The Confessional

by Gabriel Goodman

  Text copyright © 2015 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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  Front cover: © Tom Fullum/Getty Images (teen girl); Cover and interior: © iStockphoto.com/Sorapop (ripped paper).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5.

  Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Goodman, Gabriel.

  The Confessional / by Gabriel Goodman.

  pages cm. — (Suspended)

  Summary: “Jenny Vang moves to a Wisconsin high school and, hoping to fit in, she posts a made-up story about a romance with a teacher on a secret message board called The Confessional” —Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4677-5712-6 (lb : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-4677-8099-5 (pb : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-4677-8823-6 (eb pdf)

  [1. Rumor—Fiction. 2. Teacher-student relationships—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Hmong Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G61366Co 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2014046177

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – SB – 7/15/15

  eISBN: 978-1-46778-823-6 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-46779-025-3 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-46779-024-6 (mobi)

  CHAPTER ONE

  NOW

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30

  There were times when I’d look at my father and think: This is the day. This is when the ogre within finally awakes.

  He gets this look where he closes his eyes and breathes in very slowly through his nose. He was doing that now. He was centering himself.

  Dad has a terrible temper. Or so he’d always told me. I’d never seen it. He had never hit me, never yelled at me. But he’d raised me on stories of the anger he keeps inside—an awful ogre. “I do everything I can to keep it in, Jenny,” he’d said a million times. When I was little, I totally bought that. Now that I’m sixteen, I think the ogre is just a metaphor.

  Sitting in the school office next to Dad, I really, really hoped I was right.

  Black-and-orange streamers hung everywhere, the closest thing the school had to Halloween decorations. A row of office assistants sat behind a waist-high wall, all of them typing away at their desktops. Or at least pretending to. Each assistant had flashed a look in my direction. And not one of those looks was sympathetic. They practically hated me.

  I practically hated me.

  Dad and I were waiting to get called into a meeting with the principal and other senior school staff. Two vice principals and some school board members. If anything was going to unleash Dad’s hidden anger, this was it.

  “Did you write the letter to Mr. Ashbury?” he asked me in the same soft voice he reserved for prayer.

  I fished an envelope out of my bag. “I haven’t had a chance to deliver it yet.” Largely because I’m a huge chicken. I’d been really tempted to wait until Mr. Ashbury wasn’t in his room, then throw it on his desk and run.

  But, no. I had to look Mr. Ashbury in the eye when I gave it to him. It’s an honor thing.

  Dad’s second-generation American Hmong. That means his parents came here straight from Laos. It also means he grew up in a household that stuck very rigidly to our culture’s traditions. But he was the youngest of his siblings. Somehow those traditions didn’t rub off on him. He allowed himself to be Americanized more than anyone else in the family. Dad didn’t completely turn his back on where he came from. He just liked to pick and choose the things from our culture that meant something to him.

  Just my luck, one of the things he’d chosen to keep was a strong sense of family honor. And since Dad didn’t really talk to his parents or siblings anymore, our family was just him and me. And I think I threw that family honor in the toilet.

  Dad didn’t open his eyes. “Write it soon.”

  I nodded and shoved the envelope back into my bag. What I didn’t say was, That’s if they let me anywhere near Mr. Ashbury when we’re done here.

  Mr. La Clair, the principal’s secretary, answered his phone. He muttered into the mouthpiece and hung up. “Mr. Vang, Jenny ... Principal Boyle will see you now.”

  I gagged on a breath and turned it into a cough so no one would suspect how close I was to puking. But Dad knew. He opened his eyes and put his hand gently on my forearm. It was meant to be assuring. It was meant to tell me not to be afraid.

  What it really told me is: do not fear the ogre today. And that was what I really needed to hear.

  We went down the hall to a small conference room. Principal Boyle, the vice principals, and two school board members crowded around the far end of a long table. Dad and I sat on the other end.

  “Thank you for taking time off work to come in today, Mr. Vang,” Principal Boyle said. I’m sure she said it just to make me feel guiltier. Which I didn’t know was possible. “I won’t take up too much of your time. As you know, we have a very serious situation. It’s important that we send a clear message that this sort of thing won’t be tolerated here at Monona High. We’ve talked about the best way to approach this and think we’ve come up with a fair solution.”

  Then Principal Boyle turned and looked directly at me.

  “Jenny, you’re being suspended for two months.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  EIGHT DAYS EARLIER

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22

  Cough. Click!

  Perfectly timed. I had to hand it to them. Shaniece and Abby—the girls who sat in front of me during American History—had their routine down. Shaniece knew just how to cup her hands and hide her cell phone while aiming its camera at the front of the room. And Abby knew just when to cough to hide the electronic click whenever Shaniece took a picture.

  I leaned forward an inch, pretending to be really interested in what Mr. Ashbury was teaching at the white board. I snuck a glance at Shaniece’s phone when she flashed it at Abby, showing her their prize.

  A picture of Mr. Ashbury in a rare pause.

  Totally understandable. When he wasn’t a whirlwind of teaching motion, pointing to maps and gesturing for effect, Mr. Ashbury was easy on the eyes.

  Okay, he was hot.

  I’d heard this was his first year teaching, making both of us new to Monona High. Mr. Ashbury didn’t look any older than the rest of us. Piercing eyes behind hipster glasses, dark hair pointed in a faux hawk, chiseled jaw you could cut yourself on ... No way was this the first time someone had taken a secret pic of him.

  Abby cleared her throat. When I looked, she was glaring right at me. Shaniece caught me glancing at her phone and immediately pulled it close to her chest. Embarrassed, I went back to listening to Mr. Ashbury’s lecture on the Bill of Rights. Not a good idea to upset the locals six weeks into the school year. If moving around a lot—eight schools in ten years—had taught me anything, it was to not make waves.

  Once Shaniece was satisfied my eyes were off her, she stabbed at her phone’s screen with her thumbs, typing furiously. A second later, the picture of Mr. Ashbury was uploaded under the caption HOTTIE ALERT! Before she slipped the phone back into her purse, I glimpsed the bright
red banner of the site she was at.

  The Confessional.

  From what I knew about Shaniece, she wasn’t the type to ask forgiveness for anything.

  •••

  “What’s the buzz?” Grant said, slamming down in the seat next to me. “Tell me what’s-a happening.”

  Grant was an ambassador, one of the students the office assigns to show new kids around. Sweet guy, very helpful, took his job seriously. He popped up all over the place to make sure I wasn’t feeling overwhelmed. He’d even tracked me down outside of school, like here at the West Towne Mall food court, where I’d come for a milkshake.

  “It’s nice of you,” I said, “but you really don’t have to check up on me so often.”

  “I took an ambassador’s oath!” Grant said. “?‘Thou shalt not let the new girl feel alone.’ I promise I’ll stop in a few weeks. Until then, make this easy on yourself and tell me how it’s going.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Making friends? Meeting people?”

  “Right now, I’m more worried about catching up.” I pointed to the homework I was doing.

  A second later, his two friends—DeShawn and Lia—sat down next to him. Grant and the rest of the drama club crew had adopted me. I wasn’t sure if they genuinely wanted to be my friend or if they just needed someone to work backstage for the fall musical. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that theater just wasn’t my thing. Still, it was nice to have some insta-friends.

  “Does anybody know,” DeShawn asked, “why Shaniece Burton is throwing major shade this way?”

  I followed his gaze to Shaniece, sitting two tables over and glaring right at me. No doubt about it. There might as well have been cartoon daggers coming out of her eyes.

  “The death look would be for me,” I said, trying to ignore her. “I think I saw something I wasn’t supposed to.” I didn’t get why she was still mad. It’s not like I was going to narc.

  “What did you see?” Lia asked, hungry for gossip.

  I sighed. “She uploaded a secret picture of Mr. Ashbury to some website and called him a hottie. The way she’s staring, you’d think I killed her dog.”

  My friends went quiet. Grant looked sick and Lia looked scandalized.

  “Was it The Confessional?” Grant said.

  “That’s the one.”

  Lia oooohed and fanned her face. “That’s some hot stuff. No wonder she hates you, chica.”

  Hates me? For looking at her phone?

  “Can we please change the subject?” Grant said, taking a drag on his Dr. Pepper.

  “Ashbury is the new guy, right?” DeShawn said. “The pretty one? Sounds about right he’d be all over The Confessional.”

  “It’s all the gossip you could want about anyone at Monona High,” Lia said. “Who’s dating who, who’s having the most sex ... you know, the basics. You want the dirt on anyone, that’s where you find it.”

  DeShawn pulled out his phone and showed me the site.

  “Looks like Reddit,” I said.

  DeShawn nodded. “Works the same way. Somebody posts a topic and then the comments start flying. You take it all with a grain of salt, but it can really open your eyes to the people you thought you knew.”

  I glanced over, and Shaniece was still glaring.

  “Ignore that skizz,” Lia said. She turned and gave Shaniece the finger. “She only goes to The Confessional for the attention. She loves to see everyone talk about all the guys she’s hooked up with.”

  I was still learning the lingo at Monona. You could get in big trouble if anyone heard you use “the other s-word,” the one that meant a girl who sleeps around. So everybody just said “skizz” instead. And when people talked about Shaniece, they said “skizz” a lot.

  Grant rolled his eyes. “Way too gossipy for me. That place is toxic.”

  “You only think that because The Confessional voted you ‘Most likely to sleep with the Gargoyle for a lead role,’?” Lia said, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow.

  The Gargoyle was what they called Mrs. Krause, the drama coach. I had her for Contemporary Lit. She was about as pleasant as her nickname suggested.

  “Whatever,” Grant said, rolling his eyes. “Really, Jenny, you don’t want to go anywhere near that site.”

  “Got it,” I said. But of course, I was really thinking, I need to check this out.

  I’d never had any interest in being popular. Any time I’d ever changed schools, I was never the only new kid. It was easy to spot the others. I could see the ways they worked the system. They figured out who the most popular kids were and tried to worm their way in.

  Not me. Just isn’t who I am.

  Now, fitting in—that’s something completely different. Don’t make waves. This was rule number one when trying to make friends at a new school. The second rule was to figure out the In.

  The In was like a mass, shared interest. The one thing everybody (or almost everybody) talked about. Most schools, it was sports. Usually football, but not always. I’d develop a healthy-but-totally-fake interest in the In and pretty soon, I wasn’t the outcast anymore.

  Trash talk. That was the In at Monona High.

  Who knew?

  CHAPTER THREE

  SEVEN DAYS EARLIER

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23

  I’d promised myself that I’d finish all my homework before exploring The Confessional. And of course, just as I finished, and just as I was about to turn on my phone, the doorbell rang.

  I glanced at the clock. 7:00. So much for The Confessional. I had a date. Well, an appointment.

  When I crossed the living room to answer the door, Dad looked up from ESPN for the first time all night. He’s the master of the Stone Face. Sad, happy, surprised—his expression never changes. But this time, when he looked at me with those blank eyes, I knew exactly what he was feeling: resigned.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I want to.”

  I opened the door to find another Hmong girl on the other side. She wore a plain white blouse and a navy skirt. Which kind of surprised me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

  “Mee?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

  Mee, the cousin I hadn’t seen since I was six, nodded. “I was happy you called. It’s so good to see you again, Jenny.”

  I was born in Madison. We moved away when I was six, right after my mom died and Dad decided he couldn’t deal with the rest of his family anymore. Well, he always said it was for his job. But I knew the truth. I was surprised when, after ten years away, he announced we were coming back here. I thought it was so he could make amends with his family.

  I was wrong. My grandmother—Dad’s mom—and the rest of the family hadn’t even known we’d moved back until I called Mee. But when they found out, they hadn’t really cared either. The bad feelings were mutual.

  My family had been just me and Dad for a really long time. Ten years of moving, never really getting a chance to figure out who I was ... I kind of wanted to know where I’d come from. So I reached out to Dad’s family. Dad didn’t stop me. But I knew he wasn’t thrilled either.

  “Are you ready to go?” Mee asked, pointing to her car.

  “Do you want to come in? Say hi to my dad?”

  Her smile disappeared. “No,” she said, a little too quickly. “No, that’s okay. We should get going.”

  Like I said: mutual bad feelings.

  “Bye, Dad,” I called back into the house. A second later, Mee and I were in her car and headed for the south side of Madison.

  Words came out of Mee rapid fire. She told me about my cousins, my uncles, my grandmother. She shot through ten years of family history in about ten minutes. When I got a chance to speak, I quizzed her on the kind of music she listened to, her favorite movies. We had a lot in common.

  “It’s too bad we go to different schools,” I said. “We could hang out more.”

  “We
’ll find lots of time to hang out. Grandmother will insist you visit as often as you can.”

  “Really?” I was kind of worried that I’d been written off, like Dad. Sure, the family had taken my call. Sure, Mee had invited me over. But for all I knew, she and the others were going to sit me down and tell me how horrible I was for abandoning them. Which I think is what Dad was expecting.

  “Grandmother will be so happy to see you,” she said.

  I nodded. “I tried to get Dad to give her a call, but—”

  “That’s probably not a good idea,” she said.

  We pulled up to a small white house on Fish Hatchery Road.

  “In fact,” she said, taking a deep breath, “you might not want to mention your dad at all.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Do you know why those two don’t get along? He’s her son.”

  Mee shook her head. “No. She doesn’t see it that way. He’s dead to her.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but she shook her head again. “It’s great that you reached out to us. Grandmother wants you to be part of the family.”

  When Mee said that, my stomach did a somersault. Like it was something I’d wanted to hear but hadn’t known I wanted. Every new school, I’d tried to belong. Maybe this was what I really wanted: just to fit in with my own flesh and blood.

  We walked up a crooked path to the house. I followed Mee’s lead and slipped my shoes off on the porch before we went in. As soon as we were through the door, the overpowering smell of curry and coconut hit me. My eyes started to water.

  “Have you had dinner?” Mee asked.

  I nodded. But still, the food smelled great. It reminded me of when Mom used to make curry. Dad never did.

  A small woman in a red-and-gold dress emerged from the kitchen. Even though my memories of her had faded, I knew this had to be my grandmother.

  She smiled and chattered in Hmong. I smiled back and said quietly to Mee, “I don’t speak—”

  “She says she’s very happy to see you,” Mee said.

  “It’s good to see you too,” I said. Mee translated.

  Grandmother took my hand and continued to chatter in this language I should have understood but didn’t. She led me into the kitchen, where a number of men sat around a table, eating. I guessed they were my uncles and cousins. Women—aunts and other cousins—scurried around, preparing various dishes.