Chapter 58
The cops didn’t ask me to give a statement again. Cess said it was because her lawyer scared the bejeezers out of them, and she might have been right, but after going to the trouble of coming to my school in a police car, it felt strange that now they didn’t need to talk to me at all.
In any case, the damage, as far as my reputation went, was done.
News of the relationship I’d had with Mr. Loukas had spread far and wide since Tessa had given her statement, which included my visit there that night.
Judgment was swift. I was labeled a tart, hussy, or harlot, depending on who was talking.
The journey from social outcast to harlot was more treacherous than I could have anticipated.
Before, I’d been merely unfortunate and possibly dangerous, but now I was a woman of loose morals, a victim of my own poor choices, which offered a convenient justification to anyone who wanted to pass judgment.
There’d been a time when I hadn’t thought my life could get any smaller.
I’d been wrong. There were no more bike rides, or bonfires, or long walks.
The mothers stopped looking at me at Mass, even Lucy Ormonde, one of my mother’s closest friends, who’d hugged me every time she saw me since my mother’s death and called me a dear girl.
The fathers, on the other hand, started looking at me, eyeballs wide and curious that the strange tall girl was the one to cause all this ruckus—it was always the ones you didn’t expect.
Mr. Stephens, the father of Dolly and Tammy, spat at me while passing me on the street.
Cess said it likely had nothing to do with me, that Mr. Stephens had always been vulgar and hadn’t been raised to understand that one shouldn’t spit in the street, but I wasn’t so sure.
It felt directed. Intentional. I’d come to notice the difference.
Billy Harris, unsurprisingly, wasn’t one to quietly ignore what had happened.
Whenever I passed him in the corridor he’d make a kissing noise, and ask if I was looking for a new boyfriend, or did I only like older men?
One horrible day he even followed me into the girls’ bathroom between classes, pushed me into a cubicle, and put my hand on his crotch—a kindness, he said, because I was probably missing it.
I stopped using the school bathrooms after that.
I did what I could to stay out of people’s way.
I volunteered to reshelve books in the library at lunchtime, I picked up litter after school.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t cease to exist, which appeared to be the only possible way I could avoid the wrath of the community.
My name was on everyone’s lips, all the time.
Apparently, there was no need to whisper it anymore.
I heard it in the schoolyard, in the library, on the street.
At least I wasn’t invisible anymore. I was everywhere.
Mad Mabel.
Mad Mabel.
Mad Mabel.
Through the aftermath of Mr. Loukas’s death, and all the accusations that came with it, Christos was the only person who kept talking to me.
In fact, he made a point of talking to me, more than he had before.
His friendship made me feel wonderful and terrible all at once.
Wonderful, because I was unused to having anyone stand beside me like that, other than Daphne.
Terrible because Christos suffered for his solidarity with me, and any hard-won inroads he had made in the social sphere appeared to be lost. Instead, as he walked the hallways, he received the same taunts that all the Greek kids did. Mostly from Billy Harris.
“Wog.”
“Dirty Dago.”
“Moussaka muncher.”
They weren’t especially clever or funny slurs, though you wouldn’t know it the way Christos laughed. I knew he did it to not allow anyone the satisfaction of hurting him, but he was pretty convincing. Sometimes, he even clapped back.
“Jeez, Billy, somewhere in the world there’s a tree working hard to produce oxygen so that you can breathe. I think you should go and apologize to it.”
I snickered.
“What did you say?” Billy said, getting up.
“Oh, you didn’t understand?” I said. “I’d explain but I don’t have the time or the crayons.”
Now Christos laughed.
Billy just looked confused.
It was nice having someone to hang out with, other than Daphne. Christos and I sat by each other in class. We walked to and from school. At school, we ate lunch on the bench outside the library, and Christos would tell me about what he was eating.
“This,” he would say, “is my mum’s spanakopita. Best spanakopita in the world.”
Every meal his mother made was “the best in the world,” and indeed, I hadn’t tasted a bad one. “Is that so?”
He grinned. “Come over for dinner sometime,” he said one day. “Then you can try Mum’s moussaka.”
No one had asked me to come over for dinner before. Certainly not a boy! And now here was Christos, suggesting it as if it were completely normal. I wondered what Cess would say.
“I’d love to,” I said quickly. “Especially if the moussalata is half as good as the spanakopita.”
“Moussaka,” he said with a laugh.
I snorted. “Sorry. Moussaka.”
Christos looked me dead in the eye. “Did you just … snort?”
I couldn’t help it, I snorted again. Christos burst out laughing. “You did it again!”
“Hey, it’s not as bad as Daphne,” I said. “She farts when she laughs.”
Christos doubled over laughing. It was like a drug. I was addicted.
We spent the entire lunch period laughing. A few people stared, one made a rude comment. Christos and I just laughed. It wasn’t until we were walking back to class that he said: “Is Daphne your friend?”
I nodded.
“You should tell her to join us sometime.”
I said I would. But I didn’t.
The first time Christos kissed me was at the beach.
There was a little cove that he knew about that you had to climb over the bluffs to get to, which meant it was secluded and we were the only ones there.
He brought fish-and-chips and a bag of Greek sweets his mother had made.
I brought a blanket that we lay on in the afternoon sun.
It was so different from Mr. Loukas. Then, I couldn’t talk at all.
With Christos, I talked and talked and talked.
I couldn’t stop. I told him about my father, and how much I hated him.
I told him about Cess and Ness, and how much I loved them.
I told him about my mother, about Kitty.
He told me about Greece, about his brothers, about his parents and cousins and uncles.
When we finished the fish-and-chips, he asked me to close my eyes while he fed me the treats his mother had made. They were delicious, as I knew they would be. More delicious, though, was the feeling of his fingers brushing my lips. It was bliss. It was agony.
I opened my eyes. “Good?” he asked.
“Very good.”
He grinned. And I knew I’d found him.
I lay down. He did too.
I’d finally found my Gilbert Blythe.