Oh what the hell, go have some fun, her grandmother said.
Charlie’s mother looked at her own mother in horror, then put her hand on Charlie’s shoulder.
Well, that’d be for the best, staying friends, she said.
Charlie knew she should bite her tongue and let that be the end of it. And she tried, she really did. But it came out anyway.
And why is that? she said. Is it beyond you to consider I’m not totally unlovable?
Don’t be a drama queen—I was thinking of him.
How kind.
You think you belong in this bubble? It won’t last forever, you know.
That’s what this is about? I’m dating a Deaf guy?
Oh, now you’re dating him?
What’s it to you?—Charlie snapped the headlamp band against her head, for emphasis—You only care about stuffing my head with enough metal to pretend with your shitty friends I’m normal!
Her mother was saying some other things now, but Charlie didn’t know what they were, because she left them all standing there and slipped back behind the curtain.
By the time they got to “I Won’t Grow Up,” Charlie could feel her whole body shaking—not a rhythm but an open run of voltage from her head and down her neck. She yanked the processor from her head, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her mouth felt cottony thick, her jaw tight. Charlie imagined herself going pale, or green, or maybe very red, but whichever it was, the cast members were eyeing her funny as they ran on-and offstage. Her body was a hummingbird’s thrum.
And then Tinker Bell came through the wing, her glow stick tutu bouncing past. The neon pinks and yellows and greens blurred together, a plait of light trailing behind her as she returned to the stage. Charlie grasped at the braid, tried to follow it hand over hand—surely the life buoy at the other end of that phosphorescent rope contained the antidote for her pain. But the light was slick; it slid and refracted in her grip until she could no longer see it at all, everything was too bright. She inspected her hands and looked up, realizing she was onstage beneath a spotlight. The pirates scattered and Gabriella-Wendy’s face scrunched into a knot of horror at her approach, but Austin stayed fixed to his mark. She held out her empty hands to him, and he looked from her palms to her face utterly derailed, but smiling.
It was getting harder to see now, but out in the house a figure that must’ve been Fickman was storming down the center aisle. Charlie, though, was fixated on row four, or at least where she remembered it to be. Even her mother would know there was something wrong—everyone’s eyes on this lost child—and there was power in her chest right before she hit the floor.
look, I’m not a monster. I only tried to do what was best for her. To give her every opportunity. To balance an injustice. To fix my mistakes.
When she was born, I studied her tiny hands, her fingers curled in so tight and thought, Perfect, she’s so perfect, how could someone like me have made something so lovely? I was exhausted and yet full of love and wonder and fear. That first night I was afraid to put her down, held her against my chest until dawn. And I knew right away I would do anything to protect her.
When she still wasn’t talking at two, I panicked. We began the circuit—early interventionists, autism screenings. Finally audiology, otolaryngology, speech pathology. The results were clear: I had failed her. Victor had failed her. Especially him.
The doctors spoke of miraculous new technology, proselytized really, and their enthusiasm was contagious. It was all very expensive—the surgery, the device, the therapy that was to come, but what price tag can you put on hope? Charlie had already lost so much time. I knew we had to make it up to her. I liquidated my grandfather’s inheritance. Victor picked up some extra gigs. We would make it work. We would open doors for her.
It was the doctors who told me not to sign, not to let her sign, did you know that? It would confuse her, they said, cause further delays. Your people—medical experts. I trusted you.
When I was very young, my mother entered me in beauty pageants. I hated them—the early morning wake-ups and long drives, afternoons in strange hotel ballrooms, the hot and terrible assaults on my hair—but I was too young to know this wasn’t how all girls spent their weekends. They were good for me, my mother said. I was developing confidence. Maybe I’d even get a scholarship somewhere.
I never won, but once I came in second. I was pleased with myself. Finally, I was one of the last girls left standing on the stage. I was given a bouquet and crowned with a tiara just like the one Miss Tennessee wore in the autographed picture that hung above my bed. But when I met my mother by the stage door afterward, I could see right away she wasn’t happy.
So close, she said as we walked to the car. And nothing else.
So please, don’t judge me. There is no one more disappointing to me than myself.
Ma’am, I really need you to step away from the desk, said the nurse as she waved the next person forward. They’re moving her down from ICU now, and you’ll be allowed to see her in just a moment.
february had been at it long enough to know that she could not blame herself for her students’ every hurt—pain wrought by their families, by one another. And yet. Whenever a student was in crisis, she found it impossible to disengage, and the night of the play was no exception. She had even jumped in her car and sped behind the ambulance, though she realized as soon as she got to the hospital there was nothing she could do beyond crowd the waiting room.
She’d lost only one student in residence during her time as headmistress, Benjamin, a third grader, more than a decade ago. He’d had a seizure in his sleep—massive cerebral hemorrhage, nothing anyone could have done, but it had been her second year in charge and his death had marked her, a line dividing the Before and After. February, like everyone, had a few major delineations in her life, bad and good—the loss of each of her parents, but also the day she’d come out to them, the night she met Mel. She imagined these moments as force fields, once one was raised it was difficult to return to the place that sat behind it, obliging a person to remain changed and hurtling ever forward. Though it had been After Ben for a long time, time didn’t lessen his power.
So February offered to bring Charlie’s parents something from the cafeteria and then returned home to pace the upstairs hall, thinking Not your hall much longer with every turn. Mel had tried to get her to sleep, or at least sit down, coaxing her into the living room for a few minutes with a cup of tea, but it didn’t last long. After tossing and turning for a while, she caught up on emails, then dishes. More pacing. At 5:30 a.m. she got in the shower.
It was still dark when she left the house, but the first sunlight was peeking out behind Clerc by the time she got to campus. She startled a groggy Walt in the guard’s box at the gate, and he jumped up and saluted her, at which she couldn’t help but laugh. She looked at the upper dorms, pictured the students dreaming in their beds. That was the thing she loved most about River Valley—even without seeing another soul on the quad, she knew she wasn’t alone. The feeling sustained her, at least enough to get her into her office with a cup of coffee and her laptop, blank Word document open and a cursor blinking like a tapping foot, waiting for her to find the words she knew she had to say at the faculty summit in just three days.