Honor Code

by Kiersi Burkhart

  I was the one who threw away the only relationship here that meant anything to me—for him.

  I did this, and now it’s up to me to clean it up.

  -----------------------

  The sun is out, but everything is cold. I spaced checking the temperature like I always do before leaving the room, and now I’m totally underdressed. My legs are icicles by the time I get to Morning Prayer, but the sting of it feels good. Distracting. A different kind of pain.

  I pass under bare, skeletal trees on my way to Cath. Their limbs hang out over the main walkway like warped, arthritic bones.

  I slide into my seat right as the doors close. Thank god the First Years are relegated to the far back pews so I don’t have to worry about seeing . . . him. I don’t try to talk to Gracie.

  I am made out of playing cards. Even a light breeze could send me scattering.

  Later, Gracie and I end up standing next to each other by accident in the long breakfast line, and it takes forever to get our meal cards swiped. I wonder if she’ll ask about how bad I look this morning, but she says nothing. Once I’m inside, I scan the whole cafeteria, searching for him.

  There. By the buffet exit, walking off with his buddy Cal, carrying a tray stacked full of yellow eggs and shining-greasy bacon.

  It’s a stab through my abdomen.

  They’re joking about something. Laughing.

  My vision pulses with black and red, watching them enjoy themselves. How dare he! How can he act like everything is normal?

  All the places he touched me ache. I can feel every single one of them as if they are glowing red hot, right through my clothes. I turn away to pick a carton of milk off the rack, in case he looks over. But he won’t.

  Because I was disposable to him. I was a stinky little burger wrapper that went in the trash once it was done being a napkin. I don’t know why I bothered buying a meal today—I’m not hungry. Anything that goes down will surely come back up.

  I stick to the wall with my tray to put as much space between me and Scully as I can, keeping my eyes on the floor. Even my toes feel not quite attached to my body, out of my control, just like the rest of the world.

  Only one more week until we get to go home for break. I just have to make it one week.

  It feels like the rest of my life.

  Lilian and Eliza are already sitting at our usual table, chatting about something asinine. Gracie sets down her tray across from them and gets out her homework. She scribbles out her assignment for math later, mumbling some curse words to herself as she erases a problem and starts over for the second time.

  None of the other girls talk to me, as if I’m emitting waves of fuck off. I force myself to toss down as much buttered toast as I can. Hayden can pinch my fat as much as she wants next year, and it won’t make a difference to me.

  In Art History, it seems like people sit an extra six inches away—as if I’m contagious. Or maybe I’m the one doing it.

  I don’t want anyone to touch me, even by accident.

  Paying attention in class is impossible. One of my teachers is saying something interesting about conspiracy theories, but not five minutes deep, and my own personal video starts again in the background. A scene-by-scene, slow-mo instant replay of last night.

  My own brain has betrayed me.

  I grit my teeth together and press the graphite tip of my pencil into my notebook. I’m going to take notes. But the lecture doesn’t keep me for more than a few minutes before the memory worms forward again.

  Zzzzzt.

  The sound travels through me whenever the replay starts over, reverberating in my elbows, knees, anywhere my joints connect.

  I skip lunch. I’m still not hungry, and I can’t sit through another meal, pretending to smile, trying to act like everything is fine as Bex, Gracie, and the others go on as usual. I have this irrational feeling that anyone who gets too close to me will know. They’ll smell it on me. Whatever it is, this disease—I’ll pass it on to everyone within my vicinity.

  As I trudge across brown, crispy, dead grass back to Isabel House, a bitter winter gust blows past, buffeting a flag on the flagpole so it makes a wretched snapping sound. I thought I knew this place, but now, I feel like I’m walking across the surface of Mars. I keep scanning the horizon to make sure I don’t run into him, since our dorms are right next to each other.

  The first thing I do in our room is yank open my wardrobe. Clothes avalanche out from when I shoved them all in there to pass inspection this morning. Buried under my stinky tennis shorts are the blue shirt, the black skirt, the torn leggings. What was once my favorite outfit. The blue shoes are smeared with mud.

  I look at them for a long time, and my throat and stomach lurch as if I might throw up.

  I shove the clothes in the plastic Nordstrom’s bag that my dress came in and seal it up. Then I walk downstairs to the dumpster out back, lift the heavy metal lid, and throw the bag in.

  Gone. Forever. The lid clangs closed. But somehow my head is still pounding, and my body is still stinging.

  I go tell Jean that I’m sick and I need to skip class.

  “Do you want to see the nurse?” she asks.

  “No. Cramps are just worse than usual.”

  She takes one look at me and clears me for a sick day.

  I clean up as many of my things around the room as I can, until my half sparkles. I make a trip to the basement and wash all my clothes on HEAVY SOIL. When they’re clean and dried, I fold them and put them away and head into the bathroom with a towel.

  I turn on the hot water and just stand under it. Starting at my hairline, I take a bar of soap and start scrubbing. It’s one of those fancy soap bars with coffee grounds in it, something my mom gave me because it would be good for my skin. “Exfoliating,” as she calls it.

  I’ve always hated it because it’s so scratchy. Right now it’s perfect.

  I work the soap down the sides of my face, across my mouth, where his mouth was. Where his tongue lapped up mine. On the underside of my breasts I find scattered red stars where blood vessels burst, from when he grabbed and twisted my flesh through my bra.

  I reach the crux of my legs and for a long moment, I can’t touch there. My own body has become foreign to me, an alien body.

  Outside the bathroom stall, somebody complains about there being no hot water. “Someone’s been in here showering for a long time,” a girl says. “So freaking rude!”

  There’s still some warm water, I want to screech at her. Anyway, cold water is good for you. Maybe your skin won’t break out all the time if you stop inflaming all your pores. She’s probably one of those girls who watched gleefully as Hayden poked and prodded me that first night of school. I hope she gets athlete’s foot.

  I squash my tongue between my teeth until it hurts, then reach for the spot between my legs with my melting bar of scratchy coffee soap. There, I scrape hardest. I punish and punish. I think about what these parts were made for and I feel sick again.

  I scrape and scrape. The water turns lukewarm. Girls in stalls on both sides let out groans.

  “Where’d all the hot water go?”

  “Take shorter showers, you vain people.”

  But I don’t care about any of them. I finish up at the crux and work my way down my legs. The water goes from lukewarm to cold. Everybody’s bitching and moaning. I put the soap back in my soap box, turn off the cold water, and towel off. I exit the stall like nothing is wrong.

  From across a football field, anyone could tell: this girl is rotten.

  -----------------------

  http://privateschoolnewb.tumblr.com

  Dec. 11, 2017

  I had to go back to classes today unless I was willing to visit the nurse and obtain a note (spoiler alert: I’m not). So instead I excuse myself a lot to go to the bathroom, just to escape being close to other people.

  Boarding school looks like:

  Living inside an ever-shrinking metal box.

  I can’t escape him
anywhere. I hear him laugh in the dining hall, even though he avoids looking at me. The sound of his voice makes bile come up my throat. He hasn’t spoken to me once, and I work hard to keep it that way. Every time I see him I fill up with something sour and sharp. But I can’t help passing him on my way to class.

  I always duck into the crowd, evaporate, disappear.

  I hate them—all these vapid, boring creatures happily living out their pointless little lives. I am a satellite revolving around the planet that all the other normal, insipid people inhabit. Going about their useless daily business, unaware of all of the chains holding them down, the fake world they swim inside like feeder fish in an aquarium.

  -----------------------

  We have Chemistry in the computer lab this week, because we’re making renderings of molecules out of 3D atoms. Thank god. Lectures are the worst—my mind floats away and the memory worms its way forward. The sound of my own struggle, his voice saying Isn’t this what you wanted? clobbers anything that might be happening in real life, in front of me.

  Hands-on classes, at least, hold my interest longer, despite how little I’ve been sleeping. I’ve learned Scully’s schedule, so I spend hours awake, obsessing over the best route to class that will avoid even having to see him.

  It’s harder than you’d think at a boarding school to avoid someone. Everyone is everywhere all the time.

  I sit down next to two girls looking at the internet, while the teacher sets up for class in the front of the room. They’re giggling about something, scrolling down. It’s rude to snoop, but I’ve got no self-control anymore. I look over at their screen.

  For a second I don’t believe what I’m seeing. One of the girls covers her mouth as she reads.

  We draw in our sketchbooks in the low light most nights, giggling at our renditions of Him. He models a lot for the Drawing Club, so we have tons of material to draw from (so to speak). Usually we sketch Him so His huge pecs stretch out His too-tight shirts.

  This can’t be real.

  I reach over, grab the mouse out of the girl’s hand, and close the window. She gasps and spins in her chair toward me.

  “What the hell?”

  “What? You know how Mrs. Romero is. If she catches you goofing off, we all get a shit grade for today.”

  They whisper some rude things about me, but keep the window closed and switch over to the assignment. The rest of the lecture, my heart is thundering.

  Has that blog gone all around the school by now? It would be so easy to figure out who wrote it.

  My hands are shaking when Mrs. Romero gives us the go-ahead to start building our molecule. I shuffle my chair closer to the two girls from before, and they glare at me.

  “What were you looking at?” I whisper.

  “Aren’t we gonna get in trouble?” the first girl says in a mocking voice.

  “Did you not hear me?” I ask. “What the fuck were you looking at?”

  They both stare at me. I guess that unexpected aggression has bewildered them out of a snarky reply.

  “Just some stupid thing we found reblogged on the private school tag,” the second girl says defensively. “Chill out. I don’t even remember what it was called.”

  So they didn’t get to . . . well, anything else. That’s one small good, at least.

  Back in my room, I look up the tag the girls mentioned and try to get an idea of how far it’s spread.

  Only a few notes. Good.

  But it should come down before anyone else finds it.

  -----------------------

  The next day is the last day of school before we’re released for winter break. It’s been raining nonstop, and the paths and streets run black with mud. I think Gracie wants to get out of here as badly as I do. She doesn’t hustle at all at tennis, and she barely responds when I ask her questions about our homework.

  People feel farther away than ever before, like Edwards itself is trying to eject me. You were never welcome here, it says, covering my pant legs in mud. Now have you learned your lesson?

  That afternoon, when I get up to close the blinds, I see Gracie staring intently at something on her computer screen. Out of curiosity I peek over to see what she’s looking at.

  Gray background. White, script-like text.

  The blog.

  Goosebumps creep down my arms. I can’t pretend like it doesn’t exist anymore. We have to talk about this.

  I sit back down on my side of the desk, my throat tight and tingly.

  “Gracie?” I ask.

  Her head snaps up from the screen, and she hastily closes the computer.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” That’s probably the friendliest tone she’s used since the Mixer.

  “Last week . . .” I force down the bile crawling up my throat. “I went to Scully’s room. For tutoring.”

  At the mention of Scully’s name, her face changes. Her lips are flat, her eyes staring intently at me.

  “He . . .” I want to reach into my own throat and pull the words out, since they won’t come on their own. “He made us tea. And then he . . . he pushed me down on the couch and . . .”

  “Sam.” Her voice is strained. “This happened to you?”

  I nod, slowly, and I can’t keep my composure any longer. The tears wrench themselves free. Within a few seconds the steady stream becomes a river. My chest is seizing, heaving, as Gracie comes around the desk. I slide out of my chair, onto the floor, and she falls down to her knees next to me. Her arms wrap around me as each sob comes in a lurching gasp. It’s as if my body is an exploding star, slowly sucking itself in, until all that’s left is a black hole.

  All the secrets between us spill out in a flood—every last one. Ugly and wretched, knotted in themselves like steel wool. I still have the bruises, but she doesn’t need to see them to know. My sobs are all it takes.

  “He’s . . . he’s . . .” I press my wet eyes against Gracie’s shoulder. “He’s a fucking monster.”

  She rubs a circle on my back, not speaking.

  “How . . . how did I not . . . know?” I cry. There are so many things I could have done differently. This is all my fault. None of this would have happened if I had just—

  “People like him—they’re good at hiding it,” she says, pulling away from me. Her eyes shimmer with tears, but her face is hard and cool, like stone. “This is Edwards Academy, Sam. You aren’t supposed to know. And everyone lets him get away with it.”

  I wipe my face with my hands. She’s right. Scully’s House Dad cleared me, no problem. Surely he saw that the door was closed and just didn’t care. Maybe he knew exactly what was going to happen that night.

  Maybe he let it happen.

  I remember how Scully’s name was missing from the Naughty and Nice lists. How I never mentioned it to Gracie.

  Maybe Hayden just let it happen, too.

  When I look at Gracie now, it’s as if the whole shape and color of her has changed. Like the thin screen of glittery, nostalgic sepia tone that covered everything has finally been lifted, and the ugliness underneath is all there is.

  Who else has seen the real Edwards Academy? How many other people simply watch, and don’t say a word?

  -----------------------

  Coming clean with Gracie doesn’t change things between us as much as I’d hoped. We try to talk, to be friends like before, but our old pattern continues on: pretending like nothing is wrong; pretending like Scully doesn’t fill up the air, leaving no space for words. My guilt has consumed whatever we were.

  Edwards has gotten inside us. Acting like everything is okay, when really we’re stretched like taffy so far that we’re about to split in the middle.

  Scully’s presence hovers, a shadow creature that has sunk its curled claws into us—and holds on.

  Gracie can’t seem to look at me. I feel angry. Not at her, not even at Scully. Just . . . angry. In a way I’ve never felt before. Like an ember of coal, just hot enough to stay lit.

  I can’t believe how
unfair it is—that Scully still walks around school, laughing with his friends like everything is fine, and only we suffer. Only we carry this burden on our chests. Only we drown under it.

  Thankfully, it’s time to go home for Christmas break. Getting away from this place for a while will be good for me. I hope it will be good for Gracie, too, not to have me around her as a reminder of what happened.

  When I go to meet my parents at pick-up, I stop in front of the white clock tower, covered in grime from last night’s rain. At least, for a few weeks, I won’t have to hear that obnoxious thing ringing out on the hour, every hour.

  I could hug my parents’ station wagon when I see it at the curb and climb in the back.

  Chapter Eleven

  http://privateschoolnewb.tumblr.com

  Dec. 25, 2017

  It’s Christmas Day. There’s snow on the ground outside. And it’s the first Christmas morning of my life that I haven’t woken up excited to go downstairs and open my presents.

  I hate being awake in general, because then the replay goes on again, nothing to stop it. Even when I watch a movie with my family, I can only absorb it for four or five minutes before it starts up again.

  Zzzzzt.

  I wonder if my family notices that I’m different. I don’t go downstairs much. I have a lot less to say to them. I worry that if I am around them too long, they’ll know.

  The one thing I am grateful for is that I got my period. Who knows if that slimy meathead gave me something. At least I know this: I am for sure not pregnant.

  This lets me believe that eventually, everything will be okay again.

  Someday.

  -----------------------

  Winter break is long and dull. I expected to relish having all the hours in the world to study and prepare for finals, but I just obsess over everything. The Mixer. Scully. Gracie. How I could have stopped it all from happening in the first place.

  I try to call Gracie, just to see if we can clear the air. Restart again in the new semester.

  I need her.

  But she doesn’t answer. I leave a voicemail. Surely she’ll hear it and change her mind by the time we see each other at school again. We will reunite back in our room and throw our arms around each other, now that she’s realized how terrible it was being apart for so long without speaking at all.