Thousand Words (17 page)

“It was work,” he said, leaning against the counter, chewing. “Pretty normal until the end of the day.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mom was stirring butter into some peas in a bowl.

“Got a call from Principal Adams, up at the high school,” he said, and my arm froze. I tried to make it continue stirring the meat, but it wouldn’t move. I glanced at Dad, my throat going dry. “A big brouhaha over cell phones or some such.”

The numb feeling drained down my wrist and into my hand. I dropped the spatula into the pan. It tipped backward and clattered to the floor. “Dang it,” I said, bending to pick it up.

“Anyway, he got a phone call from a parent or something. I don’t know. I didn’t have a chance to really talk. I was trying to get out of there. I told him I’d call him first thing tomorrow. Exactly what I want to do—begin my day with a crisis. I wish we could just ban cell phones from those buildings. That would take care of a lot of problems. Those kids don’t need them, and they do nothing but cause trouble.”

I rinsed the dropped spatula and bent to put it in the dishwasher, sure that I was going to be unable to stand up again. My dad’s words were tumbling around in my head like clothes in a dryer.
Principal Adams… parent… phone call… cell phones
…

I hoped against hope that this was about something else. Maybe someone was failing a class because they were too busy texting or something. Maybe someone’s cell had been stolen from their locker in PE. Happened all the time.

But, hope as I might, somewhere deep down I knew it wasn’t something so simple. Why would the principal call my dad if that was the case? You don’t call the superintendent unless you’ve got a really big, or really unusual, problem.

And my problem was both.

“You know anything about a cell phone issue at the high school, Ash?” my dad asked, and I swear my teeth were chattering like a dumb cartoon character’s. I took a deep breath and, stalling, acted really interested in something that was going on inside the dishwasher. Finally, I pasted on a smile and stood up.

“Nope,” I said as convincingly as I could, though to my own ears it didn’t sound convincing at all. “I haven’t heard anything.”

Liar, liar, liar.

“Huh,” he said. “Well, I’m sure tomorrow I’ll get to the bottom of whatever it is.”

Inside of me, something shriveled into a dead hunk.

Tomorrow.

This wasn’t going to blow over tomorrow.

It was only going to get worse.

Because tomorrow my dad would know.

I didn’t really sleep—just tossed and turned all night—but when five-thirty came, I jolted awake in a panic. My stomach clenched in on itself with worry, and I raced to the bathroom and hovered over the toilet. I could hear the shower in my parents’ bathroom. My dad was up and getting ready for work.

I turned on my phone and texted Vonnie:

After a few minutes, during which I about gnawed my whole thumbnail off, she replied:

Not the response I was expecting to get. I opened my laptop, pulled up my email, and found the link Vonnie had sent me. It was for a website that posted naked pictures of random girls shot in ordinary places like parties and grocery stores and bedrooms. I clicked it and gasped.

Right across the top was the photo of me, only it was blown up huge. The page had more than two hundred comments, and I scrolled through them, my mouth hanging open. A lot of people had written things about me.

My mouth hung open as I read their words. I couldn’t count how many times I was called a slut, or worse. And everybody was talking about how ugly I was, how ugly my body was. And even worse were the comments from people who didn’t sound like they went to my school. The ones who were looking because they were enjoying it.

A little moan leaked out of me, and for the first time since this whole thing began, I finally started to cry. It wasn’t going to go away. Not at all. This was way too big to fade away.

I shut the laptop and pulled my legs to my chest. I rested my forehead on my knees and cried. People I didn’t know, looking at my naked body. People I did know—people in my classes, people I passed in the hallways—some of whom I actually liked, saying horrible things about me online. Oh my God, online. My naked body was online. Like a porn star.

I ran back to the bathroom and hovered over the toilet again. Nothing would come up, and I sat on the floor for a long time, resting my head on the toilet seat and letting the tears drip down onto the knees of my pajama bottoms.

I heard the thunk of pipes as Dad shut his shower off. He’d be coming out soon, smelling lemony like his aftershave and starchy from his freshly dry-cleaned shirt and heading off to work.

I couldn’t face him this morning, knowing what he was about to find out.

I went back to my room and changed into my running clothes. It wasn’t unheard of for me to take an early-morning
run to beat the sun, especially when it was hot outside. Mom and Dad wouldn’t think anything of it.

I tied my shoes and jogged down the stairs, hitting the front door as I heard Dad opening the bedroom door down the hall. I slipped out before he could see me.

Back when I was in junior high and hoping to someday make the varsity cross-country team, running was my go-to stress reliever. I would breathe in, slowly and steadily, unplug from my phone and my iPod and my parents and everyone around me and just run. I liked the solitude, the way my breath beat in and out of my body without my even thinking about it. I liked the way it warmed me up, spent me, and left me with a floaty feeling after I was done.

I had a trail that I liked to take that led from the back of our subdivision and through some woods. On the other side of those woods was a strip mall that had everything in it from an auto parts store to a karate dojo to a dance studio and even a thrift shop.

I loved to go into the thrift shop for a halfway-point break and pick around at stuff, weaving in and out of the rooms, trying to imagine who’d first bought that old TV with the bent antenna, or the chipped coffee mug that said
I DON’T DO MORNINGS
or the beaded sweater or the picture of Jesus. I liked to paw through the clothes and shoes. I liked the musty smell and the flickering lighting and the fat, fuzzy gray cat that lurked around, usually in the tablecloth room.

After ducking out of my house this morning, I hit the street and headed for the trail. It would be too early to go to
the thrift shop, but I could look in the window. I could still transplant myself into someone else’s life, someone else’s story. I needed a new story right now. I needed that post-run floaty feeling.

My feet hit the dew-moistened wood chips in perfect rhythm. Kaleb had shown me how to lengthen my stride so that it felt like walking rather than running. He’d improved my stamina by working with me to keep a cadence in my head. He’d challenged me, but he’d also helped me. And even though I’d been running long before I met him, I was unsure if I could do it without him now.

I breathed in and out, trying to clear my thoughts. No Kaleb. It didn’t do any good to think about him, to dwell on how good he once was to me.
Just breathe. Just step. Just run.

There were two joggers up ahead of me, and I passed them on the left. Two moms pushing strollers, talking more than they were running. Seeing them on the trail made me feel safe, secure. They knew nothing about what was going on with me. There were far more people out there who didn’t know than people who did. I just had to remember that.