each the thickness of Lucy's
forearm.  Three of these limbs were wrapped around Anna's body, the
remainder flopping about on the floor or slithering around the pipework
like huge, pale worms.



   The girls' reactions were variously terrified or incredulous.  Lucy
realised she should be helping Anna and stepped forward, raising her hockey
stick to strike at the nearest of the creature's tentacles.  Anna was
hysterical, her body thrashing as she tried to escape the creature's grip,
which only resulted in the tentacles coiling tighter around her thighs and
chest.  She attempted to scream again, but the constriction of her ribcage
made the noise into a feeble mewl.



   The five others, three of whom were screaming, appeared to draw the
creature's attention.  A slit opened on the central, bulbous body to reveal
a single eye, which gazed at them ominously.  Hannah, the furthest back
among them, turned to flee.  One of the free tentacles darted between the
girls' legs, stretching like rubber, and snapped around her ankle.  It
yanked her backwards and she fell over hard, her head meeting the tiles
with an audible smack.  She was unresisting as the creature reeled her limp
body towards itself.



   "Someone get help!  Go and get help!"



   Lucy brought her hockey stick down on the nearest tentacle.  It was
surprisingly yielding when she hit it, as if it were made of clay.  The
implement left a visible dent, turning the white skin of the creature dark
purple.  The creature let out a high-pitched shriek, the wounded limb
uncoiling from Hannah's ankle and retreating to the central body.



   "How'd you like that, you little fucker?!"



   She raised her stick again, and sprained an arm muscle as she tried to
swing the it downwards.  She looked up to see that two more of the limbs
had wound themselves around it.  The creature wrested it from her hands
effortlessly.  Lucy looked about for other weapons to improvise, but there
were none.  Alongside her, Sarah clutched desperately at a tentacle that
was tightening around her neck.  Two more girls fell to the ground as their
legs were pulled from under them.



   The creature forced Lucy to the ground using the hockey stick, and
another tentacle pinned her in place.  The tip of it bore down on her
sternum with a weight that seemed impossible for its litheness.  As if to
taunt her, the creature snapped the hockey stick like a twig, and let out
another shriek.  It discarded the splintered wood, and then both of the
tentacles it had used lunged towards her.



   All around her were the sounds of screams and cries from the other
girls. Lucy looked about to see that nobody had managed to escape.  Anna
was being pinned against the ceiling, and the creature was staring up at
her with its single, hideous eye.  The wounded tentacle returned to its
prey now that it sensed the danger was past, slithering around Hanna's leg
and dragging her across the floor.  The other girls were likewise ensnared.
Those whose hands were still free were beating ineffectually at the
tentacles as they coiled around their bodies.  The creature seemed to be
having trouble grappling all of them at once, but the length of its
appendages meant that one tentacle was easily capable of wrapping itself
around two bodies at a time.  Screams gave way to breathless gasps as the
girls struggled for air against the constricting grip.



   Sarah's cries were muted as the tentacle around her neck forced its way
into her mouth, pushing her head back.  She gagged and retched, and
orange-coloured ooze escaped past her lips and dribbled down her chin.  Her
knuckles were white as she gripped the assailing limb.  One of the
tentacles that had taken an interest in Lucy seized her, jerking her up
into the air by her arms.  The other slipped away to snake up beneath
another girl's jersey.



   By this point, the creature had a very good grip on every one of the
seven girls, its tentacles coiled about their chests.  Some of them had
been too slow to move their arms out of the way, which were now pinned by
their sides.  At least two girls were choking on tentacles that had entered
their mouths.  The neon-coloured mucus that the creature secreted seemed to
be having some kind of sedating effect - Lucy could see Sarah's struggles
becoming weaker as the tentacle bulged and disgorged another payload of
ooze into her.  Her cheeks bulged, and orange goop trickled from her
nostrils.



   The creature was drawing all of the girls towards itself, slowly but
inescapably.  With remarkable dexterity, it began to transfer the girls
between tentacles, squashing them together in order to free up some of its
limbs.  The grip around Lucy slackened for a brief moment, and she found
herself face to face with Amanda, a girl two years her junior who had only
joined the team the previous week.  Amanda's cheeks were wet with tears. 
Her expression was one of complete, uncomprehending fear.  A single
tentacle coiled around them both, squeezing their bodies together.



   "Oh God," Amanda was crying, "why me?  Why?"



   Something cold and wet slithered up Lucy's shorts.  It hooked around the
waistband, and tugged them away.  She could see the same thing happening to
one of the other girls, who was screaming and kicking her legs to no effect
as her bottom was exposed.  The tentacle slipped along her inner thigh, and
her screams took on a different character as it entered her.  Lucy realised
the same thing would happen to her, and clenched her thighs together as
hard as she could.  The tentacle butted against her knees, wriggling
vigorously and squirting her with more of the apparently endless slime.  Of
course, she was unable to tense her muscles forever, and at the first sign
of a slight relaxation, the tentacle forced its way up and inside her.



   Lucy groaned through gritted teeth as she was penetrated.  The tentacle
was fat, but the smoothness of its skin and the ample lubrication meant
that it made its way inside easily.  It writhed within her while she tried
to get enough breath to scream.  Either some of the girls had already given
up, or they had been completely incapacitated by the sedating mucus - the
creature was handling them like rag dolls, jerking them around roughly as
it violated their every orifice.  It apparently devised other plans for
Amanda, lifting her up and holding her upside-down by one ankle.  The
position made her legs hang open, and another, opportunistic tentacle
burrowed into her.  She moaned weakly.



   A torn scrap of material fell across Lucy's face, the remains of
someone's shredded panties.  The creature was tearing their clothes away
like wrapping paper.  She was dragged closer to the central body, and
another girl collided with her as the creature consolidated them into a
heap of helplessly struggling bodies.  Lucy could feel a hand grasping
blindly somewhere around the small of her back.  Her face was mashed into
another girl's buttocks, and as a result her cries were smothered as one of
the creature's free tentacles forced its way into her own behind.



   The whole pile of girls lurched as the creature repositioned itself, and
the mucus-slick buttocks were shifted from Lucy's face just as she thought
she might suffocate.  Three inches away, she saw a tentacle slide in
between them and do to their owner what had just happened to her. 
Somewhere up above her, there was a whimper.  A minute later, the very same
tentacle withdrew and turned towards Lucy.  She clamped her lips together
as tightly as she could, but was powerless to prevent the tentacle's entry.
The limb slid down her throat, and fed her another dose of warm slime.



   There was very little struggling from any of them now, only defeated
moans and gasps.  Lucy found that she was barely able to move her limbs -
her whole body was going numb.  The tentacle around her released its grasp,
and even though she was now completely unrestrained, none of her muscles
seemed to be responding.



   "Is...  can anyone still move?" she said.  It was difficult to form the
words; she slurred as if she were drunk.  Somebody responded with a groan.

   "What ...  what's it gonna do..." somebody wondered.  "It...  it's
looking at me...  oh, shit.  Ow.  Ow."



   The girl who had been speaking was hoisted into the air by her armpits,
and the creature held her against the wall.  Its other tentacles began
dribbling copious amounts of mucus onto her - a different consistency this
time, white and gelatinous.  It seemed to begin thickening the moment it
was exuded, and it soon became apparent that the creature was using it to
glue the girl to the wall.  It smeared another glob across her mouth, which
quickly set into a rubbery membrane, only narrowly leaving her nose
uncovered.  Lucy could see panic in the girl's eyes.



   By the time the creature was finished, the girl was swathed in a slimy
cocoon, the weak movements of her body just visible beneath the thick
membrane.  She was shaking her head and sobbing.  Lucy was next, and the
creature chose to stick her to the ceiling.  She was able to take a long
look at the girls lying on the floor, sprawled haphazardly, orange slime
coagulating on and around their bodies.  The creature saw fit to squeeze
out a large quantity of its adhesive onto Lucy's face - fortunately she
managed to close her eyes before the tentacle covered them.  Now blinded,
she could only listen as the same fate befell the rest of the girls.  A
while later the wet sounds ceased, as presumably the creature had finished
immobilising the last of them.  The silence was now only broken by an
occasional groan or sob.



   A tentacle stroked Lucy's face, and the creature made a satisfied
purring sound.



   --



   Rachel still had no idea what she should do with the egg.  Having spent
the last hour staring at it, she had decided to take a walk and clear her
head.  She had tried once to dispose of it, holding it over the sink with
the intention to crush it and wash whatever came out down the drain.  And
yet, despite the horrible circumstances that had surrounded the egg's
appearance, she felt that it would be wrong to kill what was presumably
growing inside.  Some instinct told her that it needed to be protected, and
was her responsibility.



   In fact, she had felt quite guilty as she carried it back to her room
afterwards.  She had carefully placed it upon her pillow, where it remained
while she sat and looked at it and wondered what to do.  She had hidden it
out of harm's way before leaving, nestled amongst her clothes in a drawer.
It would probably be a good idea to tell someone about it.  Later, she
decided.



   There weren't many students around campus at this time in the morning -
it was half past ten, which meant anybody on a serious course would be in
lectures, and the arts students would still be asleep.  It reminded her
that she did still, technically, have studies of her own to attend to.  In
the days since her encounter with the creature, she had decided to deal
with her feelings by simply not thinking about them.  More recently, the
memory of the initial trauma had been supplanted by the experience of
actually laying the egg, which, whilst certainly strange, had not been
entirely unpleasant - quite the opposite, she thought.  She had even caught
herself wondering if she might experience it again somehow.



   Her reverie was interrupted by a sniffle from someone to her left. 
Rachel turned to see a girl sitting on a bench near the side of the path,
her eyes red from crying.  From the looks of things, she had been doing it
for a while now.  They made a brief, awkward moment of eye contact, before
the girl covered her face to her hands and hunched over, her back shaking
with the force of her sobs.



   Rachel sat beside her, saying nothing.  The girl calmed down after a
couple of minutes, and wiped her face with a tissue that Rachel offered
her.

   "Thanks," she said.

   "Want to talk about it?" said Rachel.

   "No.  No, it's fine," she said.  "You wouldn't believe me anyway. 
Nobody will." She sniffled, and tried to laugh at her comment.

   "Try me.  I've been through some pretty messed-up stuff myself recently.
I'm Rachel, by the way.  What's your name?"

   "Jessica," the girl said.