Ainsley is silenced. She feels her aunt’s hand on her back. Harper leans in. “Just tell the truth,” Harper whispers. “It’s okay, whatever it is.”
“I stole the gin from my grandmother’s house,” Ainsley says. “But it was Emma’s idea, not mine, to plant it in Candace’s locker. Emma stole the locker combination of every student in the school from this office in November. She’s the one who brought in the cocaine packet. My housekeeper doesn’t have a boyfriend. Emma took the cocaine from her father’s jeans.”
At this, Dutch Marlowe stands up and roars. “Watch who you’re accusing, young lady!”
Everyone at the table, including Dr. Bentz and Stu Beasley, recoils. In these peace talks, Dutch is the renegade nation.
“Watch how you speak to Ainsley,” Aunt Harper says. Now she, too, is on her feet. “Your defensiveness tells me that you’re probably guilty, and your demeanor is consistent with someone who abuses cocaine.”
“Shut up, Tabitha, you stuck-up bitch,” Dutch says. “Why don’t you have your mommy call her lawyer?”
“Now, now, Mr. Marlowe,” Dr. Bentz says. “There will be no name-calling.”
“It was Ainsley’s idea, pure and simple,” Emma says. “I was wrong to agree to such a cruel plan, but Ainsley and I have been friends a long time…” Here Emma starts to cry, and Ainsley’s eyes grow wide at the sight. In the five years that they’ve been hanging out together, Emma has never grown weepy, much less shed a tear—not even when discussing her mother, who moved to Florida when Emma was in kindergarten and never returned. “And so I just went along with it, even though I knew it was wrong.”
“It was your idea,” Ainsley says. “You pulled that cocaine packet out of your front jeans pocket yesterday before school.”
“I’ve heard enough!” Dutch says. He glares at Harper. “You tell your daughter to stop accusing people of things they didn’t do!”
Dr. Bentz touches the knot of his tie. “What we have established thus far is that neither the alcohol nor the packet with the cocaine residue in it belonged to Miss Beasley.”
“Correct,” Stephanie Beasley says. Her hair is in a loose bun, and she’s wearing a gauzy sundress, looking pretty and natural and every bit like half of the kindest, most solid parental unit in all the world. Stephanie gives Ainsley a pained look. “I don’t know what Candace ever did to you. But you spent years making her life miserable, culminating in this regrettable stunt. The astonishing thing to me is that you thought you could get away with it. Because you’ve never been held accountable for any of the atrocious things you’ve done or said to people. And that”—here she looks at Harper—“is your fault, Tabitha.”
“I’m not…” Harper says, but then, apparently thinking better of it, shuts her mouth.
“This is my aunt,” Ainsley says. “Not my mother.”
Everyone at the table stares at Ainsley as if she has two heads.
“This letter, left at the nurse’s office,” Dr. Bentz says, pulling it out and setting it in front of Ainsley. “You wrote this? Saying that you’d heard Candace Beasley had alcohol and drugs in her locker?”
Ainsley looks at the typed paper. She had misspelled alcohol (alcohal) on purpose to make it seem like someone less intelligent than she wrote it. Her grades aren’t stellar, but at least she can spell. She doesn’t know if she should admit to the letter. Can they check it for fingerprints or check the ink type against her computer at home?
“Yes,” she says.
Dutch checks his watch. “Can we go?” he says. “I have a restaurant to run.”
“Yes,” Dr. Bentz says. “Everyone may go except for Ainsley and her guardian. I’ll handle things from here. Thank you for coming.”
It’s worse than the Salem witch trials, Ainsley thinks. Worse than Galileo or Joan of Arc. She, Ainsley Cruise, has been framed. She is so flustered at the failure of Dr. Bentz to see past Emma’s bullshit and Dutch’s intimidation tactics that she can’t find the words to speak in her own defense.
“I’m giving you a three-day suspension,” Dr. Bentz tells Ainsley. “However, you will serve it in school, and you will take your exams. That’s a kindness from me. I’m well within my rights to assign you an out-of-school suspension and let you take zeros. Do you understand?”
Ainsley opens her mouth to speak. It was Emma’s idea, not mine. The baggie of cocaine was Emma’s contribution. She encouraged me to steal the gin. She said this was the only way to teach Candace a lesson—not only for stealing Teddy but also for trying to be popular, like us. Emma stole the locker combinations right out of Ms. Kerr’s filing cabinets during a fire drill.
But it won’t do any good because Ainsley started out with a lie. She lost all credibility, and there’s no getting it back.
She nods. Aunt Harper’s hand is still on her back, steadying her.
“I’m very sorry about this,” Harper says.
“It’s Ainsley who should be sorry,” Dr. Bentz says. “While serving your suspension I expect a written apology to Candace and her parents and one to Emma as well for leading her down a wayward path.”
Ainsley swallows. “Okay,” she says.
She has to start serving her suspension immediately. She is taken to a room in the interior of the school that she didn’t even know existed. She is being chaperoned by a teacher named Ms. Brudie, whose sex had remained a mystery for most of tenth grade. “Ms.” indicated female, but her appearance (crew cut, men’s polo shirts, flat-front khakis) said otherwise. Understanding of her job at the school had also been hazy. Now Ainsley understands that Ms. Brudie deals with discipline problems—serious discipline problems—one-on-one.
Ms. Brudie takes Ainsley’s phone and hands her a stack of loose-leaf paper. “Apology letters,” she says. Her voice is surprisingly delicate and feminine. “Then you may study.”
“What about lunch?” Ainsley asks. “What about the bathroom?”
“You’ll have a chance to get your lunch and eat it here,” Ms. Brudie says. “You get one five-minute bathroom break.”
The suspension room has no windows except for one in the door the size of an airport paperback. There is a desk and a chair; the walls are cinder block painted institutional beige.
It’s jail, and no sooner does Ms. Brudie shut the door—she will be sitting right outside—than Ainsley starts to cry. The loose-leaf paper on the table in front of her catches tears dingy with mascara, like so many sooty raindrops.