Thousand Words (21 page)

Yet something about that realization also heartened me.
As frustrated as I was with Vonnie and her “it’ll all blow over” attitude, and as much as it didn’t feel like it would
ever
blow over, maybe it really would. Maybe this would eventually be forgotten, this trouble I was in. Maybe people would forget about it like this old VCR and the cassette tape player that I wasn’t even sure if I’d know how to work. Back when I was born, my parents didn’t own a computer yet. They didn’t send emails or surf the Internet, and they certainly didn’t send texts, much less picture texts. How much had changed in that short period of time. This would change, too, and soon nobody would care about the dumb photo I’d sent to my boyfriend back when people were doing something so outdated as texting. The thought gave me hope. If someone didn’t mind tossing out a photo of their children having fun, surely eventually my photo would end up in recycle bins, too.

So while she was wrong about how quickly people would forget, maybe Vonnie was right; eventually this, too, would pass. If only I lived through it in the meantime.

I checked the tag on the pillow. Three dollars. And it was a purple tag. I had enough.

I slipped off my shoe and pulled out the money I’d brought, then slipped it back on and made my way to the register.

“Find something?” the old lady asked, and I placed the pillow on the counter. “Oh, that’s cute,” she said, studying it.

The fan whirred toward me, blowing back my hair and sending a gust of cool air down the nape of my neck. I shuddered, my skin rising up in goose bumps. After being in here, it was going to feel outrageously hot outside.

She rang up my pillow and I paid her.

“Tomorrow we’ll have green tags fifty percent off,” she offered. “You should come back. We have some cute junior clothes that will get put out tonight.”

“Thanks,” I said, and had to tamp down the fear that I
would
be coming back to the thrift store tomorrow. And every day after that. That this would be my only respite, my only social life, talking about cute throw pillows to a seventy-year-old.
Surely
, I thought,
“indefinitely” doesn’t mean forever. I can’t be hanging out in a thrift store forever.

I plunged back outside into the heat and started jogging the minute I hit the parking lot, the bag with my new pillow in it hanging over my wrist and smacking into my knee with every step.

Empowered by it, I turned into the woods and took the trail back to my house.

When I got home I went straight up to my room, kicking my shoes off in the doorway. I placed the pillow at the head of my bed, on top of my other pillows, then stood back and studied it. I liked it there. It gave me something to hope for.

I took a shower and got dressed, did some math that I figured we were probably doing in class that day. I read a little. Watched a movie. Poked around online until I worked up the nerve to look for the website where my photo had been posted. Someone had taken it down, along with all the nasty comments, which was good, though I wondered if that only meant my photo had been moved somewhere else.

After a while, I heard a car coming down my street,
someone pulling into my driveway, and then two short honks. Vonnie.

I ran downstairs and opened the front door to let her in.

“Oh my God, Buttercup, you wouldn’t believe,” she said, pushing past me and heading straight for the recliner. She plopped into it sideways. “There were like twenty parents up in the office this morning. People are pissed off.”

“About what?” I sat on the arm of the couch.

She shrugged. “About the texts. About the school taking away phones. About it being the superintendent’s daughter. People’s parents want him fired. Sarah’s mom is saying it should go to court.”

“Well, that’s rich, considering it was Sarah’s brother who started the whole thing,” I said. But on the inside I was trembling. The peace I’d felt when I’d gotten home from the thrift store was gone. I was slammed back into reality, where I’d screwed up majorly and everyone in the world knew it. “Besides, court? What for?”

She waved her hand. “I don’t know. You know Sarah. It could have been all drama. You got any soda?”

I brought her a soda, and she opened it and took a sip, shaking her head. “What are you gonna do, Buttercup?”

“What do you mean? I’m suspended, remember? It’s not like I can do anything.”

“No, I mean… what if this gets serious? What are you gonna do if Sarah’s mom gets this to go to court or whatever?”

My heart was leaping around in my chest like a wild
animal, but I swallowed it down and waved my hand dismissively. “Drama,” I reminded her. “I mean, it can’t go to court. It’s not like I committed a crime or something.”

“I guess,” she said. “But I probably ought to tell you, this is totally the only thing everybody is talking about right now. It’s in the newspaper and people are writing all these letters to the editor and stuff. And the text is still being sent around. I heard that some people over in Mayville have it.”

Mayville High School? How many schools had this gone to? Chesterton, the junior high, two colleges, and now Mayville.

“No way. I don’t even know anybody in Mayville.”

She nodded, took another sip. “Probably a good thing, right? Adams is trying to figure out who’s still sending it around. The shit’s getting really deep. Saturday detention if you’re caught talking about it, suspension if you’re caught sending it. But of course nobody’s going to tell if they got it sent to them. They don’t want to be caught up in this.”

“Neither do I,” I said, and I felt my chin start to quiver again. I willed the feeling away.

We sat together for a while, and a couple times she tried to bring up another subject—somebody was dating someone new, someone had gotten into a wreck in the parking lot, somebody was fighting over something stupid—but I honestly couldn’t pay attention, and she didn’t even really have much conviction behind her stories. It was like my story was the only story worth telling right now, and if we couldn’t talk about that, there was really no point in talking at all.

Finally, she set her empty can on the table next to the recliner, stretched, and got up. “I probably should go,” she said. “You gonna be okay?”

I shrugged. “I guess it sounds like I’m going to be here for a while.”

She looked sympathetic. “Buttercup. Take it from me, you don’t want to be there. Have you talked to Rachel?”

“No,” I said sullenly. And I had no plans to ever talk to her again.

“She says she’s sorry she did it. She says it was supposed to be funny. Your face was in the picture, so she figured everybody knew it was you anyway. She wasn’t thinking it would go this far.”

I laughed. “Like destroy my reputation and get me suspended? Well, I don’t forgive her.”

Vonnie looked torn. “I get it,” she finally said, but I didn’t believe that getting it meant she was going to see it my way and stop hanging around with Rachel. And it was at that moment that I really understood how my relationship with Vonnie had changed.

Not long after Vonnie left, Mom came home. Her hair was kind of fuzzy, like she’d run her hands through it a lot during the day, and she looked tired.

Instead of getting out a book or heading straight to the computer in the den, she went to the bedroom and climbed into bed, slinging one arm over her eyes.

“Mom?” I asked, standing in the darkened doorway. “You fine?”

At first she didn’t answer, but then I heard a muffled “No.”

I went in and lay down next to her, stiff and alert next to her defeated body. “Bad day at work?”

She moved her arm and looked out at me with one eye. “Bad day in general,” she said. “Your dad is going to be late tonight, and I have a migraine, so just grab yourself something for dinner.”

Her tone sounded angry and bitter. And tired. Really, really tired. She sounded a lot like I felt.

“Okay. Why’s Dad going to be late?”

She sighed, letting her arm fall to her side, staring up at the ceiling. “You really want to know, Ashleigh? He’s having a meeting.”

“About the text?”

“Of course about the text.” I hated the way she sounded. Mom had been mad at me before, but she’d never sounded so much like she wanted to get away from me.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said again, even though I’d already said it once and had really meant it. I was getting really tired of apologizing, and I’d noticed that I was the only one doing it. A lot of people were involved in this, but only one of us was saying she was sorry. And nobody was apologizing to me. “I heard there’ve been reporters hanging out around the school. Is that who he’s meeting with?”

“Yes, he’s had to talk to reporters. They’ve scooped up the story like vultures. I think they’re forgetting that this involves children.”

“You think they’re going to put it on the news?” I got a lump in my throat and tried to concentrate on the afternoon shadows sliding around on the ceiling and walls of my parents’ darkened bedroom, the slits of light pushing through the edges of the drawn blackout shades. “Do you think they’ll come here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re already at Central Office. Part of what makes the story so sensational is that you’re the superintendent’s daughter, so who knows how they’ll handle it.” She moaned. “But who cares what the reporters are going to do, anyway?” she said.

I sat up. “I do, Mom. This is so humiliating. I think everybody’s so worried about how this looks for them, they’re forgetting how embarrassing this is for me. I’m naked in that picture.”

She pulled herself to sitting and faced me, the lines around her eyes soaking up the shadows of the room, making her look older and slightly witchy.

“It’s embarrassing for all of us. But this is bigger than just embarrassment.”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Ashleigh,” she answered. “This isn’t going to stop at embarrassment. What you’ve done… you’ve distributed child pornography. Your dad… he’s going to be late tonight because he’s meeting with the police. You’re going to be arrested.”

We stared at each other in disbelief.

More was so much scarier than I’d ever imagined.

I brought the pillow with me to Teens Talking.

I felt kind of stupid walking in there with a silk-screen picture of little kids peeking out of my backpack like a security blanket, but I had an idea and I wanted to run with it.

“What’s this?” Darrell said, coming up behind me in the hallway and pulling the pillow out of my backpack. He studied it. “Awww, cute. Your brothers?”

I shook my head. “I’m an only child.”

“Oooh, spoooiled,” he sang, and stuffed the pillow back into my bag like he couldn’t care less about it.

“Please, like you couldn’t tell she’s spoiled by looking at her,” Kenzie said, brushing past me with her big belly. I rolled my eyes but let it go.

Mack was already at his computer. Instead of sitting next to him, I went straight to the back of the room, where a table was set up right next to the art cabinet. I’d already checked ahead of time, so I knew exactly what I needed and where to find it. I got to work, arranging a bunch of random items haphazardly across the table—crayons, a pencil cup, a stuffed bear, a rubber band ball, a flashlight, and my cell phone. Right in the center, tilted almost diagonally, I placed the pillow on top of all of it, then stood back and snapped a photo.

“Check it out,” I said, pushing the camera’s review tab as I walked past Mack’s computer station. I bumped him in the back and he turned around and looked at the camera’s screen. I saw his lips move as he read the words across the pillow. “For my pamphlet. What do you think?”

He nodded. “Nice.”

The time flew by as I worked on editing the photo until it was perfect. I took three more shots, adjusting the items here and there to get it just right. But something about it seemed bland. I couldn’t quite land on what was missing.

When Mrs. Mosely stood up and looped her purse strap over her shoulder, saying, “All right, everyone, you’re two hours closer to being done with my ugly mug,” followed by Darrell saying, “Aw, Mose, your mug ain’t ugly. You remind me of my mom,” I’d barely noticed that any time had passed.

We filed out, and I peeked into Dad’s office, only to find a sticky note on the door saying he was in a late meeting and I’d need to catch a ride with Mom. But as I pulled out
my cell phone to call her, I noticed Mack heading down the sidewalk, his jean jacket pulled up around his ears. I texted Mom that I’d be walking and burst through the doors after him instead.

“I’m going with you,” I said, trotting up next to Mack on the sidewalk.

“Where?”

I shrugged. “Wherever you’re going. Skate park?”

He considered it. “Sure, okay.”

When we got to the skate park, we both ran up the closest ramp and sat down at the top as if this was something we’d done together a million times rather than only once. I shrugged out of my backpack and let it rest behind me. Mack kicked off his shoes and set them to the side. I did the same, even though my socks were thin and my toes were already cold from the walk over.

“See that rail over there?” Mack said, pointing to a nearly rusted-through rail stretched between two low ramps. “I saw a kid break his arm on that thing once. His bone was broken in half and his arm just swung around all limp.” He stood and leaned forward over the ramp, then slid down on his socks.

“Gross!” I followed him.

“Yeah, it was. My dad had to take him to the hospital. But the kid was back here the next week, skating with his arm in a cast.”

We jogged up the lowest ramp and slid down the other side, then sprinted toward the highest ramp and pushed ourselves up, our legs pumping as our socks slid, our fingers
gripping the ledge above us. We made it to the top and stopped to catch our breath.

“And another time I saw a kid knock both his front teeth out trying to take his bike down that ramp over there.”

He slid down the ramp, but I stayed put, my hands on my hips, my toes numb, my fingers red from the cold. I felt out of shape since leaving cross-country.