Abandon (18 page)

“Why you’d ditch your own cousin to sit with
them.
They’re kind of mean to people who aren’t…like them.”

“I’m trying to make a new start,” I explained. “And part of it includes not letting bad things happen to people I love.”

“Oh,” Kayla said. She didn’t look as if she understood. But that was okay. No one did, really. “Well, good luck with that.” Then she called, “Alex, wait up,” and took off after him. I sighed.

Then I picked up my heavy bag and started the long hot walk across the beach, towards the picnic tables.

W
hy don’t
you love me anymore?

That’s what I finally remembered Hannah had written in the note she’d left Mr. Mueller on the day she died — the note that no longer existed, thanks to Mr. Mueller having destroyed it.

Why don’t you love me anymore?

Hannah may have swallowed the pills that killed her.

And I had failed to be there for her, still too confused and traumatized from everything that had happened to me to remember my promise to protect her from it.

But Mr. Mueller?

He was the one who was truly responsible for Hannah’s death. I’d known it in my bones, with the same certainty that I’d known Hannah’s mom was keeping her daughter’s room preserved as a
sort of shrine to her, exactly as it had been the day she died, down to the dirty clothes that had been in Hannah’s laundry basket, so her parents could lift the lid of the basket and smell their daughter’s scent from time to time, and pretend she was still alive.

For weeks after Hannah’s death, I thought of nothing else.

How could I have let it happen?

I’m the one who’d told Hannah evil isn’t just in our graveyards.

Evil can be anywhere. In our churches. In our own homes.

In our schools.

And though I’d promised her otherwise, I’d done nothing to protect her from it.

When I overheard my dad say the Changs had no chance of winning their lawsuit against the school and getting Mr. Mueller removed from his position because it was just their word against his — all they had by way of evidence were a few of Hannah’s diary entries — I knew what I had to do.

And this time, it wasn’t to run like a scared little girl the way I had from John — twice.

Of course things went wrong from the start, though. I didn’t expect Mr. Mueller to turn out the overhead lights during the private tutoring session I’d finally agreed to. Because he had a headache, he said, from all the anxiety.

Not, of course, that anyone at the Westport Academy for Girls believed he’d been romantically involved with a student who’d killed herself over him. Anyone but me. The Changs’ lawsuit had actually made Mr. Mueller more popular. Frantic about his health as the stress from the trial caused him to grow pale beneath his
goatee, many of the moms and daughters started leaving him even
more
baked goods. Some of the girls made up a new cheer to show their support of him. The Mueller Shout-Out, they called it. They performed it at every game and school event.

This was not as bad as the names a lot of them started calling Hannah online:
Slut. Liar. Skank.

So it wasn’t bad enough Hannah had to die. They had to kill her memory, too.

The school didn’t even put Mr. Mueller on any kind of administrative leave, either. I guess they couldn’t or it would be like they were taking sides or something.

It made me see red. Literally. Every day, I walked down the halls of the Westport Academy for Girls, and most of the time all I saw, everywhere I looked: red. Red as those poinciana blossoms. Red as those tassels on my scarf.

Which might be how I realized I was in way over my head even before the lights in Mr. Mueller’s classroom went out that afternoon. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest, I could barely speak, and he hadn’t laid a finger on me yet. How was the camera I’d hidden in my backpack — the one with the lens pointing out through a hole I’d cut in the front pocket, the way I’d read online to do — supposed to pick up anything in what was basically semidarkness, thanks to the spring thunderstorm that was rolling in outside?

I hadn’t even really thought through what was supposed to happen after I filmed him behaving inappropriately with me. I guess I was going to have to say,
Oh, sorry, I just remembered I have another appointment, Mr. Mueller. I have to go now. See ya!

How else was I going to get out of there without actually having to do — well,
that
— with him?

I couldn’t let that happen. I had to stay in control.

Mr. Mueller kept saying we should give each other neck massages. He knew how tense I had to be from all my problems at home, he said, with my mom and dad’s divorce (which had been all over the tristate news because of the amount of money involved and who my dad was). Mr. Mueller said he imagined I had to feel as stressed as he was. But that was all right. We were both adults. We might as well admit we were attracted to each other.

I knew then that I wasn’t going to be able to go through with it. Not only was the camera probably not even recording anything due to the lack of adequate lighting, so the whole thing was for nothing — because of course I had to have what the Changs didn’t have: evidence — but now that I was alone with him, the idea of Mr. Mueller touching any part of me, even just my neck, made me want to vomit.

The worst part of it all was that no one was going to believe me. Why would they?

I guess that’s what got me so mad. So mad that a red tinge began to appear at the periphery of my vision.

Oh, no.

When you play back the recording of what happened that day in Mr. Mueller’s classroom, you can’t see anything much at all because of the lighting issue, except for my white school uniform blouse, and the dark blob of Mr. Mueller’s arm coming towards me.

On the tape, you can hear his voice assuring me that everything’s going to be all right. I just need to relax, he says.

I hate it
when people tell me I just need to relax.

Had he told Hannah she just needed to relax? I bet he had.

That’s when my vision turned magenta.

“There’s no accountability anymore, Pierce,” Dad always liked to complain during our fancy lunches. “No one holds anyone accountable for what they do. It’s always someone else’s fault. Usually people just blame the victim.”

Slut. Liar. Skank.

Well, I was holding Mr. Mueller accountable for what had happened to Hannah.

It was as Mr. Mueller was telling me to relax, and reaching his hand towards me — I thought to massage my neck, but I soon found out it was for a different reason — that it happened. You can watch it happen on the tape. There’s me, leaning up against the edge of his desk, telling myself I could handle the situation if it got out of hand (once, when we were waiting for Dad to come out of a board meeting, his driver, an ex-cop, taught me how to hit someone in self-defense, should the need ever arise), and there Mr. Mueller is, standing in front of me, lifting his arm. His hand is coming towards my face.

The next second, Mr. Mueller is gone.

I don’t mean literally gone. I just mean, on the tape, a black shadow appears, blocking the entire lens for a second or two. It’s as if a third person had entered the room. Although no one — no matter how much of an expert in digital film analysis, or how
much Dad promised to pay them for their testimony — can say for certain, to me this shadow definitely looks like the figure of a man…a very tall man with longish dark hair, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old.

For a few seconds, you can’t see anything on the tape. The screen is black. You can just hear sounds. There’s a brief scuffle, then a sickening crunching sound, some muffled conversation.

A second later, the shadow is gone.

On the film, I’m exactly where I always was, leaning against the desk. Only now, instead of standing in front of me with his hand out, Mr. Mueller is cowering against the chalkboard, cradling his arm against his chest.

And he’s screaming.

That’s because every bone in his hand has just been broken.

But especially the bones in the finger that he used to press the cookie crumb into the bare skin of my knee. Those, in particular, were pulverized.

The Westport police say “it’s unlikely…though not impossible” a girl as small as I am could have inflicted that much damage to a full-grown man.

Unfortunately, Mr. Marzjak, the custodian, swears he saw no one else come in or out of the room until the EMTs arrived a few minutes after he himself called them, upon walking in and finding Mr. Mueller writhing around in so much pain. Mr. Marzjak heard all the screaming. He’d been out in the hallway mopping up. In fact, it was Mr. Mueller’s awareness of this fact that caused him to try to cover my mouth with his hand in the first place,
fearful that I might start screaming and draw the attention of the custodian.

The police didn’t believe Mr. Mueller’s story about my assaulting him — which he apparently delivered to them in what they describe in their report as “a highly agitated manner.”

They so didn’t believe it that they searched the entire school as well as its grounds for “a third party” even before they found the digital camera still running inside my backpack and played back the video.

No one else, however, was found. Because of the rainstorm at the time, anyone who might have jumped from Mr. Mueller’s classroom on the first floor would have to have left trace evidence. But the mud beneath the classroom’s windows was undisturbed.

Of course no such evidence was found. Why would John bother using windows or doors like a normal person? Why would he bother to say hello? Just
poof.
Crunch. Bye.

Except he hadn’t even bothered to say good-bye.

Although he did stop to hurl another one of those wild, reproachful looks at me with his silver eyes just before he disappeared.

“Wait” was what I’d said to him after he appeared from out of nowhere, took a single step forward, seized Mr. Mueller’s hand from in front of my face, and twisted it with a force that sent the basketball coach falling to his knees in front of me.

It was not so dark in the room that I couldn’t see all the color draining from Mr. Mueller’s face. I would have thought he’d passed out for a few seconds, if it hadn’t been for the bloodcurdling
scream he let out. It was only John’s grip on him, holding him half suspended in midair, that kept him from sagging to the floor.

“What?” John already had his other fist cocked, ready to pummel Mr. Mueller into oblivion. He didn’t look happy to see me.

I couldn’t really blame him, under the circumstances. Every time we met, it seemed, it was because I was in some kind of trouble.

John stood there glowering down at me, his chest heaving up and down exactly like that dove I’d found the day we met, his eyes glazed over with the same kind of confusion and pain. I guess throwing yourself around through alternate dimensions isn’t easy.

“Don’t,” I said, flinging my gaze towards Mr. Mueller’s pale face. “Please, John. Just don’t.”

John stared down at me as if he didn’t understand a word I was saying.

I wasn’t sure I understood, either. I just knew I couldn’t watch anyone else — not even someone I hated as much as Mr. Mueller — die.

I reached out and laid my hand on John’s fist.

There were so many things I could have said then. So many things I
should
have said.

But only a single word tumbled out…the name I hadn’t been able to get out of my head for weeks. The reason I was there, the reason all three of us were there.

“Hannah,” I said. There was a world of hurt in those two syllables.

I couldn’t bear the thought that she might still be by the side of that lake, waiting in the cold for that boat — that
other
boat. Ever since I’d heard about her death, it had been all I could think
about — besides proving Mr. Mueller had been having an affair with her. I had to know if she was all right.

And I knew John would tell me the truth.

As soon as I touched him, I saw some of the wildness leave his expression. His gaze softened, and he seemed to catch his breath. He even shook his head, as if in bemusement, like
Really?
That’s
what this was all about?

“She’s with people who love her,” he said.

My shoulders sagged with relief. That’s all I’d wanted to hear.

John glanced down at Mr. Mueller, who was still moaning and screaming, then looked back at me.

“Are you —”

He broke off, because the door to the classroom was opening. Mr. Marzjak was coming in, having heard Mr. Mueller’s screams.

That’s when John disappeared.

And it all happened so fast, I might have thought I’d imagined it…if his image hadn’t been caught on tape.

Mr. Mueller denies there was anyone else in the room, of course. He says that I just went completely berserk as we were going over SAT study guide questions and attacked him without provocation.

That’s the explanation everybody at the Westport Academy for Girls chose to believe. So instead of Hannah Chang, they all started calling
me
a slut, a liar, and a skank online.

This was fine with me, since Mr. Mueller got put on permanent suspension. “The incident,” as they all called it, is still under investigation.

And at least no one’s doing the Mueller Shout-Out anymore.

But, as Dad’s lawyers point out, Mr. Mueller has plenty of incentive to stick to his story. Even if he never teaches again — and he may not, unless he can do it one-handed — he should be able to get a decent settlement out of the civil suit. After all, he got attacked by Zachary Oliviera’s half-crazy daughter (or so he claims). Everyone knows people who’ve died and come back return…well, a little
off.

Still. While no one can agree what exactly went on
during
“the incident,” thanks to the poor lighting and Mr. Mueller’s moaning, the recording of everything Mr. Mueller said
before
he started screaming has the DA — not to mention the Changs — intrigued.