The Never List

truth, Adele. Were these girls part of this project?”
    Adele shook her head, her face as white as the pages of the open notebook in her hand.
    “No, no, I had no idea about any of this.” She pointed to the photographs. “That’s separate. That’s Jack’s madness. There was another side to him, though. He was a serious scholar.”
    “Then what was the secret society for, Adele? We know you were in it. Scott Weber told us.” It wasn’t exactly true, but I thought I’d take a chance.
    “You spoke to Scott?” Her tone changed in an instant, and her eyes flashed with anger. She looked like a trapped animal. She was used to being in control, keeping her secrets. Yet here she was, cornered.
    “Tell us, Adele,” Christine said, her eyes rimmed with red from crying but her voice steely.
    “The ‘secret society,’ as you call it, has nothing to do with any of this,” Adele began, looking away from Christine’s disturbing aspect. “It was just a … school project.”
    “Explain.”
    The word must have echoed painfully in Adele’s head. In her mind, as we all knew, she got to ask the questions. She looked at each one of us in turn, perhaps trying to weigh the situation she was in, figuring out who had the power here. We sat in silence for a full minute, waiting while she struggled with what she would say next. Finally, she must have decided she had run out of choices, and she began.
    “David and I were seeing each other that first semester. He introduced me to the BDSM movement when we met. At first I was interested in it intellectually, you know, as a topic for study, but then I was … let’s just say I was drawn into it. We started experimenting, and it escalated.”
    She paused and took a deep breath. She seemed to be gradually resigning herself to telling her story.
    “Then Jack walked in on us in the back stacks of the social sciences library when we were engaging in some … imaginative role play. His curiosity was, needless to say, piqued. At first we were horrified that our professor had found us out. Then we were flattered when he was so intrigued. Jack was so impressive, and I had just started working for him as a research assistant, so we were thrilled really to have something to offer up to him.
    “Soon enough we were all going to The Vault together. And then, I guess when Jack trusted us enough, he invited us to join his … private study group, I think is a better term. He’d set up an exclusive little cadre to analyze this subculture in a way a state-funded university might not necessarily sanction. More hands-on, so to speak.”
    “It had something to do with that Bataille group, didn’t it?” I asked.
    Adele looked surprised.
    “Yes, Acephale , but how did you—”
    “The brand. It’s the symbol for it,” Tracy responded.
    “I see,” Adele said, looking stunned. She gathered her composure and went on. “Well, yes, Jack was obsessed with the literature of transgression: Bataille, De Sade, Mirbeau. He thought it would help us understand the psychological origins of perversions, fetishes, sadistic impulses—all of it.” The words rushed out of her, like those of a proselytizer. “But he believed transgressive behavior couldn’t be studied through mere observation. It wasn’t like depression or schizophrenia or sleep disorders. We had to experience it for ourselves.
    “So that’s what we did. We altered our entire lives to get to the core of this work. We created our own rituals and incorporated these texts to, you know, get into the spirit of things, to help us to break free from societal norms and uncover our true selves. Andfrom there we could reach an understanding beyond—” She stopped abruptly, seeing our expressions. She’d lost us.
    Adele cleared her throat.
    “So yes,” she said, “as part of all that, we talked about human sacrifice, mutilation, bondage, and all kinds of other debased acts. But it was a game. It wasn’t real. It was just like what we did at the club.” She stopped and looked over at the box of photographs. Tears sprang to her eyes.
    “At least, I thought it was,” she continued. “I don’t know. Maybe Jack was grooming us for something more, but it didn’t get that far before his arrest. I swear.”
    We were all staring at her. None of us even dared to move for fear she would stop telling her story.
    As she paused, I glanced quickly around the room, checking the doors, the windows, listening. It was silent, all was still. Jack