by Paige Rawl
I might have been an outcast at Clarkstown. But I wasn’t now. Not here.
As we crossed the finish line, cheerleaders shook pom-poms and cheered for us.
“G! O! G! O! Go, go go!” For a moment, I cheered back.
Although I still missed being a cheerleader, I had to admit: just for this moment, it was nice to have someone cheer for me.
I thought about that card I’d dropped in my bag—the one from the Women in Motion group.
It might be nice, I thought. It might be nice to tell my story one of these days.
Being at the AIDS Walk was freeing—no one looked at me differently just because of my diagnosis. And for the first time in a long time I thought maybe there was a place where I could feel like I belonged.
Two months later, I stood in front of a small crowd at a Teen Extravaganza talent show. It was a big, open room. Two hundred people, nearly all of them strangers, sat in folding chairs. They were waiting for me to speak.
I was terrified.
It started on the drive.
“What’s the matter, Paige?” my mom had asked. “You’ve won pageants. You know how to talk in front of a crowd.”
She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand that pageants were a kind of show. They weren’t real. The questions—caboose or engine?—were just for fun.
At pageants, I got to be in control. I got to look strong and optimistic.
At a pageant, I didn’t have to stand up and say things like I have a disease.
Or, Because of that, I lost friends.
Or, People hurt me.
Or, Everything feels totally out of control.
I didn’t have to admit my truth. And that was what I’d be admitting tonight. That I had a disease. That people had hurt me. And that I didn’t have it all under control.
As I stood backstage, waiting for my spot in the program, I watched kids I didn’t know belt out tunes into a microphone. They performed hip-hop routines, recited their own poetry. Elsewhere in the room, the AIDS Ministry Network tested for HIV and handed out brochures on different diseases.
All of that was kind of a blur. Because all I could really focus on was the piece of paper—just one sheet—that I was clutching with my shaking hands. I scanned the crowd for the few faces I knew: my mom; Amber; the woman, Marie, who I’d met at the AIDS Walk.
I took deep ragged breaths and told myself quietly to stay calm. Then, I stepped up to the microphone.
I remember hearing my voice crack as I spoke.
“I’m Paige Rawl,” I began. “I’m fourteen years old, and I am affected by something called HIV.”
I didn’t—I couldn’t—look up as I told the rest of my story: the loss of friends, the teachers and administrators who didn’t seem to care, the bullying, the seizures.
The room was quiet.
And then I remember this: when it was done people began applauding. I looked out into the crowd, and I felt a weight lifted, a weight I hadn’t even known I was carrying.
I remember feeling like maybe I didn’t have anything to hide.
Herron High
Herron High was amazing. I felt safe and supported there. But I was still struggling with what I had been through, and I don’t think anyone realized it—not even me.
I visited Herron High School for the first time during my eighth-grade year.
I’d been home with my mom, day after day, for nearly a year. I’d studied history alone, taken tests alone, calculated fractions and percentages alone, conjugated verbs alone, and learned about the food chain alone.
I saw a few friends on weekends. I saw Erin and Mariah and Amber, a handful of others, when they weren’t busy with school stuff.
But most of the time—at least five days a week, week after week and month after month—though, I’d been alone.
Some things were better; I hadn’t had another seizure since I’d left Clarkstown. I slept better at night. I had stopped cutting myself, stopped grinding my teeth, and my stomach pains were almost gone.
But it wasn’t enough for me. It wasn’t nearly enough. I longed to laugh with friends, to be a part of something, to see other people—to see something other than the walls of my house—when I looked up from my notebook. I wanted to play sports, to cheerlead, to sing and dance. I wanted something other than me and my mom, this house, this sofa, this television, this stack of books.
I’d heard about Herron from a family member, and it sounded like an altogether different kind of school experience. A public charter school, their website said. A classical, liberal arts education that integrates knowledge, inspires character, and values community service.
I knew they had an advanced concert choir, and I’d loved to sing since I was small. So there was that. Mostly, though, I read these words over and over: Knowledge. Character. Community.
I emphasized the last word especially. Community.
The school building, in downtown Indianapolis, was the former Indianapolis Museum of Art. It looked like a museum, too—high ceilings, grand staircase, windows and marble everywhere. Touring it the first time, I whispered to my mom that it looked like a school you’d find in New York City. Or London, or Paris.
It felt like it was a million miles from Clarkstown.
I noticed things on that visit. I noticed that kids didn’t seem to circle into tight groups; they moved around more openly. Everyone interacted with everyone else.
I noticed that all the teachers had small statues on their desks, tiny ancient-looking busts. I sat in on a Latin class, and listened to the teacher weave deftly between conjugating verbs and Greek mythology, waving his arms the whole while. I loved it. On the way out of class, I glanced at the statue that was on top of his desk—the bust of someone I did not recognize. He noticed me looking at it.
“That’s Aristotle,” he said. “You know much about Aristotle?”
I shook my head and picked up the statue.
“He believed in character. In virtue.”
I nodded as if I understood. The teacher continued, “He believed in education, in using knowledge to become our best selves. What do you think about that?”
I shrugged. I looked at the bust for a long time before setting it down. Then I looked up at him. “I think maybe not enough people do that.”
He laughed. “You’ll also find statues of Plato, Shakespeare, a bunch of the others. Every year we get a different one. They remind us to make our mark in this world, to think about what’s right.”
I nodded and started to leave the room. He called after me.
“Hey, Paige?”
I turned around.
“I hope to see you back here.”
He seemed to mean it.
And that was another thing: the way the Herron teachers interacted with the students felt different from anything I’d ever seen. They were more relaxed with the students, but also more caring. They looked the kids in the eye. They looked me in the eye.
It felt homey, this school. Homey and challenging both. Maybe, I thought, there was a school for me, after all.
Later, my mom and I sat down with Ms. Lane, the assistant to Herron High School’s head of school. She was a serious woman—friendly enough, but without a fake smile plastered across her face.
I liked that. I no longer trusted plastered smiles.
My mom, I could tell, was nervous. She began explaining to Ms. Lane what had happened to me at Clarkstown. Ms. Lane listened, occasionally turning to me with a smile.
“Paige just had a lot of problems at her old school,” my mom said, the words coming out in a rush. “She had a lot of friends, and then something happened, and she started to get bullied.”
Ms. Lane nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that. I want you to know that we don’t tolerate bullying at Herron.”
“I mean,” my mother continued, “it’s like she was one of them, one of the gang, and then they turned on her. They were like a pack of animals, the way they turned on one of their own.”
Ms.
Lane nodded and opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but my mother kept talking. “It wasn’t the kids you’d expect, either,” she said. “These were the so-called good kids. The honor roll students. The ones from good homes. But they were just heartless. Totally merciless. And nobody did anything. The school didn’t—”
“Mrs. Rawl—”
“And then they just let Paige leave. They said they couldn’t promise to protect her. It was like they’d given up and—”
“That must have been—”
“So now she’s at home, she hasn’t been able to do the things she loves to do, she’s not challenged, and I just can’t believe—”
“Mrs. Rawl.” Ms. Lane’s voice was absolutely calm. “I want to assure you that Herron does not tolerate—”
“Nothing was ever done. Nobody ever got punished. What she needs—”
“Mom,” I jumped in.
“Is a school where—”
“Mom.”
“She knows she can be safe from—”
“Mom.”
My mother looked up.
I glanced at Ms. Lane, who looked my mom right in the eye. “We don’t tolerate bullying at Herron, Mrs. Rawl,” she repeated.
My mom let that sink in. She frowned. “But it’s kids. So how do you . . . ?” She stopped and frowned.
“We just don’t tolerate it. Kids rise to the expectations that are set for them. It really is that simple.”
My mother glanced back and forth. For a moment she looked confused, then her shoulders visibly relaxed. “Well, okay,” she said. “Okay. Good,” she said.
So it can be that simple, I thought. You just don’t tolerate it.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the article from the Indianapolis Star—the one about me, about the lawsuit. Up until this point, she still hadn’t told Ms. Lane about my HIV. But she handed the article to Ms. Lane. “You should know,” she said. “This is her. This story is about Paige.”
Ms. Lane read it for a few moments, then she looked up. She looked me right in the eye.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said. “It won’t happen here.”
Her voice was so confident. Just completely certain.
The lawsuit had been dragging on. It wasn’t hard to notice how angry my mother was every time our attorney called. She would scream into the phone each time, “They said WHAT?” and “That’s not how it happened at all!” Then she would hang up the phone, and I’d pester her with questions. Eventually, she would tell me.
The school’s attorney is suggesting that your seizures weren’t from stress, that they were actually because you hit your head during that cheerleading fall.
(Whaaat? I’d scream. They did an MRI. My head was fine. I didn’t even have a concussion. And how do you explain the fact that the seizures stopped when I left Clarkstown?)
Or she’d say: I don’t know, honey, they’re claiming they never got those notes I left for Miss Fischer.
(Then me: You’re kidding me, right? They’re either lying or completely incompetent, Mom.)
Then Mom would sigh and I would march out of the room and sit in the bathroom with music on, or inside my bedroom with arms folded.
But now, sitting at Herron, Ms. Lane held the newspaper article about me. She had just reassured me: it won’t happen here. And the contrast of it all—her assurance that “it won’t happen here,” versus Miss Fischer’s weak, old “I cannot promise to keep you safe”—was dramatic.
Ms. Lane turned to my mom. “Thank you for sharing this with me. Do you mind if I make a copy?”
My mother shook her head. “No, I guess not.”
Ms. Lane nodded, stood, and left the room for a moment.
I turned to look at my mother. “I think this is it,” I said. “I think I love it here.”
Later, once my enrollment was complete, Mom and I visited with the Herron High School nurse. It was still summer, but my mom wanted to discuss my medicines. She wanted to explain about the seizures, in case they should start happening again.
While my mom and the nurse talked, I glanced around the office. My eyes fell onto a white plastic bag sitting next to her desk. It had a red ribbon on the outside, with the words INDIANA AIDS FUND printed on the front. I walked over to the bag and picked it up. It was filled with pamphlets.
The nurse smiled at me. “I picked up a bunch of information,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure we are doing everything possible to accommodate a student with HIV.”
My mother practically gaped at the nurse. “You did that?”
“Of course I did,” the nurse said, a little surprised by my mother’s reaction. “As a school, we need to be as informed as possible,” she said. She glanced at me, then looked back at my mom.
“It’s our responsibility,” she said very matter-of-factly. “Paige is now one of our students.
“I mean,” she added almost as an afterthought, “it’s only if we learn all we can that we’ll be able to lead our students in learning all they can.”
I thought back two years, to the time I sat in Miss Ward’s office, when she told me to deny having HIV. I remembered her face, so bright and chipper, as if denying my status were the best idea since sliced bread.
And in that moment, in the nurse’s office, I finally understood what I wished Miss Ward had done that day.
There were so many things she could have done, after all. Miss Ward could have said, “Thank you for choosing to share that with me.” She could have said, “I’m so sorry you are struggling with this.” Or maybe even, “How can we support you?”
And if she didn’t know to say these things, she could have said, “I don’t know very much about HIV, I don’t know exactly how I should handle this, but I will learn more.”
Above all, that’s what I wished Miss Ward had done: I wished she had decided to learn something. I mean, maybe she wasn’t sure about what it means to support a kid with HIV. But it seemed so simple now: she should have learned about it so that she could lead others.
She could have showed a little bit of bravery, a little bit of leadership.
I remembered her face, that wide bright smile that offered no help whatsoever. I hated her. I swear to God, I hated Miss Ward, just like I hated everyone I had left behind.
The very thought of them made me bitter.
I looked at my mom then, who was standing there with the nurse. Mom’s eyes were welling up with tears. I knew she felt relieved—relieved that at last, she didn’t feel alone.
I walked over to her, and she smiled at me, such a warm and happy smile. If I could have bottled that smile, I would have. I would have bottled it and put it in a jar, so I could take it out the next time I needed a little extra warmth. I leaned my head against her shoulder, and she kissed me on top of the head.
Herron was so hopeful, right from the start.
And that feeling that I had—that it was the place for me—was correct.
It was the right place. It was—it is—a good place.
But.
But there were some things I didn’t understand, not yet.
I didn’t understand that everything that had already happened—the name-calling, the notes, that desperate sense that everything around me was out of control, that increasing isolation from my friends, that year of desperate aloneness—had taken deep root in me.
I didn’t understand that their effects were inside of me, almost like a virus.
I didn’t understand that a change in scenery—even to a good place, to a welcoming place, to a place that was doing everything it could to accommodate me—wouldn’t be enough to undo some of what had been done.
There was darkness inside me. It would be inside of me for a while longer.
Herron couldn’t push out the darkness. Ms. Lane couldn’t. The school nurse couldn’t. Aristotle couldn’t.
Only I could do that.
And I wasn’t ready to do it. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
Escape<
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Sometimes, the biggest moments in your life happen with no thought at all.
It was September. Ninth grade. I’d been at Herron High School for a month; nothing bad had happened.
Better than that, I liked it.
I’d started late. Just before Labor Day, I’d gotten a bad case of meningitis. My fever had spiked, my head and neck ached. This was no ordinary illness—it came on in a rush, and by the day’s end I was in the hospital.
By the time I had come home, all the other Herron students, all my future classmates, already knew their way around the halls.
It made me extra nervous to start—already, I was an outsider, and I hadn’t even started—but my mother had looked me in the eye and told me not to be afraid.
“You’re going to like Herron, Paige,” she said. “I really think you will.”
And now the meningitis was gone, and my mother had been right. I did like it.
I liked that the school displayed student art everywhere inside the buildings. I liked the buildings themselves—the scrollwork moldings and iron fences up and down marble stairs, and the lofty feeling that museum architecture gave me.
I liked that I could sit with anyone at lunch, that I could approach anyone in the hallway. I like that I never once felt left out.
I liked the way teachers talked to us—like we were people, adults even, not young children. I liked how that made me feel like I could do anything.
I liked my classes, liked being one of twenty-something kids in a classroom, all opening up to the same page in the same workbook at the same time.
I liked not feeling alone.
But.
Outside of school, my mom and I were hurtling toward a settlement hearing. All these meetings with attorneys, all of those phone calls, all of the talk, this endless talk, about what had happened at Clarkstown had started to wear on me. I didn’t understand why it had to be so complicated.