Chad smiled at me, nodded as if he understood. Sam reached across the table and spooned another heaping serving of lasagna onto his plate.
The funny thing about that dinner is that even though we didn’t talk about the hearing, or the Motel Manor, or even the horrible thing itself, for one of the first times ever, it genuinely didn’t feel like we were faking it. It was like we had decided to take the long, inevitable conversation slowly. To put it on hold for a moment while we sat back at the table together. I was grateful.
After Chad kissed me on the head and went back to his dorm, and Sam disappeared into his room, I went upstairs and lay on my bed, thinking about Meghan, looking forward to the conversation I knew we’d have when I called to tell her I was okay, fill her in on the Motel Manor adventure. My mom and dad followed me less than one minute later and sat down on the bed on either side of me. I sat up.
“Thank you for letting me stay there,” I said.
“It wasn’t up to us. You were very brave,” my mom said, deflecting. She looked over at my dad, cueing him.
He cleared his throat. “So, Judy, honey, there were some decisions that we had to make for you while you were—clearing your head.” I liked this, clearing my head. I wondered if it had been part of what my mom told him to say, or that was just the part about “decisions,” and the clearing-my-head thing was his own way of living with my having run away from them.
I nodded, waited for him to continue. He asked, “Do you want to have that talk now, about what happened, before you go back to school?”
I didn’t. Not yet. But I knew they did, and didn’t want to make them feel bad. “Can we talk about it after I sleep for a while?” I asked. “I mean, maybe tomorrow or something?”
“Of course,” they said in unison.
Then my mom handed me a white envelope. “This came today,” she said. “I thought you might want it right away. And as for talking about the last two weeks—everything you’ve been through, and everything that’s happened here—just tell us what you want to know and when, and what you want us to know. Let’s all just be as direct as we all can from now on.”
“Okay,” I said. “First I want to read this letter.”
She kissed me and then took my dad’s hand. “We’ll leave you to it.” They walked out, closing the door quietly behind them. Later that night, I would press my ear to the vent and listen to them strategize about when to tell me that they were the ones who had pulled the plug on criminal charges. How were they going to explain that I would have been put through a hellish carnival of a trial, made public, ruined? Whether to tell me that they had, in their hearts, wanted positive endings for all of us, that ruining anyone’s life, even the boys’, wasn’t their goal. They decided to wait until I asked.
But before I even pressed my ear to the vent or heard anything, I read his letter. It was on computer paper, typed. Even in the first moment of ripping that thing open, I wished it were a yellow legal page, anything homemade, with his handwriting on it, a card or something. But there it was, printed:
Dear Judy, This is not the first time I wanted to go back in time
and take back something bad that happened. But there’s no way to
undo the things that happen. There is also no way for this letter
to change things. But I want to apologize to you formally. I am
very sorry for what happened, more sorry than I can say in a
letter like this. Maybe someday I can try to explain how I could
have been part of what happened. I hope I can. I hope you know
I cared about you, and I’m sorry for what happened. Yours
truly, Kyle.
Only his name was handwritten, like he was an executive signing a letter his assistant had typed or something. Yours truly? I held the signature up to my face and breathed in, but it smelled like nothing, not even paper or ink. Cared about you, past tense. I folded it back into the envelope and put it in my desk drawer with the lock, where I also had my copy of the DVD.
That’s when I went to the vent to listen to my parents strategize. They were so relieved to see me intact and have me home that I’m too embarrassed even to record the maudlin things they said to each other about their love for me. But I was glad to hear all of it, even the long, predictable session about what I could handle knowing and when to tell me everything. Just the feeling of my ear against the floor was so familiar I could have sung and danced for joy.
Instead, I took a long shower, brushed my teeth, put my moon-and-stars pajamas on, and slept for eleven hours in my own bed—without having a single dream.
When I walked in, the place felt different. Maybe because I’d been gone, or didn’t remember accurately what it had been like before I left. My parents had wanted to drive me, to come in with me, to take me straight to the office for what I was certain would be an unbearable debriefing with the “administration,” one they insisted we would need to have. I told them I wanted to go alone the first time. So the morning after I got home, my dad showed me the raised pedals in the car and sent me to school on my own. It was the first time I had ever parked in the D’Arts parking lot myself.
Inside, a rush of cool air greeted me, and then the smells, both familiar and strange, normal and yet so specific to D’Arts that they seemed rare: Lysol, cafeteria food, chlorine, sawdust from the tech room behind the theater, scent of wood sets being built, paint, sloppy joes, books, other kids, shampoo, lotion, toothpaste, sweat. I thought of Kyle for a minute, his hair and the warm smell of his skin. I walked by the first-floor teachers’ lounge; someone had burned microwave popcorn in there, maybe yesterday. I saw Mr. Luther sitting on a couch, grade book in his lap. I kept walking. All the murals were in place: zebras, Greek goddesses, tigers, teenagers.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked to my locker, enduring the heads that turned as I went. My locker was just as I had left it: woven strands of lanyard still twisted and colorful, glass beads in place. It wasn’t like one of those movies where a kid gets cancer and when she comes back to school, everyone has shaved their head in solidarity. I mean, no one had put Mylar balloons on my locker or welcome signs or anything. And since I didn’t know yet who those other videos were of, I didn’t have any specific company for that misery, except Ginger, and that hardly made me feel less lonely. When I opened my locker, it had the same library book and metal smells, the same pictures of me and Goth Sarah and Molly in our Halloween costumes, one of Sam dancing in our living room, and another of Chad and Alice and me and Sam from the night of the senior voice concert.
I looked down and saw that someone had stuffed some notes in the vertical crack of the locker. I picked up the first one and unfolded it.
Judy L! You are our favorite hot freak. Stand up, smile at
whoever’s looking at you, and we’ll see you in American lit. If your
day totally sucks, we’ll skip the afternoon together. Meantime, tell
anyone who fucks with you to fuck off or Molly (almost BROWN
belt! Yah!) will kick their ass. xoxox, S&M (get it?).
The second one was a piece of folded notebook paper, which I unfolded and smoothed out. It was my own handwriting, said: “I’m deaf; can’t hear you bitches.” Underneath that, Sarah had drawn a picture of me, doing fake sign language with one hand and flipping off her and Molly (stick figures) with the other. I was little, with huge hands, especially the one with its middle finger up. She had colored the picture in with crayon, including a brown belt around Molly’s stick waist. I laughed, in spite of myself.
Last was a shiny pink envelope with my name on it. I opened it carefully, found a glittery card with hot pink and silver flowers on it. I opened it up:
Dearest Judy, I have been thinking about you since I heard the news
about what happened at school. I am so sorry, and am sending
healing energ y every day. Love, Mimi Mews (Ginger’s mom).
I could feel eyes prickling across my back, people I knew and didn’t know slowing as they walked by. I also heard the regular shuffle of shoes and chattering, giggling, shouting, making out, singing, dancing sounds of another morning at D’Arts. It wasn’t all about me, I reminded myself. I wondered what Mimi Mews had thought of Ginger coming forward about the video of herself and Kyle, whether she thought her daughter was a hero. Maybe she was horrified or angry. I doubted it, given the note to me. Maybe she wanted to be friends with my parents now, so they could console each other about their little girls becoming unwitting porn actresses. I hung my jacket, folded Molly and Sarah’s note up and put it in the pocket of my jeans. Ginger’s mom’s note I put in my backpack and left in my locker. I slowly collected my books and turned to walk purposefully down the hall. Elizabeth Wood and Stockard Blumenthal were coming toward me. I sucked in as much air as I could right as they went by.
“Hey, Judy, welcome back,” Stockard said. I didn’t hear any sarcasm in it.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Yeah, welcome back,” said Elizabeth, and then they were on their way, in a conversation about whatever was actually present tense: breaking up, rehearsal, something I knew nothing about. I mean, the thing is, even if you’re naked on a video one moment at school, sleeping with three boys, by the next moment everyone is back to thinking and talking about themselves. Sarah wakes up underwater every day about Eliot and the foreign exchange student. And Stockard just broke up with Greg. I bet in her view that’s almost as painful as what happened to me. And in a way, she’s right. Because suffering isn’t always relative. And now she has to have laser surgery to have her OATS tattoo removed, which will probably really hurt. I keep thinking of the weird way Bill said, “That’s a good story,” like now that it’s over, that’s all it is.
I walked down the hall, turning to look when I passed Kyle’s and Chris’s and Alan’s lockers. They had been ripped bare, probably by the custodian, Mr. Nicks, but I imagined instead a mob of my loyal friends shredding the stupid movie posters and reel-to-reel tapes that had been on Kyle’s, the Lakers crap on Alan’s. I didn’t remember what had been on Chris’s, but now they were all utterly undecorated. I gave myself a minute to dream of the movie version: all my supporters, getting rid of every scrap of evidence that those guys had ever even been at D’Arts. In the movie, there would be no digital copies, no viral version online, just DVDs my friends would be throwing onto a giant bonfire in the backyard of the school, out by the track. They would incinerate every last copy of that wretched thing until it might as well never have existed. We’d all be in it together. I would walk into that scene, head held high, and fling my copy, the final one, onto the flames. Then everyone would cheer and carry me out on their shoulders.
I realized suddenly that I had been standing at Kyle’s locker an uncomfortably long time, and that I didn’t want anyone to see me there, so I pretended to be preoccupied with my right boot. I bent and fussed with the buckle while secretly looking up at that blank metal door one final time. It makes sense that stripping your locker is the way D’Arts would expel you: erase. In a way, it’s the opposite of what happened to me, but also creepy and terrible. I stood up, and Mrs. O’Henry, the counselor, was standing there, her arms hanging at her sides like they hurt, or were really heavy.
“Hi, Judy,” she said. I stood up quickly, straightened my sweater.
“Hi, Mrs. O’Henry.”
“Your parents called to say you’d be back today. I’m so glad to see you.”
I thought I should say thank you, but couldn’t. Why had I thought that driving myself to school without my parents would help me prevent this encounter? Somehow I’d assumed that if they weren’t with me, I could have a day of people my own age, and not also have to contend with the adult world. One at a time seemed punishment enough.
Mrs. O’Henry said softly, “Can you join me in my office for a talk? Of course, I’ll write you a pass if you’re in danger of being late to class.”
The thought of a hall pass or late pass or any kind of pass had always struck me as ludicrous and patronizing, but now it seemed absolutely comical. I wanted to ask Mrs. O’Henry if she would write me a pass for having been videotaped naked with three guys, and oh, while she was at it, could I have one for running away to a filthy motel and missing two weeks of school? I smiled politely.
“Of course,” I said, and followed her down the hallway. She seemed uncomfortably aware that I was behind her, and kept slowing down, parting the hallway crowds, insisting that we walk side by side. I was worried she would take my hand. She was wearing an enormous gray skirt, a white button-down shirt, and a cardigan with pink, black, and yellow flowers on it. She smelled nice, and it occurred to me that she was probably somebody’s grandmother. When we got to the main office, I couldn’t look up, lest I make eye contact with any teacher who happened to be standing at the mailboxes, or worse, with Mr. Grames, who had probably done nothing but watch the video and field calls from reporters for what must have felt now like his entire tenure at the school. Even the secretaries seemed to be staring. Maybe they had been at the hearing.
Mrs. O’Henry put her hand on my shoulder for a moment to lead me into her small office. She closed the door behind us and gestured for me to sit in a chair facing her desk. I hoisted myself up and looked at her.
“Judy,” she said, and I could see that there were pictures of kids all over her desk, and a grown-up who looked a lot like Mrs. O’Henry, and was probably her daughter. There was no guy in any of the pictures, so I thought maybe she didn’t have a son. Maybe her daughter was divorced. I looked at Mrs. O’Henry’s hand; she wore no wedding ring. Maybe all the women in her family got divorces.
“Let me first say how sorry I am about what happened. This is the sort of occurrence that we, as an institution, never like to see happen at our school. And it is the responsibility of every member of the administration, faculty, and student body, to make sure that nothing of the sort happens again.” She paused, maybe realizing how stilted and bizarre she sounded, and slid her half-glasses off of her nose, rubbed her eyes for a minute. “Judy, you’re such a bright and promising student, and we’re delighted to have you here. We hope you’ll finish your education with us, and that you will feel that Darcy is doing everything in our power to make things right.”