“Something like that.”
We stare each other down for a few more minutes. That doesn’t sound like much, but there are certain times in your life when you realize just how long a minute is, such as when waiting for another driver to let you slip into their lane during a traffic jam, or when waiting for a microwave meal to cook. This is one of those times.
I feel like he’s waiting for me to apologize, but I won’t do it.
Eventually he says, “You may go. But if this happens again I won’t be so lenient. Your behavior has already attracted a wealth of unwanted attention to our school, Miss O’Neill, and by continuing to act up you’re only making it worse for yourself. I know you’ve had a troubled upbringing, but there’s only so much understanding we can give before we have to take action.”
Now I feel like he wants me to thank him for letting me off the hook, but again, I won’t do it.
I walk out without a word.
4.47 p.m.
Desperate to have my faith in the world restored, I stop by Mrs Crannon’s office after final bell. Instead of candy wrappers, she’s surrounded by balled-up tissues and a tube of menthol oil, and her nose is redder than a baboon’s behind. Bless her.
And yet, at the sight of my weary expression, she’s the one offering me sympathy. “Oh, Izzy. You poor thing. How are you doing?”
My skin crawls. The idea that this lovely, warm and kind woman has seen my vagina is so sickening, so gut-wrenching, that I can barely breathe. But I’m getting used to having the wind knocked out of my lungs, and I try to push past it.
Swallowing hard, I perch on a desk instead of condemning myself to several minutes of torture-chair hell. “I’m okay, I guess. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to it all, you know? Should I be fighting back? Or lying low for the time being?”
She blows her nose like a trumpet, mumbling against the tissue. “Well, I think only you can answer that. There’s no right answer. Just do what feels most comfortable, and know that you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. Those of us who truly care about you know that too, and don’t look at you any differently.”
Even though she’s being sweet, my cheeks burn with embarrassment as I let it really, truly sink in that my middle-aged drama teacher has seen me naked. You know those dreams you have when you’re a kid, that you accidentally go to school without any clothes on, and everyone stares and there’s nowhere to hide and you just want to die?
That’s my reality.
I can’t do this.
I’d planned to chat to her about my screenplay, but I’m too mortified. I leave without even saying goodbye. Maybe she calls after me, but I can’t hear anything over the blood roaring in my ears and the self-loathing rippling through my veins.
4.59 p.m.
I almost don’t see him.
I’m hurrying down the hallway in the arts and social sciences building, chin tucked to my chest and heart beating wildly, dreaming of the moment I hit the fresh air, but knowing deep down it won’t make me feel any less dirty.
Mercifully, there are no other students around. Most are either at team practice – yes, on a Friday night, because sportsball is evil – or cutting loose for the weekend. Feeling excited about the weekend is an alien concept to me these days.
Because it’s so quiet, the soft remixed reggae floats out into the corridor even though the door to the art studio is closed. It’s so out of place, so incongruous, that it jars in my subconscious. It takes me back to a very specific time and place in the not-so-distant past – to Baxter’s party, sipping beer on the soft couch with Carson pressed up against my shoulder. Before . . . everything.
I stop in my tracks. The art studio is just down the hall and, while the door is shut, the blind over the window hasn’t been pulled down. Curiosity gets the better of me and I edge closer, the music growing louder as I do. It’s not as intense as it was at the party; it has that tinny quality you get when you play songs through your phone speakers. But it’s definitely the same song.
Carson has his back to the door as he paints, working on a giant canvas propped up on an easel. As I creep toward the window, I try to get a better look at what he’s drawing, but his body obscures the middle of the canvas. Around the edges, in the background of whatever he’s shielding, is the star-spangled banner, painted in the same red and white I saw speckled on his shirt back when he kissed me in the hallway; the same blue that stained his hands.
A brush in his hand, he dabs away at something I can’t see, leaning close to the canvas and examining his work in painstaking detail. I’m transfixed, but I also feel like I’m violating his privacy. He once offered to show me his work someday, but like I say. That was before.
I’m about to walk away, to leave him to the painting session he’s obviously skipped basketball practice for, when he swivels his body to the side, reaching for some more paint. His shirt lifts up as he does, exposing a strip of toned torso, but for once that’s not where I’m looking.
Painted in deep turquoise on the center of the canvas is the Statue of Liberty, piggybacking on an African-American slave. The slave is sweating with the exertion of carrying the statue, and bleeding from whip wounds on his chest. Behind him are hundreds of other slaves, getting smaller and smaller as they fade into the background; into the fabric of the American flag. The colors are vivid and textured, and the light and shade are so expertly manipulated that the Statue’s torch seems to shine only on her, not the slaves below.
Damn, Carson is talented. He’s good at basketball – hell, he’s great at it – but this? This is another level. It’s so good I can barely breathe.
The soft reggae remix ends. Before the next song begins, Carson twists back to the canvas, and he catches sight of me in the corner of his eye. Our gazes lock through the window. Something unreadable crosses his face. My gut instinct is to go to him, to tell him how incredible his work is. How incredible he is.
And then I remember. He betrayed me. He sold me out.
As I blink away my awe at his talent, another song starts, and I walk away toward the fresh air I thought I craved. But at the sight of Carson, I know the truth.
All I crave is him.
6.13 p.m.
Betty has gone out to one of her ludicrous evening classes. They run them for free at the community center – I think Friday nights are yoga finger-painting, whereby they have to paint nude pictures of each other while holding impossible poses. Laugh all you want, but Betty now has the flexibility of a double-jointed circus freak, and the paintings get less creepy the more you look at them.
So yeah, she’s out all night, meaning I have some time to do some digging around on the internet to see if I can figure out who exactly made my life a living hell – and why – since the school board apparently gives precisely zero shits. Betty’s absence is doubly beneficial because a) I can cry all I want in the process without worrying her, and b) I don’t have to share the Wi-Fi, which is a bonus because she’s always downloading movies illegally, despite the fact she’s never once been able to successful open any of the files. She is the world’s worst pirate.
I make myself a pumpkin spice latte using bargain-basement coffee creamer, and settle down on the couch with Dumbledore and a box of tissues at the ready [which means a very different thing to teenage boys, I’ve come to understand]. And then I open the World Class Whore website.