The Drowning Girls (18 page)

“Oh, my God. Let me see.”

“I would so die if this were me.”

Danielle closed her eyes and leaned against the stall wall, tears streaking down her cheeks.

“I know she’s only a freshman, but doesn’t she know that—”

“Please. Some bitches are just stupid.”

I grabbed Danielle’s hand and felt her grip in return, sweaty and desperate, as if she would fall if I let go.

“What happened to her, anyway?”

“I wouldn’t show my face if that were me.”

There was some laughter, then the sound of water running in the sink, a towel being ripped off the automatic dispenser, and we were alone.

I looked at Danielle’s tear-streaked face and said, “Let’s go home.”

“I thought you had to stay,” she sobbed.

I shook my head. “This is an emergency. They’ll understand.”

She yanked my arm, frantic. “I can’t go out there!”

“Well, we’re not going to wait in here for two more hours.” I looked around. “You don’t have a coat?”

“No.”

I unlocked the stall door and grabbed a black peacoat from the pile near the doorway.

She looked at me. “I can’t just steal someone’s coat.”

“I’ll bring it back to school next week and put it in the Lost and Found. Come on.” I helped her into the sleeves, pulling the collar high around her face. I went first, peering out the door. After the fluorescent brightness of the bathroom, I blinked, my eyes adjusting. The area around the exit was clear because the dance floor was crowded, writhing with bodies. It took me a moment to place the song as “Billie Jean.” Really? Michael Jackson in 2014?

I jerked my head, and Danielle slipped her shoes on, one hand against the bathroom wall for balance.

She kept her head down as we went through the lobby. I mimed an apology at Sharon Hegarty and we headed into the cool night. On the sidewalk, Danielle stopped to take off her heels as we rounded the corner in the direction of the staff parking lot.

“Dani—”

“Let’s just go,” she moaned. In the passenger seat, she bent double, head in her hands.

“Hold on a second.” I dug my phone out of my jeans and sent Aaron a text.
Emergency. Had to leave. Tell the others for me?
I shoved my phone back into my pocket, not waiting for a reply.

Danielle bent forward, head in her hands, until we were on the freeway, cars zooming past us in the left lanes. Finally, I asked, “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

She didn’t look at me. “I don’t even know how to say it.”

“So just say it, then.”

She took a deep breath, and her voice came out as a whisper, almost lost in the exhalation of the heating vents. “Someone started a rumor that I’m gay.”

“Oh.” I steadied myself, aware of my own breath, my hands on the wheel. The thing to do...the thing to do was to be supportive and encouraging, to be a listening ear. I’d been witness to a few of these conversations in my office over the years, and I knew how badly they could go wrong. “I’m glad we’re talking about this, Danielle. It’s absolutely okay if—”

“Mom!” Danielle shook her head. “Hello? I’m not gay. It’s a stupid rumor started by stupid small-minded...” Her voice trailed off. I watched as she pinched her eyes shut, catching the tears with her index fingers.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning? What happened after you left the house?” The words were out of my mouth before I realized they were coming, as if by rote. I’d questioned students this way before—reluctant girls who wanted to talk but didn’t know how.

“Well, we went to dinner. It was that Italian place in Pleasanton, the one with the striped awning and the big statue out front.”

“And what happened then?”

Danielle shook her head, her gold earrings flashing. “That’s what I don’t get. Everything was fine. We were just laughing and eating and I went to the bathroom, and when I came back they were all talking about me. And one of the guys, Josh—the one who’s a senior?—said he didn’t know I was a dyke.”

“Do you know why he said that?”

She was less hurt now, more angry. “Yeah, one of the girls showed me something that had been posted on that stupid Twitter account. You know, that gossip account?”

I nodded, heart sinking. I knew it all too well, and so I knew what Danielle was up against, gay or not—the nasty rumors, the slurs and innuendos. That was what the girls in the bathroom had been talking about; the favorites and comments and shares meant it was already all over the internet. I tried to keep my voice even. “What did it say?”

“That’s the stupid thing. It was that picture you took of me, in the dressing room, remember? I posted it on my Instagram, and someone made a meme out of it.”

“That picture was completely innocent,” I said. “How in the world—”

“Because that other girl was in there, trying on her dress. It looks like I’m checking her out. So someone wrote this nasty comment—” She wiped her eyes again.

I swallowed. This was the great trick that social media had played on us. Take any image, pair it with any language, and the two were linked. Taken out of context, everything was titillating, ridiculous, revisionist history.

“The worst part was Kelsey,” Danielle continued, and I froze, my arms stiff against the wheel. “I know I’m not gay, so—whatever. But she was just laughing, like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She said that must be why I invited her to spend the night, so I could sleep in the same bed as her. She said that she was flattered, but we weren’t playing for the same team.” Danielle stared out the window. We were nearing the end of the access road, the last turn where the road widened and split. I slowed down, sensing there was more to the story.

“And then, the guys wanted us to kiss. They kept, like, saying it. I tried to just laugh about it, but it was awful. And Kelsey said she was up for it, just once, but I wouldn’t do it. I don’t know. It just wasn’t funny anymore.” She cupped her face with her hands.

At the entrance to The Palms, the gates rolled back, slowly. I had a mad urge not to wait for them to finish, but to take out the gates and the post with the front of my car, to drive and not care who or what got smashed in my path. Instead, I rolled slowly down the street, pulled into our driveway and shut off the engine. Neither of us moved.

Finally, I said, “I’m so sorry, honey. She’s not a good friend, to treat you like that.”

“I know. You were right.” Danielle got out of the car, picking her way across the slate landscaping path in her bare feet.

A moment later, still seething, I followed her.

* * *

Phil met us in the entryway, looking at his watch. “I thought you were...” He stopped, seeing Danielle’s blotchy, tear-streaked face.

I shook my head and his thought dangled, unfinished. Upstairs, Danielle’s door closed with a quiet click.

“I need to use your laptop,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“I need to look something up, right now.”

“And you can’t use your laptop?”

I stared at him.

“All right, fine,” he said, moving past me. His laptop was open on his makeshift desk, facing away. “Let me just—”

When I came around the side of the folding table, he was closing out his open tabs. I watched as a screen with a scales-of-justice logo and a multipart name disappeared. Someone, someone and Fitch. What the hell was that? A law firm?

He shifted out of my way and gestured to the keyboard with a flourish. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

My fingers unsteady, I navigated to Twitter, then to the MLHS Stories feed.

Danielle’s picture was the most recent post on the page, with 537 favorites and more than a hundred retweets. It was the picture I’d taken in the dressing room, with Danielle in front of the mirror. Next to her was the other girl in the white dress, the fringe a blur. It was just an accident of timing, a trick of the camera, but it looked as if Danielle was checking out the girl’s backside. On top of the picture, in heavy white font, it read
Watch your booty girls
.
The thought was finished beneath the picture:
Babydyke is coming for you
.

Phil leaned in to get a better look. “What the hell is that? That’s supposed to be Danielle?”

“That
is
Danielle.”

“Oh, my God. Who posted that?” He reached in front of me, navigating on the mouse pad. He clicked on the replies—a stream of them, littered with
dyke
and
queer
and the ubiquitous
lol
. One read
Hey, I went to science camp with that girl. No idea she was a lesbo.
Another said
I heard she put the moves on her best friend.
Phil barely got his fingers out of the way before I slammed the laptop shut.

I dug in my pocket for my cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Gopal—he’s the assistant principal. Maybe he can get the picture taken down. I know it’s too late—it’s everywhere by now. But at least it’s a start.” I left a message on Gopal’s voice mail, telling him to look at MLHS Stories and call me back.

Phil had opened his laptop again. “These comments are awful. Who did this?”

“Who do you think?”

He stared at me, his face a mask. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“It had to have been Kelsey. And if it wasn’t, then she didn’t do anything to make it better. Danielle said she was laughing along with everyone else.”

“Why would she—”

“I don’t know, Phil,” I said, my voice a sheet of ice. “Why don’t you ask her?”

* * *

Danielle’s room was completely dark, and she was facedown on her bed. “Go away,” she mumbled.

I pushed the comforter to one side and lay down next to her.

“Mom, come on. I just want to be alone.”

“Me, too. Let’s just be alone together.”

Danielle groaned. She was still wearing the black dress, bunched now around her thighs.

“You want to change out of that? You’d feel more comfortable.”

“Why, sure, Mom. That would make everything better.”

We lay side by side in the dark. A phone buzzed, and I reached reflexively into my pocket, hoping it was Gopal.

“It’s my phone,” Danielle said. She was holding it in her hand, facedown. “It’s Kelsey again.”

“She’s texting you from the dance?”

“Only a hundred times. You want to see? Here.” She passed me her phone. The screen was stacked with lines of green text bubbles, all from kelseybelle.

Saturday 9:21 PM

You think I had something to do with this? That’s crazy I was just playing along. Stupid joke but I’m sorry.

Saturday 9:38 PM

Come on I’ll tell them it was a stupid joke.

Saturday 9:45 PM

It’s just a joke, srsly. Let it go.

Saturday 9:56 PM

Did you go home? WTF?

Saturday 10:14 PM

Omg text me.

Saturday 10:29 PM

Can’t believe you left me.

“What am I supposed to do?” Danielle asked.

“You don’t have to do anything. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I mean—I have
finals
next week. How can I go back there? Everyone thinks I have a crush on Kelsey. I’m going to fail all my classes and be a freshman dropout.”

I smiled in spite of myself, but I gave her a little nudge. “You have to go back, you know.”

“Keep my head up, you mean? Take the high road, and all that crap?” She sighed. “I don’t want to see her again.”

“You don’t have to see her again. You don’t have to text her back. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Between us, her phone buzzed again, a line of text lighting up the screen.

Saturday 10:35 PM

Are you just never going to talk to me or what?

Danielle ignored the phone, turning it facedown.

“Besides, you have other friends.”

She snorted. “Last year I had other friends. Now I don’t anymore.”

“They’re still there, I bet.”

“I don’t know.” After a moment, she spoke again, her words muddled against her pillow.

“What?”

She rolled onto her back. “One of the guys said he knew I was gay because of my haircut.”

“One of the guys is an idiot, then,” I told her. “Actually, you look great with your hair this short. I like it.”

“Really?”

I kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t reply to her messages. Don’t do anything. Just get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning, we’ll see how you’re feeling about it. Is that okay?”

Danielle sighed, too emotionally exhausted to argue with my platitudes. I suppose she’d lived long enough to know that sometimes it wasn’t better in the morning. Sometimes, in fact, it was worse.

* * *

Sanjay Gopal worked quickly and Danielle’s picture was down by noon on Sunday. I know because I kept checking on my laptop, refreshing the page every few moments.

“I took screenshots of all the comments, too,” Gopal told me. “Some of them are clearly recognizable as our students, and I could call them in, make things a bit difficult.”

As a parent—as a
human
—I wanted to punish every kid who had written
dyke
and
queer
and some slurs I’d had to look up online to understand. But I had bigger concerns. “Can you call in Kelsey Jorgensen, too? She’s a sophomore, new this year.”

“Why? Is she involved somehow?”

“She was part of the group Danielle was with, and she was laughing and basically encouraging the rumor. She might have posted the picture, too.”

Gopal was silent for a moment. “Look, I know this has upset you, Liz, but there’s really no way to know where the meme came from. Your daughter posted the picture, and just about anyone could access it. You might want to consider changing her privacy settings.”

“I know Kelsey’s involved, Sanjay. Can’t you just call her into your office and talk to her? Put a little pressure on her and see what she says? Or at least give her a warning, let her know someone is paying attention?”

I could feel his hesitation, the weight of things he wasn’t saying. Most APs came and went, moving their way up the ladder, but Gopal had been at Miles Landers for five years now, and he was good at the job. The staff thought he was conscientious, and for the most part, students thought he was fair. This was the first time we’d connected on a personal level, and I knew he was thinking that I was just another crazy parent, making unreasonable demands and expecting impossible results.