Chapter Thirty-Six
Mom drops me off on Monday and I fall in step with a current of students heading toward Ridgeway’s main entrance, relieved. Calm.
I think I’m still numb.
I haven’t heard from Kristen. I haven’t heard from Maurice either. Not that I was expecting to. The quiet is just getting to me.
With more than ten minutes until the bell, the hallways are packed.
I don’t see Hannah or Kristen. I think about stopping by Mrs. Rubio’s room to go over final details since the festival is this Saturday, just to have something to do instead of going straight to homeroom, alone with my thoughts.
But as I pass her room, I notice she’s not at her desk.
I have to push through students in the senior hallway, shoulder my way between backpacks and bodies to get to my locker.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, close enough to the girl in front of me that she hears me over the chatter.
She moves aside and I squeeze through the last few kids into the open area along the lockers. Well, right in front of my locker.
My locker…
Students aren’t milling about, making their way to homeroom. They’re just standing here, behind me now, trying to get a look at my locker.
At the picture taped to my locker.
My hand stills in midair, as I was reflexively reaching for my lock, and I take in the blown-up picture of naked women clinging to each other, a Lesbian Leverage watermark prodding my brain like an ice pick from the corner of the page.
The page—the picture, the pornography—that everyone can see… on my locker.
“Clarity.”
“Clarity.”
A hand wraps around my arm. Someone’s holding me.
It’s Olivia and Hailey, trying to pull me away.
“Oh my God,” Kaytee gasps, pushing to the inside of the circle.
“Where’s Hannah?” Hailey asks, her voice unable to cover the whispers around us.
“Wait, so is she, like, gay?”
“No. Well, yeah. But she’s a lesbian because she’s a girl… right?”
“So, is she coming out?”
“It’s a weird way to come out.”
“It’s bold.”
“It’s cool.”
“It’s gross—”
“Shut up, Sean. You’ve probably jerked off to that video.”
“Clarity, it’s okay,” Olivia whispers, her voice in my ear, cutting through the murmurs and gossip.
“Where is Hannah?” Hailey hisses, her patience waning.
“We have to get her out of—”
I see her. I notice her hair first, down and wet because she probably washed it this morning. I don’t really see her though, because I’m trapped inside myself.
Hannah scrapes the picture off my locker, crumpling it—I realize—against an already crumpled paper that she’s holding in her other hand. She looks at everyone around us, disgusted, her brows pinched in an angry expression that I’ve never seen.
“What is this? Who did this?” she shouts.
More whispers. Everyone takes a collective step back, circling me, Hannah, Olivia, Hailey, and Kaytee.
“Is this funny to you?” she asks.
No one answers.
No one, including Vincent standing a few bodies back from the inner wall. Kristen isn’t with him.
“This fucking school,” Hannah mutters under her breath.
“Ms. Fitzpatrick,” Mrs. Abram gasps, choosing now to poke her head out of her room.
She scans around, students beginning to break off and finally mind their business.
“What’s happening? What’s the meaning of this?” she asks, stepping into the hallway.
I don’t know when I started crying.
When no one answers, Mrs. Abram turns to Hannah. “What’s that?”
“It’s nothing—”
“Well, it’s something,” she snaps. “We wouldn’t all be standing here and you wouldn’t be uttering profanities outside my classroom if it was nothing.”
She holds out her hand. Hannah hands her the crumpled papers. The air stills as the students still brave enough to stand around hold their breath, watching as Mrs. Abram unfurls the papers.
“Ms. Fitzpatrick,” she says, but it comes out all huffy and incredulous. She looks at Hannah, staring at her over the top edge of her glasses. Then she looks at me, with my tears, surely piecing together some inaccurate assumption about—
“It’s not what you think,” Olivia blurts.
“Liv—” Hannah tries to stop her.
“Someone taped that to their lockers. A—a bully! It wasn’t them. Hannah took them down—”
“You,” she says to Hannah. “And you,” she says to me. “Principal’s office, now.”
Hannah’s parents arrive first, so she goes into the office first. During the fifteen minutes that we wait in the scratchy, uncomfortable, polyester-cushioned chairs, we don’t speak aside from Hannah apologizing and me telling her that none of this is her fault.
We might have kept talking if the receptionist hadn’t come over and informed me that they were able to reach my mom and she is on her way. I mean, there’s not much to say after a declaration like that.
Actually, maybe there’s one more thing—
“Lesbian Leverage?” I ask.
Hannah shifts beside me. I realize she’s stifling a laugh.
“It’s lesbian porn.”
“And you know that how?”
But then her parents arrive, and the receptionist comes out of Principal Waters’s office to usher them in. The door closes with a soft click only to open moments later as Principal Waters calls Hannah in too.
Which leaves me alone, by the doors, chilled by the draft coming in from the hallway and shaken by the inevitability that my mom is on her way.
And then she’s there, pushing through the doors in a much more hurried fashion than Hannah’s parents. She’s wearing the rubber-duck scrubs, her fall jacket open, flapping with the force of air pressing against her but not slowing her down.
“I’m here for my daughter,” she says to the receptionist, leaning over her desk. “Clarity Jones.”
“She’s right there, ma’am,” she says, pointing to me. “The principal is finishing up. He’ll call you in in a moment.”
Mom whirls around, gliding in one swift motion until she’s seated next to me. She grasps my shoulders, assessing my tearstained cheeks and the mascara I tried to wipe away but has now settled into raccoon eyes. Finally her gaze falls on my quivering lip.
“I’m sorry—” I start, but the principal opens his door and the Fitzpatricks come out.
“They are taking Hannah home for the rest of the day,” Principal Waters instructs the receptionist.
They stop at her desk, Hannah glancing at us but looking away quickly when she registers that my mom is here.
“That’s the girl who was at our house,” Mom whispers, assessing, processing. Her arm remains around my shoulders.
But it slips away when we have to stand up, because it’s our turn to go in.
I’ve never been inside the principal’s office. I’ve come to the main office before to hand in notes from my parents, their attempts at excusing my lateness or informing the school why I missed the previous day for a cold or an appointment or something.
But I’ve never had to pass the front desk; I’ve never had to go inside to see Principal Waters, to sit in the dark leather chairs across from his desk—across from him.
I wonder where Hannah sat. There are only the two extra chairs, which means one of her parents had to stand. Or maybe Hannah stood.
Mom pulls her chair closer to mine and sits.
Principal Waters sits. He takes a deep, silencing breath.
“Clarity, would you please tell us why we are here?” he asks.
“You can tell us. I don’t see why you would call me on my way to work if you didn’t have a reason,” Mom says before I can say anything.
Principal Waters sits up and clears his throat, the way some people do when they think they’re going to take control of a situation.
“Well, Mrs. Jones, it has come to my attention that your daughter and another student seem to be in a romantic relationship. I usually am not privy to these kinds of things, but today their relationship was brought to my and perhaps the entire school’s attention when highly inappropriate pornographic images were plastered on their lockers. ”
He pauses, shifting his gaze from my mom to me, and back to my mom.
The pause continues, the air turning stale and awkward while he waits for her to say something.
I want to steal a glance at Mom next to me, but I get that don’t poke the bear feeling and try to keep my eyes focused on anything else.
Her leather seat yawns as she sits back, silent.
“It’s distracting,” he adds, talking fast like his own voice is getting impatient. “This kind of behavior—”
“Behavior that—just so we’re clear—is a reflection of the character of another one of your students, someone who is not in this room and was not in the office—at least not when I arrived.”
“Well, yes—”
“Principal, correct me if I’m wrong, but my daughter didn’t put the picture on her own locker, and I’ve met Hannah—I’m assuming she’s involved since she was just here—and I highly doubt she put the pictures up.
So that means we are all here because you’re upset about something some other student—who is not being reprimanded—did to my daughter and her friend. ”
“Mrs. Jones, I—”
“No, what’s distracting—to put your own word to proper use here—is a school that would jump to discriminate against queer students, that allows bullies to tape porn to walls without consequence.”
I think Principal Waters shrinks two sizes. At least, that’s what happens to me when Mom gives me the look—the one where her eyes are wide so the whites shimmer with anger, and her mouth sets in a line when she’s done talking in her condescending, cruel tone.
I look away, realizing she could turn that look on me at any second if she chooses to.
I mean, she still might. I know right now she’s just defending me.
She’s not the kind of person who lets someone twist the truth, especially when it comes to her kid.
The stuff about discrimination just proves her point—but it’s not the same as being okay with me being gay.
“I wasn’t suggesting that your daughter was the problem.”
“That’s exactly what you were doing. I’m not stupid,” she snaps, her energy electrifying the room. “You were about to call her relationship a distraction. How dare you.”