Chapter 11 #2
I stared at him, trying to read his expression. What had I been expecting? That I would say Hazel’s name and his eyes would turn hard, revealing he had something to do with it? It was stupid.
“Was she your student?” I asked. It was a detail I should have already known. Something I should have asked her but that never occurred to me.
Bradley nodded. “She’s in my English class. Hazel’s a good kid.”
I stiffened. My sister, who looked so much like me.
“Do you like her the way you liked me?” I asked.
I stopped breathing as I waited for him to answer. This, I realized. This was what I’d come here to find out. Why I knew I had to come inside the second I’d seen his car.
He shook his head quickly. “No. There’s no one quite like you, Rose.”
That wasn’t a conclusive answer. I stood back so I could watch his face carefully as I asked my next question.
“So, you don’t sleep with all of your students then?” My voice was even, not aggressive. I even added a small smile to keep him relaxed.
Bradley’s head snapped back in surprise. “Please keep your voice down,” he whispered tersely, his eyes darting to the closed door. “But to answer your question, no.” He looked hurt, my words coming out of left field. “Of course not. My god. Is that what you’ve been thinking?”
I watched for any sign of insincerity. I had spent the last eleven years questioning everything I knew about everyone. This was no exception.
“What was I supposed to think?” I asked, my eyebrows raised.
He got out of his chair then, moving toward me. He wasn’t exceptionally tall—he had only a few inches on me—but his being so much older had always made him feel gigantic. He stopped a few feet away.
“I’m not a predator, Rose,” he insisted. A wrinkle formed between his eyebrows, the same way it always had in the past. “You meant something to me.”
“The Lolita of Loxahatchee?” I offered as a joke. This lightened the tension in the room a bit, but he was still considering me carefully, like I might reach forward and slap him.
“What happened with you was an isolated incident. I have been entirely professional with every student I’ve had since.”
Did I believe that? I wanted to. Every inch of my body was begging me to lean into his words.
“I had to ask,” I said softly. I tucked my hair behind my ear. I was losing my resolve with every second that I looked at him. He was too familiar. Too much a part of my life back then. The idea of him being involved in any way still made me feel ill.
He looked down at me, seeming to be a little in pain.
“I feel guilty about it to this day. I don’t want to say I regret it necessarily, because I really did care about you.
I was probably in love with you, though I suppose that doesn’t make it any better, does it?
” He sighed. “And I was young, which I’m sure sounds like a bullshit excuse to you, but I wasn’t so far out of school myself. ”
It was weird to see him like this. Almost begging.
The years following my and Bradley’s “relationship” were the years when sexual predators were called out.
Men were exposed for the things they’d done.
People talked about the power dynamics in relationships now. Bradley was afraid of me, I realized.
“I didn’t come here to lecture you about what we did,” I said, waving him off.
“You didn’t come here to accuse me of being a serial predator?” Bradley asked, a slight edge to his voice.
I threw my hands up in frustration. “I had to cover every base. I need to find my sister.”
He rubbed at his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, and what this is all bringing up. It’s not unreasonable to ask.” He paused. “Although, I would hope you know me well enough to know that it’s ridiculous.”
We stood in silence for a few minutes and then Bradley cleared his throat. “You really do look great, you know,” he said. “I mean, I saw you promoting your book online, but it’s surreal to see you in person again.”
I wanted to ignore his comment about how I looked, but hearing it come out of his mouth after all this time sent an automatic thrill down my spine.
“Did you read the book?” I asked, interested in the answer. I had always wondered if he’d kept tabs on me. Bradley looked at me like I was being foolish.
“Of course I did,” he said. “Even if it hadn’t blown up the way it did, I would have read it. You wrote it. That’s reason enough.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And? What did you think?”
“It was phenomenal, but you already know that.” He gave me a cocky grin. “You’ve always known you were smarter than everyone else.”
“It’s still nice to hear. Even if it’s old news.”
“There’s my girl.”
His words were like liquid nostalgia, immediately washing away the last seven years and leaving my eighteen-year-old self standing before him.
“I appreciated my characterization,” he added, his expression softer. “Although I got off a little easy.”
“I couldn’t put in what really happened, now could I?” I’d omitted quite a bit. Outright lied in a few places. All to protect him. And myself.
“You could have,” he countered. “But I appreciated the discretion, nonetheless.”
“I didn’t see the point in getting you in any trouble,” I said honestly. “It was over by then. That time of my life was difficult enough.” I didn’t need to explain for us to both know what I meant.
Six months after Will was convicted of murder, I had become obsessed with revenge.
I hated the community for what they had done to him, hated the Hopelys for how they’d supported the lies.
I didn’t entirely realize it at the time, but I was on the brink of a breakdown.
My parents had separated, Tommy was away at college, Hazel was in Tampa with Mom, and of course, we know where Will was.
None of my friends spoke to me. My entire life had fallen apart, and I’d become uncontrollable.
I’d stopped eating, developing what was probably anorexia though I flirted with bulimia too.
I found it therapeutic. I liked watching the fat and muscle disappear from my body in chunks: stomach, thighs, hips, ass.
My breasts were somehow left unaffected, life’s cruel joke.
The same year, I grew two inches, turning me into some grotesque, angular caricature of myself.
I had become unreasonably attractive at a time when I wanted to shrink into the background.
It was mostly the boys who paid attention. No one wanted to be friends with a murderer’s sister, but they could still want to fuck her.
I viewed sex as a tool. It was a way to manipulate people into doing what I wanted. A way to seek comfort in a community where I was ostracized. Very rarely did I do it for my own pleasure.
I spent every free moment I had hooking up with anyone even remotely near my age.
The more sex I had, the better I felt. It was the perfect distraction.
I lost myself so completely in the desire.
I fucked people’s boyfriends. I blew people I barely knew.
I spent the night of Cassandra’s sweet sixteen getting railed in the bed of a Ram truck in the middle of the woods.
My father, now a single parent and suffering with his own grief, had no idea what to do.
He called in my mother when the rumors started to get out of control.
They talked about sending me to therapy and cried about how these were all the natural consequences of trauma.
They threatened to ground me but never did.
I may have been acting out, but my grades were still perfect—and I’d never done anything illegal.
The fall of my senior year, I had been hanging out with a junior named Tyler who was very into amateur filmmaking and even more into my tits.
His mother was on the PTA with Mrs. Hopely, and therefore he couldn’t be seen out in public with me.
We had skipped fourth period to hook up under the bleachers.
Tyler was an overly enthusiastic kisser who kept begging me to let him take pictures of me topless.
Even then, I knew it was a bad idea, one that would land me on some deeply depraved porn site for true crime lovers.
He pushed me up against the bleachers, unbuttoning my cardigan.
His hands grabbed at my breasts greedily.
“Eh hm.” Someone cleared their throat near us. An older voice that I was sure belonged to a teacher. Tyler broke apart from me instantly. Even in jeans, you could see he had a raging hard-on.
“Mr. Myers,” Tyler said quickly. His cheeks and neck had turned the color of the school’s red mascot.
“Tyler, seriously?” Bradley’s voice was full of disappointment as he took in the situation from the side of the bleachers.
Tyler looked mortified. Bradley had been one of the newer English teachers at the time.
Only twenty-six, and the girls were all in love with him and the boys wanted to be him.
In any normal situation he’d have been only a five or six, but being a teacher, and the only remotely young teacher, made him infinitely hotter.
I’d never taken a class with him, but I’d heard the way the girls spoke about him in the hallways.
He was also the film club sponsor, meaning Tyler saw him regularly.
Tyler sputtered, looking from my open sweater to Bradley, absolutely panicked. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I—”
Mr. Myers held his hand up. “You and I can discuss this after school, Tyler.”
“Are you going to call my parents?” Tyler asked, petrified.
Bradley shook his head. “Not if you go back to class right away. I’d like to talk to Rosie for a minute.”
“Rose,” I corrected him. I had made a big point of not letting anyone call me Rosie anymore.
“Sorry, Rose,” Bradley replied. “Get to class, Tyler.”
Tyler didn’t look back in my direction as he picked up his bag and disappeared out of sight. I rolled my eyes. What a little bitch.
Mr. Myers turned to me.