Thousand Words (11 page)

“So your goal was only to completely humiliate me a little bit? Gosh, thanks, I feel so much better now.”

“No, my goal was to… I don’t know.” He rubbed his hands over his hair. “I was pissed off, and it wasn’t smart or right. It just happened. And I’m sorry that I did it.”

“Sorry that you did it or sorry that you got in trouble for it?” Because I was willing to bet he wouldn’t have been sorry at all if he’d never gotten caught. “What exactly are you sorry about, Kaleb?”

“Ms. Culver,” Mr. Frank said to Tina, “our intention was not to give your client a platform to attack Mr. Coats. We’re here for an apology.”

Tina’s giant mouth flopped open. “N-no, of course not,” she stammered. “But, understandably, my client has some thoughts she wants to express—”

“I think the least he can do is answer some questions for my daughter, don’t you?” Mom said, interrupting Tina. She placed her hand on the back of my chair.

Mr. Frank held out his hand to Mom but spoke to Tina. “Now, I understand that Miss Maynard was hurt by this
unfortunate mistake. But you need to understand that Mr. Coats has been hurt by it as well. Maybe more than she has.”

“And you need to understand that this was no mistake,” Mom said, her voice ratcheting up a notch. “You heard him say he deliberately did what he did. That doesn’t sound like any sort of accident to me.”

Mr. Frank’s hand hovered over the table, and I could almost see him kick himself into lawyer mode. His face got very serious and his body language changed. He sat forward, his palm spread toward Mom as if he were trying to physically hold her down. Tina must have sensed something, too. She stood up and gathered her things as if to usher me out quickly. “It was a mistake in judgment. He has admitted as much. But, again, we’re not here for—”

“It’s okay,” Kaleb interrupted. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ll answer her.” He turned to me. “What I’m sorry about is that I didn’t break up with you the day before I turned eighteen,” he said. “And I don’t mean that in a mean way or anything. It’s just that if I’d broken up with you then, I wouldn’t be in…” He trailed off, shook his head, paused. I could see moisture glistening under his eyes. I almost felt dizzy with surprise; here I’d been worried that I might cry in front of Kaleb, and he was the one crying in front of me instead. “I wouldn’t be in this mess,” he finally said, and I could see his Adam’s apple moving up and down as he swallowed away his tears. “They’re calling that picture child pornography. If I get charged, I could have to
register as a sex offender. I want to be a teacher, Ashleigh, and sex offenders don’t get to be teachers. I’ll have to move out of my parents’ house, because they live down the street from my old elementary school. People will naturally assume that I’m some sick pervert, and you know that’s not true. We never even had sex. I never even asked you to. I never asked you to send that picture in the first place. So I’m sorry that I didn’t break up with you sooner, and if I could take back everything that’s happened, trust me, I would.”

Mr. Frank had lowered his hand into his lap and had taken up a cocky, crossed-legged pose. He checked his watch again. “If we’re satisfied…?”

“Ashleigh?” Tina said. “Do you have anything else you’d like to say?”

I shook my head. What was there left to say? We were both screwed, and all because of some dumb, childish payback game.

Mom stood, shouldered her purse. “Well, I’m sorry for all you’ve gone through, Kaleb,” she said. “But you chose to do what you did. My husband, on the other hand, is probably going to lose his job over something he had nothing to do with. You chose that for him.”

“Dana…” Tina said in a soft warning voice.

Mr. Frank stood, too, and hitched the waistband of his pants. “I’m going to have to stop you there, Mrs. Maynard, because that’s not what we’re here for today and Mr. Coats and I have another appointment, so we’ll need to adjourn this meeting.” So much for the congenial host Mr. Frank
had been when we’d arrived. Our time was up and we needed to leave—he’d made that crystal clear.

“Yes, I think we’re done here,” Mom said. “We can find our way out.” She headed for the door. I followed behind, glancing back at Kaleb one last time. He was staring down at the rumpled paper on the table, rubbing his gaunt cheeks with his hand. He looked up and our eyes met before I very quickly looked away, concentrating on the back of Tina’s head as we walked out.

I’d finally told Kaleb exactly how I felt. Problem was, I didn’t feel any better at all than I had when I walked into the room. I might even have felt worse.

Dad had a meeting, so he picked me up right after school the next day to drop me off at community service. I was early, but I didn’t really mind all that much. When we pulled up, Mack was sitting on a concrete bench out in front of the double doors, the collar of his jean jacket pulled up over his ears against the chilly fall wind.

I joined him, dropping my backpack between my feet.

“Hey,” I said.

Mack nodded. I could hear music blasting through his earbuds, but somehow he could still hear me. The wind gusted and I pulled my jacket tighter around me. I liked the cold against my cheeks. It woke me up. In some ways it was the most awake I’d felt all day.

“You been here long? Your cheeks are red,” I said.

He shrugged. “A while,” he said.

“Can I listen?” I held out my palm and after a hesitation, Mack pulled out an earbud and placed it in my hand. I put it in, tapping my foot along with the music, which was some dubstep song I’d never heard before. We sat together through the whole song, neither of us needing to say anything, neither of us acknowledging the cold.

The song ended.

“How’d it go yesterday?” Mack asked, thumbing the volume down. He didn’t look at me, but instead focused his eyes off across the bus yard, which was next door to the Central Office building. Buses were pulling out of the parking lot, their engines roaring.

“Terrible.”

He chewed his bottom lip, and for a long moment I thought that was going to be the end of it, but he simply watched another bus pull away, then said, “So I take it his apology didn’t make you feel any better?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “He didn’t apologize. Not really. He said he was sorry for how things turned out, and he talked about how bad it’s been for him, but he never really said anything specific, you know?” And I realized that was probably what bothered me about my meeting with Kaleb the most. You could have plugged that apology into pretty much any situation and it would have worked. It was as good as saying nothing at all.

“You wanted him to apologize for something specific?”
Finally, Mack turned to me. The gray sky reflected in his eyes and made them darker.

I pulled the earbud out of my ear and held it in my lap, staring down at it. “No. I wanted him to apologize for everything specific.” I shook my head. “I know that doesn’t make sense. I just…” I watched the buses some more, trying to come up with the right words. “I just wanted him to say it. To say what he’d done. It was like he admitted nothing.”

Mack turned his gaze back to the bus yard, where two men were talking animatedly beside a bus that had its hood propped open. He nodded, as if he was mulling over what I’d said.

“Hearing him say it wouldn’t make it go away, though,” he said after a moment.

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t,” I agreed.

He turned up the volume again, and I put the earbud back into my ear, and we sat and listened to music until Mrs. Mosely walked past us on the sidewalk, hugging a book in her arms, her purse slung sideways across her chest.

“You better get inside before you freeze to death, you two,” she said.

We watched her push through the front doors, and we sat there for a few minutes longer. And then, without speaking, I handed the earbud back to Mack, and we both got up and walked in behind her.

I pushed a piece of pancake around on my plate, making a design with the butter and syrup streaks it left behind.

My father’s voice, which had been droning on and on for what seemed like forever, drifted in and out of my consciousness. “… man’s a pompous ass… thinks the whole world owes… ought to tell him…”

My mom made conversational noises to show she was listening. Little “uh-huhs” and “mmms” and soft gasps while she nibbled on bites of oatmeal.

Dad had been going on about this for days now.
Something about the board president, who Dad had never gotten along with, ever. The guy had taken to publicly calling out my dad for doing a poor job with some recent budget cuts. Dad had been moping around the house, snarling at the TV, barking things into the telephone, drinking glasses of wine at record speed, and griping at every meal, especially breakfast, as he faced another day of dealing with the fallout of the board president’s words at work.

“… going to have to talk to the newspaper yourself, I suppose…” Mom was saying. I sipped my orange juice and eyed the clock, trying to rally myself into wanting to go to school. After breaking up with Kaleb, I was so depressed I barely wanted to move, much less go listen to teachers for seven hours. But thinking about Kaleb only made my tears begin anew, and I was so tired of crying. I did not want to be one of those girls—the ones who shuffle through school sniveling into a tissue and tearfully announcing their latest breakup to anyone who’s unlucky enough to get in their path or dumb enough to ask what’s wrong.

“I have to get to school,” I finally said, standing and taking my plate to the sink.

Both of my parents looked up, Dad’s rant temporarily forgotten. “You didn’t eat anything,” Mom said.

“I’m not very hungry today. Plus, we’re eating doughnuts in math,” I lied. “For passing some test.”

“Oh, congratulations, honey!” Mom said, but Dad bellowed over her, pointing his fork in my direction, “See?
They blame me for the budget problems, but as long as the teachers are cramming food down the throats of every kid who gets an A on a test…”

I edged for the door, picking up my backpack and sliding into my flip-flops.

Mom tilted her head and sized me up, ignoring Dad. “You fine?” she said. She looked suspicious.

I willed a smile. Tried to look casual. “Frog fur, Mom, I promise. I just ate a lot last night, I think.”

“Well, you call me if you feel sick or anything, okay?”

“Of course.” Vonnie’s car horn honked two short beeps and I jumped. “Von’s here.” I took two steps back into the kitchen and kissed Mom on the cheek. “Have a good day at school,” I said.

She smiled. “Hey, that’s my line.” Another of our goofy inside jokes.

I raced outside and immediately heard music coming from Vonnie’s car. Cheyenne and Annie were in the backseat, and they were all talking over each other and the song, which was turned up so loud the thumping bass was bouncing off the sides of my neighbors’ houses. I saw Mrs. Donnelly sitting in a rocker on her front porch, her pink robe cinched tight around her middle, a coffee mug pressed against her lap. I grinned at her and waved; she nodded grimly.

When I opened the car door, noise spilled out like I’d opened the door into a rave. Vonnie was laughing so hard she was dabbing at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, trying to keep mascara from running down her face.

I plunked into the passenger’s seat and held my backpack in my lap. Cheyenne and Annie were singing at the tops of their lungs, their Starbucks cups sweating in their hands. It was hot outside, the kind of day that made you wish it was still summer break and that they waited to start school until after the crappy gray weather rolled in for the season, rather than in August.

“Yo, Buttercup!” Vonnie shouted. “Sorry, we hit the fraps without you. We’re draggin’ ass big-time this morning.” She eyed the backseat through the rearview mirror, and they all cracked up.

“No problem,” I said, not getting what was so funny. I looked back and forth between them. “What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Vonnie said, too innocently. “I swear.”

We pulled out of the driveway and headed toward the highway.

“Dude, I seriously think I pulled something in my knee last night,” Annie said, leaning forward and turning down the music. “I fell right into that ditch. I had grass stains on my skin, for real. Not on my clothes, but on my
skin
.”

“I still have shoe polish on my right hand,” Cheyenne said. “You were so lucky that neighbor pulled right into his garage, Annie. He’d have seen you for sure.”

“I know. That’s why I ran into the ditch. I was freaking out.”

“What?” I asked again. “What did you guys do last night?” Again, they all met eyes in the rearview mirror, but nobody said anything. After a beat, they broke into a new
round of laughter. “No, really,” I said. “What are you talking about?” I was starting to get irritated, even though their stupid smiles were making me smile, too.

“Vigilante justice,” Vonnie said.

“More like knee rearrangement,” Annie said.

I still didn’t get it. “Whatever. Don’t tell me.”

Finally, Vonnie turned off the radio and glanced at me as she navigated the morning highway traffic. The turnoff to the school was backed up, as usual. “Vigilante justice,” Vonnie repeated. “We righted a wrong.”

“Totally,” Cheyenne said around her straw, then belched. Annie called her gross and threw a wadded-up napkin at her.

“Spill it,” I said, a smile creeping in. Whatever it was, it must have been crazy, from the sound of things. I felt a little pang of jealousy that they hadn’t asked me to do it with them.

My phone buzzed. A text. I looked at it and my breath caught. It was from Kaleb. Part of me was angry that he was already texting me after saying he never wanted to talk to me again, and part of me hoped he was apologizing and asking me back. I opened the text, barely breathing.

All it said was:
WTF?!

I was pretty sure he hadn’t meant to text me, because I had no idea what he was talking about. Probably he’d meant to send it to Holly or whichever college girl he’d broken up with me for.