Thousand Words (15 page)

I told Mack about how when the officer said they were going to work with me, Dad boomed, “Work with her? You
call dragging her here and grilling her working with her? She took a damned picture, and she’s scared to death. Look at her. Child pornography. That’s bullshit. Kids are pulling this shit all the time and you know it.” And how I’d been thankful to my dad for saying that, even though I wasn’t so sure he really believed it.

And I told Mack how the officer used my name too many times and how he talked down to me like I was stupid and how I felt like I was about an inch tall when I had to admit in front of my parents that I’d been drunk when I took the photo and that Kaleb had liked it at first and that I knew he’d liked it because we’d made out all day afterward.

Mack didn’t say anything while I talked. He sat there, looking out toward the high school, thumping his legs against the ramp, nodding every now and then or making a disbelieving noise, but not interrupting, just letting me talk. Letting me tell the story and get it all out.

I finished by telling him how the officer wrote a bunch of things in my file, then closed it and tapped it a few times on the table. How he gave a smile, like everything was good, and said, “Thank you, Ashleigh, for cooperating. We’ll be in touch.”

And I told Mack the worst part—how when the officer left the room, it felt much larger, much barer, much more open in his absence, and how I’d shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, feeling stupid and humiliated and alone.

“Your parents were there, though, so it’s not like you were alone,” Mack said.

I nodded. “I know,” I said. “I wasn’t technically
alone
alone, but”—I paused—“but I ruined something.” That was the best way I could put it. I’d ruined something with my parents, because before this I’d never really done anything wrong. We’d had our occasional arguments, but I’d never really done anything to disappoint them before. Not like this.

Since this had happened, they had been focused on how it affected them. It seemed a little unfair. I was the one in trouble. I was the “sex offender.” It seemed like there was a “me” and a “them” now; not an “us.”

By the time I finished talking, the sky had darkened and the streetlamps had come on, bathing Mack and me in an orange glow. The spray paint on the ramps took on a peculiar brightness, the concrete at their bottoms black pools.

I waited for Mack to say something. To open his mouth and speak. What I really wanted was for him to share his story now, to tell me how he’d ended up in Teens Talking and what his project was about. But when he finally opened his mouth, the only word that came out was “Sucks.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It does.” And then more silence stretched between us, and part of me felt like he was expecting me to say something more, but I’d told him everything. Or at least everything I was willing to tell. And he’d told me nothing, as usual. And he wasn’t going to. So I finally gathered myself up and said, “I probably should go.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Mack answered.

I put on my shoes, then stood and sideways-walked down the ramp and picked up my backpack. I glanced at
Mack, who was tying his shoes. “Next time show me the creek?”

“Sure,” he said, without looking up.

I headed back home, thinking about how, even though Mack hadn’t told me his story, he’d at least listened to mine. In some ways, my step felt lighter for having told it. I just hoped I didn’t end up regretting it.

I told my mom that I needed to retake a test before school, so she dropped me off on the way to work and I was there before anyone else. For some reason, this seemed like the safest bet to me. If I was going to try to fly low and incognito, like Vonnie suggested, the best way would be not to make a grand entrance.

I took my books to the library and studied under the flickering fluorescent lights, trying to keep my mind off my cell phone.

It had buzzed all night long. Part of me wanted to turn it off, make it stop, but another part of me—the humiliated
part—knew that the messages were happening no matter if my phone was off or on. If they were going to be sent, I wanted to at least be in the know. In some ways I couldn’t tear myself away from them, no matter how much they hurt to read. So I left the phone on, a piece of me sinking lower and lower every time the alert sounded. Message after message after message. Vonnie, trying to comfort me, trying to tell me that nobody would care. Friends asking what the hell happened, asking if it was faked, asking why I did it.

And the unfamiliar numbers. Those were the worst. Those were the ones calling me a slut and making disgusting suggestions about what I should be doing in future pictures. I guessed that some of those might have come from Kaleb’s friends, and maybe even some from Holly or whoever the hell he was with now.

At first I had read them all, even answered some of them, but after a while I’d given up. I read them and deleted them, and then eventually started deleting them without reading. I hoped that at least someone out there had done the same thing with my photo: deleted it.

The closer it got to the first bell, the more on edge I got. My foot twitched on the floor uncontrollably. My hands shook. That ringing in my ears came back. And as students began to trickle into the library, handing in books, passing through, I felt more and more like I was rooted to my chair. I would never be able to get up and walk to class. I wasn’t strong enough.

But soon—way quicker than I wanted it to be—Mrs.
Dempsey, the librarian, came by with a handful of books and said, “Class starts in three minutes.”

I closed my book and stood on weak legs, peering out into the hallway through the library windows. Everything looked normal. Nobody seemed to be scandalized out there. Maybe Vonnie was right and this was nothing. Maybe nobody would say anything at all.

I gathered my things and slithered out of the library, hurling myself into the stream of students, looking nowhere but straight ahead. I put one foot in front of the other, hoping to get to my destination without incident.

I turned the corner, bypassing my locker, heading to the science wing.

And that was where Nate was standing, with Silas and Danny Cross. Danny had his arm slung around the neck of his girlfriend, Taylor, whose friend Jenna was standing on the other side of her.

Silas saw me and, as if in slow motion, a knowing grin spread across his face and he bumped Nate’s biceps with his elbow. Nate’s head jerked up and our eyes met, and he let out a bark of laughter, bending at the waist and covering his mouth with his palm like douchebag guys do when they want everyone to look at them. Like an animal herd, the whole group snapped to attention, their heads popping up, their faces at first curious and then turning to disgust, or hate, or laughter.

I swallowed and kept walking, pretending I couldn’t see them.
Blind. I’m blind. I don’t see this.

“Hey, Ashleigh,” Silas called. “You look good today. Something’s different, though. What is it?” Against my will, I turned toward him, just in time to see him tapping his chin in mock-serious thought, like he was the damn
Thinker
or something. He snapped his fingers. “Oh! Dude! I know what it is! You got your hair cut. No, no. That’s not it.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but even I could feel that my will wasn’t really behind it. I was going for hateful but was probably only achieving fearful beggary.
Please don’t say anything, please don’t say anything.

“Nah, she got contacts,” Nate said.

“No, it’s something bigger than that. Something I can’t quite put my finger on…” Silas cupped his hands in front of his chest like he was holding on to a pair of breasts, and Nate and Danny were practically drooling all over themselves with laughter. A few more people were pausing to gape at what was going on, and despite the fact that I was trying so hard to be blind to them, I could still see what they were doing, the way they laughed, the way they leaned their heads together to talk. I forced my legs forward, willing them to go faster, faster. All I had to do was get around them and through the doorway of my science class right on the other side. It was the same as ignoring the pain at the end of a really long run, I tried to tell myself.

“Oh! I know what it is!” Silas finally boomed, and his words felt like shrapnel landing on me. “You have clothes on! That’s totally why I didn’t recognize you.”

Don’t hear it, Ashleigh
, I told myself.
Be blind and deaf
to it. Exist in your own quiet, dark world. You’re in a tunnel. You’re floating. Just a few more feet and you’re there at the finish line.

But as I passed Danny, Taylor looked over her shoulder and said, so quietly it was almost not there at all, “Slut.”

Her friend Jenna nodded in agreement. “Skank.”

And the looks on their faces were not of cruelty, but of such disappointment—like they’d expected me to be better than that—I wanted to fall on the floor and cry. I wanted the door at the end of the hall to open up and suck me out into a tornado, spit me out in another school, where nobody had a clue who I was. Taylor had been on cross-country last year. We’d shared a bag of M&M’S on the way home from one of our meets. She’d been in my Algebra II class. She’d always been so nice.

She’d always been so nice.

Way too nice to ever stand, drunk and naked, in front of a bathroom mirror and take a picture of herself. Way too nice to send that picture to her college-bound boyfriend. She would never even have entertained the idea.

And something about that knowledge made me feel all the more humiliated. Because I had thought I’d be too nice to do something like that, too. But obviously I wasn’t nearly as nice as I’d thought I was.

Just be blind. Don’t see their faces. Don’t hear their words. Be in the dark. Bottom-of-a-well dark. Lost-in-a-forest dark.

Somehow I made it into my science classroom, and
somehow I endured the whispering I heard around me while Mr. Kenney, clueless, wrote notes on the board. Somehow I kept from crying when Tyler Smart held up his cell phone and the people around us snickered as my breasts, my belly flashed across the tiny screen.

And I made it down the hallway again, just me, just blind and deaf Ashleigh, just floating Ashleigh, to my English class, and somehow I didn’t throw up in ceramics class when my table partner, Phillip, kept molding boobs into the sides of the bowl he was making, joking that he was going to call his piece
Ode to Maynard
.

Somehow I made it through until lunch.

Vonnie and Cheyenne were sitting at our usual table, hunched over a shared plate of Tater Tots, when I got there. I was in a horrible mood and wasn’t certain that I was going to be able to make it through the rest of the day. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it through without crying. Someone had grabbed my butt when I’d leaned over to stuff my backpack into my locker, someone had called me a whore when I’d walked past one of the lunch tables, and I’d had enough. I didn’t want to be touched or called names. I didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

I grabbed a pudding cup from the mobile cart and flopped down next to Vonnie. Cheyenne didn’t look up from her lunch, and probably I was being too sensitive, but something about the way she was ignoring me felt like the last straw. If I couldn’t count on my friends to act normal, how could I expect anyone else in the school to act that way?

“What? Should I sit somewhere else?” I snapped.

Cheyenne’s eyes went wide. “What?”

I pulled the foil off my pudding. “You look embarrassed.”

“Oh,” she said, and flushed. She bent her head low and stuffed a Tater Tot into her mouth. “I’m not,” she said around the Tot.

Rachel and Annie sauntered over with trays of pizza and sat down across from Cheyenne. They were talking quietly together. And as much as I wanted to have a normal lunch—at least have that much in this horrible day—I couldn’t keep the upset that had been filling me up all day from spilling over.

“So, Rachel,” I said, “I have been meaning to thank you.”

She turned toward me, and I noticed that neither of them—actually, nobody at the table—looked particularly happy. She raised her eyebrows.

“That idea you had about sending Kaleb a photo of myself was a really great one.” I gave her a thumbs-up and a cheesy grin.

Annie blinked a few times, chewing. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Rachel just kept eating, didn’t say anything.

We all ate in uncomfortable silence, and all I could hear in the mumbling and murmuring surrounding me was my name. I didn’t know if it was really there or not, but I heard it. And I wondered how long this would go on—me hearing my name murmured over and over—before I went insane.

Finally, Vonnie leaned over and swallowed the Tater Tot in her mouth. “Everyone is talking about it. In all my classes. Has it been bad?”

“Only if you consider being called a slut a thousand times bad,” I said. “But, hey, it’ll all blow over, no big deal, right, Von?”

She held out her palms at me. “Whoa, Buttercup, you better cool your shit. I’m trying to be supportive here.”

“Well, I appreciate your support,” I said, my tone caustic. I knew I was lashing out at the wrong people, but I couldn’t help myself. I was so frustrated and hurt and determined not to let it show. I would not cry. I would not react. I would will this to blow over. But I was so close to exploding, I could feel my skin vibrating under my fingernails. I wanted to stand up on the table and yell,
It was just a mistake!
But I also wanted to crawl under the table and die. Mostly, I just wanted the day to be over.

“I got the text like ten times,” Rachel said. She still didn’t look up from her pizza.

“Me, too,” Cheyenne said. “Somebody added your name and phone number to some of them, Ash.” She glanced up at me. I held my pudding-filled spoon in midair between the table and my mouth. So that was how I was getting all those texts from unknown numbers.

“Who would do that?” I gasped. I could feel tears prickling the corners of my eyes, and I blinked rapidly to keep them inside.
Do not cry, Ashleigh, do not cry. You are a raisin, you are shriveled and dried up, and your eyes have no tears.