My Dark Vanessa(54)

“Vanessa,” Strane says. “Sit up, get to work.”

It’s what he’d say to any other student acting out, but with me there’s a weakness in his voice, a pleading note that surely the others can hear. Vanessa, please don’t do this to me. I don’t move.

When everyone else gets in the van for the drive to Browick, he grabs my arm and leads me around the back. “You’ve got to cut this out,” he says.

“Let go.” I try to jerk away, but he’s holding me too tight.

“Acting like this isn’t how you get what you want.” He gives my arm a shake so rough it nearly knocks me over.

I glance up at the van’s back windows, feeling split in two, one part out here with him, the other inside with everyone else, clicking in my seat belt and shoving my bag under the seat. If any of them looked out the back window, they would see his fingers digging into the soft skin of my upper arm and it would be enough to make someone start to suspect—more than enough. A thought slaps me, stings my skin: maybe he wants someone to see. I’m starting to understand that the longer you get away with something, the more reckless you become, until it’s almost as if you want to get caught.



That night Jenny knocks on my door and asks if she can talk to me. From my bed, I watch her step inside and shut the door behind her. She takes in the mess of my room, the clothes strewn across the floor, the desk covered in loose papers and half-drunk mugs of tea blooming mold.

“Yes, I’m still disgusting,” I say.

She shakes her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I wasn’t.” She pulls out my desk chair, but it’s covered with a pile of clean laundry from a week ago that I never put away. I tell her to push it off, and she tips the chair, spilling the clothes onto the floor.

“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.