Like It Never Happened (21 page)

And for the second time, the cop oozed condescension. “Mr. Rivers, in situations like these, students will often lie to protect their teachers. Especially when . . .” She nodded at me, like my love for my director was written all over my face.

Beads of sweat had formed on Principal Gladstone's temples. He cleared his throat. “You don't need to protect your teacher, Rebecca.” Had he even known my name before this meeting? “Our priority is to protect you and your fellow students. This is a safe space.”

Dad leaned forward to squeeze my shoulder and then quickly withdrew his hand. The cop was chewing her bottom lip, squinting at me like I was a television show on the verge of resolution. Mom whimpered.

“Nothing happened,” I said.

The cop sighed, tucking her notepad back into her pocket, her pen behind her ear. “Do we have your permission to search Rebecca's cell phone?” She directed this question at my father.

I could feel Dad's eyes on my back. I could tell that, despite his display of loyalty, he wasn't sure what to believe. Wrangling my phone out of my hip pocket, I sent it skidding across the desk.

Bunt seized the phone with her left hand. She wore a gold wedding ring. For a second I was distracted, wondering what it was like to be married to her. If her husband forgot to bring home the milk, did she interrogate him at the dinner table?

“We will be searching the school e-mail accounts of both parties,” she said briskly. “If your daughter has a personal laptop, we would appreciate the chance to search that machine as well. The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better for everyone involved.”

The school had always encouraged us to use those e-mail accounts, insisting they were private.

Begrudgingly, my father promised to drop off my laptop in the morning. I didn't protest. Nothing on the hard drive revealed the fantasies in my head. My e-mail account would show the handful of e-mails Mr. McFadden had addressed to all the actors, plus a bunch of relatively pointless stuff from my friends.

Maybe the lack of messages would be enough to clear my name. How could we have had an affair without making plans?

Of course, we could have. I had imagined it a hundred times.

I was surprised to find stale tears clinging to my cheekbones. Wiping my face on my sleeve, I asked, “What about the play?”

I knew it was stupid, but I couldn't help myself.

Bunt looked at Principal Gladstone, who grimaced. “It's not happening,” he admitted. “I'm sorry.”

A Streetcar Named Desire
starring Rebecca Rivers. I had never worked harder on anything in my entire life.

“Why?” I asked. My eyes produced fresh tears, which should have been impossible.

“Even if we find zero evidence to back this student's claims,” said Bunt, “it will take us at least a couple of weeks to be sure.”

My father asked what would happen to Mr. McFadden in the meantime.

“Forced leave,” said Bunt.

“Unpaid, of course,” added Principal Gladstone, giving my father a good-guy nod.

Dad looked offended. “I'm on my daughter's side here,” he asserted. Mom didn't say anything about being on my side. She had gone completely mute.

“Sir, with all due respect”—the cop stood and refastened a rubber band around her hair—“we're all on your daughter's side.”

The house was freezing because my mother kept turning off the heat to combat her hot flashes. My father marched into the kitchen and lifted the dial on the thermostat. Wordlessly, Mom filled the electric teakettle with water. Neither of them acknowledged my sister, who was leaning against the counter, hunched over the seating chart for the wedding. My parents operated on autopilot, even when their teenage daughter was accused of sleeping with a teacher.

Because that's what they thought, right? If we had done it, he was a criminal. They would lock him up. I had to remind myself that I had only ever attacked his clothes in dreams. Still, I had been dreaming hard enough and often enough that somebody had noticed.

Oblivious, Mary piped up. “Do you think I can sit Aunt Karen with the Steudle-Trapps? There's no room for her to sit with the rest of the family.”

Nobody answered.

“I didn't do it.” My voice cracked. “Nothing happened, I swear. He's, like, a good guy.”

Mary's spine straightened and her eyes went wide.

My mother mumbled something under her breath. She kept her shoulders squared, her hips pressed against the oven, away from me.

“What?” I asked.

She didn't answer.

“Mom. What did you say?”

“Rebecca.” My father stopped me from moving past the butcher's block, from grabbing my mother and shaking her hard. Dad looked very old and tired and like he had not signed up for this. “Go to your room.”

I guess it was shock that made me obey. I felt my
sister's eyes on my back as I left the kitchen. For once, it was my life to which she played the silent witness. Between the two of us, it had always been the other way around.

After a few minutes, Dad burst into my room and seized my laptop. I opened my mouth to protest—he couldn't give it to Detective Bunt until morning—but he stopped me with a look. Any reluctance to follow the rules would count as evidence against me. A point on the side of sleeps-with-her-teacher. Dad, I realized, still wasn't sure what to believe.

I lay flat across my bed and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. I had forgotten a lot of Detective Bunt's lines, but what I remembered I replayed in my head. I wanted some evidence that everything would be okay. All my life, the bad things had ultimately been okay.

The play being called off was a certain kind of okay. And I could learn to live with my mother refusing to speak to me. But Mr. McFadden might lose his job. He might be charged with a crime. He might go to prison.

Not okay.

My friends had watched the school secretary drag me offstage. Rehearsal was canceled, leaving an unplanned window in all their lives. Presumably they had stuck by each other. Presumably they were still together right now. Maybe smoking cigarettes in Liane's tree house, wondering. Maybe dialing my number, over and over.

Maybe not.

I started falling asleep. Panic denied every comforting thought, except for one.

If the four of them stuck by me, I would be okay.

P
ushing through the halls at school the next morning, I hardly cared about the looks people were giving me. I knew I wasn't an attractive crier. The whole process always turned the whites of my eyes a really infectious-looking pink. But apart from finding my friends, nothing really mattered right then.

The four of them were huddled around Charlie's locker, which wasn't completely unusual. But their huddle seemed tighter than normal, all bodies gravitating toward Charlie, who was convincingly and despairingly slumped.

I froze. I knew, with nauseating clarity, that they had heard the story. They were not waiting for my defense.

I had wanted to trace the accusation to a jilted senior, never cast. Or to Hadley Clarke's boyfriend, who was always talking about nepotism. But those were weak theories. Who would tell such a lethal lie, just for having been denied participation in a high school play?

Standing still in the shifting crowd, I caught Tim's attention. His shoulders tensed; he looked anxiously from Charlie to me. The rest of them followed Tim's gaze to my face, most likely bloodless and horrified. Liane threw a protective arm across Charlie's back; her eyes bore into me and actually crumbled the strongest parts of me. It was the way you look at someone who has hurt the person you love most.

I stood still, waiting for Charlie to acknowledge me. Finally he lifted his chin and met my eyes. With obvious disgust, he just barely shook his head.

“You're a liar!” I screamed at him, like it was the worst possible thing he could be. “You made it up!” I lunged at him, slamming my fist into his shoulder in that helpless way.

So many surrounding conversations died as everyone turned to watch the scene. Maybe the rumor had spread fast enough that they already knew our roles: the girl who slept with her teacher, the wounded boyfriend. Or maybe they just saw the offstage drama, our two worlds finally bleeding together.

Charlie angled his head like he had been slapped, showing me the ridge of his jaw and the pink apples of his cheeks. My costars tightened their circle. They actually believed him. He had presented the evidence to our friends as convincingly as he had to the school administration.

Farther down the hall, a teacher squinted in our direction. My outburst had disrupted the benign hum of the morning. The teacher's posture threatened detention, or the principal's office.

I knew I couldn't get into trouble, not now. Not until they proved Mr. McFadden innocent.

At first I retreated slowly, unwilling to turn my back on Charlie. Then I ran.

As it turned out, there was only one essential thespian at Bickford Park Alternative School—and it was Charlie Lamb, all along.

The whole school had always more or less agreed that Mr. McFadden was gay. Girls didn't talk about it that much, but I knew Charlie and Tim had endured a certain amount of locker room abuse over the issue. As if Mr. McFadden wasn't just teaching thespians to enunciate
through
their emotions and to “move across the stage without the stiffness of adolescent shame” but also to have sex with men.

Now, somehow, everyone forgot Mr. McFadden's status as the resident homosexual. Suddenly every girl in school had a story about Mr. McFadden hitting on her. In the hallway after first period I heard Zoe Waters say, “I mean, I could have been a victim!”

She hid her face in her hands. Melody Etherege patted Zoe on the back. “You're not alone, sweetie. Remember when my sister was in
Antigone
three years ago?”

Zoe nodded and blinked at the ceiling, like only gravity could stop her tears.

“Well, he once gave her a massage after rehearsal.”

Zoe shook her head in speechless disbelief.

Others claimed to have seen us together—at an Italian restaurant on Twelfth Avenue, or riding the MAX train toward Clackamas—only they hadn't been sure at the time, because we had been kind of far away, but now they were definitely sure.

It would have been fascinating, the way everyone threw their own lies into the mix, if it hadn't made me sick.

An aid interrupted second period to summon Tim and Liane to Principal Gladstone's office. My costars refused to meet my gaze as they lifted their bags and marched dutifully past my desk. Liane was shaking, but with the determination of someone heading off to war.

Clearly they weren't planning to stick up for me. They were going to overflow with evidence—how he had set me apart, and hardly ever criticized me, and given me the lead in every play. “We can't say anything for sure,” Tim would add. “But it kind of makes sense.”

Maybe, when it was her turn, Tess would tell Detective Bunt about the time Mr. McFadden called her backstage to talk about her grades—how he had repeated her name in lecherous desperation. “We need you, Tess. Tell me how to help you, Tess.” And later in the bathroom, I had defended him. Of course I had.

For the duration of my morning classes, I hid backstage, curled into the corner where we normally piled our coats and backpacks. A long time ago, an adaptation of
The Great Gatsby
had involved dumping large amounts of sand everywhere. Grains of it still sparkled between cracks in the floor. I wondered what would happen to my Blanche DuBois costume.

The five of us always pretended like the costumes weren't a big deal. Like as long as they were true to our characters, we didn't care about looking awful. But of course, whatever Mr. McFadden picked, we had to wear in front of the entire school and all of our families, multiple times. Not to mention the yearbook always included a two-page photo spread of each production. Basically, when we said we didn't care about costumes, we were lying through our teeth.

Mr. McFadden had revealed my Blanche DuBois costume last week. It was hauntingly beautiful: a long white dress with an empire waist and tiny lace sleeves. A little too big in the chest, but Tess had promised her mom could take it in.

Now I knew it was a bad choice. He should have chosen something ugly.

In fifth period I was called back to the office. Principal Gladstone and Bunt sat in the exact same places—like they hadn't moved all night or day. I sank into the interrogation chair, where I imagined each of my friends had betrayed me already. In a voice that was half embarrassment, half apology, Gladstone explained that Bunt had a few more questions for me.

I didn't nod or do anything to show comprehension. Bunt was unfazed. “Would you describe yourself as Stephen McFadden's favorite student?”

I shook my head, willing my eyes to stay dry.

“You never felt like he singled you out in any way?”

“He's a tough director,” I said. “He has really high expectations for us. Some kids think he should be, like—” I couldn't handle the way she was looking at me, like every word I said proved either guilt or innocence. “—Nicer.”

“But you always thought he was nice enough?”

I turned up my palms, blinking back tears. “Yes?”

“Can you think of a time he criticized you in front of the other students?”

“Yes.” She waited. I closed my eyes, embarrassed. “The other day he told me that the way I was acting, it was like my character already knew how the play was going to end.”

I opened my eyes. I could tell Bunt didn't know what to do with this information. Without any context, it didn't necessarily seem like criticism. The detective wouldn't know that my character's delusions defined her. Blanche couldn't appear to know the ending; she had to believe with all her heart that she had everything under control.

Bunt tapped her pen against her chin. “Where does Mr. McFadden live?” she asked casually.

“I don't know.” I glared.

“Does Mr. McFadden have a long-term partner?”

I repeated myself.

She tested me, to see if I knew his exact age, or where he grew up. And then without warning, she switched strategies altogether. “Did he touch you the first time he drove you home?”

“No.”

“Did he kiss you good-bye?”

I let my head shake back and forth and tried to block out the sound of her voice. The rapid-fire questions were meant to break me. She knew nothing, but the sharp edge of her voice implied the most personal interrogation. Each question mark cut into me, and all I heard was:
Did you do it on the backseat of his Toyota Corolla?

And:
Have you done it with men before? With your boyfriend, Charlie Lamb? With those boys in the canoe at camp? How about the boy at Tess's beach house?

This type of thing maybe didn't happen to other girls. Bunt was taking a deep breath, preparing for another round of questions.

“Who told you?” I demanded for the second time. “It was Charlie Lamb, right? Because Charlie's my boyfriend. At least, he
was
my boyfriend and he's extremely mad at me now. He made it up. If it seems like he's telling the truth, it's just because—”

The weather changed on Bunt's face. Her lips curled into something like a smile. It was a terrible sight.

“—he's a really good actor,” I finished.