Tainted Love (Sweetest Taboo #2) (14 page)

“Isabel honey,” Tom responded, more gently now, “you have to just understand that I’m helplessly in love with you and all I need is some reassurance, some contact, just please don’t shut me out, no matter what.” I could imagine Tom’s face now, his eyes wet with tears, his lips moist from the tears that had rolled down his cheeks, his cheeks flushed with frustration, but his look softening. That all-consuming love in his eyes, that love that he so effortlessly communicated to me with a single look. I could even make out the faint twinkle in his hazel eyes that only made itself visible when Tom was overwhelmed with love for me.

I needed to make everything right with Tom. I needed Tom to trust me again, to have faith in me, and to remind him of all of the obstacles our love had overcome. I couldn’t afford to lose Tom now. He was my rock, that one safe place that never wavered even when times were really tough.

“Baby, I’ll be in contact, I will. Even if it has to be through e-mail for a while because of my hectic schedule this semester. And Tom, before you know it, I’ll be back home in your arms, that’s what I want.” I meant every word, I really did. Whether what I just committed to him was actually executable in the next few months, I wasn’t sure of, but I had to reassure him that I was committed to him, to us.

Chapter Ten - Don’t Know Why

I
stared at the paper in front of me, shocked. I’d gone to sleep wondering when Isabel would call me back, and had woken up early just to finally get a hold of her. Talking to her this morning had been a great relief and her reassurance was just what I had needed to feel better about what was now a long-distance relationship with the person I loved most in the world. But my life had just been disrupted by yesterday’s mail, which had sat unopened on my desktop.

The school year was about to start up again, so the school district had sent out its updated rules and regulations for the year. It came in a tidy package – a full volume of rules and norms – with the new material helpfully marked for us.

Somehow, the highlighter just seemed to make the text even more threatening. It was the school district’s new sexual harassment policy, and there was a form included for me to sign, acknowledging that I had read and agreed to follow the tenets of the policy. The text itself read something like this:

Sexual Harassment Policy
:

It is the policy of the Hillside Unified School District Governing Board that sexual harassment of or by any students shall not be tolerated at school origin, or in connection with any school program or activity. Individuals who commit sexual harassment are subject to disciplinary action up to and including suspension and expulsion from the school district, dismissal from the district’s employment, the filing of criminal charges with the proper authorities, and liability through civil litigation.

It was further explained that any suggestion of impropriety, no matter how insignificant, would be turned over to the Hillside Police Department, without the accused having an opportunity to offer any kind of rebuttal.

Basically, the district was going to turn any teacher accused of sexual harassment over to the cops, without giving teachers the opportunity to defend themselves.

I sat back, thinking. It wasn’t difficult to read between the lines here. The new rules were aimed at me, or so I thought, and one or two other teachers in the district whose names have been mentioned in the teachers’ lounge rumor mill. Teachers in the district must be in an uproar over this new policy, which basically absolves the district of any arbitration responsibility it formerly had. I called one of my friends – a physics teacher at the high school I taught at – and asked if he’d received the new school year’s documentation from the district office.

“Yes,” he snapped. “Can you believe this? This statement about a single complaint or allegation about anyone working in the Hillside Unified School District being immediately forwarded to the Hillside Police Department for criminal investigation? Criminal investigation? Are they serious? Do they realize how often those kids lie?”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. He was right – the kids did lie about this sometimes, and it was becoming more and more common. For the girls, it was something to brag about – having a relationship with a teacher was perceived as ‘hot’ and automatically made a girl popular at school (bizarre, I know!). The boys, on the other hand, sometimes lied about these things to get themselves out of trouble. A friend of mine had been accused the year before, by two boys on a sports team, who had alleged that he had made inappropriate advances toward one of them. The boys even went as far as to say that he’d touched one of them inappropriately. Of course it had been a lie, but the school district forwarded the allegation directly to the police department.

The next day, his face appeared on the front page of the local newspaper under bold headlines that read
Sexual
Misconduct of a Hillside Resident and Teacher
. It hadn’t taken long for the entire school – and the residents of the city itself – to socially convict and ostracize him, regardless of whether or not any evidence against him existed. He’d been cast out, socially, and ridiculed by anyone who saw him. He was suspended from his position with the district without pay. His career was over, and he’d been talking about moving to a different state to start a new life. He and his wife took his children out of school to protect them, and his wife quit her job, unable to deal with the whispers, stares and judgment of her coworkers.

The fact was that he had never molested anyone, and there was no, absolutely no evidence to the contrary. Criminal charges were not brought against him, nor was he ever arrested. But the local paper tried and convicted him of a criminal offense without any testimony at all. His life and career were over, and all because two boys had decided to generate a few lies.

About three weeks into this, my friend (and former colleague) went into his back yard, put a gun to his head and shot himself. He was discovered by his elderly mother, lying in a pool of blood in the cool green grass under a shade tree he used to swing on as a child. It had been a terrible loss for everyone, particularly those of us who knew him well and believed in his innocence.

What made it even worse was that while he was loading his gun and walking into the backyard to end his life, the two boys were at the police station confessing that they had concocted the allegations in order to get him into trouble. One of the boys had let his grades slip so low that my friend (who was not just a teacher, but also this kid’s coach) had suspended him from the team. My friend only acted according to the school’s regulations, which rendered students ineligible for team sports if their grades dropped below a 2.0 GPA. That hadn’t mattered to those students, though, who had seen only that my friend told the boy he was temporarily suspended from the team.

Unfortunately, my friend paid for the boys’ lies with his life.

This hadn’t been the first time a teacher was framed by students. It had also happened to an elementary school teacher a year earlier. This time, it was two third grade girls who came up with the idea. One of them said that he touched her breast, while her friend alleged that she saw it happen. The next thing the teacher knew, he was at the police station defending himself and denying the events. The press got hold of it, and he was tried and convicted by the media. The man’s marriage fell apart, he lost his house, his career ended, and he decided to move out of California to have a fresh start somewhere else. What really happened? The girls were held back from recess to complete an assignment they disregarded because they’d chosen to engage in conversation during the entire class period. It was their idea of reasonable payback.

And those stories didn’t even begin to cover what would happen to a teacher who was actually found guilty. I swallowed heavily. It didn’t take a genius to know that I’d be under the limelight in the coming months. After all, I’d had my own case taken into the public eye two years before. Isabel had never accused me herself, but one of her friends had let the story slip, and the police began conducting a criminal investigation. Isabel was out of the country at the time, having moved to South America with her family, but the authorities had called her there and forced her to make a statement.

Luckily for me, even though we weren’t communicating at the time, she’d refused to implicate me, telling them again and again that nothing had happened between us. In the end, with the key ‘witness’ proving unhelpful, the investigation was dropped. They had no shred of evidence of wrongdoing, and the final conclusion made by the police was that Isabel’s friend had been making up stories to bring attention upon herself. But it had been the longest – and most terrifying – three months of my life. I hadn’t slept, I’d barely eaten, and I’d almost lost my entire family as I waited to hear what my future would hold. When the conclusion was reached and the case was dropped, society had forgiven me, for the most part, thinking that I was another victim of a student’s malicious fabrications.

Still, I’d been a walking target since that time. Many teachers had never fully trusted me again, having their doubts, and I knew for a fact that the principal was watching every move I made. I’d taken a significant risk, deciding to become involved with Isabel again, as it might very well implicate me of wrongdoing; after all, why would I suddenly be in a relationship with the one student I had been accused of having a relationship with, unless there’d actually been any romantic contact in the past?

Still, she was over eighteen now, no longer in school, and her adult status alone should protect me. If it didn’t, we’d just have to move somewhere else, maybe out of state. Now that I’d found her again – and discovered that she still loved me – I wasn’t going to let anything come between us.

***

Susie and I had some shopping to do. We were planning on getting a new wardrobe for the coming year, and had only a week to do it. We had agreed to clean the apartment first, though, and were doing just that when my phone buzzed. I looked down, identified the number, glanced at it again in surprise, and hit the ‘ignore’ button.

Susie, of course, noticed what I had done. She stood up straight, a dustpan and trash bag hanging from her pale hands. “Ignoring calls now?” she asked, giving me what I’d come to recognize as ‘the look.’ She’d perfected that look in our first weeks as roommates, last year, when she caught on to the fact that I wasn’t telling her everything about my past. Since then, she’d used it again and again, usually when she thought I was lying to her about something. Her brows were furrowed and her blue eyes penetrating.

“Just not someone I want to talk to right now, honestly. I have a headache from last night and he’ll just make it worse,” I shrugged.

She stood up straighter, looking down her narrow and freckled nose at me. I glanced up and then up some more – she was a tall girl, and when I was on my knees, she absolutely towered over me. “What?” I asked innocently, already knowing exactly what she was going to say.

She shrugged nonchalantly, but then launched into the lecture I’d been anticipating. “Well now that you bring it up, I wanted to talk to you about last night,” she said. “Where exactly did you go? The last time I saw you, you were meeting with Professor Wellings about your thesis. Again. For the second night in a row. And then you come stumbling in at two in the morning, from God knows where.”

“Yeah, so?” I asked, blushing and looking down. I didn’t want to tell her, because I knew what she’d say.

“So, give,” she demanded. “Where were you, what were you doing, and who were you doing it with? Because I know that meeting couldn’t have lasted that long. Your thesis isn’t that interesting.”

I glanced at her without uttering a word; my mouth sealed shut, eyebrows raised in defense. I didn’t want to divulge, I was so embarrassed, but it only took a moment for her to catch on.

“What?” she shouted, her thin lips forming into a perfectly inquisitive oval. She dropped the trash bag and dustpan and rushed toward me, falling on her hands and knees right in front of me. “What? Professor Wellings?” she continued, aghast.

I took a deep breath and nodded slowly, hating myself for it, and yet feeling oddly excited and daring at the same time. After all, Marcus was the hottest professor in school, and how many girls would love to be in my position right now? Of course, these where the exact thoughts that went through my head when I went out with James, my work experience supervisor that I had when I was in high school. He was too good to pass up too, and the envy of the other girls in class.

Susie, though, seemed more disappointed than excited. “Oh Izzy, how could you?” she whispered. “He’s your professor, for goodness sake, not some frat guy.”

“What?” I asked defensively. “I’m not in his class anymore, so basically we’re on equal footing. And anyway, I’ve had relationships with my teachers, or whatever, before. What’s the problem?” I’d expected her to be excited about the juicy gossip, not upset. I certainly hadn’t expected her to try to make me feel guilty over it.

But that was precisely what she was doing. “Exactly, you sleep with teachers. And what about that teacher you left at home? You know, the one you’re currently in a pretty serious relationship with?” She crossed her ghost-white arms and suddenly I was sorry that I’d admitted to my liaison with Marcus.

Still, she had a point.

I shrugged, uncomfortable with the fact that I knew she was right. “I know, and believe me I feel as guilty as you want me to feel. But I didn’t intend for it to happen. I certainly didn’t go over there thinking that it would. I’m not even certain how it all happened, I had drank so much. And about Tom, I guess I’m not sure that it will work at all, you know? What if it doesn’t? What if it’s the same thing with him, where he’s with other people and I don’t know, and I just end up with my heart broken all over again? And I don’t want to forego other opportunities to be with Tom when I’m not even certain that he’s being faithful to - ” I stopped, confused at the idea. I hadn’t though it through yet, but this was close to what I was feeling. I loved Tom, truly, but I just wasn’t sure I could trust him completely. And now that I was back at school, I didn’t know if I was ready to settle down, which is clearly what he wanted and expected of me.