You'll Be the Death of Me(86)
“Okay,” she says, crossing her arms over the windowsill. “Keep me posted.”
“I will.” I reach into my pocket and hold up the box I bought on the way over. “I brought you something.”
“Are those Sugar Babies?” she asks.
“They are.”
She smiles, and even from a distance it lights up her whole face. “That’s your only move, huh?”
“Pretty much,” I admit.
“It’s a good one,” she says. “Be right down.”
CAL
Amid Swirling Rumors, Embattled Carlton Teacher Resigns.
I sit at my kitchen table on Saturday morning, almost a month after Coach Kendall tried to kill me in Lara’s garage, staring at the headline on Boston.com and wondering if I’ll ever get used to being a swirling rumor.
I thought it was cut-and-dried, what happened between Lara and me. But the only thing she’ll admit to is becoming “overly close” with me, to the point of exchanging text messages and seeing me outside of school. She turned over her phone to investigators, and when I read back through our messages to brace myself for what they’d be seeing, I realized how careful she always was. I come off like a lovesick teenager—which, to be fair, I was—and Lara comes off like a caring but ultimately boundary-respecting adult.
My parents believe me, though. One hundred percent, and they’re furious.
Wes sits across from me with a steaming mug of coffee, wearing the kind of thoughtful look that tells me he’s carefully gauging my reaction to the article. “There’s still a double standard when it comes to viewing women as predators,” he finally says.
That’s what he keeps calling Lara, and even though I resisted the term at first, I get it now. Especially the way she keeps twisting the truth to suit the image of herself that she’s trying to present: the helpful witness, relieved and grateful to finally be away from her domineering ex-fiancé, doing everything she can to make up for his crimes.
“At least she resigned,” I say.
For a while, Wes and Henry talked about bringing corruption-of-minor charges or something similar against Lara. Maybe that’s the right call, but the idea of having our relationship dissected even more than it already had been horrified me so much that they backed off. Ultimately, at least for now, they decided to focus on getting her teaching license revoked. Carlton High had already suspended her, pending investigation, when she quit.
I read through the article again, but there’s nothing much new there. Lara has admitted that she was having an affair while engaged to Coach Kendall, but she’s refusing to give the guy’s name, and since he’s not involved in the investigation, police aren’t making her. So I guess we might never know who D is, and I remind myself that I’m okay with that.
Wes frowns, wrapping his hands around his coffee mug. “I know she’s providing the police with valuable information, but I wish that wasn’t quite as much of a shield as it’s turning out to be,” he says.
I don’t answer, because I could really use a subject change. We’ve already discussed this at length. Multiple times. And while I appreciate his support—both my dads have been great, considering how much I lied to them—sometimes I need a break from being part of the news cycle. I flick the article away and pull up my messages, opening one that Ivy sent at two o’clock in the morning. “Did you know the average person spends six months of their life waiting for red lights to turn green?” I ask Wes.
He accepts the conversational shift with a smile. “Is that an Ivy factoid?”
“It is.” She’s sending them to me constantly again, which I enjoy. I send her back panels of my latest web comic, The Shittiest Day Ever, which is by far the darkest, angriest, most emotional thing I’ve ever created. It’s also, at least according to Ivy, the best.
“It’s nice to see you reconnecting with your old friends,” Wes says, taking a long sip of coffee. “And making new ones.”
I wasn’t sure how people would treat me when I went back to school that first week after being released from the hospital. Whether I’d be viewed as a hero for making it out of the garage alive, even though I got my ass kicked in the process, or a loser thanks to Lara’s denials about what happened between us. I found out pretty fast when I walked down the hallway toward homeroom and a couple of guys in my class started singing “Hot for Teacher” at the top of their lungs. Everyone laughed, and my face burned with the realization of just how much the rest of senior year was going to suck. Then I felt an arm sling around my neck.
“Don’t even think about giving my boy Cal a hard time,” Ishaan Mittal called out in a booming voice, pulling me down the hall with him. In the wrong direction from my homeroom, but whatever. The YouTube show has made Ishaan a celebrity at Carlton High, and as soon as he decided I was his boy—which was a little ironic, considering their most-viewed episode to date is the one where he had no idea who I was—people stopped laughing. Now he keeps inviting me places, and while I don’t often go, I have to admit that he’s not bad company when he isn’t trying to book me as a guest.
Plus, it’s nice to have other people to hang out with occasionally. Ivy and Mateo have restarted their epic interrupted romance, and while I’m happy for them, I don’t always want to be in the middle of it.