Chapter 27 Vonda
Vonda
Goddammit, Vonda cursed. Martha was bringing another walk-in.
She wanted to leave a little early, get home and out in her garden before dinnertime. Reply to more of the crazy messages she’d been getting all week from friends saying how much she looked like some stupid sketch a wacko had put out on the internet.
Like she had either the time or inclination to futz around with online games, especially since now there was another student to contend with.
Martha brought the girl, Hannah Jenkins, to Vonda’s office.
With her burgundy-colored hoodie on, Hannah slumped into her chair without saying a word.
The only thing Vonda felt like asking her was, You going to take that goddamn hoodie off your head? You going to sit here in my office all disrespectful like that, hiding in your hoodie, not looking me in the eye?
And yet. And yet: You’re here because you want my help, aren’t you?
You’re going to tell me about how you’re depressed, how you miss your mommy and daddy, how the girls in your dorm aren’t treating you right.
You’re going to want me to do the impossible: make it all better, give you the confidence your helicopter parents never gave you.
Vonda drew a deep breath. She released it in a sigh she tried to keep quiet. “So,” she began in the sweetest voice she could muster. “What brings you in?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said, shrugging off her question.
And Vonda was off—launched once again on the school counselor’s tiresome dance, trying to pry it out of them, one basic question at a time. Where are you from? What year is this for you?
If their parents had forced the student to come in and see her, this would not be a productive chat.
If they came in on their own, they might talk eventually, but not until she wrestled it out of them because they were always too meek or hazy or immature to simply lay it out.
God, it was exhausting. Vonda dreamed of opening a counseling practice for adults, for halfway functional grown-ups willing to dive into their issues.
But even now, at the end of her flipping rope, there was something about the mix of innocence and arrogance of college students, cheeks still puffy with youth and eyes filled with both uncertainty and determination, that got to her.
Even when they thought they were more sophisticated than they were, and it grated on her nerves when they did, she enjoyed the challenge.
She could see enough of Hannah’s face to see she had flawless skin. Her upturned nose was smooth, with none of the pimples inflicting so many of the students from the awful cafeteria food they shoveled down. “Can I ask, was it your idea to come see me?”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess.”
Which is it? “I’m asking, did you come in because you wanted to, or because someone suggested it?”
“I mean, both.”
I mean, I mean, Vonda repeated in her head, giving an internal eye roll. I mean was the present-day like filler of the past. Not that like had gone anywhere.
Maybe instead of pulling weeds, she’d smoke some when she got home. Or have a few edibles.
“Someone suggested you come?”
Job #1 was finding out if their parents or friends sent them, if anyone at all knew of their plans to see the school counselor.
Not for any therapeutic reason, but because it flagged their eligibility for Vonda’s little side gig with Davis, which didn’t work if anybody in the subject’s personal circle knew of the visit.
She bobbed her head encouragingly at Hannah and waited her out, expecting her to continue averting her eyes and avoiding anything approaching decent conversation.
Hannah surprised her by being direct.
“I’m here because”—she sat up straighter—“because my math teacher has been coming on to me. I feel like my grades are at stake if I don’t play nice, and I don’t like that. I’m here to report him.”
Vonda sat up taller, too. Where had that come from? Usually, they were all so meek, so timid and afraid. And if they’d come in on their own, she could reel them in, gain their confidence, hook them up with Davis for additional counseling, a little pharma-therapy, and everyone would be happier.
But here this hooded girl had guts for a change and stated her problem head-on. And she didn’t use I mean even once. Vonda gave her a little standing O in her head. Maybe there was hope for this hollowed-out generation after all.
Vonda pulled a notepad out and started taking down Hannah’s statement.
Hannah claimed her Algebra 2 instructor, Mr. Caras, had taken to cornering her in the hallway and in the parking lot after evening classes.
He stood too close when he spoke to her, sometimes even touched her hair, pushing it behind her ear.
“An extremely intimate gesture,” Hannah said. “Don’t you think?”
Vonda looked down at her notepad, writing it down instead of answering her, surprised by her articulate question.
Hannah forged on, telling Vonda that lately he’d begun suggesting they go for drinks to talk about her performance in class, saying she might need some extra help with the formulas and equations.
Vonda continued to treat Hannah’s statements gently and with care. It was dangerous to have a student report something and not take it seriously.
Hannah looked at Vonda, wide-eyed, when she’d finished.
Vonda assured her that she’d done the right thing coming in. When Hannah asked what came next and how they’d be dealing with the situation, Vonda told her not to worry. That there was a process and that she would handle it with care so that there’d be as little backlash as possible.
But Vonda knew there was very little that could be done that wouldn’t make the girl’s life hell. Vonda would speak to Mr. Caras and get his take. In all her years here, she’d only gotten two other complaints about him. He was a great guy. And very intelligent.
But so was this student. She was not a candidate for Davis.
Despite the hood yanked down over her face, she was too sure of herself. Davis needed them meek and unsure. The easier to convince that the drugs would make them better—and the easier to persuade to go out with the men who paid Davis.
Not this girl, though. Vonda patted herself on the back for recognizing it.
She couldn’t have said why, but it dawned on her at that moment that this crazy social media sketch thing her friends were bugging her about might possibly have something to do with her work with Davis.
But that was ridiculous. Paranoid. What? Confess?
Confess that she sometimes referred certain girls to a qualified, trained psychoanalyst?
The state gave the guy his license, not her. It wasn’t her problem what he did with his patients. She didn’t do anything but get these girls the help they needed.
And what’s a woman in a criminally underfunded helping profession to do?
The cost of rent in Santa Monica was insane.
Sue her if she’d found a way to make some extra dough on the side through referrals.
And Davis had helped a lot of students, too.
A lot. The ones who couldn’t be helped .
. . well, couldn’t be helped by her. That was his call.
There’d been only one time she was aware of where things had gone off the rails, when the girl had too much of whatever they gave her and the guys who paid Davis for her ended up having to drop her off outside the doors of an ER in Santa Monica a few months back.
That had sounded like a mess. She’d ended up in a coma for several days, Vonda thought—but wasn’t positive on all the details.
What was her name? Summer? Or Somer? From Montana?
Vonda knew she hadn’t died, or did she? She couldn’t remember if she followed up on the story.
So many deaths around LA. How in the world would she follow them all?
But no, surely, she was still alive. So all was well that ended well.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the correct phrase for the outcome, but in the end, nobody got too severely hurt.
And these girls, they were so stupid sometimes. If they couldn’t figure out on their own that their doctor was getting them hooked on a drug, maybe it was time to learn a lesson or two.
But this girl before her now—no, she wouldn’t be seeing Davis.
She didn’t seem depressed. The opposite. She seemed out for blood. Maybe her grades weren’t as good as she claimed in Mr. Caras’s class. Maybe she just wanted to stir up trouble for him. Maybe she was simply being a drama queen.
Vonda made a note to check her transcripts, to speak to Mr. Caras to get a peek at Hannah’s grades. Get the skinny on this hooded avenger.
They’d have a good laugh about how sensitive the girls were these days.
The whole thing would blow over. The student would thank her in the long run.
Even if her story checked out for the most part, pursuing it wouldn’t be worth the hassle.
It was a harder, slimier game than they all thought—the he says/she says tug-of-war.
And there were much better games to play than dragging some poor professor through the mud over silly accusations.
Hannah wouldn’t be the first student she’d saved from such nonsense.
When she finally left work, Vonda was feeling good. Even slightly smug about the favor she’d done for the girl.
But fuck if the way life had been treating Vonda lately didn’t snuff out that sense of satisfaction within a matter of minutes as, driving down Broadway, she noticed a truck, a blue Ford with a black topper, looming behind her.
She vaguely remembered seeing one like it a few days ago on her street.
And she was positive she’d seen it pull out behind her as she’d left the college parking lot.
Chill, she told herself. This was SoCal.
Think how many thousands of trucks like it were cruising the streets of the greater LA area right that minute.
The whole area was crawling with vehicles, like insects, at any given moment.
She was paranoid because of this stupid sketch business.
When she got home, she’d delete those emails.
Wouldn’t even waste time answering them.
Sure enough, when she got home, she didn’t see any sign of the truck. And she followed through—opened up her computer and purged her inbox of every last sketch-related message.
Such a relief.
After she changed into old khaki shorts and a T-shirt and went outside to garden, she noticed the sky had turned an ugly skim-milk color.
The temperature had dropped. She went in and grabbed an old cotton sweatshirt, then a rake to take care of all the cherimoya leaves that had fallen onto her patio and part of her lawn.
When she bought the house, the Realtor told her that the cherimoya was a tree native to Ecuador, not California. As if she cared. Now she wanted to get all these irritating broad leaves off her patio and the tiny yard.
While she raked, she came upon a dead robin. Its bill and head were bloody, as if it had flown beak first into something hard. She turned to look at her kitchen window, and sure enough, a splat, like a Rorschach test, bloomed on the center of the glass.
Stupid bird, she thought as she raked it away with a pile of crunchy leaves. Away you go.
Her shoulders ached. She thought about going back inside, maybe having another of the edibles she’d grabbed before coming out. She left the pile of leaves and the dead bird beside her patio and decided to pick a few weeds around her sunflowers.
She looked up at the sky and squinted. Even though it was overcast, the sunlight still pierced through and felt like a hot iron pressing on her shoulders. “Goddammit.” She peeled off her sweatshirt. Probably would have to put it back on in another sixty seconds when the sun disappeared again.
Everything seemed to aggravate her lately. She thought again of the hooded girl in her office. Of the other girl in the hospital. Reminded herself to google her when she got inside. What was her last name? Somer what?
And what the hell, she’d also check to see if there’d been more hoopla with this sketch business.
She pulled weeds until her knees ached. But right as she decided to quit and scooped her last handful into her gloved hands, she heard a scuff behind her.
Before she could turn, her head was yanked back. Something cold and sharp pricked her neck.
“You move and you die,” a cold voice said. The voice surprised her, but only for a second before terror rushed through her in a wave. She froze, afraid to move with a blade pressing right into the nape of her neck, her skull cradled in the crook of someone’s arm.
“You know why this is happening?”
She was too freaked out to answer, but she managed to get a no out. But a big part of her did. Oh Jesus. Oh God. Maybe it wasn’t some social media game. “The drawing?” she got out.
“Why didn’t you confess? You don’t think you’ve done anything wrong?”
She couldn’t breathe. She dropped the weeds she was holding, started to bring her hands up to pull the knife from her throat, but she felt the sharp metal pierce her flesh.
Oh God, was this real?
Was this happening?
It all felt so otherworldly, but the tight grip around her head and neck felt more authentic and focused than anything ever. This was no joke.
“I can confess now,” she blurted, hearing her own breathiness. “The referrals? I mean, those were just . . . I mean, what he did with them, that wasn’t my call.”
The voice in her ear said, “Fuck you. It’s too late.”
She felt an excruciating pain slice through her throat and a flood of blood gurgling up.