"Fine," I sulked, "thank you."
He pushed his chair back and went to get his backpack. I told my mom that Meghan and I were going to ride bikes to school, so she kissed my forehead and took Sam to school and herself to the Grill. The house felt empty and cold after they left, and I added snapping at Sam to the list of things I was feeling bad about. I rinsed my cereal bowl as Meghan came down the stairs.
"Everyone gone already?"
I nodded.
We rode our bikes to Gallup Park, over the train tracks, over the little wooden bridge, and then around the park until we came to the little island in the middle of the Huron River. We tucked our bikes behind a bush and sat on the riverbank. I wanted to hold that moment, stay there forever, hidden with Meghan, my new bike and my old bike she had ridden waiting to take us if we ever wanted to leave. We sat like that until we were too cold to sit outside anymore, even though it was a warmish day for February. Then we huddled in the concession stand, eating popcorn and cookies and drinking Swiss Miss hot chocolate, the powdery, chalky kind you mix with water. I watched the hard marshmallows bob at the surface of the foam cup, little bits of chemical foam forming a film around them. I took a sip.
"Let"s go back out," I said to Meghan, and she nodded. We walked back to the island, our hands wrapped around the cocoa cups.
"Do you think it"s because you"re little?" she asked. And I felt a surge of tremendous grat.i.tude for her, since this was a question only she could ask me with real empathy and impunity.
"I don"t know," I said honestly. "I don"t know what it is, yet. But I think Kyle-I mean, I thought Kyle, I think Kyle liked me just because."
"I"m sure he does," she said. "And even if it"s part of why he likes you, then that"s the same as liking you for who you are, right?"
I shrugged. "I guess so."
We"d had this conversation before, when some older guy had asked Meghan on a date and we"d decided it was way too gross, and then when that guy Joel kissed me at the LPA conference, and when Meghan went to homecoming her soph.o.m.ore year with an average-size freshman guy and they made out at the end of the night even though they"d been "just friends" when they decided to go. We had never come to any conclusions, and I doubted we would now, either. I mean, was it worse for someone to like you because you were different or in spite of your being different? And if the person actually, genuinely liked you, then what difference did it really make? We came in and out of quiet for several pointless go-arounds on this topic, without any information about what had happened with Kyle and without making any progress. Then it was time to bike to Ms. Doman"s house, and I realized on the way that Meghan had brought up our ancient chat not only because it was more or less relevant than usual, but also just to distract me. I threw her a smile over my shoulder, noticed she was struggling on her bike. The truth is, the ride to Ms. Doman"s was really far, but I must have been like, bionic with shock or something, because I barely felt the miles go by. Meghan was gasping for breath by the time we got there, and she"s in good shape. Neither of us runs, really, it"s bad for the knees and hips and joints, but we both swim and Meghan plays field hockey in California.
When we pulled into the driveway, Ms. Doman was standing at the window, and I knew she already knew. Everyone at school knew, and she had found out. She came out on her porch to greet us, wearing jeans and a dark pink sweater and a long necklace of light pink and silver beads, all different shapes. Her hair was pulled off her neck in a messy ponytail; she looked stunning. But her eyes turned down when she saw me, as if she was sad, not to see me, but about something related to me. It was my first taste of knowing I had disappointed her.
"Come in, Judy. I"m so glad you called me, so glad you and your friend stopped by." We followed her into a bright yellow kitchen, with multicolored rugs on the tile floor and a white fan suspended from the ceiling. I could see the living room to the right of us, a comfortable room with a giant maroon couch and bookshelves against every wall. There were lamps on either side of the couch and two reading chairs and no TV that I could see. I wondered if she and Norman Crump sat on the couch together at night, reading by lamplight. If they did, that was nice. There were lots of pillows on the couch and a homemade-looking pink striped afghan thrown over the top of it.
I felt miniature suddenly, walking into her cheerful, cozy kitchen, as if I might be mistaken for a speck of dust on the floor and vacuumed up. Maybe she sensed this, because she pulled a couple of chairs out from behind a little round wooden table next to a door, and gestured for me and Meghan to sit on them. I sat down, looked out the door at a deck lined with potted trees. I rested my elbows on the flowered placemat in front of me, while Meghan looked around awkwardly and Ms. Doman put a red tea kettle on the stove. She brought a plate of chocolate chip cookies over to the table and set it in front of us while we all waited for the kettle to whistle. No one spoke. I was wondering whether this was okay or incredibly awkward, when the water boiled and screamed.
Ms. Doman turned a k.n.o.b on the stove, and I unwillingly put a bite of chocolate chip cookie in my mouth. My throat felt so tight I couldn"t imagine being able to swallow anything ever again. Ms. Doman was standing in front of me and Meghan, holding a giant box of tea bags, all lined up neatly inside.
"What kind of tea do you like?" she asked. Meghan pulled a dark purple bag of berry zinger from the box and I took peppermint. Ms. Doman had cinnamon. We were quiet while she put the bags in blue mugs, and then poured boiling water from the kettle. She set that on the table when she was done, on a penguin-shaped trivet. Then she had nothing left with which to busy herself, so she sat on a chair opposite mine and next to Meghan"s, and handed me the honey bear as if it were the conch in Lord of the Flies, as if to say, "Speak."
"So, um, I hope you don"t mind us coming by," I said.
"Of course not."
"I, um, I wanted to talk to you because-"
Here she decided to help me. "Because of what"s happening at school."
"Right," I said. I felt relieved that she had finished the sentence for me, as if now I would have to say nothing else and she would tell me what the h.e.l.l was happening at school and what to do about it.
She sighed. "Tell me what happened, Judy, so I can help."
I took a deep breath. "I think I did something stupid," I said. "I mean, something I wouldn"t normally have done, except I was. Well, I had a few drinks with a friend, and I-well, I-"
"With Kyle Malanack, right?" she asked. She took a sip of her tea, and I thought, someday this will all be over. We"ll be drinking and eating and we"ll have recovered from this. I"ll be okay. But as soon as she put her teacup down, my life zoomed back into focus and I lost the feeling that I"d ever get over this.
"With Kyle, right. He and I were kind of, you know-" I cleared my throat. Why had I decided to tell Ms. Doman? "We were seeing each other," I said. "And, um, I went to his house, and you know how he likes to make movies?"
"Yes," she said.
"Well, I think we were kind of, you know, fooling around or whatever, and his camera was on, and, I don"t know. I think his friends came over and maybe we were all kind of drunk and now-"
"Judy," she said. "Nothing that happened, whatever it was, was your fault. You do understand that, don"t you?"
I shrugged.
"Whatever happened at Kyle"s house-if you did not explicitly say to Kyle, "This is okay with me"-wasn"t okay. And it wasn"t your fault. Whether you drank or not, it wasn"t your fault. If you did not give Kyle your absolute, conscious, and unequivocal consent to do whatever it was that you did, or to be taped doing whatever it was you were taped doing, then he and his friends are responsible for what happened. And I mean legally responsible." She paused for a moment before adding, "Judy, because some of the adults at school have already heard rumors about this, I think we need to tell your parents as soon as possible."
My mind was flooded with thoughts, none of them pleasant. I had a vivid memory of Kyle asking, at least several times, if I was okay. He was always asking whether I was okay. And I was always saying yes. I wished that we had not gone to Ms. Doman"s house. It was my fault, and her thing about consent reminded me of it. I mean, I wasn"t a victim, anyway, and I don"t mean that in the stupid, TV-movie way. I didn"t think I had been like, asking for it or whatever. But I also knew I"d said yes. Okay, so not to the video, maybe, but to Kyle and probably Alan and Chris, too. I hadn"t invited Sarah or Ginger, because I wanted all of Kyle"s attention, and now it was mine. I had wanted everyone, Chris and Alan included, to think I was cool and s.e.xy. Didn"t that desire make me complicit? And who even cared? Whether it was my fault or not, how was I supposed to get out of it now? Who did she mean, the adults at school? Had she already known? Worse, had she seen the video before I even had? I swallowed.
"Have you seen it?" I asked, my eyes lowered. I could see streaks of original tree in her wooden table. I thought about how the rings around a tree trunk tell you how old the tree is. I wondered what woodcutter had chopped the tree down to make this table, wished I were a tree, thousands of years old, that my whole small and stupid lifetime were one ring, a blink, over, meaningless. Or that I were a woodcutter. I wished I were anyone but myself. The smell of tea began to make me sick.
"No," Ms. Doman said, looking at me. "I have not watched it." She meant to tell me that she had been given the opportunity to watch it. Otherwise she would have used the word seen, instead of watched.
I nodded. "Was there a copy at school?"
She looked at me, as if trying to figure out what I meant by this.
"Have you seen it, Judy?"
"Not yet," I said.
"I will not watch it, Judy, and I think most of the other adults who find out about this-will also make that choice." She did not need to say "including your parents," because we all knew what she meant. She thought for a moment before adding, "Maybe you should make that choice too."
"I think I have to see it," I said.
She nodded sadly. "I can understand that. Would you like me to tell your parents for you?" she asked. "Because they"re going to find out, and I"d like it to come from you or me, rather than Mr. Grames." The princ.i.p.al. Had he heard? How? Who would have told him? Worse, had he seen the video? I wondered for the millionth time how bad it was, what exactly they had taped me doing. The possibilities, though blurry, seemed endless. I thought for a minute I might fall off the stool, I felt so dizzy. I couldn"t speak.
"This is going to be okay," Ms. Doman said, and I didn"t believe her, but was glad she"d said it nonetheless. "How about this?" she continued. "How about I call your parents and just warn them that something is happening, and then you can tell them whatever level of detail you"re comfortable with. Would that be okay? Would that help?"
Meghan was nodding before I could start. I nodded too, feeling horror and relief in equal measures. If Ms. Doman called my parents, they would know it was serious. They would also know that grown-ups at school still loved and forgave me, and maybe she would tell them the same thing she was telling me, that it was going to be okay. I began to climb down from my stool.
As if she had heard me thinking, Ms. Doman said, "This will be okay, Judy," again. "I promise. No matter how bad you feel right now, or how embarra.s.sed, this will pa.s.s. You have a huge, brilliant life ahead of you-full of love and meaningful experiences-and this will not ruin it."
I did not find this comforting, although it didn"t make me love her any less. Embarra.s.sed seemed like such a flimsy, insufficient word. Embarra.s.sed! I mean, destroyed, maybe. Honestly, her words seemed to me to be making the whole thing both too small and too big at the same time. For example, they made me think that she was worried I might kill myself, and that if she was worried about such a thing, it probably meant that suicide was worth considering.
She stood up from her chair and walked over to mine, bent down, and hugged me, sitting there, for what felt like a long time. Then she hugged Meghan, too. We both stood up, and Ms. Doman walked us to the door, waved from the porch as we backed our bikes away from her house and out onto Ferdon. I could see that her eyes were glittering, and I hoped she would hold in whatever crying was coming until we were out of sight. She did not. She was still waving as we rode down the street, but the tears had started pouring down her cheeks and I could see them as I pedaled away. I moved my legs faster and faster. The whole ride home, my mind raced. Trees went by on either side of me, cars, houses, windows. I thought how there were whole universes in each house, entire families with complicated lives and relationships and problems. Millions of people not me. This made me feel slightly better.
But as soon as we pulled onto Londonderry, we saw both my parents" cars in the driveway and my stomach dropped through the sidewalk and landed somewhere near the core of the earth. They shouldn"t have been home for another hour at least. Meghan and I parked our bikes and climbed slowly off and I punched in the pa.s.s-code to the garage. The door rumbled open and Meghan and I wheeled the bikes in. Everything felt like slow motion.
"Here we go," I said to Meghan.
"You"ll be fine," she said. "It"s much better they know. I think they might have to get you a lawyer or something. You need them to help."
My mom opened the door between the kitchen and the garage. Her face was drawn and white, bruised-looking.
"Where have you been?" she asked. "We were frantic."
"We were at the park," I said.
"Why didn"t you tell me you weren"t going to school? Mrs. O"Henry called this morning to ask why you were absent-your father and I have been driving around since eleven, Judy! Where were you?!"
"I"m sorry, Mom, I didn"t realize-I-" Had they told her anything? Or just that I was missing school? Unsure of my footing, I decided to be angry.
"It"s not like I"m the first person in the world to skip cla.s.s once in my junior year, you know," I said. Then my dad appeared behind her in the door.
"Hi, honey. We need to talk," my dad said, and I knew it was worse than the skipping school thing, that Ms. Doman had just called and that this, my mistake, was going to be the worst thing that had ever happened to them. My dad"s eyes were red around the edges; he had been crying. It is impossible to overstate my horror at this realization.
"We"re not angry that you missed school," my mom said. "We just need to know if you"re okay. Have a seat." My dad tried to look brave, and I have to hand it to him, he wasn"t crying now, and he never once cried in front of me. It"s not his fault that he couldn"t hide from me the fact that he"d been crying before he saw me. He looked like he had pink eyeliner on. I kept thinking-both Ms. Doman and my father had cried over this. How was I ever going to recover, even from that small side effect?
I sat at the table. Meghan was like, "Excuse me," and then walked out of the kitchen, super quietly. I watched her go, thinking she looked smaller than usual and feeling terrible for involving her in this whole mess, and also bad for myself that she was leaving the next day and that then my despair would be complete. I closed my eyes, opened them again, realized this was real, that it was actually happening.
My mom said, "Judy, honey, do you want to tell us what happened?
"Didn"t Ms. Doman just call? What did she say?" I had a shattering feeling in my heart. This is what they mean by heartbreak, I thought.
"She said you"re in some trouble at school," my dad said.
"Yeah. I guess that"s true."
"What happened, honey?"
"He made a video."
My mother closed her eyes, composed herself.
"Kyle, you mean?"
"Kyle."
"A video of the two of you."
"Did Ms. Doman not tell you anything?"
"She said she thought you would want to tell us the details of what happened."
"Right."
"Why did he make a video?" my dad asked, surprising me.
"We"ll have to ask him."
My mom clarified. "You didn"t know he was making it," she said.
"No. I didn"t know."
"Is it a s.e.xual video?"
"I think so. I haven"t seen it."
"Were you, um, were you?"
"What, having s.e.x with him?"
Meghan had reappeared at the mouth to the kitchen; maybe she had rethought it, decided I might want her there. Or maybe it was unbearable waiting in the other room for it to be over. I gestured to her to come in.
"I don"t know, Judy. I don"t know what I meant to ask."
Tears had started a string of water down my mom"s cheeks. She made no move to wipe them, as if by ignoring them she could deny that she was crying. My mom hardly ever cries. I couldn"t remember the last time I"d seen her cry, in fact. I felt myself float up above the room, watched the conversation with a detached feeling. Her face contorted into a kind of personal battle; the top half crying and the bottom not admitting it, not letting it. She said h.e.l.lo to Meghan as if nothing was happening.
"Can I get you some hot chocolate, Meghan?"
"No, no, please-don"t go to any trouble, I-"
"Isn"t it pretty obvious that I was having s.e.x with him if he made a s.e.x tape?" I asked.
My dad scooched his chair back and stood up, went to the stove to watch the pot of boiling water.
"Is that what the video is?" my mom asked. Her eyes were pinned to me. I thought of how much she worried, how she talked to my dad late at night about how I was going to get hurt. How now she had been right.
"You haven"t seen it?" I asked.
"Of course not," she said.
"Have you had a chance to see it and you just decided not to?"
"No," she said. "No one told us there was a video until now."
"But given the chance, you won"t watch it."
"No," she said, without even pausing. "Your father and I won"t watch it."
My dad cleared his throat and I thought maybe he was going to weigh in about whether to watch the video. But he asked, "Did you love this boy, Judy?"
I was surprised that my dad would have been able to find his way so quickly to the question at the center of things. But I didn"t want to tell him that I loved Kyle, even though I thought it would make him feel better.
"Are you worried about my virginity?"
"No. Did you love him?" His voice was so sad that I gave in.
"Yes," I said.
My father nodded. "I"m glad," he said, and even in the first, grief-drenched moments of this whole thing, I appreciated him. For wanting to know most of all whether I"d been true to myself. And caring that I had. Caring more about that, in fact, than he ever cared through the entire ordeal about what anyone else said or thought.
And for not pointing out that I had been stupid to love Kyle in the first place. Or that my mom had been right that I was a basket case, unable to protect myself from the evil world. To my dad, it was better to know I wasn"t a self-destructive s.l.u.t. I hadn"t done it because I knew he"d tape me, or because of peer pressure, or because I hated myself and wanted to lose my virginity to a s.a.d.i.s.t. I"d just been wrong, thought Kyle was lovable.
"Did you know, honey?" my mom asked. "Did you two decide together to make the video?"