Honor Code

by Kiersi Burkhart

  “The prestigious Edwards Academy is under fire after a senior student, Scully Chapman, was accused of sexual assault of a freshman student,” says the anchor.

  They replay the phone video of Scully being led out of Thomas House in handcuffs.

  “Chapman was arrested Thursday night. The case might have remained under the radar, but The New York Inspector then published an exposé of hazing at the school and the alleged rape.”

  The news flashes quotes from the article published in The Inspector.

  The first night of school, they take off freshman girls’ clothes to evaluate them for imperfections. Then they tell us how to improve.

  “Edwards Academy’s strict code of conduct kept the anonymous victim from coming forward about her alleged assault for more than a month,” the anchor goes on. “The claim could have far-reaching effects for the prestigious private boarding school.”

  I pushed him away repeatedly. I didn’t scream because I didn’t want everyone else on the hall to hear, but I wanted him to stop, and he knew it.

  . . . upperclassman students like Chapman have the authority to do whatever they want.

  As the girls start to chitter among themselves, I keep my face blank. A few people throw candy wrappers at the TV screen.

  “That girl is such a coward,” a Third Year says from where she sits on the couch arm.

  “Seriously, hiding like that behind a pseudonym to talk to some reporter,” Hayden says. She turns her head, and like Bex, her eyes focus right on me. The police must have talked to her, too. “That’s definitely a violation of the honor code. If she had a problem, she should have let us resolve it before she aired her dirty laundry to the whole world.”

  I don’t return the eye contact. I suddenly feel so lightheaded that I might pass out.

  Then she turns away, back to the TV.

  I return to my room before the segment is over, saying I have to study, and fall face-first onto my bed.

  I am perched on the edge of a cliff. Bex and Hayden stand right behind me, ready to push me over. But they aren’t touching me yet. They aren’t pushing.

  They could at any moment, though, and I would fall right off the side.

  I get on the computer and reflexively check for an email from Gracie, like I always do. Nothing, of course. The same nothing it’s been ever since Scully took her from me.

  On Facebook, I find The Inspector article pasted all over my feed. Everyone, Edwards student or not, has an opinion about “Jen.”

  “How could anyone say this bullshit?” someone says.

  “Scully would never do this,” a girl from my study group says. “She’s just dragging him because she got turned down.”

  “Selfish. She’s totally unaware of the consequences of her actions.”

  “I bet somebody’s paying her.”

  I knew some Edwards kids would be loyal to Scully. That’s not news to me. But I didn’t expect all of them to fall so neatly in line.

  I climb into bed. Even though I have two finals tomorrow, there’s nothing left in me.

  -----------------------

  I start a countdown to someone discovering that Jen is me.

  But nothing happens as finals creak on. Word travels around that the body survey exposé got Hayden suspended for a few days, and outrage spikes again on campus. But she hasn’t told on me.

  Heavy snow falls one night while everyone is asleep, and the next morning we wake up to mounds of white heaped up in front of the doors. It makes the slog to my last final long, cold, and wet, even though crews are out already clearing the snow from the walkways.

  Everything said, my tests aren’t terrible. I’ve had to study in the worst conditions possible, but at least I have so much to say in my essay for Women in Art History that I go right up to the finish time.

  As I turn in my blue book, Dr. Winegard touches my hand. “Can we talk for a second after class?” she asks.

  “Uh, sure.”

  I sit at my desk until everyone who’s still left has turned in their finals and filed out. I have a lot of good teachers at Edwards, but Julie Winegard is the one I’d want as my friend. If she lectures me about going to the police first the way the provost did . . .

  After the last student leaves, Dr. Winegard closes the door and slides into the seat next to mine.

  “I shouldn’t be speaking to you about this,” she says, “but when do I ever do what I’m told? You know what they say: Obedient women rarely make history.”

  I have to smile at that.

  “I’m one of the faculty members on the committee that oversees Title IX complaints,” she starts. Here it comes. I brace myself. “I’m not really supposed to say anything, but I just want to tell you that . . . you’re not alone. I know how hard it is to come forward. I know that it feels like everything is stacked against you. You’re so brave.”

  Brave. Is that what this was? Because I’ve been feeling lately like the word is actually stupid.

  “If you ever need a safe place to eat your lunch,” she says, “or a shoulder to cry on—I’m here. Okay, Sam?”

  I almost do start crying, but I pull myself together.

  “Thanks, Dr. Winegard.” I mean it.

  -----------------------

  And then, finals are over. It’s like the entire school exhales a breath we’ve all been holding for days.

  Provost Portsmouth called my mom last night about the upcoming Philly Weekend—a three-day trip the school takes to Philadelphia, where we do all sorts of fun touristy things around the city.

  “I don’t think Sam should go,” he’d told Mom. “We have a No Contact order in place, so all the faculty are instructed to keep Sam and Scully apart. But that will be difficult to maintain on a field trip.”

  She left it up to me to decide. But why shouldn’t I go? Why does he get to enjoy himself and I don’t?

  I’m going.

  There’s really no way we can stay completely apart. As if it matters what the faculty have been asked to do when every single Edwards student gathers on the curb with our backpacks, duffel bags, and roller bags, waiting to get onto buses.

  I wish Gracie were here. We could lock elbows just like we did that first day of school. Even if the whole school turned against us, we’d still have each other.

  A flash of blond hair. A familiar laugh. Somebody tall is pushing their way through the crowd of students.

  Every muscle in my body tenses, ready to run if I need to run. I yank my bag along as I duck behind some students.

  Scully. He hasn’t come to Hamilton Hall once since his arrest—probably since he can afford to eat at the Encore Grill every day. But now he’s here with an Edwards Academy duffel bag, waiting to board a bus like everyone else.

  Eliza finds me in the crowd. “Come on, Sammy! Be on our bus!”

  Scully started that stupid nickname, and now everyone has adopted it. Sammy is a toddler’s name. I have never loathed anything more.

  “Coming,” I say to them. I pass Dr. Winegard as I lug my bag up the steps of the last bus. We exchange nods.

  Once I take my seat in the back with Bex, Eliza, and Lilian, I hear a commotion outside.

  Scully’s trying to get on my bus, but Dr. Winegard has turned him away. Everyone on the bus is peering out the windows, trying to figure out what’s going on.

  It feels like a gerbil is running around the inside of my ribcage. Scully throws up his hands in annoyance, but Dr. Winegard just points to the next bus, and eventually, Scully and his friend Cal move on.

  As the bus pulls away from the curb, the news travels down the seats. The girl who accused Scully must be on this bus. “Jen” is right here, among them.

  Bex gives me that look again, but then turns to gaze out the window and doesn’t speak the rest of the trip. The sleazy “Jen” is the only thing people talk about the entire ride. I wish I hadn’t come, but it’s too late now.

  Once we arrive at the hotel in Philadelphia, it’s the same thing: Everybody off
. Everybody wait in a huge cluster on the sidewalk. It’s dark and stinky, and the edges of the buildings jut out like teeth. Then it’s everybody find your roommates and head up to your hotel room.

  There are two beds in my room. This must have all been reserved when Gracie was still in school.

  Suddenly my phone lets out a ding. A Facebook message.

  It’s from a girl named Jackie—I think she’s in my study group. My whole body clenches, but it’s probably nothing.

  I open it.

  It was you, wasn’t it?

  I almost choke on my own spit.

  I saw you and Scully at the Roast. And you went to the Mixer with him, too, right?

  I read it twice, then want to barf all over the perfect, crisp hotel bedspread.

  I had a feeling. Loser Firstie with no friends. He told me once—he just wanted to help the meaty lizard move up the social ladder. He pitied you and how you had no friends.

  Jackie’s messages keep coming. I have a hard time reading them through the thick, wet film in my eyes.

  Don’t worry. I won’t tell. Whoever outs you will get in a lot of trouble. I don’t need you to sic the police on me, too. But it was easy to figure out. We aren’t stupid.

  Jackie includes some happy, smiling emojis that look grossly ominous.

  I hope you liked your ride while it lasted. Maybe take the hint and transfer out. We don’t need people like you.

  And then, finally, Jackie stops. The three flashing dots that meant she was typing on her phone don’t appear again.

  I switch off my phone, place it on the other bed, under the comforter. Then I lock the door and climb under the blankets and cover my head with a pillow.

  -----------------------

  I don’t leave my room the rest of the night, not even when someone comes and knocks on my door. Multiple someones.

  I turn off the light and pretend I’m not there.

  I think I understand what people mean when they say The world is falling apart. This unusually small hotel room is now ground zero of the apocalypse, and all that will be left of me at the end is an irradiated skeleton.

  The next morning, I delay the inevitable as long as possible. I take a long shower, dress myself in the best outfit I brought, and put on the shoes I got over break just for walking all over the city.

  I have to face them sometime.

  As I walk down the three flights of stairs to the lobby, where the pamphlet said the continental breakfast would be, it feels like my body is covered in a colony of ants.

  I enter the low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit room. As people glance over at me, their conversations stop. Even the boy using the waffle maker is staring while the machine beeps, letting him know his waffle is done.

  I’m not hungry at all now, but the only thing I can think to do is pretend like everything is normal. I load a small plate with miniature blueberry muffins, bacon, dry scrambled eggs.

  The whispers start in corners, at tables in the back of the dining room. It’s like a nightmare I used to have in middle school, where I’d walk into a room naked and everyone would stare, chuckle, whisper behind their hands.

  Except this time I can’t wake up.

  Pretending is pointless. I leave my food on the Formica bar as I rush out of the room and dash up the stairs. Once I’m back in my room, I yank out my phone and call Mom.

  “I need you to come get me,” I tell her, my voice overcome by tears. “Please. I need to come home right now.”

  -----------------------

  The plan is that I’ll spend the weekend at home until the school figures out how to deal with my identity getting out. I get to sleep in my own bed, use my own bathroom, and eat real, homemade dinners, without anyone watching me.

  It’s an okay substitute for the trip I’m missing, but I know it’s just the calm before the storm.

  “I want to know who told!” Mom says over dinner that night, her voice rising. “They should be punished.”

  “Nobody told, Mom. They figured it out. It wasn’t that hard.” All the arrows pointed at me.

  “You could withdraw,” Dad says. “Transfer to Castlewood High. You’d get to see all your old friends.”

  Give up and walk away after everything I’ve done to stay at Edwards?

  “Screw that,” I say, surprising Dad. “You paid a lot of money to send me there. I’m not gonna let him drive me away.”

  “Sam, nobody will think less of you if you decide—”

  “No. If I transfer out, Scully wins.”

  Mom sighs. “Fine.”

  “Remember to call Melissa if anything seems wrong,” Dad says.

  Yeah, right. Melissa can’t help me with kids going quiet whenever I enter rooms. Staring at me. Whispering about me.

  Anyway, she sent me a weird text right after the story in The Inspector came out. I haven’t wanted to talk to her since.

  Think carefully before you talk to the press. Remember that anything they print about you is a factual admission in court.

  Is she right, that it’s foolish of me to be talking to Harper? Was the article a bad idea?

  No. My identity was going to get out anyway, and it was stupid of all of us to think it wouldn’t. At least now, Harper is right—I seized the narrative. We’ve put Scully on the defensive.

  And nobody thinks straight when they’re backed into a corner.

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  When I get on my computer after dinner, my message inboxes are all flooded.

  I heard it was you, you meaty lizard.

  Who the fuck do you think you are?

  I crouch low in my desk chair, covering my mouth to block the mewling sound that comes out. There are so many of them. Almost a dozen just in the few hours since Dad picked me up in Philadelphia.

  I looked at your pics and you’re basically ugly and gross. Scully would never touch you, lol. Bet that made you mad so you picked the nicest guy in school to wreck. Bitch.

  Feeling heat working its way from my chest into my throat and head, I close my browser window. It feels like my face is going to explode.

  How could people do this to me? How could they think these things about me? Thank god I took my town and personal email off my Facebook profile.

  My school email has blown up, too, with senders I don’t know.

  what an attention-seeking whore.

  You’re lucky a guy like that wanted to fuck you. what’s your damn problem. sandy vagina?

  Every nerve in me is pulled taut, ready to snap in half as I read, read, read. The letters imprint themselves on my eyeballs. Finally, I have to let the tears out because otherwise my skin will pop like a fat, pus-filled blister.

  And then the house phone rings.

  I hope it’s not what I think it is. I hear Mom pick up downstairs and say, “Hello?”

  Then a long pause. “What? Who are you? Why are you calling here? How did you get this number?”

  I run out of my room, out to the railing over the landing. Mom puts the phone down and looks up at me.

  “Who was it?” I call down to her, my voice flayed.

  She shakes her head. “Nobody, Sam.”

  “Who was it?” I am shouting.

  “A prank caller!” She breathes hard, trying not to cry. “It’s fine, Sam.”

  The phone rings again.

  This time Mom picks up the receiver and slams it down. She unplugs the phone after that.

  i think u should do us all a favor and just kill yourself, u meaty lizard.

  Hey, I have an idea . . . why don’t I come over and rape you again? Since you seem to be into that kind of role play.

  you’re such a stupid little ugly fuckin liar I cant believe he would touch you

  I can’t stop reading them, even though each one makes it all worse. A lot of people from Edwards resort to name-calling. Meaty lizard is the most popular one, though I don’t know what it means.

  By midnight I am made of stone, clicking through each one like they have
some kind of answer to offer me. Maybe if I can find the words hidden between lines, I’ll understand why no one could consider that maybe, just maybe, I’m telling the truth.

  I stay up reading until I’m tired down to the black pit in my stomach. This is good data to send to Harper. I tally the threats until the early hours.

  Kill, rape, suffocate, rape.

  Rape, kill, rape.

  Chapter Nineteen

  HARPER

  The Inspector’s been inundated since press time. This story has more hits than anything they’ve published since that piece in 2015 on fame ruining the lives of child stars.

  Harper calls Sam the day after the story drops to set up another meeting, but it goes to voicemail.

  No big deal. Sam’s on vacation in Philadelphia blowing off steam.

  But Harper does need to know how the pre-trial hearing went for Mark’s next article. And she’s got to stay Sam’s friend to keep getting what she needs.

  She’s thankful to spend her week thinking about something else, churning out other pieces for Mark. Still, she leaps to check her inbox whenever she gets a new email.

  Then it comes.

  TO: Harper Brooks (hbrooks@nyinspector.com)

  FROM: Sam Barker (sbterrier@shmail.com)

  SUBJECT: Sorry

  Scully’s requested a judge, instead of a jury. Melissa says that’s pretty unusual in criminal cases. They must think this guy will be nice to Scully—that has to be the reason.

  Anyway, I wanted to write sooner, but it’s been hectic. I know you tried to hide identifying details and stuff, but that blog was out there for a while before we took it down, and someone at school figured out it was me. Now everyone knows.

  People are calling my parents’ house all the time. I get several dozen hate emails a day, and I had to shut down my Facebook and Instagram accounts.

  I don’t really know why, but I started counting them.

  Death threats: 7

  Rape threats: 12

  General threats of violence: 18

  Maybe this would be interesting for your next article, since you’re planning to write another one? I know that’s why you still want to buy me lunch and stuff. It’s fine. I like free food.

  bye,