Honor Code

by Kiersi Burkhart

  I start redrawing it in my new sketchbook. That night, I finish the drawing and pin it to my wall.

  When I open my laptop to check up on my post, I find a local DJ has shared my post to her Facebook fan page.

  This is privilege in action. Men like Mr. Chapman get a pass no matter what, while women are shamed and tormented.

  This is rape culture.

  Three hundred shares.

  I grip the sides of my laptop. My head swims as I read through all the shares, all the comments.

  Somebody has asked, “How do we keep letting this happen?”

  “This has to stop,” someone else writes. “We complain that girls stay silent, but they only suffer more when they speak up.”

  My blood feels heavy and thick, viscous inside my veins.

  Five hundred shares.

  It goes on growing like that all night. I finally go to bed at midnight. It’s been shared over a thousand times.

  -----------------------

  At Morning Prayer the next day, the provost walks up to the podium, his face completely red, as if he’s just learned of a death in his family.

  “There will be repercussions for harassment,” he says breathlessly into the mic. “Anyone we discover doing it will be immediately suspended. I am deadly serious about this, everyone.”

  It feels like the entire student body turns to look at me at once. The provost making an announcement isn’t going to make a difference.

  I wear the same clothes every day and change into sweatpants twice a week to wash them. And thanks to my #JusticeatEdwards post, word about my assault has spread rapidly.

  Twenty-five hundred shares.

  Six thousand shares.

  Fifteen thousand shares.

  Now the comments on my original post come from everywhere.

  scum. wrecking this good dude just because you’re mad. you’re ruining his life. how do you feel about that, bitch?

  I screenshot that one and post it to my Instagram.

  “Poor Scully,” I write. “He gets to come to school every day and everybody loves him. Worships him. Must be hard. #JusticeatEdwards.”

  Fifty-six thousand shares. Eighty thousand shares.

  On my way back from the bathroom the next morning, I find someone has spray-painted SLUT in enormous white letters across my door. I feel hot all over. I glance down the hall to see if I can catch whoever did it, but it probably happened while I slept last night.

  I snap a photo.

  “This is the price for speaking up,” I write. “This is why we so often stay quiet. Who would willingly bring this into their life? #JusticeatEdwards!”

  I take my usual back route to class to avoid as many people as possible, the one that winds down the tiny alley between the art building and the medical museum. I’m busy pressing SHARE on my phone when I notice the way ahead is blocked by two tall guys leaning against the side of the museum. The tang of tobacco smoke wafts toward me, and I stop mid-stride.

  I know that slouching silhouette from my nightmares.

  Scully exhales a huge drag, the cigarette smoke spiraling up into the air. Panic washes over me. My legs are lead. I guess he smokes more regularly than he let me believe.

  He and Cal are talking about something, but I’m too far away to hear. I take a few quiet steps back, so they won’t notice me. Pleading to old Dr. Morgan Edwards himself that they don’t. Why can’t I ever get away? He’s like a disease—everywhere all at once.

  Scully’s phlegmy, ugly laugh fills up the alley as I back up to my escape route. How did I ever like him? One of his eyes is shaped funny. He always poses, as if some invisible photographer is shooting him for a GQ cover.

  Sliding back the way I came, I turn and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction. I don’t care if I’m late to class.

  I hate him—in a way that I’ve never hated anyone before. It’s heavy and sharp and consuming, like gut-twisting hunger after a day when you forgot to eat.

  And there’s only one thing that will ever make me feel full again: seeing him led away in a jumpsuit.

  -----------------------

  A week before the trial starts, it seems like people have finally started to forget. There’s a big to-do over some lewd graffiti that, thankfully, steals some of my spotlight.

  One afternoon, I send Gracie an email with the first court date, time, and location.

  “It’s open to anyone,” I write. “In case you want to be there.”

  I get no response—not like I expected one.

  The whole week, I can barely eat. Everything tastes like cardboard, and as soon as I swallow it, I want to heave it back up. Drinking water is like swallowing ash. What will they ask me? How am I going to answer without crying?

  Then, two days before it starts, Gracie emails me.

  I am trembling with excitement as I open the message. It has no subject.

  As if I would support this performance theater. I thought you knew that grandstanding isn’t my thing.

  My throat closes, and my face feels like someone has poured hot oil into my ears. What happened to all those nights we stayed up late and days we drew pictures on the quad? This was supposed to bring her back to me, to erase Scully from the space between us. Not push her farther away. The tears come fast and thick, and it’s as if my body has given up, deciding every agony must escape right now.

  I climb onto my bed, where I become a thousand tiny, broken pieces of Sam.

  -----------------------

  “You don’t have to go to this,” Dad says as we drive to the courthouse early Friday morning.

  I’ve told myself this a thousand times, too. “I want to hear the statements.” Even though, the whole car ride so far, I’ve felt like puking out the window.

  Mom just shakes her head. She has given up trying to change my mind about things.

  The courthouse is a boring white building with dead grass and five short steps out front. After we pass through the metal scanner, the hallways are claustrophobic, and the fluorescent lights flicker as we walk under them.

  Inside the courtroom, I search for Harper among the long, bench-like seats in the gallery. They remind me of finding my seat next to Gracie in Cath that very first day of school.

  There she is—Harper’s curly black hair is pulled back with a band, and she’s wearing a sharp blazer and skirt. Just seeing her, I feel calmer, and we slide in next to her.

  Soon the judge enters in silky black robes and climbs into his seat at the bench as we all stand up. He looks in his mid-fifties, with jowls like Provost Portsmouth and salt-and-pepper hair.

  This is happening right now, and I can’t stop what I’ve started. The room swells and then deflates, the walls swimming and stretching like the inside of a funhouse. I hope I don’t get sick.

  Where is Scully? He’s almost late.

  As soon as I think it, the doors open again. A team of two men and one woman in tapered, tailored suits walk to the other counsel table.

  Then Scully comes in. A hush spreads over the courtroom. In another life, I would leap over the seats at him, claw him, tear at that horrid black suit, rip at his eyes.

  Someone has slashed his too-long surfer hair into a neat, short, military cut. And he’s wearing a pair of sleek, black-rimmed glasses.

  “Harper,” I hiss at her, “he doesn’t wear glasses.”

  “Dressing him up for the judge.” Harper makes a note. “Going for the geeky and wholesome look.”

  God. I’m so screwed. No one would rule to put that kid in jail.

  Scully straightens the lapels of his suit as he takes a seat amid his counselors. Even my skin is filled with hate. Scully’s dad, Mike, sits with his arms crossed over his chest. From this angle I can just make out his big mouth, which is exactly like Scully’s.

  The judge delivers the rules. It’s time.

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  HARPER

  The DA’s assistant stands up at the front of the room.

 
“Anastasia Weber,” she says. “Appearing for the prosecution.”

  A great name for a stony, sharp-edged woman like her.

  Anastasia sails through her opening statement, presenting Sam as the perfect scholarship student: great grades, sharp mind, set on law school. Despite the mortifying hazing rituals on the first day of school, she dove in headfirst trying to make friends and fit in.

  And then Scully happened.

  “Mr. Chapman’s modus operandi?” she says. “Scour every new class of freshmen for targets—young women with the lowest self-esteem, as determined by the prefects who conduct the ‘body survey.’ Once he’s selected one from the survey results, he develops a relationship with the young woman. As he did with Miss Barker.”

  This was new. What else has Anastasia learned that Harper didn’t know?

  Once he had his prey in the crosshairs, Anastasia says, Scully went after her. Lured her to his room, closed the door, and made his move. And the honor code supported him the whole way.

  Anastasia pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and begins to read:

  There are no secrets among us, as secrets are the barriers that keep us apart.

  We will confront each other directly when we have problems. We will respect each other even when we cannot agree.

  We will stand by each other. We will be our own wall, our own defense.

  “This, Your Honor,” she says, holding out the paper to the judge, “is the Edwards Academy ‘honor code.’ Every student signs it at the beginning of the year, agreeing to live by it. Anyone who violates it . . .”

  The clerk takes the paper and places it in front of the judge. He puts on his glasses and glances over it.

  Anastasia finishes by detailing how Sam’s parents were forced to step forward for her, because the honor code made her too scared to do it herself.

  Short and sweet.

  At his counsel table, Scully is twisting his hands under the table, wringing them out. His face looks impassive. Those glasses are too much.

  The defense’s head lawyer, a big man with a cue-ball head, rises from his seat.

  “James Turnquist, appearing for the defense,” he says, approaching the bar. “This isn’t about a good, hard-working girl pulling herself up by her bootstraps.”

  He lays it out quickly: Scully was targeted. After doing nothing but helping his fellow students, after taking pity on Sam, she turned on him.

  “When my client refused to have a relationship with Ms. Barker,” Turnquist says, “she decided to attack his character. To drag his reputation through the mud. To destroy his future.”

  Destroyed his future? What about Sam’s future?

  Harper’s been squeezing her pen so hard that it rips a hole in her notepad.

  Looking pleased with himself, Turnquist sits down.

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  SAM

  I glare at the shiny back of Turnquist’s ugly, bald head as he takes his seat at the defense table.

  The way he talked about me—as if he knows me.

  I’ll enjoy watching his face as the evidence mounts against Scully. As the judge reads his sentence, and Scully is condemned to an orange jumpsuit and a tiny room, and Turnquist realizes he’s lost. To me. To a teenage girl he so obviously loathes.

  I hope it really hurts.

  The gallery around me is silent as the judge calls the prosecution’s first witness.

  “Hayden Kent.”

  Hayden? I glance at Harper, who’s scribbling notes as fast as she can. But Hayden and Scully are friends. Why would Tasia call her?

  Hayden enters the courtroom and approaches the witness stand, dressed in sharp, clean, flattering clothes. As she swears her oath, I remember that first day of school as she gave me that pitying look and said, Hmmm, I give her a “Needs Improvement.”

  Anastasia starts off asking easy, seemingly unrelated questions. Her name, age, position in the school. How she became Head Girl. How she knows Scully and me.

  “Do you like Mr. Chapman?” Tasia asks.

  “As my friend,” Hayden says, crossing her arms.

  “What about romantically? You’re under oath.”

  Hayden purses her lips and turns her head away. “Sure, a little. Everyone does.”

  Tasia goes on to ask about the body survey. Annoyed, Hayden says, “I’ve already gone over this with the provost half a dozen times. I even got suspended because of that stupid story.” She throws me a dirty look.

  “Fine,” Tasia says. “So what do you do with your survey results?”

  Hayden frowns. “I pin them on my corkboard to track improvement, check in on the girls, give encouragement.”

  “Do you share the survey results with anyone outside Isabel House?”

  “Just some of my friends.” But Hayden’s face is so red it’s almost purple, like a pickled beet.

  “Is Scully Chapman in that group of friends?”

  “Uh . . .” She swallows. “Yeah.”

  “Can you tell us about the match-ups you organize for your house?”

  Hayden breathes a sigh of relief. This is easy for her. She describes it like a harmless mentorship program between First Year girls and upperclassman boys.

  “Why did you match up Scully and Samantha?”

  “He asked for her,” Hayden says.

  “Do you know why?”

  “He liked her art. And she was having a hard time fitting in.”

  “Was this before or after he saw the survey results?”

  Hayden is silent for a long time.

  “Miss Kent?” Tasia asks. “Please answer the question.”

  “After.” She has a hand on her forehead, like she’s trying to cover her face. “He asked about Sam after he saw the survey results.”

  “Thank you,” Anastasia says. “That’s all, Your Honor.”

  I am speechless at what she just pulled out of the Head Girl.

  Hayden made this happen? She sold me off her list to Scully like . . . like I was a prize cow.

  When Turnquist gets up to cross-examine, Hayden watches him approach her suspiciously.

  “Can you tell me about your relationship with Scully? How long have you known each other?”

  “We met as First Years.”

  “And have you ever seen him display aggressive behavior toward a girl?”

  She scoffs. “Scully? No. The exact opposite. Everything he does, he does to help other people.”

  “Has he ever come on to you or someone you know?”

  “No. And if he did, I don’t think a girl at our school would object.”

  “Have you ever heard of him assaulting someone?”

  “Never.” Hayden makes her distaste clear. “He’s gone out with girls occasionally, and . . . I’m pretty sure he’s had sex. But from everything I’ve heard and seen, it’s completely consensual.”

  After grilling her about Scully’s character, Turnquist presses her about my behavior—was I a drinker?

  Hayden looks affronted. “Nobody in my House drinks, thank you.”

  “Does she smoke? Has she dated other boys?”

  “My Firsties don’t smoke, either. And I don’t care who she dates, as long as she’s safe.”

  How about my grades?

  “I was never worried,” Hayden says. She scrunches up her nose, like she wants to say something bad about me but can’t come up with anything. “Sam’s a decent student.”

  Turnquist tries a few more questions, but Hayden gives him flat, boring answers.

  When Turnquist finally gives up and Hayden gets off the stand, she has a look on her face like she wants to slap someone. She stalks out of the courtroom, and the door slams behind her.

  I feel sick.

  I’m next.

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  HARPER

  After the judge calls an adjournment for the day, Harper waits to leave the courtroom. It’s hard to tell who’s from Edwards and who isn’t—until she spots two plain-looking white girls, on
e in a black polo that says BADGERS TENNIS. Maybe one of Sam’s teammates.

  When the two girls get up to leave, Harper follows them out. They take a right outside the courtroom. One ducks into the restroom, leaving the girl in the TENNIS shirt drinking out of a water fountain.

  “Hi,” Harper says, smiling brightly. “Do you go to Edwards?”

  The girl stands up and wipes her mouth. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Are you friends with Samantha?”

  The girl gives a little snort. “Sam doesn’t have friends anymore.”

  “Do you play tennis?” asks Harper, pointing at the shirt slogan.

  “Yeah, I’m on Edwards’s team.”

  “You play together?”

  The shift from casual to suspect is immediate. The girl’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, when she shows up. But she’s been absent a lot lately. A flake, just like her best friend who ditched the team last semester and dropped out or whatever.”

  “Best friend? I thought she didn’t have any friends.”

  “Girl named Gracie. They were roommates. Did everything together, totally inseparable. It was so pathetic.”

  Sam had given Harper the impression that she and Gracie lived together but didn’t really have anything to do with each other.

  The TENNIS girl’s friend returns from the bathroom, saying, “Jeez, Lilian, these bathrooms are pretty gross.” She stops and stares at Harper. “Who are you?”

  Harper offers her hand. “Harper Brooks.”

  She ignores it. “You’re that reporter who tricked Bex into talking, then wrote that horrible story for The Inspector.” She grabs her friend’s arm. “Don’t talk to this bitch, Lilian. She’s the one pushing Sam’s agenda.”

  “I just report the facts,” Harper says, keeping her voice level.

  “Sure you do,” the older girl says, rolling her eyes. “And you trick people into telling you stuff.” Lilian gives her the bird before they stalk off down the hall.

  Oh, well. People have called her worse things than bitch.

  She makes a note to reread her transcription, because she hadn’t thought Sam and Gracie were all that close.

  They did everything together.

  Lord, this thing is such a mess.