She Was the Quiet One

by Michele Campbell

  “Don’t bother fighting, you’re not going anywhere till we say so,” Tessa said, tightening her grip.

  “Let go, let go,” Brandon mocked, in a high-pitched tone.

  He had a prominent forehead that gave him an apelike appearance. Rose had been afraid of Brandon ever since he bumped her and tripped her on the bus. And Tessa was an athlete, tall and strong, and mean-looking, her red hair bedraggled in the rain, her mouth a sour line. Between the two of them, they could hurt Rose if they wanted to, and she wouldn’t be able to stop them. Shit.

  “What do you want?” Rose said.

  “I want my life back,” Tessa said. “Darcy and I are expelled. The police are investigating us. No college will look at us now. I’m working in my uncle’s dry-cleaning shop, and it’s your fault, rat.”

  Now, that just pissed Rose off. She’d done the right thing by telling. Tessa had made her own bed. She ought to take some responsibility.

  “You did this to yourself, Tessa. But if you need to blame someone, you should blame Darcy. She got you into this mess. I bet she’s crying her eyes out on a beach somewhere with an umbrella drink in her hand. She sure as hell isn’t working at a dry-cleaner’s.”

  “Shut up about Darcy. Don’t you talk about her,” Brandon said.

  But Rose could see from Tessa’s expression that she’d hit pay dirt. Darcy and Tessa might have gotten the same punishment, but it had hurt Tessa a lot more.

  “I bet Darcy doesn’t even return your phone calls,” Rose said.

  “Shut up.” Brandon twisted her arm, making Rose cry out in pain.

  “Brandon, stop it,” Tessa said, dropping Rose’s arm. “Let’s ask the question and be done with it. I don’t need more trouble. Enright, tell us what we want to know, and we’ll leave you alone.”

  Brandon let go of Rose’s arm. She stood between the two of them, shaking with cold and fear, as her breath went up in clouds. If there was a way to escape this situation without getting hurt, she would certainly prefer that.

  “Fine. What’s the question? I’ll tell you, if I know,” she said.

  “We want to know why we got kicked out, and Bel didn’t,” Tessa said.

  “‘We’?”

  “Me and Darcy.”

  “Uh, because you planned the attack?”

  “Don’t get cute, or you’ll be sorry,” Brandon said.

  “I’m not being cute. I’m saying, maybe because Bel was a follower,” Rose said.

  “Not any more than I was,” Tessa said, her words coming out in an agitated rush. “Darcy planned everything. Bel and I both took orders. So why did I get expelled, and Bel get off scot-free. Why? I don’t buy that bullshit story about pain pills. Normally, if you’re high when you break a rule, the Committee just whacks you harder.”

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Rose said. “But if you’re implying I lied to help my sister, I didn’t. I told the truth about what Bel did, like I did about everything else.”

  “I’m not saying you lied. I heard Bel slept with Donovan to get out from under the charge. Is it true? I need to know. And I need proof. We could use that to get our case reopened,” Tessa said.

  Rose had the proof on her phone, but she wasn’t about to tell these two. Darcy and Tessa launching an appeal, getting reinstated and coming back to campus, was Rose’s worst nightmare. The thought made her so furious—at Bel, for getting her into this mess—that she didn’t have to dig deep to come up with a convincing response.

  “You’re confusing me with someone who gives a shit about my sister,” Rose said.

  The venom in her voice was real. Bel just kept screwing up Rose’s life. When would it end?

  “Is that a yes or a no?” Tessa asked.

  “I don’t have a clue what Bel did to get off easy, and I don’t care. Because of her, I lost my roommate, everybody thinks I’m a rat, my grandmother is pissed at me. That’s Bel’s fault, I agree, not just yours and Darcy’s. I know you got punished, and Bel got counseling. She gets away with shit. She always has. In case it’s not obvious, I hate my sister, and I don’t speak to her. Bottom line, I don’t know if she slept with Donovan. But if you want to tell everyone that, you won’t hear a complaint from me.”

  Somebody was coming up the path behind them. Rose did a double take in the dimness of the trees.

  “Well, hello,” Zach said, coming up to them. “Not who I’d expect to run into on a rainy night. Especially you, Tessa. I thought you were banned from campus.”

  “Mind your own business, Cuddy. Odell doesn’t tell me what to do anymore.”

  “Maybe not, but they could charge you with trespassing. Though, criminal charges—no big deal, right? And you, Flynn—”

  “Bite me. You wanna fight?”

  “If that’s the only language you understand.”

  “You talk like a total twat.”

  “And you talk like someone who was bashed on the skull with a lead pipe and failed to seek medical attention.”

  Brandon raised his fists. He was thick as a gorilla, with a wide neck and meaty fists. Zach was no match for him. Rose held her breath, waiting for Brandon to lay Zach out, flat on the path. But in the blink of an eye, Zach whipped a pocketknife from his jacket and held it up, the blade glittering dangerously. Everybody gasped.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Brandon said.

  “You started this. I’ll finish it if I have to.”

  “Zach, please, you’ll make it worse,” Rose said.

  Tessa poked Brandon. “Let’s go. Enright doesn’t know shit, and this is getting ugly. C’mon, it’s cold out here.”

  Brandon backed off grudgingly. “You got off easy this time, both of you,” he said. “Better watch your backs. And, Rose, tell your slutty sister that, too. We know she’s hiding something, and we’re coming for her.”

  Rose trembled with shock as she watched them walk away. Zach put his arm around her protectively. His presence helped her catch her breath.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Shaken up. Thank God you came along. But really, a knife?”

  “It’s just a Swiss Army knife.”

  “Isn’t that a disciplinary violation?”

  “Technically, but I need it for self-defense. That thug Brandon’s been bothering me.”

  “Is it because you stuck up for me on the bus? I’m sorry.”

  “It’s complicated. There was stuff that went on you don’t know about, with Snapchatting the slipper attack. Flynn was in deep.”

  “Is it true he paid to have everyone’s phone wiped?”

  “Rose, the less you know the better. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, but I’m scared, Zach. They were following me. They waited till they could get me alone. I want to report them. Will you back me up?”

  “Bad idea. Brandon’s pissed enough already, over Darcy. Imagine how he’d act if we went after him directly. Come on, let’s get out of the cold. We can go the library. I want to see this mysterious thing that you mentioned in your text. I’m dying of curiosity.”

  32

  Sarah sat at a long conference table surrounded by members of the board of trustees and the senior administration of the school. Everybody listened attentively to Heath as he gave a PowerPoint presentation about his brainchild, Odell’s new anti-bullying policy. Sarah was there in her capacity as head of Moreland Hall, since Moreland had experienced a serious bullying incident. But she was also Heath’s wife. So, when her phone buzzed in her pocket, she studiously ignored it. It wouldn’t do to check her phone while Heath was in the middle of the most important presentation of his career.

  A minute later, it buzzed again. There was a terrible flu bug going around the kids’ day care, and she had visions of Scottie and Harper crying out for Mommy as they burned with fever. She eased the phone from her pocket and glanced at it surreptitiously under the table. The alert was for an e-mail, from a sender called Anonymouse@yahoo.com. Anonymouse? Like, anonymous, but a m
ouse? The subject line read only, “Important Message.” Must be junk. She shoved the phone back in her pocket.

  Heath took questions about his plan, and answered every one of them brilliantly. When his talk was done, everyone applauded enthusiastically, then they adjourned for a ten-minute coffee break. Sarah went up to the front of the room, wanting to congratulate her husband, but she couldn’t get close. Heath was surrounded by trustees. They fawned over him to the point that Simon Barlow, the headmaster, looked pink with jealousy under his mane of white hair. Simon had been headmaster for twenty-five years, and people were saying he was stale in the job. Now he had a rival on his tail.

  “Masterful pivot,” the chairman of the board was saying. “No question, this is going to help us settle the lawsuit.”

  “I’d like to put you in touch with the school’s lawyers,” another trustee said. “They could really benefit from hearing your ideas.”

  “And the marketing firm, too,” the chairman said. “I’d like to have Heath repeat his presentation.”

  Sarah backed away. It was clear she wouldn’t get a word in. And this was somewhat hard to watch. As happy as she was for Heath’s success, she worried it would go to his head.

  Sarah went back to her seat and opened the e-mail she’d gotten a few minutes before. She read it, blinked, and read it twice more. The lights in the room seemed to dim as she stared at the screen.

  “Your husband is cheating on you,” it read. “He’s screwing a student. Everybody knows but you.”

  Everybody knows but you. Sarah glanced up, afraid that people were watching her. But nobody had noticed her private drama. Was it true, did they know? How could they? Would the trustees be patting Heath on the back like this, if they thought he was screwing a student? No, that made no sense. They couldn’t know. Nobody knew. Then why did she feel like everybody in the room could read her mind, could see this e-mail?

  Maybe because the e-mail hadn’t come out of the blue.

  Sarah had been fretting about Heath and Bel Enright since overhearing that phone call on Thanksgiving Day. She remembered Bel coming up to him in the dining hall, and the heads swiveling as the two of them walked out together. He’s screwing a student. Everybody knows but you. Everybody in the dining hall that night had seemed to know—what? Something. That same night Heath snuck out of the apartment and didn’t return until 2:30 in the morning. But he’d explained where he was. He heard a noise. Plausible, right? She’d been struggling ever since over whether to believe him.

  Did this e-mail settle the question once and for all? But how could it? It was anonymous. It could be a prank. People were malicious. They enjoyed inflicting pain. Anonymouse could be a student of hers, upset with the grade she’d given, who’d overheard gossip and decided to use it against her. Or a student of Heath’s, who wanted his attention, and got mad when he didn’t deliver it. Anonymouse could even be Bel Enright herself. Who was to say? Kids did stupid shit all the time. Maybe this was a lie.

  The problem was, she believed it. There were too many signs, and she’d been ignoring them for too long. She looked at her husband now, surrounded by admirers, and felt like she couldn’t breathe. A strange weakness swept through her, and she had to hold on to the edge of the table to steady herself. This was real. He was cheating. With a student. Right?

  But if he was, and everyone knew, why the hell didn’t they say something, or do something? How could the administration of a school suffering its worst-ever scandal ignore evidence that the dean of students was sexually involved with a student? How could her friends and colleagues know that her husband was cheating on her, and not say a word? A conspiracy of silence that big seemed impossible—or at least, implausible. Sarah sat there panicky, shaky, her palms sweaty, not knowing what to do next. How could she go on with her life, not knowing for sure whether the e-mail was true? She had to do something.

  She would write back, ask for details, truth-test the sender to see if he, or she, had any real information. She prayed that this would turn out to be a hoax. After all, if this was real, why would Anonymouse withhold the name of the student? Why not come out and say it was Bel Enright? Maybe Anonymouse wanted to play games. Drag it out, toy with her. Maybe Anonymouse was out to get her—or Heath. He was clearly on the rise in the administration. Just look at how they fawned on him. A man with his ambition was bound to attract enemies. There were plenty of reasons to doubt the veracity of this e-mail.

  The headmaster went up to the podium and tapped the mic. The meeting was about to resume. Sarah was seated at the far end of the table, closest to the door. If she was looking for a chance to escape, for a moment when they were all distracted, this was it. Quietly, she pushed her chair back, crossed the few steps to the door, turned the knob carefully, shut the door behind her as softly as she could manage, her phone gripped tightly in her hand.

  Out in the hallway, she took a deep breath, feeling like she’d escaped from prison. The women’s bathroom was in the basement, three flights below, and she started down the staircase, holding tight to the banister because she was light-headed and dizzy. The stairs were steep and ancient, made of marble, worn into grooves by generations of Odell students. Sarah had been among those students once. The younger Sarah—innocent, hopeful. She’d walked these stairs when her romance with Heath was new, imagining the perfect life she’d have with him. That didn’t feel like so long ago, but obviously, it was.

  The women’s room was low-ceilinged, dank and empty. Sarah shut herself in a stall and stared at her phone. She would write back, ask questions. There was barely any reception down here. She opened the e-mail, and clicked Reply. The icon started spinning, struggling to load. Eventually it allowed her to type, “Who are you?” Anonymouse was waiting and wrote right back, but again, there was a frustrating delay before the response loaded, during which Sarah saw that there was a reply in her in-box, but couldn’t read it.

  “A fly on the wall,” Anonymouse had written.

  “If you don’t have the guts to tell me who you are, why should I believe you?” Sarah wrote.

  Again, delay. Then the reply appeared in her in-box. “I’m telling the truth. You know I am. He’s weak, surrounded by pretty girls. What did you expect?”

  Sarah felt sick reading that reply, but it also made her angry. “Tell me who the student is or get lost,” she wrote, and hit Send.

  She waited as the icon turned. Nothing.

  Her phone rang in her hand, the buzzing so startling that she nearly dropped it. How the hell did Anonymouse get her number? Was Anonymouse someone she knew? But then she had the presence of mind to look at the number, and saw that it was the day care.

  “Hel-lo?” Sarah said, her voice shaking.

  “Sarah?” a voice squawked.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Allison from day care—”

  Her cell cut out. The children. Sarah tried dialing back, but she didn’t have enough reception. She ran out of the bathroom, up the stairs and out the door of Founders’ Hall.

  “Allison? It’s Sarah. I lost you,” she said, when the call finally connected.

  “Oh, Sarah, thank goodness.”

  “What is it? The flu?”

  “I’m afraid so. Harper threw up after lunch. We took her temperature. It’s a hundred and two, and she broke out in a rash. We need you to come get her right away.”

  “Of course. The poor thing! I’ll be there in ten minutes. I’ll take Scottie, too. He’s probably next,” Sarah said.

  “Thank you. They’ll be ready when you get here.”

  Only after she hung up did Sarah feel the cold. A light snow was falling, and the ground was slick. She’d left her coat and handbag in the conference room. Ugh, she couldn’t face going back in there to get them. She hugged herself for warmth and struck out toward the other side of campus, where the day care was located. She’d collect her children and take them home to tend to them. Heath could get her things.

  Heath.

  Sarah couldn
’t afford to think about Anonymouse now. Those e-mails would have to wait. She was a mother first, and her babies were sick. She was a teacher, and she couldn’t leave her students hanging. She needed to cancel her afternoon classes. The phone was still in Sarah’s hand. She opened her e-mail to notify her students, and saw that Anonymouse’s reply had finally loaded.

  “It’s Bel Enright. No way I’m covering for that bitch. You don’t believe me? I have proof. Take a look.”

  With shaking hands, Sarah clicked on the attachment.

  33

  Transcript of Witness Interview conducted by Lieutenant Robert Kriscunas, State Police—Major Crime Unit, and Detective Melissa Howard, Odell NH, PD, with Mr. Zachary Cuddy.

  Kriscunas: What happened to your hand, Zach? That looks serious.

  Cuddy: Oh, no, it’s just a—uh—squash injury.

  Kriscunas: Is it a cut, or—

  Cuddy: It’s nothing. Look, I really don’t have anything useful to tell you, so if you don’t mind, I need to get to my next class.

  Kriscunas: Zach, I understand that you have some hesitancy about speaking with us. I just want you to know, I did get permission from your parents. Your father faxed me a signed permission form. Would you like to see it?

  Cuddy: Yes, I would.

  [PAUSE]

  Kriscunas: Okay?

  Cuddy: I see that’s my father’s signature. He’s not very sophisticated about these things. Just because he signed, doesn’t mean I have to talk.

  Kriscunas: That’s correct. You don’t have to speak with us, but let me tell you what I told him, and maybe it’ll put your mind at ease. We’re just trying to get some background information about the relationship between Rose and Bel Enright, and we understand there might’ve been tension between them over a romantic relationship with you. We were hoping you could shed light on that.

  Cuddy: Yeah, see, that’s the thing. You’ve got the wrong guy, sir. I really have nothing to add.

  Kriscunas: Are you saying you’re not the Zachary who was romantically involved with one sister, while the other one was pursuing you?