Doesn’t he know I said the words fuck and slut and screw in front of everyone?
“I once gave a student a bad grade because his father was a jerk,” Headmaster Brownser says. He looks embarrassed for about a second, but then he chuckles. Chuckles so hard he has to cover his mouth with his hand to regain control. “Never said that out loud,” he muses. “Thought it. Never said it. Thought saying it would make it more true. Make it worse than it was. But I did it either way, right?” I’m the only one onstage with him, so I guess he’s sort of talking to me. I nod and muster up a smile.
It is the single weirdest moment of my life. And I have had some weird moments in the last few weeks.
“Well, come on,” he says. This time not to me; this time to the whole school. “Who else?”
Then he nods to me and gestures for me to get off the stage. I don’t feel ready to join everyone else, but he’s practically escorting me, so I take careful steps down the ramp and climb back into my seat. By the time I’ve gotten myself settled, there is someone else on stage: a senior guy with clear-framed glasses and clear braces. The kind of guy who could not be trying any harder to fit in.
“That was really . . . cool,” he says. He has a voice so high, I’m sure when he answers the phone people think he’s a woman. “Uh, I don’t have anything huge. But I shop at the Salvation Army. With my mom. Not, like, by choice. So yeah. People made fun of me for that before and I denied it and whatever, but it’s totally true. So, there ya go.” He’s beaming. I wonder if I looked that red and sweaty and happy up there. He’s too awkward to get offstage gracefully, and he manages to step on his own feet. I do a big inward groan and think this is reflecting poorly on me too. I probably looked just that awkward. He makes eye contact with me on his way back to his seat. Waves, like I’m an inspiring celebrity, and gives me a thumbs-up sign.
It’s nice, I know it is, but the worst part of me hates him for it. My ears ring with embarrassment. I’m so busy looking at the floor and feeling bad for myself and the guy with clear orthodontics that I jump in my seat when I hear the next voice: Jemma.
“I’m not very nice,” she says. “Sometimes I’m a bitch. Like, I sort of know I’m doing it, and then I get home and feel stupid, but then I just do it again. Or I justify it, you know? But sometimes it’s hard to really convince yourself that what you did, you know, isn’t so bad.” Jemma practically sprints offstage, but it’s just as well because without my really noticing it, a dozen or so people have gathered on the ramp leading up to the stage. There’s officially a line to get up there, to have all that heat on you, and to own up to everything you hate about yourself or secretly love about yourself but know to hide.
A freshman admits to an eating disorder.
A sophomore says her mom left her dad two weeks ago, but neither of them have told anyone—even the rest of the family—yet.
Two seniors apologize for hacking into another boy’s email.
A junior says he cries in the bathroom like a girl. I mean, he actually admits this. To a school of three hundred people.
Headmaster Brownser stays right there on the side of the stage, some pillar of strength, and nods along with the sharing. He makes no move to put a stop to it. The line on the ramp gets even longer: twenty people are in line, then thirty.
“I knew about a friend’s dad hitting her, and I didn’t do anything,” a girl says, in tears. Headmaster Brownser nods, and when the crying girl doesn’t calm down, he rubs her back until she can breathe enough to muster a smile and a big, healthy exhale.
Mrs. Drake gets onstage.
“I am not always the best at my job,” she mumbles, and then shakes her head and leaves the stage. She doesn’t look at me, but she stays in the assembly hall, and whenever someone says something emotional, she checks in with them on their way offstage. All of them. The nice girls. The bad girls. The jocks. The stoners. She looks each of them in the eye when they get offstage.
People keep smiling at me on their way up the ramp, but I am so heart-poundingly stupefied by the response to my outpouring of secrets that I don’t smile back. I can’t get my head around the way one action done for a totally selfish reason has caused something so large and generous and profound.
Sasha Cotton doesn’t move from her seat in front of me. But she does keep looking back at me, and not with hatred. Not with spite or malice or, I think, further plans to destroy me. Her face is wet with tears, no surprise there, but this time they are for a reason, they are from real live empathy, and not her own dark place.
Joe is gone.