My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

  “What I want to talk about is serious,” she says. “I just don’t want you to get mad at me.”

  “Why would I get mad?”

  “You’re always mad at me, and I really don’t understand what I did to deserve it.” She glances down at her hands, adds, “We used to be friends.”

  I twist my face up, about to protest, but she takes a breath and says, “I saw Mr. Strane touch you on the field trip today.”

  At first I don’t understand what she’s talking about. I saw Mr. Strane touch you. It sounds too sexual. Strane didn’t touch me on the field trip; we were mad at each other the whole time. But then I remember him grabbing my arm behind the van.

  “Oh,” I say. “It wasn’t . . .”

  She watches my face.

  “It wasn’t anything.”

  “Why did he do it?” she asks.

  I shake my head. “I can’t remember.”

  “Has he done it before?”

  I don’t know how to answer because I don’t know what she’s really asking, if this means that she now believes the rumor about Strane and I having an affair. She makes a face like she’s dealing with someone helpless, the look she used to give me when she sensed I didn’t know something she did about music or movies or the general ways the world worked. “I had a feeling,” she says.

  “You had a feeling what?”

  “You don’t have to feel bad. It’s not your fault.”

  “What isn’t my fault?”

  “I know he’s abusing you,” she says.

  My head jerks back. “Abusing me?”

  “Vanessa—”

  “Who told you that?”

  “No one,” she says. “I mean, I heard that rumor about you having sex with him for an A on a paper, but I didn’t believe it. Even before I talked to you about it, I didn’t believe it. You’re not like that . . . you wouldn’t do that. But then I saw what he did to you today, grabbing you, and I realized what’s really going on.”

  The whole time she talks, I shake my head. “You’re wrong.”

  “Vanessa, listen,” she says. “He’s horrible. My sister used to tell me he was a creep, that he’d harass girls when they wore skirts, stuff like that, but I had no idea he was this bad.” She leans forward, her eyes hard. “We can get him fired. My dad is on the board of trustees this year. If I tell him about this, Strane is out.”

  I blink through the shock of her words—fired, a creep, harassing girls. How horrible it is to hear her call him Strane. “Why would I want to get him fired?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” She seems genuinely confused. After a moment, her face turns gentle, pursed lips and upturned brows. “I know you’re probably scared,” she says, “but you don’t have to be. He won’t be able to hurt you anymore.”

  She stares at me, her face brimming with pity, and I wonder how it’s possible that I once felt so much for her, yearned to be closer even as I slept beside her in the same small room, our bodies three feet apart. I think of her navy blue bathrobe hanging on the back of the door, the little boxes of raisins wrapped in cellophane that sat on the shelf above her desk, how she smeared lilac-scented lotion on her legs at night, the wet spots on her T-shirt from her freshly washed hair. Sometimes she binged on microwave pizzas, the shame pulsing out of her as she ate. I had noticed everything about her, every single thing she did, but why? What was it about her? She’s so ordinary to me now, with a mind too narrow to understand anything about me and Strane.

  “Why do you care so much about this?” I ask. “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Of course it has to do with me,” she says. “He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be allowed near us. He’s a predator.”

  I laugh out loud at the word predator. “Give me a break.”

  “Look, I actually care about this school, ok? Don’t laugh at me for wanting to make it a better place.”

  “So you’re saying I don’t care about Browick?”

  She hesitates. “No, but . . . I mean, it’s not really the same with you. No one else in your family went here, you know? For you, it’s like you come here and graduate and then that’s it. You never think about it again. You never contribute.”

  “Contribute? Like give money?”

  “No,” she says quickly. “That is not what I said.”

  I shake my head. “You are such a snob.”

  She tries to backtrack, but I’m already putting my headphones on. They’re not plugged into anything, the cord hanging off the bed, but it makes her stop talking. I watch her as she stands to leave, scoops up the laundry, puts it back on the chair. It’s an act of kindness, but in the moment it enrages me, makes me tear off the headphones and ask, “So how’s it going with Hannah?”

  She stops. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you two, like, besties now?”

  Jenny blinks. “You don’t have to be mean.”

  “You’re the one who was always mean to her,” I say. “You used to make fun of her to her face.”

  “Well, I was wrong,” she snaps. “Hannah is fine. You, however, need serious help.”

  She goes to pull open the door and I add, “Nothing is going on with him and me. Anything you’ve heard is stupid gossip.”

  “It’s not what I heard. I saw him touch you.”

  “You didn’t see anything.”

  She squints at me, wraps her hand around the doorknob. “Yes,” she says, “I did.”

  Strane has me recount what Jenny said to me word for word, and when I get to the part where she called him a creep, his eyes bug out like he can’t believe anyone would ever accuse him of that. He calls her a “smug little bitch” and for a moment my body goes cold. I’ve never heard him use that word before.

  “It’ll be fine,” he assures me. “So long as we both deny everything, everything will be perfectly fine. Rumors need proof to be taken seriously.”

  I try to point out that it isn’t really a rumor, because Jenny saw him grab my arm. Strane only scoffs.

  “Proves nothing,” he says.

  The next day in English, he asks us a question about The Glass Menagerie and calls on Jenny even though she doesn’t raise her hand. Flustered, she looks down at her book. She wasn’t paying attention, probably didn’t even hear the question. She stammers out a few “ums,” but instead of calling on someone else, Strane sits back in his chair and folds his hands like he’s prepared to wait all day.

  Tom starts to speak and Strane holds up his hand. “I’d like to hear from Jenny,” he says.

  We sit through another agonizing ten seconds. Finally, in a small voice, Jenny says, “I don’t know,” and Strane lifts his eyebrows and nods. Like That’s what I thought.

  At the end of class, I watch Jenny leave with Hannah, both of them whispering, Hannah throwing a glare over her shoulder at me. I approach Strane as he’s erasing the chalkboard and say, “You shouldn’t have done that to her.”

  “I would have thought you’d enjoy it.”

  “Embarrassing her will only make things worse.”

  He blinks at me, registering the criticism. “Well, I’ve taught kids like her for the past thirteen years. I know how to handle them.” He drops the eraser on the chalk rail and wipes his hands. “And I’d really prefer if you didn’t critique my teaching.”

  I apologize, but it’s disingenuous and he knows it. When I say I have to go, that I have homework to do, he doesn’t try to get me to stay.

  Back in my room, I lie facedown on my bed and breathe into my pillow to calm myself out of hating him. Because in the moment, it does feel like that—like I hate him. Really, I just hate it when he gets angry at me, because that’s when I feel things that probably shouldn’t be there in the first place, shame and fear, a voice urging me to run.

  It all falls apart over the course of one week. It starts on Wednesday, when I’m in French class and Strane opens the classroom door and asks Madame Laurent if he can borrow me. “Bring your backpack,” he whispers. As we walk across
campus to the administration building, he explains what’s happening, but it’s already obvious. Jenny wasn’t in English class the past two days, and I’ve seen her around so I know she isn’t sick. The previous night at dinner, I watched her with Hannah, their heads ducked together. When they came up for air, both turned straight toward me.

  Strane says Jenny’s father sent a letter to the school, but that it’s all hearsay, no proof. It won’t go anywhere. We just need to do exactly what we’ve talked about: deny everything. They can’t hurt us if we both deny. An ocean roars in my ears. The more he talks, the further away he sounds.

  “I already told Mrs. Giles none of this is true, but it’s more important that you deny it.” He watches my face as we walk. “Are you going to be able to do that?”

  I nod. There are fifty steps to go before we reach the front door of the building, maybe less.

  “You’re very calm,” Strane says. He stares into me, searching for a crack, the same way he looked at me in his station wagon after we had sex for the first time. As he opens the door, he says, “We’ll get through this.”

  Mrs. Giles says she wants to believe us rather than what’s in the letter—that’s literally what she says from behind her enormous desk as Strane and I sit in the wooden chairs, like two kids in trouble.

  “Honestly, I have a hard time imagining how this could be true,” she says, picking up a piece of paper that I assume is the letter. Her eyes move over the lines. “‘Ongoing sexual affair.’ How could such a thing go on without anyone noticing?”

  I don’t understand what she means. Clearly, people have noticed. That’s the whole reason Jenny’s dad wrote the letter—people noticed.

  Beside me, Strane says, “It really is absurd.”

  Mrs. Giles says she has a theory about what’s behind all this. Every once in a while a rumor like this will manifest, and students, parents, other teachers catch wind of it and immediately take it as truth, regardless of how unbelievable the rumor might be.

  “Everyone loves a scandal,” she says, and then she and Strane exchange a knowing smile.

  She says the rumors usually sprout from jealousy or a misinterpretation of innocent favoritism. That over the course of a career, teachers have many, many students, most of whom are, for lack of a better word, inconsequential. Students might be bright, accomplished individuals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a teacher will have a special connection with them. Every once in a while, however, a teacher will come across a student with whom he or she feels especially close.

  “Teachers are human, after all, same as you are,” Mrs. Giles says. “Tell me, you don’t like all your teachers equally, do you, Vanessa?” I shake my head no. “Of course you don’t. Some you prefer more than others. Teachers are the same with students. To a teacher, some students are just special.”

  Mrs. Giles leans back in her chair, folds her hands across her chest. “What I suspect happened is Jenny Murphy became jealous of the special treatment you received from Mr. Strane.”

  “One relevant point Vanessa shared with me,” Strane says, “is she and Jenny roomed together last year and they didn’t get along.” He looks at me. “Isn’t that right?”

  Slowly, I nod.

  Mrs. Giles throws up her hands. “Well, there you have it. Case closed.”

  She hands me a piece of paper—the letter from Jenny’s father. “Now if you could read that over and then sign this.” She hands me a second paper with a single typed line of text: “The parties below deny any truth to the contents of the letter written by Patrick Murphy on May 2, 2001.” At the bottom are spaces for two signatures, mine and Strane’s. My eyes skim over the letter, unable to focus. I sign the paper and then hand it to Strane, who does the same. Case closed.

  Mrs. Giles smiles. “That should do it. Best to resolve these things as quickly as possible.”

  Shaky with relief, feeling like I might throw up, I stand and head toward the door, but Mrs. Giles stops me before I leave. “Vanessa, I’ll have to call your parents to let them know about this,” she says. “So make sure to call them this evening, ok?”

  Bile rises in my throat. I hadn’t considered this before. Of course she has to call them. I wonder if she’ll call my house, leave a message on the answering machine, or if she’ll call one of them at work—Dad at the hospital, Mom in her office at the insurance company.

  As I leave the room, I hear Mrs. Giles say to Strane, “I’ll let you know if I need anything else from you, but this should take care of it.”

  When I call home that evening, I offer a flood of explanations and platitudes: everything’s fine, nothing’s going on, the whole thing is ridiculous, a stupid rumor, of course it’s not true. My parents are on different phones, both talking at once.

  “You need to stop hanging out with these teachers, first of all,” Mom says.

  Teachers? Has there been more than one? Then I remember the lie I told back at Thanksgiving, that it was my politics teacher who said my hair was the color of maple leaves.

  Dad asks, “Do you want me to come get you?”

  “I want to know exactly what’s been going on there,” Mom adds.

  “No,” I say. “I’m fine. And nothing’s been going on. Everything’s fine.”

  “You’d tell us if someone’s been hurting you,” Mom says. They both wait for me to confirm that, yes, I would tell them.

  “Sure,” I say. “But that’s not what happened. Nothing’s happened. How would it happen? You know how much supervision there is here. It’s a lie Jenny Murphy came up with. Remember Jenny, how mean she was to me?”

  “But why would she make something like this up? Get her father involved?” Mom asks.

  Dad says, “This just doesn’t sound right.”

  “She hates Mr. Strane, too. She has a vendetta against him. She’s one of those entitled people who think anyone who doesn’t suck up to her deserves to have his life ruined.”

  “I don’t like this, Vanessa,” Dad says.

  “It’s fine,” I say. “You know I would tell you if anything was wrong.”

  He and I go quiet, wait for Mom.

  “It’s almost the end of the year,” she says. “I guess it doesn’t make sense to pull you out. But, Vanessa, you stay away from that teacher, ok? If he tries to talk to you, tell the headmaster.”

  “He’s my teacher. He has to be able to talk to me.”

  “You know what I mean,” she says. “Go to class and then leave.”

  “He’s not even the problem.”

  “Vanessa,” Dad barks. “Listen to your mother.”

  “I want you to call us every night,” Mom says. “At six thirty, I expect the phone to ring. Understood?”

  Staring across the common room, the television showing MTV on mute, Carson Daly’s spiked hair and black nail polish, I mumble, “Yes, ma’am.” Mom sighs. She hates it when I call her that.

  Strane says we need to back off for a while, be conscious of optics. No late afternoons in his office, long hours spent alone. “Even this is a risk,” he says, meaning my skipping lunch to spend the free period in his classroom with the door wide open. We need to be careful, at least for the time being, as much as it kills him to keep his distance from me.

  He’s confident, though, that it’ll all blow over soon. He keeps using that phrase, “blow over,” like this is some bad weather. Summer will come and, with it, drives in his station wagon, open windows, and sea-salt air. He tells me to trust him, that by next fall, this will all be forgotten. I don’t know if I believe him. A couple days pass and things seem ok, but whenever I’m within eyesight of Jenny, she shoots me a look of raw resentment. Strane thinks she’s given up because she transferred out of his class, but I can tell she’s still mad.

  The bulletin board goes up listing every senior’s plan for college the following year. I go to dinner and, while I’m waiting in line at the sandwich station, I notice Jenny and Hannah moving methodically around the dining hall. Jenny carries a pen and notebo
ok, and as they approach each table, Hannah says something to the people sitting there, waits for a response, and then Jenny writes something down in the notebook. I notice, too, how many eyes turn toward me, then dart away, not wanting me to catch them staring.

  I leave the line, and as I walk across the dining hall I hear Hannah ask, “Have any of you heard a rumor that Vanessa Wye and Mr. Strane are having an affair?”

  It’s a table of seniors. Brandon McLean, whose name I saw listed next to Dartmouth on the bulletin board, asks, “Who’s Vanessa Wye?”

  The girl sitting beside him—Alexis Cartwright, Williams College—points to me. “Isn’t that her?”

  The whole table turns. Jenny and Hannah do, too. I catch a glimpse of Jenny’s notebook, a list of names, before she hides it against her chest.

  Twenty-six. That’s how many names are on Jenny’s list. I sit across from Mrs. Giles, this time only her and me in the office, no secretary or Strane. Mrs. Giles hands me a copy of the list, and I read down the names, mostly sophomores, classmates, girls on my floor. No one I’ve ever talked to about Strane. Then I see the last name on the page—Jesse Ly.

  “If you have anything you want to tell me,” Mrs. Giles says, “now is the time to do it.”

  I’m not sure what she’s expecting from me, if she still believes the rumor isn’t true or if this list has changed her mind and now she’s angry that I lied. She’s angry about something.

  I look up from the list. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “I’d like you to be honest with me.”

  I say nothing, not wanting to take a step in any direction.

  “What if I tell you I’ve spoken with a student on this list who says you explicitly told them you were romantically involved with Mr. Strane?”

  It takes me a moment to understand she doesn’t mean “explicit” in a sexual sense, but that I told this person directly. Again, I say nothing. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth. It seems like the sort of bluff cops on TV shows use when trying to wrangle a confession out of someone. The smart move is always to stay silent, wait for your lawyer—though I don’t know who the equivalent of a lawyer would be in my case. Strane? My parents?