Thousand Words

by Jennifer Brown

  Since this had happened, they had been focused on how it affected them. It seemed a little unfair. I was the one in trouble. I was the “sex offender.” It seemed like there was a “me” and a “them” now; not an “us.”

  By the time I finished talking, the sky had darkened and the streetlamps had come on, bathing Mack and me in an orange glow. The spray paint on the ramps took on a peculiar brightness, the concrete at their bottoms black pools.

  I waited for Mack to say something. To open his mouth and speak. What I really wanted was for him to share his story now, to tell me how he’d ended up in Teens Talking and what his project was about. But when he finally opened his mouth, the only word that came out was “Sucks.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It does.” And then more silence stretched between us, and part of me felt like he was expecting me to say something more, but I’d told him everything. Or at least everything I was willing to tell. And he’d told me nothing, as usual. And he wasn’t going to. So I finally gathered myself up and said, “I probably should go.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Mack answered.

  I put on my shoes, then stood and sideways-walked down the ramp and picked up my backpack. I glanced at Mack, who was tying his shoes. “Next time show me the creek?”

  “Sure,” he said, without looking up.

  I headed back home, thinking about how, even though Mack hadn’t told me his story, he’d at least listened to mine. In some ways, my step felt lighter for having told it. I just hoped I didn’t end up regretting it.

  SEPTEMBER

  Message 174

  Is it true ur up for grabs? Cuz I’ll grab!

  I told my mom that I needed to retake a test before school, so she dropped me off on the way to work and I was there before anyone else. For some reason, this seemed like the safest bet to me. If I was going to try to fly low and incognito, like Vonnie suggested, the best way would be not to make a grand entrance.

  I took my books to the library and studied under the flickering fluorescent lights, trying to keep my mind off my cell phone.

  It had buzzed all night long. Part of me wanted to turn it off, make it stop, but another part of me—the humiliated part—knew that the messages were happening no matter if my phone was off or on. If they were going to be sent, I wanted to at least be in the know. In some ways I couldn’t tear myself away from them, no matter how much they hurt to read. So I left the phone on, a piece of me sinking lower and lower every time the alert sounded. Message after message after message. Vonnie, trying to comfort me, trying to tell me that nobody would care. Friends asking what the hell happened, asking if it was faked, asking why I did it.

  And the unfamiliar numbers. Those were the worst. Those were the ones calling me a slut and making disgusting suggestions about what I should be doing in future pictures. I guessed that some of those might have come from Kaleb’s friends, and maybe even some from Holly or whoever the hell he was with now.

  At first I had read them all, even answered some of them, but after a while I’d given up. I read them and deleted them, and then eventually started deleting them without reading. I hoped that at least someone out there had done the same thing with my photo: deleted it.

  The closer it got to the first bell, the more on edge I got. My foot twitched on the floor uncontrollably. My hands shook. That ringing in my ears came back. And as students began to trickle into the library, handing in books, passing through, I felt more and more like I was rooted to my chair. I would never be able to get up and walk to class. I wasn’t strong enough.

  But soon—way quicker than I wanted it to be—Mrs. Dempsey, the librarian, came by with a handful of books and said, “Class starts in three minutes.”

  I closed my book and stood on weak legs, peering out into the hallway through the library windows. Everything looked normal. Nobody seemed to be scandalized out there. Maybe Vonnie was right and this was nothing. Maybe nobody would say anything at all.

  I gathered my things and slithered out of the library, hurling myself into the stream of students, looking nowhere but straight ahead. I put one foot in front of the other, hoping to get to my destination without incident.

  I turned the corner, bypassing my locker, heading to the science wing.

  And that was where Nate was standing, with Silas and Danny Cross. Danny had his arm slung around the neck of his girlfriend, Taylor, whose friend Jenna was standing on the other side of her.

  Silas saw me and, as if in slow motion, a knowing grin spread across his face and he bumped Nate’s biceps with his elbow. Nate’s head jerked up and our eyes met, and he let out a bark of laughter, bending at the waist and covering his mouth with his palm like douchebag guys do when they want everyone to look at them. Like an animal herd, the whole group snapped to attention, their heads popping up, their faces at first curious and then turning to disgust, or hate, or laughter.

  I swallowed and kept walking, pretending I couldn’t see them. Blind. I’m blind. I don’t see this.

  “Hey, Ashleigh,” Silas called. “You look good today. Something’s different, though. What is it?” Against my will, I turned toward him, just in time to see him tapping his chin in mock-serious thought, like he was the damn Thinker or something. He snapped his fingers. “Oh! Dude! I know what it is! You got your hair cut. No, no. That’s not it.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, but even I could feel that my will wasn’t really behind it. I was going for hateful but was probably only achieving fearful beggary. Please don’t say anything, please don’t say anything.

  “Nah, she got contacts,” Nate said.

  “No, it’s something bigger than that. Something I can’t quite put my finger on…” Silas cupped his hands in front of his chest like he was holding on to a pair of breasts, and Nate and Danny were practically drooling all over themselves with laughter. A few more people were pausing to gape at what was going on, and despite the fact that I was trying so hard to be blind to them, I could still see what they were doing, the way they laughed, the way they leaned their heads together to talk. I forced my legs forward, willing them to go faster, faster. All I had to do was get around them and through the doorway of my science class right on the other side. It was the same as ignoring the pain at the end of a really long run, I tried to tell myself.

  “Oh! I know what it is!” Silas finally boomed, and his words felt like shrapnel landing on me. “You have clothes on! That’s totally why I didn’t recognize you.”

  Don’t hear it, Ashleigh, I told myself. Be blind and deaf to it. Exist in your own quiet, dark world. You’re in a tunnel. You’re floating. Just a few more feet and you’re there at the finish line.

  But as I passed Danny, Taylor looked over her shoulder and said, so quietly it was almost not there at all, “Slut.”

  Her friend Jenna nodded in agreement. “Skank.”

  And the looks on their faces were not of cruelty, but of such disappointment—like they’d expected me to be better than that—I wanted to fall on the floor and cry. I wanted the door at the end of the hall to open up and suck me out into a tornado, spit me out in another school, where nobody had a clue who I was. Taylor had been on cross-country last year. We’d shared a bag of M&M’S on the way home from one of our meets. She’d been in my Algebra II class. She’d always been so nice.

  She’d always been so nice.

  Way too nice to ever stand, drunk and naked, in front of a bathroom mirror and take a picture of herself. Way too nice to send that picture to her college-bound boyfriend. She would never even have entertained the idea.

  And something about that knowledge made me feel all the more humiliated. Because I had thought I’d be too nice to do something like that, too. But obviously I wasn’t nearly as nice as I’d thought I was.

  Just be blind. Don’t see their faces. Don’t hear their words. Be in the dark. Bottom-of-a-well dark. Lost-in-a-forest dark.

  Somehow I made it into my science classroom, and somehow I endured the whispering I heard around me w
hile Mr. Kenney, clueless, wrote notes on the board. Somehow I kept from crying when Tyler Smart held up his cell phone and the people around us snickered as my breasts, my belly flashed across the tiny screen.

  And I made it down the hallway again, just me, just blind and deaf Ashleigh, just floating Ashleigh, to my English class, and somehow I didn’t throw up in ceramics class when my table partner, Phillip, kept molding boobs into the sides of the bowl he was making, joking that he was going to call his piece Ode to Maynard.

  Somehow I made it through until lunch.

  Vonnie and Cheyenne were sitting at our usual table, hunched over a shared plate of Tater Tots, when I got there. I was in a horrible mood and wasn’t certain that I was going to be able to make it through the rest of the day. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it through without crying. Someone had grabbed my butt when I’d leaned over to stuff my backpack into my locker, someone had called me a whore when I’d walked past one of the lunch tables, and I’d had enough. I didn’t want to be touched or called names. I didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

  I grabbed a pudding cup from the mobile cart and flopped down next to Vonnie. Cheyenne didn’t look up from her lunch, and probably I was being too sensitive, but something about the way she was ignoring me felt like the last straw. If I couldn’t count on my friends to act normal, how could I expect anyone else in the school to act that way?

  “What? Should I sit somewhere else?” I snapped.

  Cheyenne’s eyes went wide. “What?”

  I pulled the foil off my pudding. “You look embarrassed.”

  “Oh,” she said, and flushed. She bent her head low and stuffed a Tater Tot into her mouth. “I’m not,” she said around the Tot.

  Rachel and Annie sauntered over with trays of pizza and sat down across from Cheyenne. They were talking quietly together. And as much as I wanted to have a normal lunch—at least have that much in this horrible day—I couldn’t keep the upset that had been filling me up all day from spilling over.

  “So, Rachel,” I said, “I have been meaning to thank you.”

  She turned toward me, and I noticed that neither of them—actually, nobody at the table—looked particularly happy. She raised her eyebrows.

  “That idea you had about sending Kaleb a photo of myself was a really great one.” I gave her a thumbs-up and a cheesy grin.

  Annie blinked a few times, chewing. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Rachel just kept eating, didn’t say anything.

  We all ate in uncomfortable silence, and all I could hear in the mumbling and murmuring surrounding me was my name. I didn’t know if it was really there or not, but I heard it. And I wondered how long this would go on—me hearing my name murmured over and over—before I went insane.

  Finally, Vonnie leaned over and swallowed the Tater Tot in her mouth. “Everyone is talking about it. In all my classes. Has it been bad?”

  “Only if you consider being called a slut a thousand times bad,” I said. “But, hey, it’ll all blow over, no big deal, right, Von?”

  She held out her palms at me. “Whoa, Buttercup, you better cool your shit. I’m trying to be supportive here.”

  “Well, I appreciate your support,” I said, my tone caustic. I knew I was lashing out at the wrong people, but I couldn’t help myself. I was so frustrated and hurt and determined not to let it show. I would not cry. I would not react. I would will this to blow over. But I was so close to exploding, I could feel my skin vibrating under my fingernails. I wanted to stand up on the table and yell, It was just a mistake! But I also wanted to crawl under the table and die. Mostly, I just wanted the day to be over.

  “I got the text like ten times,” Rachel said. She still didn’t look up from her pizza.

  “Me, too,” Cheyenne said. “Somebody added your name and phone number to some of them, Ash.” She glanced up at me. I held my pudding-filled spoon in midair between the table and my mouth. So that was how I was getting all those texts from unknown numbers.

  “Who would do that?” I gasped. I could feel tears prickling the corners of my eyes, and I blinked rapidly to keep them inside. Do not cry, Ashleigh, do not cry. You are a raisin, you are shriveled and dried up, and your eyes have no tears.

  “I just figured you’d want to know,” Cheyenne said quietly. “I think pretty much everybody has gotten the text by now.”

  “I heard that some kid in the junior high is showing it around,” Annie said. “I don’t know if that’s true, though. Like, who would send it to a junior high kid? That’s gross.”

  I dropped my spoon back into my cup, not hungry at all anymore. “Oh my God,” I said, resting my forehead in my hands. “Oh my God.”

  Vonnie put her hand on my arm. “Don’t freak out. It’ll be okay.”

  “That’s so easy for you to say,” I moaned into my palms. I felt hot, a trickle of sweat coursing down my back. “It’s not you who everyone has seen naked. I can’t believe Kaleb did this to me.”

  “Even my brother didn’t send his slutty girlfriend’s picture around, and he was, like, so proud of that thing,” Rachel added. “He told everyone in the world about it, but he didn’t show it to anyone.”

  I glared at her. It had never been clearer to me how much I couldn’t stand Rachel. Not to mention how much I didn’t see how Vonnie could like her. When Rachel talked about the texts, she almost seemed excited. Like on the inside she was thrilled this had happened to me so she had something to dish about. “Could we not talk about your brother’s slutty girlfriend right now? That’s what got me into this mess. Thanks to you, everyone is calling me slutty now.”

  Rachel licked her lips. “Look, I know you’re having a bad day, but just so you know, you’re not alone. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve been asked today if we do it, girl-on-girl? Do you know how many times I’ve been asked to send a picture of myself around? You’re the one who decided to go all full frontal, and I’m paying for it.”

  “Oh, so I’m supposed to feel sorry for you now?” I said, incredulous. “It was your stupid idea in the first place, Rachel. Do you really think what you’re going through is anywhere near the humiliation I’m going through?”

  Rachel was definitely the type of person who would think that. She would totally adopt my humiliation if that was what it took to get some sympathy from someone. But I wasn’t going to let her. So somebody had asked her a rude question. Poor baby. It was the broken acrylic all over again. Her whole life was one big snapped-fingernail meltdown.

  “I didn’t think you’d actually do it,” she said, and again her lips curved upward, like she was enjoying this. “And besides, I thought you’d just flash your boobs or something. Not get totally naked. It’s really embarrassing.”

  I got up and grabbed my pudding cup. “Well, I’ll make this easier on you, then, Rachel. I’ll leave. You don’t have to be associated with me anymore.”

  “Buttercup…” Vonnie said, but I ignored her. I wheeled around and marched out of the lunchroom, tossing my trash into the garbage bin on my way out. It landed against the side of the bin and slopped pudding up onto the cafeteria wall. But I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting some alone time.

  I stormed down the hall and out the front door. I sat on a bench in the sun until the bell rang for fifth period to begin, trying hard to let the stress melt off of me. But I was so tense I felt coiled, ready to spring. I was physically unable to calm down. On some level, I knew my embarrassment wasn’t Rachel’s fault for suggesting I take the picture, or Vonnie’s for pissing Kaleb off. But it felt easier at that moment to blame them, if for no other reason than to have someone in this mess with me, just so I wasn’t alone in my mistake.

  I stood, turned to face the school. Listened to the hoots and calls of lunch-recharged students as they bounded up and down the stairs, wove in and out of crowds, slammed locker doors. They were all energized again. Plenty of oomph for a new round of Call Ashleigh Names.

  I couldn’t do it. />
  I wasn’t blind.

  Or deaf.

  I could see and hear everything.

  I turned around and walked home.

  “Are you sick?” Mom had poked her head in my bedroom door. She was still wearing her sunglasses. “The school called to say you missed fifth, sixth, and seventh periods.”

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Just lay there, facedown, my cheek pressed into the folds of my pillow, staring out the window across my bedroom. Somewhere, hidden in the gloss of the window, there was a heart with Kaleb’s and my initials written in it. I’d drawn it in some condensation on the glass one night last winter while talking to him on the phone. When it got cold again, the heart would reappear, a ghost of the past sent to taunt me.

  I was no longer pretending to be blind or deaf. Instead, I was frozen. Laid out on a slab of ice, like in a morgue. I was stuck there. I couldn’t move.

  Mom opened the door a little wider. “You need a chuck bucket?”

  “Just a bad day,” I mumbled, my cheek scratching against the pillow. Getting frostbitten. Turning black and dying. “Sorry I left without asking.”

  She sighed and I heard her purse hit the floor; a jangling of car keys. “Is this about Kaleb?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how. Yes, it was about Kaleb, but not like she thought. I wasn’t simply heartsick over a boy. This was much, much worse than that.

  “Okay,” she said, almost to herself. “Listen, we can talk while we fix dinner. Come down in fifteen minutes?”

  “ ’Kay,” I said, though I knew that even if I’d wanted to, I’d never be able to get up and walk down the stairs to help her cook dinner. I thought I almost saw one edge of the heart shape on my window. If I squinted and stared really hard, it was there. I could maybe even see the “K” inside the heart. I glared at it. Hate you. Hate me. Hate us.