“So who was this boy?” Mrs. Valley asks. “I think he should be brought up on charges.”
“I agree,” Daddy says. “Who was it?”
I hesitate. I don’t know what Stephen would want. Last time he was adamant about not telling anyone who beat him up, but this time there are so many witnesses. Hell, I bet if I looked for it, I could find footage of the fight on YouTube right now.
I know what I want. Justice.
Stephen deserves a little.
“Derek Andrews,” I say. “He did it.”
“And he’s the one who beat Stephen up two weeks ago?” Mrs. Valley asks it like a question, but she sounds like she already knows it’s true. “Something needs to be done about this! And what about you? Did Derek hit you, too?”
“No,” I say. “Me and another girl were fighting.”
She insists a doctor look me over to make sure I don’t have any life threatening injuries. I already know I don’t but she is so worked up, it seems easier to go along with her plan rather than argue. Daddy doesn’t argue with her either.
I sit on one of those uncomfortable hospital beds they have in the ER. The nurse has pulled the beige curtains shut, giving a false sense of privacy even though I can hear everything going on around me. Still, it’s better than nothing.
I’m worried about Stephen.
Where is he? How is he? What’s taking so long?
Daddy talks to Mrs. Valley just beyond the curtains, and I strain to hear their words.
“Are you okay?” he asks her.
“I don’t know,” she sighs. “I was so scared on the way over here.”
“Stephen will be fine. He’s a tough kid, Karen.”
“He’s still my baby.” She cries. “He’s all I have left.”
“I know,” Daddy soothes. “Come here.”
I peek out to see him holding her. She sobs and he rubs her back as he rocks her soothingly. Seeing them makes me feel weird inside. It’s been a long time since my father held my own mother the way he is holding Mrs. Valley. In any other couple, I might have found the intimacy sweet, but in these two, it just irritates me and I have a flare of sympathy for Mom. How hard it must have been to know you were never first in your husband’s heart.
“It’s going to be okay,” my father whispers.
“I wanted so badly to talk to you these last few months.”
“I was angry. About Jude. About…what he did.”
“I know.”
And then he says something that surprises me. “It’s in the past now. We have to move on.”
Is he serious? What a turnaround from the past months of hatred and bad mouthing he’s done regarding Jude. Is he…is he trying to get back with Mrs. Valley?
She pulls away. “Nothing will be right until we leave Rockingham, Simon.”
“You’re leaving? When?”
“I’m selling the house through a realtor. We’re leaving for Illinois next week.”
“Next week?” Daddy is as shocked as I was. “So soon?”
“It’s time to start fresh. For both of us.”
“But so soon…were you going to say anything?”
“Simon, what is there to say? It’s over.” Mrs. Valley wipes at her eyes. “I love you, but that doesn’t matter. Too much has happened. This is the best way.”
The doctor comes in and Daddy is silenced. His face is a mirror of all the things I felt when Stephen told me he was leaving. And really, she’s right. What is there to say? The Valleys have made up their mind. In a week they will be gone.
What will we do without them?
I think about the monologue I’ve been writing for Mr. March’s class. It’s the idea of walking a mile in another man’s shoes, of not judging a book by its cover, of no two snowflakes being alike. Cheesy and clichéd. Yet, I cling to the small hope that completing it and being brave enough to read it in front of the class will be the first steps towards changing people’s perceptions about Stephen.
And maybe even about me. I reach into my pocket and pull out the folded paper containing Stephen’s monologue. With shaking hands, I open it and read the words, stunned that he has chosen to write about Jude after all.
When I’m finished, I know what I have to do.
Perception is a hell of a thing. It’s time for my classmates to grow up and look at the world with new eyes.
I know I do and will for a long time to come.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
STEPHEN
We leave tomorrow.
It’s hard to believe actually. I hate this town so much, but I’m nervous about what comes next. Mom and I have agreed not to discuss our past with anyone in Illinois. The less people know the better. I want to be judged for who I am, not what my brother did.
Here in Rockingham, everyone is just too close to what happened to my brother. It’s hard to heal when you see constant reminders about what he did in the form of me. I know I haven’t done anything wrong, but the guilt of what Jude’s done will be with me a long time.
Maybe even as long for Derek.
I shouldn’t have outed him. The anger made me weak. Monica says he is paying the price in a very social way right now—no one wants to have anything to do with him. Apparently, Caitlin told everyone what Derek admitted to her that night at the park, too. They all know he saw Jude with the gun and did nothing to stop him. She also told everyone he spray painted the cafeteria, and they found a spray paint can in his car. The school hasn’t decided whether they will press charges.
I’m sure if I’d turned out to be the one who’d done the crime, they would have thrown me in jail without a second thought.
Double standards—aren’t they fun?
Because I know how hard it is to stand alone, to have everyone judge you, I chose not to press assault charges against Derek. My mom is pissed about the decision since I’m still recovering from a collapsed lung due to the fight, but whatever. I’m not thrilled about her past decisions so I guess we’re even.
We’re leaving. That’s all that matters. Well, that and Monica.
She is the one regret I have about moving. And I worry about her. How is she going to deal with life with her dad? Will he give her the attention she so desperately wants? Is she destined to become a boozehound like her mother, to hide her pain by self-medicating?
She’s going to come up and visit over Thanksgiving break. Her dad already said she could although I halfway wonder if he said yes so he could see Mom.
I don’t trust him. Partially because I think any guy who cheats on his wife is scum, but also because he reminds me of Jude. The more I look at Jude’s real father, the more I see little hints of my brother. They have the same eyes, the same hair, the same strong jawline.
And like Jude, Simon is weak. Another beautiful butterfly.
Monica and I have vowed never to share the secret of Simone or Jude with anyone. I think she wants to save her father from embarrassment.
As for me, I don’t want people thinking just because my brother was related to his girlfriend that his actions should be justified or excused. Jude Valley knew right from wrong. I know he did. While Monica is content to accept the brother/sister thing as Jude’s motivation, I’m not so sure. Oh, I think it was the final straw for Jude, but looking through his notebook, I can’t help but notice his hate of the world had been festering for a while. His God Man comics clearly show he’d been thinking about hurting people who he considered lesser than himself.
I believe Jude was just waiting for the right moment. Mom and Mr. Monroe supplied him with the perfect justification.
As I’m thinking about that, Monica knocks on my bedroom door.
“Hey.” She comes in wearing a blue halter-top that leaves little to my imagination. Her short shorts are also a delight. Has she chosen to dress this way to tease me? After all, with the collapsed lung, there isn’t a whole lot I can do right now. “How are you feeling?”
“Better now.”
She grins and leans over to kiss me lightly. Hmm…there is definitely an advantage to being stuck in bed.
“I’m glad to see you, too.” Monica sits on the edge of the bed, looking at the boxes in my room. “You’re all packed up.”
“I am. Movers should be here early tomorrow to load up the truck and haul it all away to our new humble abode in Galesburg.”
“You ready for the cold of Illinois?”
“I hear they actually have snow there.”
“No,” she says in mock surprise. “What is snow?”
“You’ll see it for yourself when you come visit.”
“Hmm…about that,” she says. “There’s been a change in plans.”
Damn. I knew it was too good to be true. Her mother must have put her foot down or something. Why can’t we catch a break just once?
“Oh yeah?” I ask, trying not to sound pissed, but I’m bracing for bad news. “Why’s that?”
“Well, I may be here for Thanksgiving instead of with you,” she says, her face very serious. Then she cracks a smile. “But you won’t be able to complain too much because I’ll be able to see you lots more than you think between now and then.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Turn out my father is old friends with the head of a special fine arts academy in Illinois. It’s a fancy boarding school for students who want to train in the arts. Daddy called last night, spoke to his friend, and barring any unforeseen complications, I’m in like Flynn.” Her smile grows. “It’s about thirty minutes away from where you live and the best part is, you get weekend passes to go off campus.”
“So…are you saying…we’ll see each other on weekends?” I don’t dare get my hopes up yet.
“And some week days during the holiday season.” She beams. “Oh, except for this Thanksgiving. I promised Daddy I would come home for that.”
“That’s…that’s great,” I say, completely flabbergasted. “No. It’s fucking awesome!”
She laughs and gently hugs me. “I’m happy, too.”
“What made you decide to do this?” I ask.
“Well, it was actually my dad’s suggestion,” she says with an eye roll. “He brought it up the day after the fight. Said he’d been doing some thinking about my future and the pressure of living in Rockingham, especially after what happened with Caitlin.”
“That’s cool, right?”
“Yeah. It is. But…”
“But what?”
“I think…I think his motivations may not have been entirely about me and my pursuit of the arts. The location of the school is just too much of a coincidence.”
Simon Monroe is sending her to a boarding school in Illinois because that’s where my mother is. What a dick. This isn’t for Monica at all. It’s about him. How Jude-like.
“Don’t dwell on it,” she says, knowing what I’m thinking. “Just focus on how it benefits us.”
I nod. She’s right. Fuck Simon Monroe. He gave me the gift of seeing his daughter without the pressure of all the gossips of Rockingham High School being on us. I’ll take it.
As for him and Mom…I’ll deal with it when the time comes.
“So, there’s something else I should tell you,” Monica says, pulling out her phone. “Or rather something you should watch.”
She taps on her phone, opening up an app, and then hands the device to me.
“Since I’m leaving, I decided to be brave. Mr. March helped me,” she says.
“What is this?”
“Our monologues.”
I lift an eyebrow and hit play.
The small screen comes to life. I recognize the stage in the auditorium. Monica is standing off to the right in the dark while Mr. March stands center, bathed in the beam of a spotlight.
His deep baritone is easily heard. “Today you are going to hear two monologues. Both are powerful and well written. And most importantly, they touch on the idea of perception. The subject matter is delicate, but I ask you just to consider what the speaker is saying. Monica, the stage is yours.”
I look away from the screen, the old, familiar anxiety working its way into my stomach. Monica meets my eye and gives me a reassuring smile. “It’s okay, Stephen. Just watch.”
Staring back down at the screen, I am sucked in to the moment and by the clear determination in the recorded Monica’s eyes as she steps into the spotlight alone and speaks. “When I heard my sister was dead, I felt…nothing. It wasn’t real. I mean, we’d just had an argument that morning about whether or not I could ride in her car if I didn’t change my T-shirt. I called her a bitch and walked away. Arguments, hair pulling, stealing clothes out of her closest—now that was real. Not death.”
The audience is silent, and even though this is a recording, I can tell that everyone person in the room is riveted. This is what they’ve been waiting months to hear. Something personal about what happened in May. And Monica…she is so vulnerable, so open in this moment. For me, the spotlight would be a prison, a place of no escape. She makes the best of it, embracing the boundaries, and opening them with her words.
“The first emotion I really remember feeling after she died was anger. I could feel it choking me, making my head and heart ache. At first, I thought the anger was all directed at Jude. Simone begged for her life and he just took it away. I couldn’t understand that kind of thinking. What kind of person does that? What kind of family raises a kid who could be so callous? So cruel. So…evil. But then I realized something else. I was also angry at me. I mean, how could I have spent so much time with someone and never realized who they really were?” She laughs, dryly and tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Jude Valley wasn’t a random stranger in my house. He came over all the time. I had conversations with him. I sat across the dinner table from him. I argued with him over books and ideas. And the whole time, I was sitting across from the face of evil and I never saw it. I. Never. Saw. It.”
Monica looks directly at someone in the audience—I don’t know who—but it’s almost as if she’s forgiving them for making the same mistake she did as she smiles softly and shakes her head. “No one did. Maybe not even the people closest to him. And yet, we blame them the most. We blame his family for his actions. We don’t see that they may have been victims, too.”
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. Her hand is shaking as she unfolds it. “I want to share something with you. Something deeply personal from a boy who has been hurt just as badly as any of the seven people who died.”
For a moment, she studies the words on the paper, letting the silence stretch through the audience, weaving a small spell which forces them to keep their eyes on her. Then she takes a deep breath and reads my monologue.
“My brother was the monster under your bed, the nightmare you don’t expect to be real. But he is real. Or was. People can’t let go. We all think we’re invincible. So no one was prepared when hell was unleashed during the middle of the day. No one was prepared when the artistic kid with the sarcastic sense of humor decided we were not as invincible as we thought. Adults couldn’t protect us. There weren’t any warnings that this would happen. It just did. Seven kids may have paid the ultimate price, but in a way, we’re all his victims. Jude Valley stole innocence from us.” She pauses and I’m stunned by how powerful she makes my pathetic words sound. Just goes to show a good performer can make anything sound amazing. “I can’t make excuses for Jude’s behavior. I can’t explain it. I can’t pinpoint an exact reason or moment that sent him over the edge. No matter what the shrinks say or the media lets slip on television about him having some sort of mental illness, I can’t accept that. I won’t. I believe with my whole heart that Jude chose evil. It wasn’t born in him. It wasn’t something forced on him. It was something he picked in a fully sane state of mind. Which is maybe the scariest thing of all.”
A rush of emotions churns through me. Fear, relief, happiness, anxiety—there’s no way to sort th
em all. It’s not that I’m the next Shakespeare or John Greene. It’s that when Monica reads my monologue, she really gets it. She conveys to those jerk off students what I never would have been able to do on my own. They may still hate me, but at least, she made me sound good.
“I’m ashamed of Jude, embarrassed to walk these halls,” she continues, a slight shake in her voice now. “All summer life has been a long, endless hell with no one willing to see me as someone separate from my brother. I kind of get it. I haven’t always been the good kid. Have I done things I’m not proud of? Sure. Who hasn’t? That doesn’t mean I’m evil, too. I understand the power of choice. I understand the heartache of being a victim, of being afraid to come to the one place where we’re all supposed to be safe.”
Once again, she pauses, but this time when she looks at the audience, her face is accusatory. I can tell she has read this part so much she doesn’t need to read from the crumpled paper in her hand. “But I don’t need your compassion or pity. I’m not asking for forgiveness for Jude. He doesn’t deserve it. I want only one thing. See me when you look at me. Not him. Not the monster. Not the evil. See me.”
Monica holds the moment for dramatic effect and then slowly folds the paper back up. The spotlight she’s been standing in starts to fade as she says one last line. “I see you, Stephen.”
The stage goes dark.
There is a long pause.
The applause starts, softly at first, and then louder, stronger. Someone whistles their appreciation in the audience, and when the lights come up, a few kids stand for Monica. She is still center stage, but she is crying so hard I’m not sure she realizes what’s happening. Mr. March walks on stage and puts an arm around her.
At this point, the video stops.
I swallow hard.
“Well…” she asks softly. “What did you think?”
“That…was…incredible,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She kisses the top of my head, collects her phone, and then stands. Looking around the room, she asks, “So where is the journal? Are we still going to do this or what?”
“Top desk drawer,” I say. She pulls out Jude’s notebook, holding it in her hands almost reverently. “Are there any pictures in there you want of Simone? Some of the one’s he drew of her were really good.”
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