If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say

by Leila Sales

  But his protection was short-lived. Team Boxer made the case that he was an unfit parent. He kept guns in a cabinet where they were easily accessible by children. He was violent. He let his daughter play outside in the evening, unsupervised. He was neglectful. His home wasn’t safe for a child. If he’d been parenting her the way he should have, he could have just scooped her up and brought her into the house; no tiger should ever have needed to die.

  “I know I should have been outside with her,” Richard conceded, shamefaced. “I never stop regretting that I was inside when that animal showed up. But, well, our backyard is really isolated, and it’s fenced in, and I could hear everything from inside the house. I figured there was no way anything could happen to my baby without my knowing. And I was only in there for a couple minutes, anyway.”

  He’d been inside for a couple minutes because he was fixing himself a drink. Yet one more reason, Team Boxer pointed out, why he couldn’t be trusted with his daughter.

  So social services took Tabitha away. They put her in a foster home after trying and failing to bring home her mother.

  “She’s been in foster care for the past three months,” Richard told us, his eyes welling up. “I can have supervised visits with her, but that’s it. She cries every time I have to leave—she doesn’t understand.

  “So that’s why I’m here. I took out a second mortgage on the house and got a loan, and here I am. I need to be rehabilitated. I need to get my daughter back.”

  * * *

  The first thing I noticed about Abe was that he used a wheelchair. The second thing I noticed were his eyes, which were wide and crystalline blue. He was a few years older than me and from Westport, Connecticut. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he started out, and all of us scoffed, with varying levels of politeness. Because didn’t we all want to believe that we’d done nothing wrong? Wasn’t the point that none of us got to be in charge of deciding whether we had done something wrong?

  “I didn’t,” he insisted. “My father did.”

  Abe’s father, he told us, was Michael Krisch. I recognized that name. Everyone did. Michael Krisch had been a big-deal investment advisor who, it had been revealed a couple years ago, had committed securities fraud and cheated his clients out of billions of dollars. “He’d been running this scheme for my entire life,” Abe said, “even before I was born.”

  Abe had grown up believing his father was one of the greatest businessmen in America, only to learn, at the age of eighteen, that he was a thief of the first order. We all knew that Abe’s dad was in jail now. “He’s one year into a hundred-year sentence,” Abe said bitterly. “I haven’t visited him yet, but give me another ninety years and maybe I’ll get around to it.”

  Once the truth about Michael Krisch came out, everyone turned on his family. Abe was deserted by his friends and girlfriend, whose parents had invested (and lost) their life savings with his dad. “My friends’ college funds?” Abe said. “Gone. Their parents’ retirement savings? Forget it. And that’s just the people who I knew personally. My dad handled investments for so many clients and ruined almost all of them. I don’t blame anyone for hating him. I hate him.”

  The problem was that they came after Abe, too. Because, while he may not have aided his father, he didn’t stop him, either. “I’d been interning for my dad since I was fourteen. He said he wanted me to learn the value of hard work from a young age, which is, in retrospect, a joke. Really what he wanted me to learn was how to get away with cheating people. He had the idea that once I graduated, I’d join him in the family business and we’d become, like, this father-son duo of white-collar criminals. So he hid what he was up to from almost everyone, but he didn’t hide it very carefully from me, because in the long run, his plan was to bring me in on all of it. I think on some level he wanted me to appreciate what a mastermind he was.”

  When the FBI investigation revealed this—that Michael Krisch had been offloading funds into accounts in his son’s name, that Abe had known some of the broad strokes of what his father was up to and failed to do anything to stop it—the public attacked him.

  “People were angry, and they wanted someone to blame, and I was still there, wandering free and innocent. It just went on and on and on. There’s no way to ever escape the legacy my dad left me. So, like Jazmyn, I tried to kill myself. How’d you do it, Jazmyn? You didn’t say.”

  “Pills,” Jazmyn replied. “I had to get my stomach pumped.”

  “I jumped from a sixth-story balcony,” Abe said.

  They both said it in such a casual way that, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

  “Now I’m paralyzed from the waist down,” Abe went on. “I’ll never walk again. And some of my old friends feel bad about this—like they shouldn’t have pushed me so hard. But people who don’t know me? They don’t care. I’ve seen jokes about me online … things like, ‘Abe Krisch is as bad at offing himself as his father is at making money.’

  “This wasn’t my crime, but people hate me for it anyway. I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life.” Abe gestured to his wheelchair, as if we might have forgotten. “It’s stupid,” he concluded.

  * * *

  I told my story last. This wasn’t a competition—and if it was, we were all losers—but I was surprised to feel like I wasn’t the biggest victim in this group. What I’d gone through was hard, but it wasn’t unique. (And it certainly wasn’t “completely” unique.) I was even able to make eye contact with each of them as I explained my background as a champion speller, my post, and the fallout. I felt like this was kind of that chance I’d been dreaming of, the chance to speak to an impartial audience and explain why I had done it and what I’d meant. Okay, it wasn’t on CNN or NBC. But it was something.

  Once I was through, Valerie and Kevin went over some of the key guidelines and principles of Revibe.

  “No one is to leave the property without permission,” Kevin said. “I promise this isn’t as isolating as it might sound: we all leave together every afternoon to do volunteer work, so you will still get to see the outside world! But as a general rule, you need to be focused inward, in a controlled environment with few variables.”

  “Your phone and e-mail communication will be limited and supervised,” Valerie went on. “It’s the internet that, in one way or another, landed most of you in trouble in the first place, so you need to take a step away from the internet to solve the problems it’s caused.”

  I didn’t disagree—after all, that was why I’d quit all my social media—but the idea that I might not be able to google myself whenever I felt the need made my heart tighten.

  “We have signal jammers set up on the property,” Valerie explained. “We turn them off for a few hours each evening, and during that time you can make and receive calls and e-mails. But the rest of the time, you simply won’t get any reception here. So even if you want to give in to the urge, you won’t be able to. If you’d like, you can give us your login credentials so that we can check your e-mail more regularly and let you know right away if something important comes in. I know some of you have children, so it may not always be feasible for you to wait for updates about them.”

  It was starting to occur to me that I had, perhaps, signed myself up for being a prisoner.

  “Even during the internet hours,” Kevin added, “you are to use your communication privileges responsibly. That means you may not make any statements about your public shaming without first running them past us. Nor may you reveal details of the Revibe technique publicly. Of course, you are never to share names or other private information about any other Vibers.”

  I could do this. Maybe not the bit where I could only google myself once every twenty-four hours—I had no idea how to survive that uncertainty—but the rest of it, I told myself, I could do. I was, after all, a terrific rule follower. And I had promised my mother I’d do everything I could to make this work.

  Kevin went on. “There is to be no use of controlled substances of any kind o
n the property. And it should go without saying that there’s to be absolutely no physical involvement with anyone else in the program.”

  So much for my chances with the handsome animal abuser, then.

  “You are all in delicate situations,” Kevin continued. “Many of you are emotionally fragile, some of you are underage, you’re all away from your homes and families, and your entire focus needs to be on redemption. I assume I don’t need to go into any more detail as to why all relationships here are to be strictly collegial.”

  We shook our heads.

  “That’s about it for the hard-and-fast rules,” Valerie said. “Everything else we just ask you to go into with an open mind and a commitment to getting better.

  “The last thing I want to say here is that tonight, telling your stories, is the last time I want to hear any of you explaining why you did what you did, or placing blame on others, or anything else. We’ve all heard your side of the story now. We all know what you’d like to say in your defense. And now that it’s been said, we need to move on from it. If there’s one central point for the next five weeks, it’s this: I was wrong. And the sooner you can say that with conviction, the sooner we will be able to make you right again.”

  17

  It’s funny how quickly cliques form in this world. Even at Revibe, where there were only seven of us and we were all screwed up, still some people immediately gravitated toward one another, effectively leaving the rest of us on the outside. I realized this after our meeting. Kevin and Valerie encouraged us to go to bed, saying we had an early and busy day ahead of us tomorrow. Richard, Marco, and Abe all followed their suggestion and headed off to their respective rooms. I went out to the porch to read in the fresh air for a bit, but I found that Kisha, Jazmyn, and Zeke were already out there, huddled in a tight circle that left no room for anyone else to join. Presumably none of them had any preconceived notions about who I was or where I belonged, and I could have marched in there and made myself at home. But also presumably, if they’d wanted my company, they would have invited me to join them in the first place. So I went back inside and to my room, like Valerie and Kevin had said we should.

  I did not fall asleep. At this point, I hardly knew how. I pulled out my phone, tried to google myself, and felt a cold sweat seep across my body when, of course, it did not work. I told myself that probably no one had posted anything new about me over the past couple of hours. It was possible, yes. They would have had no good reason to do so, although they didn’t need a good reason to do so. But, I reminded myself, it was not probable. And if anything had been posted about me in the past couple hours—if my life had once again been destroyed—well, it would still be there the next time I was able to look, right? If I saw it the instant that it happened, would I really be able to do anything about it? Would that really give me a leg up on stopping it from getting out of control? Okay, yes, maybe, but again, it wasn’t likely that anything was happening online right now or that I could do anything about it even if it was.

  None of this was making me feel better.

  I tried to read a book but couldn’t focus, tried to write anything but of course drew a blank, tried to watch something on my computer before remembering that that, too, required the internet. There was no way I could do this for the next five weeks. I was going to go crazy.

  Once I felt confident that Kisha, Jazmyn, and Zeke would have at last gone to bed themselves, or at least moved indoors, I headed back out to the porch. I was too restless, and this house was too claustrophobic. It was right on the beach, but when you were inside you couldn’t hear the surf at all. Every window and door was sealed up tight. All I could hear was the air conditioner.

  When I opened the door to the porch, I was surprised and a little annoyed to see a solitary shadowy figure already out there. Whoever it was sat very still, and I considered turning right around and going back to my room again, but then he said “Hey,” and I realized that it was Abe, with the wheelchair and the blue eyes. And even though I wanted to be alone, it would be rude to act like I hadn’t heard him.

  “Hey,” I said back, going to sit on the deck chair near him. “What are you doing up?”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” he said. “You?”

  “Same.”

  “Nightmares?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I get nightmares,” he volunteered. “Every night. Sometimes I dream that I’ve let everyone down and I’m running all over, looking for someone I haven’t betrayed, but I can’t ever find them.”

  He paused, but I didn’t say anything. So he kept going, maybe just to fill the air. “Sometimes I dream about the accident. I dream I’m jumping and then I’m falling, and when I hit the ground, I wake up. And then I can’t fall back asleep. So I thought I’d come outside for a bit, try to clear my head.”

  That was heavy stuff from a person I’d just met, but there was something about the nighttime that made heavy stuff feel natural. I didn’t want him to feel like he had to keep talking, keep revealing himself to the air, so I ventured, “I have nightmares, too, sometimes, but mostly my problem is that I’m afraid I’ll miss something important if I’m sleeping.”

  “Do you think anyone here is able to get a good night’s sleep?” Abe asked. “Or do you think every one of us is afraid of what might happen when we close our eyes?”

  I imagined this, the house full of people who were trapped awake, and alone. “I bet Kevin and Valerie can sleep just fine,” I said at last.

  He gave a little laugh. “Sure. And maybe Zeke, too. Zeke seems like he might actually be a psychopath.”

  “You think?”

  “I guess that was rude,” Abe said. “Zeke could be a really good guy who just happens to like torturing animals.”

  “Couldn’t we all be psychopaths?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I think Zeke’s different, though. He really doesn’t seem to think that he did anything wrong.”

  “Neither do you,” I pointed out.

  “Oh yeah. That’s true. I guess I could be a psychopath, too.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Unlike Zeke, you actually didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Thank you,” Abe said. “Because sometimes I wonder. When everyone else tells you that you’re guilty, and you’re the only one who doesn’t agree, you start to ask yourself if you’re actually the delusional one.”

  “I don’t think you belong here at all,” I told him. “I don’t see what you did that you need to repent for. So what if you knew some of what your dad was up to? You were a teenager, and he was one of the most successful investment bankers in the world. And he was your father. What were you supposed to do?”

  “I could have turned him in,” Abe said, sounding disgusted. “I didn’t actively do anything wrong. But I didn’t do anything right, either.”

  “You can’t be held responsible,” I replied.

  “You’re clearly saying that as someone who didn’t lose all her money to Michael Krisch,” Abe said, “and that means you’re biased. But really, thank you.”

  “I’m hardly an expert on morality,” I said, “so I wouldn’t put too much stock in my opinions on guilt and innocence.”

  The sea breeze lifted my hair, and I tied it back with a hair elastic from my wrist. It was a nice night for sitting outside. It was too late, but it was nice.

  “So what were you like before?” Abe asked abruptly.

  “Before?” I repeated.

  “Yeah. Before your scandal.”

  “Oh.” I pulled my knees into my chest and looked out across the beach, toward where I knew the water was, even though I couldn’t see it. In the daytime, I might not have answered him, but in the cloak of night I felt safer. “I was … I don’t know. How do you sum yourself up? I wrote a lot. I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Stupid, I know, but I didn’t realize that at the time. When I was younger, I won the National Spelling Bee.”

  “You mentioned that earlier,” Abe reminded me.

  “Well
, it was a pretty defining moment in my life. I went to this small Jewish day school at the time. Then I went to a public high school, which was kind of a shock after spending years with the same twenty-three kids in my entire grade. I was like, Oh, this is high school, like straight out of a movie set. I graduated in June and was supposed to start at Kenyon in the fall.”

  “Ah,” Abe said knowingly. “The college dream.”

  “The college dream was my whole dream. I don’t even know what other dreams look like.” I sighed. “Did you make it to college?”

  “I went to UConn for two months. Then this happened.” He gestured to his legs. “I didn’t go back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Never mind. Go on. You were telling me your deal.”

  “Oh, that was about it, I think. In general, I don’t know, I was a pretty good girl. I followed the rules, I didn’t get in trouble. I guess I wasn’t leading an extremely exciting teenage life. I wasn’t really popular—not like my older sister—but I wasn’t unpopular, either. I had my group of friends who I hung out with, and that was enough for me. We had fun together. We were always making little movies, or working on some ridiculous scheme that would ultimately go nowhere, or just watching YouTube and playing video games and making fun of things. Normal stuff.”

  “You had a boyfriend?”

  I shook my head.

  “Girlfriend?”

  “It would have been a boyfriend, but in practice it wasn’t anybody.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “No one in your league?”

  I snorted. “Very funny. No, I’m just not the dating type.”

  “What type of person is ‘the dating type’?”