Thousand Words (24 page)

Didn’t I know it. I often stayed up at night wondering how I would someday explain this to important people in my future.
Look, before you ask me to marry you, you should know that I distributed child porn when I was in high school
…. Yuck.

Mack walked in, followed by Darrell and Angel, who were giggling over something they were looking at on Angel’s cell phone.

Mrs. Mosely put her glasses back on and closed her book. “No cell phones in the room, please. You know the rule.”

“But, Mose, you gotta see this. It’s hilarious,” Darrell said, whipping the cell out of Angel’s hand and bringing it to Mrs. Mosely’s desk. Even though I knew they wouldn’t be stupid enough to show Mrs. Mosely the text of my photo, I still felt instant nervousness at the words “you gotta see this,” as if they were. I took the opportunity to slip away.

“Hey,” I said, sliding into my chair next to Mack’s.

“Hey.”

He navigated to whatever page he was looking for, slumped back in his seat, put his earbuds in, and began speed-clicking the mouse.

My pamphlet was almost done, and I printed out a sample copy, then slid my chair back and stood up to retrieve it from the printer. For some reason, as I passed behind Mack, a movement on his computer screen caught my eye.

“What are you…?” I asked, leaning over his shoulder to see the screen, but stopped short. Animated army guys ran around on his screen, simulated bullets flying as they aimed and shot at some incoming airplanes. “A video game?”

Mack immediately stopped clicking and leaned forward, pushing the power button on the monitor to shut it off.

“Shhh!” he hissed at me, his eyebrows twisting up into an angry knot.

“A video game?” I repeated, not really caring if anyone heard me or not. Kenzie flicked a glance over at us and then went back to whatever she was saying to Angel, shaking her head as if we were pathetic.

“Shut up, would you?” Mack said through gritted teeth.

I stood up straight, crossed my arms. It didn’t make sense. We were all working, putting in our time. You didn’t get out of here without having some work to show for it, so how was Mack ever going to get out if he was spending his time playing video games? “Does Mosely know? What are
you going to do when it’s your turn to show off the stuff you made? What are you in here for, anyway?” All the questions I’d been careful not to ask were coming out in a torrent.

He turned and looked me right in the eyes. His skin was dry and there were pimples around his hairline and his curls clung to his forehead in a clump. There was a flush on his smooth, jowly cheeks, as if he was embarrassed. “This is my business,” he said in a low voice. “Step off.”

“Fine,” I said, and reluctantly moved toward the printer. “Don’t expect me to cover for you, though. Eventually she’s going to figure this out.” I couldn’t help wondering why she hadn’t already.

He let out an angry breath and flicked his computer monitor back on.

We worked silently side by side until Mrs. Mosely cleared her throat and announced that it was time for a break. Everyone stood up and darted down the hall to stretch their legs, check their phones, do whatever it was they wished they were doing when they were in the classroom working.

I lingered behind in the hallway, watching Mack head down to the candy machine like always. I was pretty sure I was the last one he wanted to join him. Instead, I pressed my back against the wall and waited for break to be over.

“Excuse me?” a little old woman called, coming down the stairs, pressing a cane to the floor between each step. “Do you know where the board meeting is going to be held?”

Mrs. Mosely rushed over to her and grasped the woman’s elbow. “I’ll show you,” she said, and they disappeared up the staircase, one slow step at a time.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. People were arriving for the board meeting. I started to feel really nervous, like they would all recognize me as I snuck out of here with Mom. Like they would all be looking at me, talking about me, gossiping about how I was probably here to do my community service for what I’d done to their poor little sons and daughters. What I’d done to them. Ridiculous.

More than anything, I wanted Vonnie to come in through the ground-floor door and be my hero. Secret me out like a movie star avoiding the paparazzi. Right now. Steal me away and whisk me to someplace where the Chesterton news didn’t reach. I needed a friend.

I heard a rattle right next to my ear and my eyes flew open. Mack stood there with a box of Dots. He shook them again.

“Dots,” he said.

I reached up and took it. “Thanks.”

“Where’d Mosely go?”

We both tore open our boxes. I tipped a Dot into my hand; he poured a mouthful directly into his mouth. “Took some lady upstairs.”

He nodded. “The board meeting.”

I was surprised he knew about it. “Yeah. They plan to make my dad resign.”

“He shouldn’t. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

I sucked on the Dot, rolling it around on my tongue. “Some people would disagree with that statement. According to them, I have ruined their children forever. And he allowed it to happen. Or something like that.”

“That’s stupid,” he said.

“I know.”

Even though Mrs. Mosely hadn’t gotten back yet and everyone was still hanging around in a loose circle down by the bathrooms talking and giggling, Mack and I slowly went back into the classroom, to our computers, chewing our candy.

I was moving a text box on my pamphlet when Mack turned to me.

“I’m not ordered,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I didn’t get court ordered to be here. So.” He shrugged.

“I don’t get it. What do you mean you didn’t get court ordered?”

His eyes flicked toward the door, as if he was afraid someone was going to come through it and hear him. Then he lowered his eyes, and his voice. “My mom took off when I was eight. And then three months ago my dad killed himself.”

“Oh,” I said, my hand still stuck to my mouse. I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t even sure if I was processing his words at that point. If his mom was gone and his dad was gone, didn’t that make him an orphan?

“Anyway. I didn’t go into foster care, because I’m seventeen. That’s why I quit school. I don’t have a place. I was
tardy all the time because I didn’t have an alarm clock and they were going to suspend me or some shit, so I quit instead. Made it easier on everyone. Plus I hated school so it was no big loss.”

“What do you mean you don’t have a place? Where do you live?”

He shrugged. “Wherever I can. I’ve stayed at Mosely’s house a few times. Friends’ houses. Sometimes, if it’s nice, I sleep outside. At the skate park or the creek or whatever. Places where my dad used to be.”

Immediately, the image of a moonbeam illuminating the word
SOLO
popped into my head. Solo, as in just one. All those times I’d felt like I was so terribly alone, while my parents were fighting for me and Vonnie was checking in on me. I had no idea what “alone” really was. “That’s terrible,” I said.

“At first, Mosely wanted me to come here so I could write up some stuff about suicide, because I’d seen firsthand what it can do to a family. But then after I was done with that, she let me keep coming in so I could have a place to go in the afternoons. Especially when it’s cold. It sucks outside when it’s cold. So to answer your question, yeah, Mosely knows about the game. She doesn’t mind.”

“Oh,” I said again, totally aware that I sounded like a fool. But I kind of figured I deserved to sound like a fool, after how much I’d been whining to him and laying all my problems on him, having no idea what his life was like. “Okay.”

The rest of the group began to file in.

“Look at this. Two straight-A students getting their extra credit while the teacher’s away,” Kenzie said when she saw us.

“Whatever,” I said.

“I’m sorry, what did you say, Supermodel? I think all the brown stuff on your nose is making you talk funny. Maybe you should take a picture of yourself and send it to everyone.”

Mack turned to face her. “She said shut the fuck up. Any problems hearing that?”

Kenzie rolled her eyes. “
Pfft,
what are you, her dad? Oh, wait. No, her dad is upstairs about to get fired because his daughter is a ho.”

I whipped around in my seat, but Kenzie was easing her big belly into her chair with her back to us already, and Mrs. Mosely was coming through the door. My face burned, I was so angry. And embarrassed. Here I’d just found out that Mack wasn’t a criminal, and Kenzie had reminded him that I was one.

After a few minutes, Mack bumped my shoulder. “Just so you know, I got the text, too.”

Of course he had. Why wouldn’t he? Because he didn’t go to Chesterton anymore? What did that matter? A lot of people who didn’t go to Chesterton had gotten the text. Probably everyone in this room had gotten the text. Who was I kidding? It was going to be a long while before I sat in a room full of people who hadn’t all seen me naked. I
wanted to cry. I’d been fooling myself to think he’d been any different from anyone else.

He leaned in farther. “Back when I still had a phone. But I didn’t open it up,” he said.

I gazed at him.

“I never looked at the picture,” he said.

And something about the earnestness in his face told me he was telling the truth. And that gave me a little, tiny glimmer of hope, that maybe there were some people out there who’d received the text and not only hadn’t passed it around to their friends, or gossiped about it to everyone they knew, or uploaded it to the computer, or called me names and spread rumors about me… but flat-out hadn’t looked at it at all.

Maybe those people did exist out there.

Or maybe Mack was the only one.

And I supposed that was okay, too. Because the simple fact that there was one made me feel so much better, I almost felt post-run floaty.

I finished my box of Dots just as Mom came to the classroom door. She was five minutes early, but Mrs. Mosely said she understood and wouldn’t dock me the time on my sheet.

Mack took out his earbuds as I logged off and gathered my things.

“So you’re not going to the meeting?” he asked.

“No way. You?”

“I don’t have anywhere better to be. And I’ve got some stuff to print out. It could be entertaining.”

I frowned. “It’s not entertainment. It’s my dad’s job. And it’s stupid, like you said.” I zipped up my backpack and looped the strap over one shoulder. “I, for one, don’t want to witness it.”

“Come on, Ash,” Mom said from the doorway. She slid the sleeve of her turtleneck up to peer at her watch.

“You could go with me,” Mack said.

“I think I’ll pass,” I mumbled. “See you tomorrow.”

I followed Mom, who turned left out of the doorway rather than right.

“I parked in back,” she said, walking fast so that I had to work to keep up. “That way you don’t have to go through the hall upstairs. Not that there are that many people here yet.”

So Mom had done it. She’d been the friend with the getaway car on the ground floor, not Vonnie. Mom was going to secret me out of here like a movie star. Mom had been the hero I needed, without my even asking her.

“Thanks,” I said, but as we hurried down the hall and out the door into the evening, I began to slow.

Mack was right. This was stupid. The whole thing—the scandal, the board meeting, the way I’d let it all define me. The cowering in corners at school, pretending I was blind and deaf and frozen and dead, the running away. The power I was giving everyone else over my life.

How long had I been letting other people decide who I was? How long had I been Kaleb’s pining girlfriend? Or Vonnie’s sorta best friend? Or Slut Up for Grabs? When
was the last time I’d said who I was? When was the last time I’d been just Ashleigh?

Then you need to think harder….

I stopped walking.

“I want to stay,” I said.

Mom turned. “What?”

“I want to stay. I want to go to the meeting.”

“Oh, Ashleigh, come on, let’s go. We don’t have time for this. I’ve got to get back here in—”

“I’m not playing around, Mom. I want to go.”

She took a few steps toward me, her hand still digging in the front pocket of her purse for her car keys. “Honey, I don’t think you should. This is going to get ugly for your dad.”

“So that’s exactly why I should be there.” She still looked uncertain. “Mom, I know what I’m doing. It’s not going to be any tougher than anything else I’ve gone through since this all happened.” And that part was true. Everything I’d gone through had been humiliating and embarrassing and painful and lonely, and none of it had been important. None of it had had purpose.

This was important. This had purpose.

“Please trust me,” I said. “I’m fine. Frog fur.” I grinned, despite the butterflies that were batting against my rib cage, making me nervous and nauseous.

Mom seemed to think it over for a few minutes, then slowly pulled her hand out of her purse. She put her arm around my shoulders, and together we walked back inside the Central Office building.

Central Office didn’t have a meeting room that would seat more than fifty people. Ordinarily that was not a problem. Most board meetings went entirely ignored by pretty much the whole community, so there was no need for something bigger. Dad had complained about it for years, that the community was so apathetic, it was impossible to get people to care about their kids’ educations until they were ticked off about something. Judging by the crowd that was stuffing itself into the meeting room today, it looked like he had a point.

The first thing I noticed when Mom and I walked in was the TV camera. The local media had shown up. This meeting was news, I realized, and in our small community, it was big news. Mom kept her arm around my shoulders
and we plowed through the people, who mostly seemed not to notice us at all, and into the back conference room, where Dad was sitting, putting together his notes.

He looked somber, hunched over a worktable with a cup of coffee in front of him. He saw Mom and me come in and started to get up.