Thousand Words (19 page)

But she’d turned her back and was heading toward her table. My heart sank.

Finally, I headed for my class, but as I approached the door, Principal Adams stepped out of nowhere and put his hand on my elbow.

“Ashleigh, I need you to come down to the office with me.”

Without the slightest pause, he turned and headed toward the administration office, and I followed, my stomach sloshing and my eyes burning, and feeling more alone than I ever had before.

I’d been in Principal Adams’s office countless times.
Turning in fundraiser money, showing off a cross-country trophy, eating lunch with the people who’d made the honor roll. I’d always wondered what it would be like to be there because of trouble. I’d thought the kids who ended up in the principal’s office were the losers who couldn’t control themselves.

And now here I was. One of them.

It was sunny outside, and still hot, so the shades were drawn over the massive window behind Principal Adams’s desk, giving the whole office a murky gray tone. The walls were lined with shelves, books bearing titles such as
Fundamentals of Teaching
and
Educating the Special Needs Child
crammed onto them. I wondered if he’d read them all. It was hard to imagine Principal Adams as an academic, given that most of his time was spent standing in the hallways nagging at people to get to their classes before the bell rang.

He gestured for me to sit down in the chair across from his desk, and after I sat, he walked out of the office, mumbled a few things to the secretary, then disappeared around the corner. I spent the time wringing my hands and swallowing repeatedly, wishing the lump in my throat would go away.

Eventually he came back with Mrs. Westlie, our school psychologist, who carried a legal pad in one hand and gave me one of those half-smiles that people give when they either don’t want to talk to you or feel sorry for you. I guessed maybe it was a little of both.

They took their time getting settled, or maybe it only felt that way to me. It was so quiet in the office I swore I could hear the sweat seeping out on my forehead. Finally, Principal Adams sat behind his desk and Mrs. Westlie settled on the chair next to me, laying her legal pad on her knees and holding her pen loosely in her hand.

Principal Adams cleared his throat. “Ashleigh, how are things going for you?” he started, and I thought it was such a weird question, I was almost too surprised to answer it.

“Fine,” I said, my voice weak and tiny.

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Westlie asked. I noticed her pen poised to write. She had adopted a concerned, sympathetic head-tilt to go with the patronizing smile.

I nodded.

“Well, I’ll tell you why I’m asking,” Principal Adams said. “Yesterday I got a phone call from a parent about a text her son had received. This morning I got three more phone calls about the same text.”

I looked down at my lap, my face burning so hard I almost felt drunk. Like I was watching this happen to someone else, not me. This was on TV. It had to be. I was an observer. Only an observer. I said nothing.

“Do you know anything about this text?” Principal Adams asked, and when I still couldn’t bring myself to look up, much less answer him, he continued. “Ashleigh, the text includes a photo.”

I closed my eyes. Nothing worked to keep the embarrassment away. Being blind. Being deaf. Being frozen. Being
an observer. Being silent. I still felt humiliated no matter what I was.

“Ashleigh,” Mrs. Westlie said, her voice soft, but with an undertone of authority and seriousness, “it’s clear that it’s you in the photo. And even if it wasn’t, your name and phone number are attached to it.”

I felt a tear slither out from under my eyelid, and felt all the more disgraced for it. As much crying and dry-heaving as I’d done at home, I didn’t want to cry in front of anyone at school. This was embarrassing enough without my adding to it by bawling. I made no move to wipe the tear away; maybe if I ignored it, they wouldn’t see it, and it would be like it wasn’t happening at all. But I felt my chin begin to crumple and my breath begin to hitch, too, and there was no way I was going to be able to keep it in any longer. Everything from the past week was going to come out—the sadness of breaking up with Kaleb, the betrayal, the embarrassment, the anger at Vonnie, all of it.

“I didn’t mean for everyone to see it,” I said, my voice an unsteady warble. “Kaleb sent it.”

Mrs. Westlie started writing on her legal pad. “Kaleb who?” she asked without looking up.

“Coats,” I said, and I had to wipe my nose with the back of my hand, which only made me cry all the harder. Principal Adams pushed a box of tissues across the desk and I took one.

“Coats?” he said. “He’s graduated, hasn’t he?”

I nodded. “We broke up.”

Principal Adams got a deep furrow between his eyebrows when I said that. “He’s eighteen, I take it?”

I nodded. I didn’t understand how Kaleb mattered at all, given that he no longer went to Chesterton High, but it must have mattered to them, because Principal Adams and Mrs. Westlie exchanged a look.

“Ashleigh, how did he get this photo of you in the first place?” she asked, and I was sure my lips wouldn’t move around the words, I was so humiliated. I took a deep breath to abate the tears.

“I took it,” I said. “I sent it to him.”

“Do you know who else has the text?” she asked.

Again I shook my head. “A lot of people,” I said, and Principal Adams got a pained expression on his face.

He straightened up in his chair. “The parents who called me all have freshman students,” he said. “And this morning Mrs. Martinez said she had to confiscate the phones of three sophomores. She said they were passing around a text of a naked student. Some other teachers have complained about increased cell phone use in their classrooms as well. Do you realize, Ashleigh, how disruptive this text has been? And these parents aren’t going to go away. They want suspension.”

I sat up straighter, alarmed. Parents had seen the photo. Teachers had seen it. Suspension. My dad would kill me. My mom would be so disappointed. She’d want to know what had happened. They both would. “Please don’t tell my parents,” I begged, and the tears started anew, because I
couldn’t believe I was at the point of begging the principal to keep a secret this big from my parents. “Please. I’ll do Saturday school or something, but if you tell my parents… My dad is the superintendent.”

“I know exactly who your dad is, Ashleigh, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late. I’ve already talked to him about this problem we’re having, and he asked me to forward the text. I had to warn him about what he was going to see. He already knows about your involvement.”

At that moment, I could have sworn that the floor dropped about a thousand feet, my chair sailing down into a black hole. Things began to get grainy, and I must have swooned or something, because Mrs. Westlie reached over and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Are you feeling ill?” she asked.

I doubled over in my chair. My dad had seen the text. I wanted to die right then and there.

“Ashleigh,” she said, shaking me a little. “Do you need to lie down in the nurse’s office for a minute?”

I shook my head. I must have, because I saw the room sweep back and forth in front of my eyes, and my stomach was sinking, sinking, sinking, giving me a strange sense of vertigo.

They talked to each other for a few minutes, and I could make out enough through my daze to understand that they were talking about the logistics of my suspension. They were making decisions about what to do with this “situation” that I had caused. But in my head all I heard was a
buzzing, droning noise that must have been the numbness reaching my brain, and it sounded like a horde of cicadas calling out what a horrible person I was:
Slut up for grabs! Slut up for grabs! Slut up for grabs!

Finally, Principal Adams turned to me and said, “Right now we’re going to put you on an indefinite suspension, just until we get a hold on this situation. We’re going to get to the bottom of how this photo got passed around, too. Do you have any idea who might have sent it, other than your boyfriend?”

“He’s my ex-boyfriend,” I said through cold and dry lips. “And Nate. Nate Chisolm sent it, too, I’m pretty sure.”

“The sophomore?”

“Yes. He played baseball with Kaleb.”

And again they shared a look. Mrs. Westlie closed her eyes and shook her head pityingly.

Principal Adams stood up. “Mrs. Westlie will take you to your locker to get your things. We’ve called your dad to come get you.”

Tears started up again as I stood and followed her down the hall to my locker. I pulled out my jacket and a couple of books and pushed everything else inside. I hated not knowing how long I’d be gone, how behind I’d be when I got back. If I got back. Would it be possible that I’d be gone for the rest of the year? That I’d have to switch schools? Retake my junior year?

“I need to get my cross-country things,” I said, and Mrs. Westlie walked me down to the field house, then
stayed outside the locker room while I went in. I pulled my gym bag out and stuffed all of my laundry, and my extra pair of running shoes, into it.

Coach Igo was in her office when I passed by to leave.

“I understand you won’t be participating in this week’s meet,” she called out. I stopped, stepped inside. The glare of the locker room lights hurt my irritated eyes, made them feel puffy.

“No, I guess not.”

“You have your lock?”

“I left it on my locker. I’m taking everything home to wash while I’m”—I couldn’t make myself say it, couldn’t say
suspended
—“gone.”

She looked back down to the book she was notating. “Go get it,” she said.

“Coach?”

She looked up. “Go get your lock and bring it to me.” I stood there trying to make sense of what she was saying. “Playing a sport is a privilege, not a right. You lost that privilege. You’re off the team.”

For a moment, this seemed so surreal, there was no possible way it was actually happening to me. Surely I hadn’t been suspended indefinitely and kicked off the cross-country team all in the space of ten minutes. It wasn’t possible.

Coach stood up, her chair making an awful metallic screeching sound on the floor, and checked her watch. “Hurry, I’ve got a class starting in ten minutes.”

I marched back through the locker room and dialed the
combination on the lock I’d been given by the school my freshman year, when I first made the team. I pulled it off, for the last time, and handed it to Coach. She gave me a semisympathetic look.

“I’ve known you for a while now, Ashleigh, and something tells me this whole thing was an accident or somehow got out of your control.”

I nodded.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that you made the poor decision that set it all in motion.”

“I know.” Boy, did I ever know. And know and know and know.

“And you know the rules of play. If your grades drop or you get into any trouble in the classroom, you’re off the team. No exceptions. I have to do it.”

She bounced the lock in her palm a few times, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she almost felt kind of bad about kicking me off the team.

Mrs. Westlie appeared, the clack of her heels echoing off the lockers. She poked her head around the corner. “Ashleigh? You ready? Your dad is here. He’s in the office waiting for you.”

Hell no, I wasn’t ready. I would never be ready to face him. I still had no idea how I would do it. But I knew I couldn’t stand here in the girls’ locker room forever, hoping he’d go away. Eventually he’d come in here and find me. And then he’d be super-pissed—like he wasn’t super-pissed already.

“I’m sorry, Coach,” I said.

“I’m sorry, too, Ashleigh. You’re a good runner.” She shook her head sadly, which only made me feel worse.

I followed Mrs. Westlie out of the locker room. There were several boys in the gym, bouncing basketballs, and some of them stopped and watched me as I walked out. Somehow this was worse than the name-calling—the silent, curious stares. I knew what they were thinking now—they were glad it wasn’t them being escorted out of the school, and they couldn’t wait to gossip to their friends that they’d seen it happen to me.

Dad didn’t say anything to me on the way home. We sat in complete and utter silence, which was somehow worse than if he’d been lecturing me. What had started out as a way to get Kaleb’s attention now loomed between us in the front seat of Dad’s car, big and ugly and dense.

When we got home, Dad got out of the car and disappeared into the house, leaving me behind. I sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the ticking and clicking of the engine cooling off, then gathered my things and went inside, racing straight to my room and locking the door. I half-expected Dad to come storming in at any moment, ready to rage at me, but he never did. I sat on my bed, miserably deleting texts and watching the sun get lower in the sky as the afternoon wore on.

My phone rang. It was Vonnie. I could hear the squeak of shoes on the gym floor as her teammates warmed up. “I
told Coach I have cramps, so she’s letting me take five,” she whispered into the phone. “But I heard you got suspended so I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I guess.”

“Did your dad freak out?”

“Not yet,” I said. “He’s going to kill me.”

I heard a whistle, and Vonnie’s voice went lower. “He’ll get over it. It’s not like you’re the first person to ever get in trouble. He’ll be mad, probably yell at you for a while, and then he’ll forget about it.”

“I doubt that,” I said, then paused. “I’m sorry. About the fight. I was acting like a jerk.”

“No big. I mean, I don’t love that you think this was all my fault, but it’s okay. You’re stressed. I get it.”

“I don’t think it’s all your fault, Von.”

“I probably didn’t help things with the shaving cream,” she said.

“Probably not,” I agreed. “By the way, I got kicked off cross-country, too.”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yep. My life is basically over. I have nothing. No Kaleb—not that I want him, anyway—no school, no cross-country. I’ll be grounded for life, I’m sure. I don’t even have my dignity anymore.”