Canary (31 page)

I was sitting next to a group of players who were passing around a copy of the midterm they were
 
taking
 
the next day.

“What is going on?” I asked Julia, scanning the other comments. “There must be at least twenty postings from people about the team cheating.”

“Go to November 13.”

It was my post describing how Jack wanted to have sex with me. Again, the comments against the team shocked me.

At least Jack asked to have sex with you. I went to homecoming with Scott White, and he tried to screw me in the backseat of his car. He ripped my dress, and I had to kick him to get out.

Sex is nothing to the guys on the team. When I started the dance team my freshmen year, it was expected that we sleep with a member of the team at a party they had. It was some sick initiation thing they did. Most of us slept with them, and the girls who didn't had to put up with so much shit that they quit.

I was at a party once and walked in on 2 Beacon players in a bedroom with a girl passed out. They had her top off and one was pulling off her belt. They acted like I was the one doing something bad by
interrupting them. ASSHOLES!

“This is crazy,” I said as I clicked on different entries.

“I know,” Julia said. “And you're not the only one who has bad stuff to say about Luke.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go to your last entry.”

I did, and when I saw what was written to me, I smiled for the first time in what had felt like weeks.

Kate, we hear u. Don't stop making noise.

Luke is a piece of shit!

U R not the only 1 Luke's done this to. U R the only 1 brave enough to say something.

F*** Luke . . . he deserves what he gets.

There's a lot of us at Beacon who see through the bball team. We'll stand behind you if you
 
continue
 
this fight.

“This is incredible,” I said, staring at the words in front of me. “People believe me.”

“Of course they do. So do you still want to delete your blog?”

“No way.” I couldn't hide my excitement. “Not until every single person has gotten to read it and post. I'm not touching this.”

And I wasn't. No matter what Dad told me to do.

I hung up and printed out the comments. I cut out the ones supporting me and hung them on my walls around my bed. When I turned off the lights to go to sleep, the white paper was visible in the faint glow from streetlights outside my window. They surrounded me, each a reminder that someone was listening and I wasn't in this alone.

www.allmytruths.com

Today's Truth:

Life has winners and losers.

Basketball is a lot like life.

It's a game where there is a defined set of rules.

If you are fouled, that person is penalized.

If you score, your team wins a point.

There are always people cheering for you,

wanting you to win,

and those who want to see you fail.

People who celebrate when you fail.

Basketball has winners and losers,

but there is always a new start with each game.

You're always able to begin again.

Posted By: Your Present Self

[Wednesday, January 15, 3:38 PM]

Dad was in his office the next morning when I finished showering. I'd put on my uniform, even though I was unsure of what the day would bring. I wanted to go to Beacon. People supported me, classmates were willing to stand up against the team and speak out alongside me. I wouldn't let Luke, Ali, Jack, or anyone else push me out.

Dad's door was closed, and light streamed from under it. How long had he been in there? Had he gotten up a little bit before I had, or had he been up all night? Regardless, he was in there now, and the unwritten rule always had been that if Dad was in his office we were not to disturb him.

Today, I ignored his rules. Dad's office wouldn't be his place to hide from me anymore. I wasn't going to let him close the door and shut me out.

I hesitated for only a second before I knocked. The days of second-guessing myself were over.

“Come in,” he said, and there was a hint of surprise in his voice.

I opened the door, and Dad's gaze went straight to my uniform. I knew he understood that I wasn't planning to stay away from Beacon.

“You can't go to school today.” He didn't say it like an order. There wasn't force behind it. It was merely a statement of truth.

“Why not?”

“Beacon wants to suspend you for the time being. They don't want you in there right now.”

“How can they do that? I didn't do anything wrong.”

“I don't know if they can, but right now it's not something I want to fight.”

“It seems to me there are a lot of things you don't want to fight lately.”

“You won't be going to school,” he said, a bit louder now.

“Why am I being punished for telling the truth?” I stared at Dad, incredulous that Beacon could tell me not to return.

He held my gaze, his jaw clenched. “They need to figure out what to do about all of this stuff you posted. How to deal with it.”

“Everything I wrote is true.”

“True? According to you, maybe. But the school is going to want proof. People aren't going to believe you. Anyone can post whatever they want online.”

“Have you even read it? Have you read the
comments people posted? Because if you did, they'd show you what I'm saying is true.”

“I saw enough of it, Kate.”

“No,” I shouted. “You haven't. You need to read it all.”

Dad leaned back in his chair and ran his left hand through his hair. His wedding ring caught in the light, and I thought about Mom.

“I'm sorry,” I said, but I wasn't sure if I was. How could I forgive Dad for putting his team before me? Shouldn't he be the one apologizing?

On his desk was a piece of toast he must have made for breakfast. The butter soaked through, and the middle was a soggy mess.

I tried to focus on it as my eyes filled with tears. “I had to do this. I didn't have a choice.”

“You had to ruin my team? Everything I worked for?”

I stared at the plate. The words were stuck in the back of my throat. The words I'd tried to say since Mom died. I wished I could rewind things and go back before Brett enlisted in the Army and moved out of the house and I lost Jack and my friends. I wanted to go back to those days after Mom had died and force Dad to see me, to see Brett. If I could go back to the start, before we all knew what grief and sadness were, maybe things would be different.

I longed for my old life when I'd sit at the table with Mom and Dad, listening to Brett make fun of how tall I was for a seventh grader and having Dad stick up for me, telling us he's always been fond of giraffes. I wanted us to be a family again. I wanted us to talk to each other.

I played with the bracelet on my wrist. “What I did wasn't about you. It was about me. I did this for me.”

“I don't understand,” he said, and it felt as if he hadn't heard what I was trying to say. “Why did you have to publish all that stuff for everyone to read?”

“You told me you would do something, and you didn't. This was about protecting myself and standing up against what happened.”

“And so you decided it would be a good idea to punish me too?”

My tears spilled out. They hit my cheek, stinging as if I had been slapped. “That's not what I was doing, Dad. It's my life that was destroyed.”

He stood, but he wouldn't run away this time. I'd make him listen. I stepped in front of him.

“Do you have any idea what 
your
 team has done to me?” I shouted, each word coming out harsher than the last. “How much they've hurt me? Luke tried to 
rape
 me. I found out he put drugs in my drink. He planned what he was going to do. There's a naked picture of me on every student's phone now. I can't even walk through the hallways of Beacon without getting elbowed or called names. And do you know who did all of this? 
Your
 team. The boys you think are perfect. The boys you spend so much time with that you can't pay attention to how much your own kids are hurting. They're the ones who have
done everything.”

He sank slowly like a flower wilting under the rain. He put his head in his hands.

“Dad?”

When he brought his head back up, his eyes were glassy, wet. He spoke quietly, “What did I do?”

“Nothing.” I paused, took a deep breath then went on. “You did nothing.”

Dad stared at me.

“I tried to tell you about Luke, but you wouldn't listen. You told me to be quiet. You're so blinded by Beacon that you didn't even believe your own daughter.” I wasn't sure I could get the rest of the words out, but I went on. “You didn't do anything, and I've been left alone. I lost Mom. I lost you. And now, with Brett gone, I'm terrified he won't come back and I'll be left with no one.”

I covered my face with my hands, shaking so hard I choked on my sobs. I let out everything I had been holding in for months, for the last two years.

I waited for Dad to yell back at me, to remind me again how I'd destroyed what he cared the most about. I heard him move around his office, small, quiet movements away from the chair.

I tried to calm down, but each time I did, my mind drifted to what had happened during these last few weeks, and fresh fears and sorrows washed over me.

Dad placed a hand on my shoulder, and then he spoke in a voice not loud or angry but full of regret. “I've messed up, haven't I?”

I turned around. His face was no longer filled with fury, only pain. The same pain that reflected in my eyes when I looked in the mirror.

“I've let you and Brett down.”

I wiped my eyes with the wet fabric of my blouse sleeves. “Why haven't you been here for us? You've shut yourself away from Brett and me, and it's as if we don't even exist. Just like with Mom. We never even talk about her. All I ever wanted was to talk, to remember her, but all you seem to care about is your basketball team.”

“I'm sorry,” Dad said, and he had a look on his face that I'd only seen one other time: the night Mom died. He placed a hand firmly on my shoulder. “I've messed us up. Our entire family. I didn't know what to say, what to do, how to make it better, because it wasn't. I couldn't pretend to be okay.”

“None of us could.”

Dad turned my chair around and gave me an awkward hug, his hands around me, his body warm but unfamiliar next to me. He spoke with his head pressed against me in the hug. His words were muffled, but I understood every one of them, “It's hard to be the strong one, but I should have been. I need to be.”

“You don't need to be anything, Dad. You just need to be 
here.
”

He held on to me for a few minutes, neither of us talking but for the first time since Mom had died, I didn't need him to.

“I'm so sorry,” he finally said, his eyes welling up. He shook his head. “What I did was wrong. I protected the wrong person.”

“Sometimes it's hard to see who the enemy really is,” I said, not because I was letting him off the hook but because I knew how easily you could be blinded by something if you were trying to hold on to what you loved.

“It's my job to keep the enemy away from you,” he said.

I thought about those months after Mom was diagnosed. Dad had been the hero for all of us. He protected, loved, and cared for Mom even when it seemed she was giving up, even when Brett and I could see how sick she was. He watched over us and remained the strong one. Dad had fought for what he loved, and he could do it again.

“You can start to fix things,” I told him. “Talk to Brett. Tell him to come home.”

“I need to make this better.” Dad looked me straight in the eyes. “I will make this better. I'm sorry, Kate.”

“Thank you,” I said and didn't even try to fight the tears that formed in my eyes, because that was exactly what I'd needed to hear. It was far from the perfect apology, but none of us are perfect. It was a start, and right now a new start was exactly what my family needed.

Dad sat at our kitchen table with my laptop and read the comments on my blog, and I went upstairs to change out of my uniform into jeans and a sweatshirt. I wasn't going to school, but it wasn't because Beacon was keeping me out. Dad wasn't going either; the two of us were going to the police station together.

I pulled up a chair next to him. He scrolled through one of my postings as I rubbed my hand over the indentations on the worn table that had seen my family through so much.

“Did you know,” he said, pointing at the screen, “that Brett posted on here?”

“Yeah, he's read it all.”

Dad's face grew sad. “He's grown up, and I've missed it.”

He turned back to the screen. People had been on all night. There were twenty or thirty messages below some of the posts.

“I should have listened to you, Kate. All these people, and I couldn't—”

“Dad, you're listening to me now.”

And it was the truth. Dad couldn't take back what he had done. He had made his mistakes, but he recognized it now. He was listening, and that was enough for now.

Jack's truck was sitting in my driveway when we returned from the police department. The engine was on, and little puffs of smoke came out the back pipe.

Dad put his car into park. “Do you want me to stay here with you?”

I shook my head. “No, go ahead to school. I'll be fine.” Dad had asked me if it was okay for him to go to work after we filed reports against Luke and Ali. I told him it was. He had a lot to deal with, and I was the catalyst of all of it. He needed to go back to Beacon, but he was no longer choosing the team over me.