Parachutes

by Kelly Yang

  I think back to what he said about Li Incorporated. I grab my laptop and pull up their website. I open another tab to google their founder. I don’t find much on their website, but Google spits out a picture of their founder, Vincent Li, standing next to his wife and son— Wait a minute, is that . . . ? I zoom in on the image to get a closer look at his son when the home phone rings.

  “Hello?” I answer distractedly.

  “Hey, I need to speak to Claire.” The voice gets my attention. It’s Jay. I put down my laptop.

  “She moved out,” I tell him.

  “What do you mean she moved out?” Jay asks.

  “She moved out,” I repeat. I gaze at her empty room. All that’s left of her is the faint stain on the carpet where she threw up that first night.

  “Where’d she move to?” Jay asks. Suddenly his voice takes on an entirely different tone. “Is she with that white boy?”

  “No!” I exclaim. Then it occurs to me, Jay knows about Zach.

  “If you see Claire, tell her that I need to talk to her,” Jay says.

  “Wait, before you hang up!” I open my laptop back up. “Is your dad by any chance Vincent Li? Does he own Li Incorporated?”

  There’s a pause on the phone. “Yeah, why?”

  Oh. My. God.

  “Nothing,” I say to Jay.

  Sixty-Nine

  Claire

  I put my stuff in storage and check in to a nearby hotel while I wait for my mom’s real estate agent to find me a house. The real estate agent says it’s going to take a couple of days, during which I continue to skip school (my parents email the school to tell them I’m sick), watch TV, and order room service.

  My mom says hotels make you forget reality—what happens in a hotel, stays in a hotel. I wonder if that’s something she tells herself so she can avoid thinking about what my dad does in them, but I try to apply the same logic. I take long swims in the outdoor pool. I float on my back as I gaze up at the clouds, thinking about my childhood and enjoying the warm weather and how nice it is to not be at school, until I remember why it is I can’t go to school. At the thought of Jay, all the horror comes flooding back and my body plunges. Water goes up my nose, and I gasp and cough.

  The pool staff rushes over to me and asks if I’m okay. I get out of the pool and run back to my room. Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? Moments of happiness punctured by the memory of what happened, like a bomb which can detonate at any time.

  Sleep’s been hard. Zach brought me some melatonin, but it doesn’t really work on me. I long instead for my grandmother’s special blend of Chinese rosebud, wolfberry, and white peony root tea, but I know I can’t call her. I’ve been forbidden from contacting her. Not that I’d want to talk to her about what happened.

  Jess FaceTimes to tell me Jay’s been asking about me.

  “I told him to go fuck himself,” she says. She’s kept my secret and not told anyone, not even Nancy and Florence, who keep texting me, Where are you? What’s going on? “He looks like shit by the way . . . ,” she adds.

  My phone dings. It’s my parents on the other line.

  “I’ll call you back,” I say to Jess, and switch the call.

  “Good news,” my mom announces. “We found you an apartment two blocks away from school. They’re getting it ready now. You should be able to move in a few days.”

  “Oh, and listen,” my dad adds. “I talked to Jay’s dad.”

  I sit up and wrap my robe around me tightly.

  “He assures me what happened will not happen again. Jay is very sorry. You’re safe to go back to school.”

  I’m safe?

  “I’m only going back if he’s kicked out of school.” I tell my parents I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what Ms. Jones said and I think I want to press it with the school.

  There’s silence on the other end.

  “What will that accomplish?” my dad asks. “Sure, it’ll feel good for five minutes. But what about afterward?”

  I brace for a lecture on how uncomfortable it’s going to be to have to recount my story to all the various administrators of our school. But that’s not what he says.

  “Everyone will know you’re damaged goods,” my dad warns.

  My hands go cold as my mom quickly apologizes for him and says, “He didn’t mean that. We just don’t want you to get hurt!”

  But it’s too late. I bite my mouth so hard, when I get off the phone, there’s blood on my lip.

  Mrs. Mandalay makes small listening noises in her office the next day as I tell her what Jay did to me. Zach offered to come with me, but I wanted to do this by myself. I’ve now told the story five times to people, and each time, I can feel myself getting stronger.

  “And that’s when you say he raped you?” Mrs. Mandalay asks.

  “Yes,” I say, proud of myself for keeping it together. Surprisingly, during the most important meeting of them all, my eyes stay dry. Mrs. Mandalay asks me what I did afterward. She’s a lot more clinical than Ms. Jones, asking for times and details almost like a doctor would. I tell her I took a shower and went home.

  “Did you go to the police?” Mrs. Mandalay inquires.

  “No,” I say. “Not yet.”

  A pause. “I see,” she says.

  “Should I go to the police?” I ask.

  She jots down some notes. “You can if you want,” she says, looking up at me. “Is that what you want, Claire? To have a long, drawn-out police investigation?”

  I shake my head. Not when she puts it like that. She seems colder than when I was in here for the Mrs. Wallace email thing. Does she not believe me?

  “If you go to the police, they’ll want to know a bunch of things. Why didn’t you get a rape test done? Why’d you wait so long to come in? Why did you stay in Jay’s house afterward and take a shower? Not to mention, what were you doing in his bedroom to begin with?”

  I press my index finger and thumb to my forehead. They’re the exact whys I’ve been asking myself these last few days.

  “I just don’t want to have to see him anymore,” I murmur. I look up and plead with Mrs. Mandalay. “Please, can you make him switch to another school?”

  Mrs. Mandalay shakes her head. “We can’t just kick him out of school. This is America. We believe in due process,” she says. She reaches for a copy of the school rules. “Now, on page 38, you’ll see that whenever there’s an internal student dispute, students are encouraged to take the matter before the administrative board.”

  Ms. Jones had mentioned something about the administrative board. The headmistress tells me it consists of teachers, administrators, and student representatives and works just like an actual court. They hear testimony from both sides.

  “So it’s like a school court?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “And Jay will be in the room?”

  “Yes,” she says. I groan at the floor. I was afraid of that. “And either side can call witnesses.”

  “There are no witnesses.”

  “Well, you can have character witnesses.” She slides the school rules pamphlet across her desk. “Trust me,” she says. “This is the best option.”

  As I take the pamphlet from her, she reminds me that California truancy laws prevent me from staying home any longer.

  “You mean I have to stay at school today?” I ask.

  “I’m afraid so,” she says.

  My mouth forms an O. I promised myself I would not come back to school until after Jay was kicked out. I only came back today to meet with Mrs. Mandalay.

  “Claire.” Mrs. Mandalay looks me in the eye. “If you really want to do this, you’re going to have to be stronger than this. You’re going to have to face him at the meeting eventually.”

  I reach for my backpack, putting the school rules pamphlet inside. Stepping out of Mrs. Mandalay’s office, I lift my eyes, squinting at the full on-ness of school. Classmates screaming. Laughing. Taking pictures of each other in the photo booth of the
ir MacBook Airs. I stare at them, envying their normalness. This is just a regular school day for them, not a warzone they have to share with their rapist.

  Florence is the first one to spot me.

  “Oh, thank God, where’ve you been? My parents came for the spring concert and—” She stops talking when she sees my face. I shake my head, the words trapped in my windpipe. Florence leads me over to a quiet picnic table way out in the field.

  Jay runs up to us as we’re walking.

  Florence lets go of my hand when she sees him. “I’ll let you guys have a moment,” she says.

  I shake my head at her, No, don’t leave me!, but the words are swallowed up by the shock of Jay standing next to me, talking to me, like nothing happened.

  “Hey,” Jay says. “I just wanted to apologize for what happened.” He reaches out a hand to touch my elbow, and I jerk it away so violently, I drop my phone on the ground.

  As he reaches to pick it up, I shout at him, “Leave it.”

  Jay puts up his hands. Florence, Nancy, and Jess watch us from across the field. The sight of his hands brings me straight back to that night, the way they pinned me down, holding me in place while he violated me. I lunge forward, feeling my breakfast rising in me. It comes shooting out of me. As Jay reaches to hold back my hair, I shout at him, “Get the fuck away from me!”

  My face is ashen white, hair a disheveled mess, the sick drying on my shirt as I march back into Mrs. Mandalay’s office for the second time today.

  “I want to proceed with the ad board,” I say. Mrs. Mandalay puts down her pen and folds her hands on her desk.

  “Are you sure about this?” she asks.

  “Yes.” The idea of spending the next few months in the same school as that creep, while he walks around pretending nothing happened, is impossible. I get physically ill around him. Any hope for an undisturbed rest of my education withered and died today on the field.

  Mrs. Mandalay presses a button on her desk phone, tells her secretary to hold her calls. She turns to me and once again reminds me, “You’re going to have to face him during the trial.”

  I know. I tell myself there’s nothing to be scared of. I’ve already faced him. Of course, telling him to fuck off on the field is not the same thing as listening to him deny having raped me to our teachers.

  “You think you can handle that?” she asks.

  I clench my hands into tight fists.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Okay, then,” she says, retrieving her calendar from her desk. She glances at the dates. “How’s Thursday?”

  Walking out of Mrs. Mandalay’s office the second time, I’m met by Florence, Nancy, and Jess outside. My squad pulls me in for a hug as I tell Nancy and Florence what happened.

  “That motherfucker!” Nancy cries. “Are you going to switch schools?”

  I shake my head. “No. I’m going up in front of the ad board.”

  “Hey, how’d it go?” Zach runs up to me and asks me. He’s just come from training, and his hair’s still wet. My friends stare at Zach as he leans over and gives me a kiss.

  “This is Zach,” I introduce to them.

  Jess looks down at Zach’s ripped JanSport backpack and used Nike sneakers, the swoosh so faded it looks more like the crooked mouth of a smiley face. And even though she doesn’t say it, I can see it on her face: You left Jay for him?

  Seventy

  Dani

  “Hey,” I say to Zach in band, putting away my tournament papers for Snider. “How come you keep canceling our tutoring sessions?”

  He doesn’t reply.

  I glance over at Ming, rubbing her puffy eyes as she gets out her sheet music. Last night, she finally talked to Florence about walking away at the concert. Ming asked Florence why she did that. Was it because she didn’t want her parents talking to Ming’s parents and finding out they weren’t exactly rich? When Florence couldn’t give her a straight answer, they broke up.

  Zach turns away from me.

  “How’s Claire?” I ask. Again, he doesn’t say anything. “I got a call from Jay. He knows about you guys . . .”

  This gets Zach’s attention. He points his reed at me. “You’re still talking to him? Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?” he asks me.

  I stare at him. What’d I do?

  Mr. Rufus walks up to the conductor’s stand and orders us all to sit down. He holds up his baton and nods to Ming, who lifts her bow. She takes a deep breath and plays the first soulful note.

  I sneak glances at Zach as I lift my flute. I can’t believe I’m back to sneaking glances at him in band again. I deliberately play an off note, hoping to get his attention. But no matter what I do, he doesn’t look at me.

  Claire lingers in the shadows of the hallway, like she’s hiding from someone. I’m glad she’s back in school. She peers into the big faculty conference room, the one Mrs. Mandalay only uses for special occasions, like an ad board meeting.

  “Dani!” Mr. Matthews, my counselor, walks up to me in the hallway and greets me. “Everything okay? You feeling better?”

  I muster a polite nod while looking over his shoulder at Claire. She catches me looking at her, frowns, and walks away.

  I glance down at the file in Mr. Matthews’s hand. It reads: CONFIDENTIAL—BRIEFING MATERIALS FOR MEMBERS OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE BOARD ONLY.

  “Is there going to be an ad board proceeding?” I ask.

  Mr. Matthews sighs yes. I try to probe him for more details, but he moves the file sharply away from me. “Dani, you know I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” he says, changing the subject. “Hey, I’m sorry you didn’t make headmistress commendation. Maybe next year.”

  I look down. “Yeah . . . maybe,” I say.

  “But at least you get to go to Snider!” he says. “It’s in two days, isn’t it?”

  I nod. My mom printed out the plane ticket this morning and set it on my bed.

  My eyes slide back over to the ad board room. Now Jay’s standing in front of it, looking inside. His finger’s moving in the air, like he’s counting how many seats are inside. Something’s definitely up.

  “Hey, Mr. Matthews, do you know anything about Li Incorporated?” I ask.

  Mr. Matthews’s face hardens.

  “Why do you ask?” he says. Before I can answer, he says stiffly, “I think you should focus on preparing for your upcoming tournament.” He excuses himself and walks away.

  Seventy-One

  Claire

  Jay’s making the rounds, going from table to table, talking to parachutes. They informed him yesterday about the ad board meeting that’s happening on Thursday and I guess he’s lobbying for character witnesses. At lunch, the other kids talk in hushed whispers, murmurs that dull when I get close and sharpen the minute I walk away. Jess sighs.

  “Maybe you should back down,” she says, watching Jay out of the corner of her eye.

  Florence stirs her soup, her eyes puffy and red. Apparently, she and Ming broke up.

  “No way.” I shake my head. I look over at the ever-growing table of Jay sycophants, most of them guys, but also a couple of girls. What’d he promise them? A flight home on his private jet? “I’m not worried. I’ve got you guys, Zach, and Ms. Jones.”

  Speaking of Ms. Jones, she catches up to me later that day and tells me she’s going to talk to Mrs. Mandalay and request that she be a part of the ad board.

  “Now that I’m teaching here full-time, I’d like to be a part of the decision-making process of the school, especially on matters involving student safety,” she says. “I looked at the rules and there’s no requirement that ad board members needed to have taught at the school for a certain period of time. It just says faculty members.”

  I throw my arms around her—it’s the best news I’ve heard all week! “Thank you so much!” I say. If Ms. Jones is in that room on Thursday, it would mean that I would have at least one adult on my side.

  I wish her good luck as she goes and talks to Mrs.
Mandalay. The smile on my face vanishes when I get back to my locker and see the Chinese words smeared on the front of my locker:

  Cock Tease

  Frantically, I try to rub it out, but it’s written in permanent marker. I scrub and I scrub, as the other students pass by and stare. The white kids thankfully can’t read it, but all the parachutes can. They shake their heads at me as they walk by.

  Dani sees me and joins me in scrubbing, but I yell at her, “I don’t need your help!” She stops scrubbing and quietly walks away. Five minutes later, she comes back with a dry-erase whiteboard marker, which she tosses at me.

  “Try tracing over it with this,” she says.

  I try tracing over the characters after Dani leaves. It works. When the words finally come off, Jess, Nancy, and Florence walk up. The four of us stand back and look at my locker. The words are gone but I’d overscrubbed and now there’s a faint white outline against the beige metal.

  Florence looks nervously at me. “You sure you still want to go through with this?”

  Later that day, I’m moving into my new apartment, two blocks away from school. It’s a two-bedroom town house overlooking the lake. The real estate agent, a white lady named Sarah, gives me the keys and asks if it’ll be just me. I tell her yes and brace for a lecture about the dangers of living alone as a teenager, but she couldn’t care less. She shows me how the stove and the oven work and leaves the number of the local housecleaning agency on the fridge. It happens to be Dani’s agency. I toss it out.

  After Sarah leaves, the movers drop off my stuff and the delivery guys from Pottery Barn show up to deliver the rest of the furniture I ordered. As they’re moving the couch inside the house, I hear a sports car speeding down the street. My body shrinks with dread. I look up to see my worst nightmare parking in front of my town house.

  “We need to talk! You’ve been ignoring all my voice mails!” Jay shouts, walking toward me.

  I’m so shocked he’s here, I’m disoriented for a second. Then angry. Violently, hysterically angry. This is my home! How dare he come here? I look to the mover guys and the delivery people and want them all to get out so I can lock the door, but the door’s open wide, and Jay’s running up the stairs, and before I know it, he’s standing in the middle of my living room.