“Now,” said Patrol Officer Kenney, “before, we talked about the attack itself. I got that. Tell me again what happened leading up to the attack.”
Dennis sat up, looking puzzled. “Whaddya mean? The guy just jumped me.”
“You didn’t say anything to provoke him?” Officer Kenney quizzed. “Maybe mouth something?”
Jane could see where this line of questioning was headed. “Dennis,” she interjected, “did you say something to Mitchell?”
“I didn’t say anything,” he stated defiantly, though Jane’s motherly instincts told her he was lying.
“Dennis Jacob Straussman, did you do something to provoke this?” she demanded.
Dennis glanced sideways at his mother, knowing exactly what she was thinking. “Oh, I may’ve mouthed something about his sweet ride,” he admitted. “Ya know, his Christmas present. He’s kinda sensitive about it.”
“Why would that make him attack you?” Mark asked.
Patrol Officer Kenney piped in, “Apparently a couple of days ago someone vandalized Mitchell’s new car by putting sugar in the gas tank. Mitchell named your son as a suspect, but the case was just assigned to a detective, who hasn’t had time to follow up on it yet.”
Jane looked from Dennis, who sat silently, to Dana, who glanced away as if she feared revealing evidence with her eyes, to Mark, who just looked bewildered.
The officer filled the void. “According to some of the other students, Dennis and Mitchell have been engaging in some kind of ongoing cyber-feud.”
“Cyber-feud?” Jane repeated.
Patrol Officer Kenney kindly explained, “Having a fight over the Internet. E-mails, insults, nasty postings on their Web pages. Apparently a lot of the other kids have been keeping up with it. It seems to have escalated with some comments about Dennis’s sister and a basketball coach.”
Mark spoke up. “Dana?”
Jane spun around to face her daughter. In an instant she felt her mind putting together all the clues, fears and suspicions that she had long been trying to ignore. Dana. Coach. Extra gym time. Moodiness. No dating. She thought she finally saw the puzzle clearly.
Now that the direction of the conversation had taken a surprising turn, Jane was the speechless one and Mark took charge. “Sir,” he directed to the baby-faced police officer. “I think we’d like a few moments alone to talk to our children. We don’t want to interfere with your investigation, but I think there are some private issues we need to discuss.”
Officer Kenney shuffled his feet, but seemed to trust Mark’s paternal intentions. He nodded and left the room to give the family some time alone.
As soon as he closed the door, Jane exploded, unsure which child should bear the brunt of her wrath first. She decided that both should get it at once, so she ordered Dana to sit next to Dennis. Mark stood up next to her, arms folded tightly across his chest. “What is going on here?” she bellowed.
“Nothin’,” Dennis shrugged.
“Don’t you lie to me, young man!” Jane pointed an index finger in his swelling face. “I know you. I know you messed up Mitchell’s car. That’s why he assaulted you. Now explain what this feud is all about.”
Her son just shrugged again. “Nothin’. We just started a little cyber trash-talkin’ and I guess it got outta hand.”
“Trash talking about what?”
No response.
“Answer your mother!” Mark blurted uncharacteristically.
Dennis flinched slightly, not used to hearing his father yell at him. “Just the usual stuff—ya know, you’re so ugly blah, blah, blah. Then he started spreadin’ some crap about Dana and Coach, so I told him to knock it off.”
“And when he didn’t quit, you sugared his car?” Jane asked.
No response.
Jane lowered her voice. “Dennis Jacob—”
Dana broke her silence to come to her brother’s defense. “It’s not true.”
“What, about the car?” Mark asked.
“No,” she said, drawing a glare from Dennis. “Well, yeah, yeah, that’s bogus too, but I meant the stuff about me and Coach. It’s not true. ‘Just a load of crap some people are sayin’.”
“Dana,” Jane tried to coax gently, “I know you have a lot of respect for your coach, but if there’s something going on between you two, we need to know about it. It’s not your fault. You won’t be in trouble.”
Dennis reached over and gently squeezed his sister’s hand supportively. She looked over at him, then directly at her parents. “There’s nothing going on. Coach is a good guy. He’s helped me a lot.”
Jane and Mark could see that she was not prepared to turn on her predator, as was often typical of young people who had been enticed into such relationships. Horndog’s victims . . . Jessica Hampton . . . Mandy Taylor? Jane instructed the twins to sit still, while she and Mark met with the principal and Dr. Tighe, who turned out to be very reasonable. Like them, he had been unaware of the cyber-feud. Together, the adults pulled up their children’s Web pages. What they read was, just as Dennis had described, a back and forth of insults posted for all the world to see. Postings from early in the fall semester reflected more of a friendly competition between the two, as Dennis mocked Mitchell’s academic performance and suggested he would be better off applying to Dumb U. than an Ivy League school. Mitchell mocked Dennis’s geekiness and supposed inability to obtain sexual partners, etc. etc.
Then, around Halloween, Mitchell started posting vicious comments about Dana. The language and venom of the comments shocked all of the adults. They ranged from “dildo-loving pussy eater” and “gives great head. I bet she practices on her brother;” to “fucks her Coach every afternoon to get playing time.” Dennis had responded in various degrees of sarcasm, first trying to deflect the commentary away from his sister, then advising for such comments to stop, to retribution such as posting altered photos of Mitchell engaged in sexual acts with a variety of animals, people, and objects, including the tailpipe of his own car. That one appeared a day before the vandalism occurred. Mark was visibly shaken by the images and words. Inwardly, Jane was equally as shocked, but outwardly retained her cool demeanor.
All three parents apologized profusely for their sons’ actions. Dr. Tighe promised that Mitchell would lose his computer privileges as well as his car. Everyone agreed that neither side would pursue criminal charges, although Mitchell would still be suspended for fighting and possibly expelled for the rest of the year. Mark and Jane offered to pay repair costs on the car, while Dr. Tighe agreed to cover Dennis’s medical expenses. After the doctor left, Mark commented that they probably needed to get Dennis’s ribs checked out, but Jane wasn’t quite ready to leave. She leveled a steady stare at the principal. “Did you know about this feud?”
He answered in the true tone of a bureaucrat. “I had heard some rumors, but since nothing was taking place on campus, there was really nothing I could do about it.”
“Did you even check to see if the rumors were true?” she asked, incredulous. “All you had to do was pull up their Web pages.”
“Did you?” he shot back. “Dr. Roardan, I have a lot of students to deal with and a lot going on at this school. I don’t have time to go running down every rumor that floats through the halls. High schools are by nature gossip mills. Some things turn out to be true, others not. And some things just really aren’t my business.”
“What about the rumors of my daughter and one of your faculty members?” she demanded. “Isn’t that your business.”
Now he was on the defensive. “This is the first I’ve heard about this accusation. What did your daughter say about it?”
“She says it’s not true.”
“Well then, it’s probably not. ‘Just trash-talking, like the kids said.”
Jane, empathizing more and more with Katherine Benedict, was ready to explode at this pencil-pushing bureaucrat. She could not believe that in this day and age he would be so dismissive of such an accusation. She was sorely
tempted to throw the example of Jessica Hampton in his face. “You should know that victims of abuse by people in authority are often reluctant to admit what happened,” she noted instead. “Do your job! Find out if it’s true!”
The principal glared at her, wanting to reiterate the parents’ responsibility in this situation, but he refrained. Instead, he replied more tactfully, “I’ll investigate the matter, but it would be helpful if you could get your children to tell the truth. We have to balance the protection of students against persecution of teachers based strictly in innuendo. I assure you, if it’s true, we’ll report it to the proper authorities and will take appropriate action here. That’s the best I can do.”
Jane expressed satisfaction that he would at least do something. Then she turned to Mark, who was sitting in his chair just staring into space. “Do you have anything to add?”
“I want to take my son to the hospital,” he announced brusquely, jumping up from his seat. Since the twins had driven to school in his car that day, Mark took Dennis to the emergency clinic and Jane drove home with an icily silent Dana.
Jane tried to break the tension, hoping it would get her daughter to open up and relax a bit. “Rough day, huh?”
Dana just looked out the window. Jane refused to let her child retreat into her turtle shell. “Dana, I read the stuff that Mitchell was saying about you on the Internet. . . . I know how hurtful such things can be. But you did nothing wrong. Kids can say some really mean things, especially when they’re hiding behind a computer. There’s not much you can do about lies like that. However, if some of it’s true, if someone is doing something illegal, or dangerous, then it’s best for us to know about it. I know it’s painful, but sometimes it’s better to talk about these things than to hold them in. If you want to talk, I’ll listen. Just listen.”
Dana would neither speak nor look in Jane’s direction. She just sniffled silently as tears ran down her face. Her mother’s heart broke for the child’s obvious pain, but she had no idea how to fix it.
When they arrived home, Dana went straight to her room, still not talking. Jane decided to give the girl some space while contemplating her next move. Four hours later Mark brought Dennis home with gauze wrapped around his midsection. “Bruised, but not broken!” the boy proudly announced. “And still champion!” He struck a mock boxer’s pose that failed to elicit a smile from either parent. He would have to wait until the next day to get his glasses fixed, so he planned to wear them to school covered in duct tape. “The true nerd look,” he bragged. Before letting him eat dinner, Jane stood over his shoulder and watched as he completely obliterated his Web page. He was then banished to his room while Mark and Jane tried to decide how best to handle the situation.
“Did he say anything to you?” Jane asked.
Playing with some reheated noodles on his plate, Mark shook his head. “No, he just made jokes. Listen, maybe we’re blowing things out of proportion here. Teenagers gossip, they insult one another, they play tricks. It’s part of growing up. Dennis just pushed it a little too far this time. I talked to him, though; reminded him of the importance of keeping his record clean, the fine line between pranks and crimes, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think he’ll reign it in now.”
Jane’s face flushed as she slammed her fork down. “What is it with you men? First the principal, then you! What, you think this is just some game? Boys will be boys? What about Dana? All the things that kid said about her?”
“I agree, that was out of line,” her husband said defensively. “But that’s part of the reason I don’t think we should be too hard on Dennis. He was just sticking up for his sister. If you want the truth, I’m kind of proud of him.”
Jane agreed with him there. After reading Mitchell’s invective, she wanted to do much worse than just mess up his car. “So you don’t think we should punish him?”
“Well, he’s already gotten beaten up for it,” Mark noted. “How about if we limit his computer use, monitor it more closely, and make him pay part of the cost of getting Mitchell’s car fixed?”
Jane agreed, with the proviso that Dennis would have to work off their share of the costs through sweat equity around the house. She could think up quite a few remodeling and landscaping jobs that needed completion before her son left for college. Mark seemed satisfied with the verdict, but Jane was not finished.
“What about Dana?”
“What about her?” he responded obtusely. “She didn’t do anything wrong. Why punish her?”
“I’m not talking about punishing her,” she clarified. “But there’s definitely something wrong. I think she’s depressed.”
Mark dismissed her again. “Oh, she’s a teenage girl worried about getting a basketball scholarship. She’s moody. God, everybody in this country thinks every moody teenager is depressed or hyper. Put ‘em all on pills and send them on their way! Sieg Heil, Prozac Nation!” He gave a mock Nazi salute.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jane gritted through her teeth. “I think there’s something specific bothering her. Maybe it’s just the mean gossip, or maybe it’s something else, I don’t know.”
“Look,” he responded. “I know you don’t trust her coach, but I don’t believe any of that crap that Mitchell wrote. It’s just stupid lies that kids tell. Dana said it wasn’t true. We need to trust her a little bit.” He took a forkful of noodles and chewed slowly.
Jane contemplated his words, tapping her fingernails nervously on the side of a water glass. “I think maybe we need to consult with a specialist on this.”
“You mean a therapist?” He leaned back, then acquiesced much more easily than she had expected. “I guess it couldn’t hurt.”
Chapter 18
Submission
Upon returning to campus, Lewis and Mandy each tried to act as if nothing had occurred during Spring Break. Neither ever mentioned that night on the town. In fact, Mandy seemed to go out of her way to avoid him. He noticed that she was more abrupt in picking up and dropping off his materials, no longer lingering to chat as she usually did. He was afraid he might have offended her, but he was not sure how to apologize without making things even more awkward between them.
The truth was, she had hardly been offended. In fact, ever since the night of the Music Fest she had been using all of her strength to remain businesslike. He was married and her boss. She tried to recall her mother’s advice that guys going through a divorce just wanted rebound sex. In contrast, her friends were pushing her to go for it, even if it was just a fling. “Enjoy the ride while it lasts,” Blanca pressed. Pragmatic Julie advised at least waiting until he was no longer her boss, to avoid the impression that she was trying to sleep her way to the top.
Her head told her to follow her mother’s advice, but her body told her to follow her friends’. Yes, Lewis was her not-yet-divorced boss. He was also sincere, sweet and cute. She was relieved to notice his missing wedding band after Spring Break, which she took as some sign of emotional progress, though she never acknowledged that she noticed it.
After a few uneasy weeks of this behavior, Lewis decided that he needed to say something. He casually asked if she could discuss their project over a quick lunch. It was a beautiful temperate day, so they decided to sit outside to eat their deli sandwiches. At first they focused on work, discussing the final stages of her research.
His mind went blank as he tried to recall exactly how he had planned to apologize. “You haven’t said much the past few weeks. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
She assured him that it was, but refused to elaborate as she took a big bite out of her tuna on rye.
Before he could stop himself, he blurted out, “I miss you,” sounding more emotional than he intended. Collecting himself, he went on, “I . . . I mean, I miss our talks, you know, how we used to just talk. I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to make you feel uncomfortable.”
For the first time in weeks, she looked into his sweet blue eyes, once again hidden by his glasses.
She wanted to hold his hand, touch his face or do something to indicate how she felt, but she remembered where they were. Instead, she balled up a fist and gave his shoulder a friendly punch. “S’okay. Ya didn’t offend me,” she said.
“Still friends?” he asked.
“Friends!” she declared. They both knew it was a lie, but at least the luncheon had broken the impasse. For the next few weeks they went back to exchanging friendly banter, when secretly they both wanted more. As if to offset the electrical charge between them, they always maintained a proper physical distance, much more pronounced than during the first semester when he had been the “safe,” happily married professor.
One Friday afternoon near the end of the semester, Lewis caught up with Blanca and Mandy standing outside of Hammond talking about big end-of-year projects coming due. Suddenly, Blanca piped up, “Hey, Lew, we’re doin’ some research tonight for a paper I’m writin’ about racial themes in zombie movies. Wanna come over and watch?” Mandy glared at her roommate, who pretended to ignore her.
“Uh, zombie movies?” Lewis queried.
“Yeah, we gotta bunch rented for the whole weekend, but I think tonight we’re gonna watch both Romero versions of Night of the Living Dead. You in?”
Though not much of a zombie movie fan, Lewis did recall seeing the original Living Dead when he was in college. Of course, the main attraction would be the company, not the film. As much as he wanted to be there, he also did not want to risk making Mandy feel uncomfortable. “Would that be alright with you, Mandy? I really had no plans beyond a boring bachelor Friday night with Clint.”
“Sure. Bring pizza money,” she said.
“And beer,” Blanca added. Later that afternoon she texted him with instructions to arrive by 7 p.m.
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