My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

  Mrs. Giles takes a deep breath, touches her fingers to her temples. She doesn’t want to be dealing with this. I don’t want to deal with this, either. We should just forget it—that’s what I want to say. Let’s forget all about this. But I know we can’t, not with Jenny leading the charge, and because of who her father is. The structure of Browick suddenly seems obvious, a blatant system of power and worth in which some people matter more than others, something I’ve always felt but haven’t before been able to comprehend so plainly.

  “We need to get to the bottom of this,” she says.

  “We are at the bottom,” I say. “None of it is true. That’s the bottom.”

  “So if I go get this student and bring them in here, will your story change?” she asks.

  I blink as I realize she’s trying to call my bluff, not the other way around. “It’s not true,” I say again.

  “Fine.” She gets up, leaves the office, the door still open.

  The secretary pokes her head in, sees me and smiles. “Hang in there,” she says.

  A lump rises in my throat from this small scrap of kindness. I wonder if she believes me, what she thought during the last meeting with Mrs. Giles and Strane, while she sat scribbling down everything we said on her yellow legal pad.

  A few minutes pass and Mrs. Giles comes back into the office with Jesse Ly trailing behind her. He sits in the chair beside mine, but he doesn’t look at me. His face burns red, his neck, his ears. His chest heaves with each breath.

  “Jesse,” Mrs. Giles says, “I’m going to ask you the same question you answered before. Did Vanessa tell you that she and Mr. Strane were having an affair?”

  Jesse shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, she never said that.” His voice is high, frantic, the kind of voice you use when you’re so desperate not to tell the truth, you don’t care how obvious it is that you’re lying.

  Mrs. Giles again presses her fingertips to her temples. “That isn’t what you said five minutes ago.”

  Jesse keeps shaking his head. No, no, no. He’s distraught, so much so that I’m gripped with an overwhelming pity for him. I imagine reaching over and placing my hand over his, saying, It’s ok, you can tell her the truth. But I only sit and watch, wondering if I’m ultimately to blame for him going through this moment of obvious pain, if it matters that I’m the one with more to lose.

  “What did you tell her?” I ask quietly.

  Jesse’s eyes jump over to me. Still shaking his head, he says, “I didn’t know this was going to happen. She just asked me—”

  “Jesse,” Mrs. Giles says. “Has Vanessa ever told you that she and Mr. Strane are romantically involved?”

  He looks back and forth, from her to me. When his eyes sink to the floor, I know what’s coming. I close my eyes and he says yes.

  If I were weaker, this would be it. I’ve been trapped, confronted with my own inconsistency. The way Mrs. Giles stares me down, it’s obvious she thinks this is over, that I’m about to break. But there’s still a way out of this tunnel. I see the sliver of light. I just have to keep digging.

  “I lied,” I say. “It was all lies. What I told Jesse about Strane”—I correct myself—“Mr. Strane, none of it was true.”

  “You lied,” Mrs. Giles repeats. “And why would you do that?”

  I look her straight in the eye as I explain my reasons: because I was bored and lonely, because I had a crush on a teacher, because I have an overactive imagination. The longer I talk, the more confident I become, blaming myself, absolving Strane. It’s such a good excuse, it explains away anything I said to Jesse, plus whatever rumors the twenty-five other names on the list heard. This should have been my story from the beginning.

  “I know lying is a bad thing to do,” I say, looking from Jesse to Mrs. Giles, “and for that I’m sorry. But that’s the whole truth. There’s nothing else to it.”

  It’s a dizzy pleasure, like filling my lungs with fresh air after pulling the blankets off my face. I am smart and I am strong—more than anyone understands.

  I skip lunch and go straight to Strane’s classroom, knock on the door. He doesn’t answer even though I can see the lights are on through the textured glass window. I tell myself he’s just worried about the optics still, but during English, Mr. Noyes is there instead of Strane, and as soon as I step inside the classroom, he tells me I need to go to the administration building.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  He holds up his hands. “I’m only the messenger,” he says, but it’s clear in the wary way he looks at me, like he doesn’t want to be near me, that he knows something. I walk across campus, unsure if I should hurry or drag my feet, and when I reach the front steps of the admin building, looking up at the columns and the Browick seals on the double doors, Dad’s truck pulls into the main campus entrance. I hold my hand up to shield my eyes and see they’re both in there, Dad driving, Mom in the passenger seat with her hand clamped over her mouth. They turn into the parking lot, get out of the truck.

  I hurry back down the steps and call, “What are you doing here?” At the sound of my voice, my mother’s head whips around and she points a finger down at her feet, the way she calls to Babe when she’s done something bad. Get over here. Just like the dog, I stop fifteen feet away and refuse to come any closer.

  “Why are you here?” I ask again.

  “Jesus, Vanessa, why do you think?” she snaps.

  “Did Mrs. Giles call you? There’s no reason for you to be here.”

  Dad is still in his work clothes, gray slacks and a blue pin-striped shirt with phil embroidered over the pocket. Despite everything else, embarrassment flares up in me. Couldn’t he have changed?

  He slams the truck door and strides over to me. “You ok?”

  “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  He grabs my hand. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  He stares straight into me, pleading, but I reveal nothing. My lower lip doesn’t even tremble.

  “Phil,” Mom says. “Let’s go.”

  I follow them into the building, up the stairs, and to the little room outside Mrs. Giles’s office with the now-familiar secretary. I look to her for another smile, but she ignores me as she waves us in. Strane is in the office with Mrs. Giles, standing beside her desk, hands in his pockets, shoulders back. My chest aches from wanting to burrow into him. If I could I’d press myself into him and let his body consume me whole.

  Mrs. Giles holds out her hand for my parents to shake. Strane holds out his hand, too, which Dad takes, but Mom just sits down, ignores him like he isn’t even there.

  “I think it’s best if Vanessa isn’t here for this,” Mrs. Giles says. She looks to Strane and he gives a quick nod. “You can head back into the waiting room.”

  She gestures to the door, but I’m staring at Strane, noticing how his hair looks wet from the shower and that he’s wearing his tweed blazer and a tie. He’s going to tell them, I think. He’s turning himself in.

  “Don’t,” I say, but it barely comes out.

  “Vanessa,” Mom says. “Go.”

  The meeting lasts a half hour. I know this because the secretary turns on the radio, probably to keep me from overhearing what’s being said in the office. “It’s your two thirty afternoon coffee break,” the DJ says, “a half hour of nonstop soft hits.” While the secretary hums along, I think about how I’ll always remember these songs because they were the ones playing when Strane confessed and sacrificed himself for me.

  When it’s over, they all emerge at once. Mrs. Giles and my parents stop in the waiting room. Strane keeps walking. He leaves without giving me a glance. I see Mom’s flared nostrils and dilated eyes, Dad’s mouth set in a straight line, looking how he did when he had to tell me our old dog died overnight.

  “Come on,” he says, taking my hand.

  We sit on a bench outside, Mom staring at the ground, her arms crossed tight, while Dad does the talking. What he says is s
o far from what I expect, it takes me a while to swing back up and actually listen. He’s not saying, We know everything, it’s not your fault. He’s saying that there’s a code of ethics at Browick that students are held to, and I violated it by lying about a teacher and damaging his reputation.

  “They take stuff like that pretty seriously here,” Dad says.

  “So it’s not . . .” I look from one face to the other. “He didn’t . . .”

  Mom’s head jerks up. “He didn’t what?”

  I swallow hard, shake my head. “Nothing.”

  Their explanation continues. I’m going to end the school year early. There are only a couple weeks left anyway. They’re spending the night at the inn downtown, and, in the morning, I’ll have to, as Dad puts it, “right my wrong.” Mrs. Giles wants me to tell all the people on Jenny Murphy’s list that the rumor about me and Mr. Strane is a lie and that I started the lie.

  “Like, tell them one at a time?” I ask.

  Dad shakes his head. “Sounds like everyone’s going to get together so you can do it in one go.”

  “You don’t have to do it,” Mom says. “We can pack up your room and leave tonight.”

  “If Mrs. Giles wants me to do it, I have to,” I say. “She’s the headmaster.”

  Mom purses her lips, like she wants to say more.

  “I’m still coming back next year, right?”

  “Let’s take this one step at a time,” Dad says.

  They take me out to dinner at the pizza place downtown. Between the three of us we can’t even finish a pie. We pick at our slices, Mom using napkin after napkin to soak up the grease. Neither of them will look at me.

  They offer to drive me back to campus, but I say no, I want to walk. Look at what a nice night it is, I say, still warm at dusk.

  “I could use a peaceful few minutes before I go back up there,” I say.

  I expect them to refuse, but they seem too dazed to argue and let me go. They hug me goodbye outside the restaurant, Dad whispering, “I love you, Nessa,” in my ear. They turn left toward the inn and I go right toward campus and the public library, toward Strane’s house.

  “I know this is stupid,” I say when he opens the door, “but I had to see you.”

  He looks beyond me, to the street and sidewalk. “Vanessa, you can’t be here.”

  “Let me come in. Five minutes.”

  “You need to leave.”

  I’m so frustrated, I scream and shove him with both hands, using all my weight, which doesn’t move him but rattles him enough to shut the door and usher me around the side of the house so we’re shielded from the street. As soon as we’re secluded, I throw my arms around him, press against him as hard as I can.

  “They’re making me leave tomorrow,” I say.

  He takes a step back, unwinds my arms, and says nothing. I wait for his face to show something—anger or panic or regret for having let the situation reach this point—but he’s completely blank. He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks over my shoulder, up at the house. He’s like a stranger standing before me.

  “They want me to talk in front of a bunch of people,” I say. “I’m supposed to tell them I lied.”

  “I know,” he says. He still won’t look at me, his face set in a deep frown.

  “Well, I don’t know if I can do it.” At that, his eyes flick down at me, a tiny victory, so I push it further. “Maybe I should tell them the truth.”

  He clears his throat but doesn’t flinch. “From what I understand, you’ve already come pretty close to doing that,” he says. “You told your mother about me. You told her I was your boyfriend.”

  At first I don’t remember, then: the drive home from February break, after she heard me on the phone in the middle of the night. What’s his name? she asked, the snow-covered fields and skeleton trees flying past the car windows. I answered with the truth—Jacob. But that was just a word, a common first name, not the same as a confession. She hadn’t gleaned the truth from that one word. She couldn’t have. If she did, she wouldn’t have let Strane leave Mrs. Giles’s office or agreed to this idea of me apologizing to a roomful of people.

  “If you’ve decided you want to ruin me,” Strane says, “I can’t stop you. But I hope you understand what will happen if you do.”

  I try to say that I didn’t really mean it, that of course I’m not going to tell, but his voice drowns out mine.

  “Your name and photo will be in the papers,” he says. “You’ll be all over the news.” He speaks slowly, carefully, like he wants to make sure I understand. “This will follow you around forever. You’ll be branded for life.”

  I want to say, Too late. That I walk around every day feeling permanently marked by him, but maybe that’s unfair. Hasn’t he been trying hard to save me? Making me promise I’d move away for college, insisting that ultimately my life would be bigger than him. He wants more for me, an expanse of a future rather than a narrow road, but that can only happen if he remains a secret. Once the truth is out, he’ll come to define my entire life; nothing else about me will matter. I see a half memory, like something from a dream: a hybrid girl, part myself and part Ms. Thompson—or maybe I’m remembering a news clip of Monica Lewinsky?—a young woman with tears rolling down her cheeks, trying to hold her head high through question after humiliating question of what happened: Tell us exactly what he did to you. It’s easy to imagine how my life could become one long trail of wreckage leading directly back to my decision to tell.

  “I’d rather end my life right now than go through that,” Strane says. He looks down at me, his hands still in his pant pockets. He’s casual even as he looks ruin in the eye. “But maybe you’re stronger than I am.”

  At that, I start to cry, really cry, the kind I’ve never done in front of him before—hiccupping, awful, ugly crying with snot dripping from my nose. It comes on so fast, it knocks me over. I lean against the side of the house, brace my hands against my thighs, and try to breathe. The sobs won’t stop. I wrap my arms around my middle, crouch on the ground, and smack the back of my head against the cedar shingles, like I’m trying to whack them out of me. Strane kneels before me, holds his hands behind my head, between me and the house, until I stop struggling against him, open my eyes.

  “There you are,” he says. He inhales, exhales, and my chest rises and falls along with him. His hands still cradle my head, his face close enough to kiss. Tears dry on my skin, tighten my cheeks, and his thumb strokes the soft spot behind my ear. He’s grateful, he says, for what I’ve done so far. It’s very brave to take responsibility and offer myself to the wolves. It’s evidence of love. I probably love him more than anyone else ever has.

  “I’m not going to tell,” I say. “I don’t want to. I never will.”

  “I know,” he says. “I know you won’t.”

  We work out together what I’ll say in the meeting tomorrow, how I’ll blame myself for the rumors, apologize for lying, and make clear that he did nothing wrong. It isn’t fair, he says, that I’m being forced to do this, but clearing his name is the only way to get out of this alive. He kisses me on the forehead and the corners of my eyes the way he did when we kissed for the first time in his classroom, huddled behind his desk.

  Before I leave, I glance over my shoulder and see him standing on the dark lawn, his silhouette illuminated by the light from the living room windows. Gratitude radiates out of him and into me, floods me with love. This, I think, is what it means to be selfless, to be good. How could I ever have thought of myself as helpless when I alone have the power to save him?

  The next morning, the twenty-six people on Jenny’s list meet in Mr. Sheldon’s classroom. There aren’t enough desks for everyone, so some kids lean against the back wall. I can’t tell who’s there; I only see faces bobbing and swaying, an ocean of buoys. Mrs. Giles has me stand next to her at the front of the room while I read the statement Strane and I came up with the night before.

  “Any inappropriate rumors you might have h
eard about Mr. Strane and me are not true. I spread lies about him, which he did not deserve. I’m sorry for being deceitful.”

  The faces stare back at me, unconvinced.

  “Does anyone have questions for Vanessa?” Mrs. Giles asks. One hand shoots up. Deanna Perkins.

  “I just don’t get why you would lie about this,” Deanna says. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Um.” I look to Mrs. Giles, but she only stares back at me. Everyone is staring at me. “That isn’t really a question.”

  Deanna rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying, why?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Someone asks a question about why I’m in his room all the time. I say, “I’m never in his room,” a lie so glaring, a couple people laugh. Someone else asks if there’s something wrong with me “like, mentally,” and I say, “I don’t know, probably.” As the questions continue, I realize the obvious: that I can’t come back, not after this.

  “Ok,” Mrs. Giles says, “that’s enough.”

  Everyone is given a slip of paper with three questions. One, who did you hear this rumor from? Two, when did you hear it? Three, have you told your parents about it? When I leave, all twenty-six heads are bent, filling out the survey, except for Jenny’s. She sits with her arms crossed, staring at her desk.

  I get back to Gould and find my parents packing up my room. The bed is stripped, the closet empty. Mom blindly dumps my stuff into a garbage bag—trash, papers, anything on the floor.

  “How did it go?” Dad asks.

  “It?”

  “The, you know . . .” He trails off, unsure what to call it. “The meeting.”

  I don’t answer. I don’t know how it went, can’t even process what really happened. Watching Mom, I say, “You’re throwing away important stuff.”

  “It’s garbage,” she says.

  “No, you’re putting school things in there, stuff I need.”