My Dark Vanessa(61)

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.”

She stands back and lets me rifle through the garbage bag. I find an essay with Strane’s comments, a handout he gave us on Emily Dickinson. I clutch the papers to my chest, not wanting them to see what it is I’m saving.

Dad zips my big suitcase, stuffed with clothes. “I’ll start bringing stuff down,” he says, stepping out into the hallway.

“We’re leaving now?” I turn to Mom.

“Come on,” she says. “Help me clean this out.” She opens my bottom desk drawer and gasps. It’s full of trash: crumpled papers, food wrappers, used tissues, a blackened banana peel. I’d filled it in a panic a few weeks ago right before room inspections and forgotten to clean it out. “Vanessa, for god’s sake!”

“Just let me do it if you’re going to yell at me.” I grab the bag from her.

“Why won’t you just throw things away?” she asks. “I mean, Jesus, Vanessa, that’s trash. Garbage. What kind of person hoards garbage in a drawer?”

I focus on breathing as I empty the desk drawer into the trash bag.

“It’s not sanitary and it’s not normal. You scare me sometimes, you know that? These things you do, Vanessa, they don’t make sense.”

“There.” I shove the drawer back into the desk. “All clean.”

“We should disinfect it.”

“Mom, it’s fine.”

She looks around the room. It’s still a mess, though it’s hard to tell what mess is mine and what is from packing everything up.

“If we’re leaving now,” I say, “I need to go do something.”

“Where do you need to go?”

“Ten minutes.”

She shakes her head. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here and helping us clean this room.”

“I have to say goodbye to people.”

“Who do you need to say goodbye to, Vanessa? It’s not like you have any goddamn friends.”

She watches as my eyes smart with tears but doesn’t look sorry. She looks like she’s waiting. That’s how everyone’s been looking at me this whole week—like they’re waiting for me to break. She turns back to the mess, yanking open the top dresser drawer and pulling out fistfuls of clothes. When she does, something falls, slides across the floor between us: the Polaroid of Strane and me on the village pier. For a moment, she and I stare down at it, equally stunned.

“What . . .” Mom crouches down, reaches for it. “Is that—”

I swoop down, grab the photo and press it facedown to my chest. “It’s nothing.”

“What is that?” she asks, reaching for me now. I back away.

“It’s nothing,” I say.

“Vanessa, give it to me.” She holds out her hand like there’s a chance I might give it up that easily, like I’m a child. I say again that it’s nothing. It’s nothing, ok? Over and over, my voice rising into a panic until it reaches a scream so forceful Mom steps away from me. The high note seems to linger, ringing through the half-emptied room.

“That was him,” she says. “You and him.”

Staring at the floor, shaken from the scream, I whisper, “It wasn’t.”

“Vanessa, I saw it.”

My fingers curl against the Polaroid. I imagine Strane here in the room, how he’d calm her down. It’s nothing, he’d say, his voice soothing as a balm. You didn’t see what you thought you did. He could convince her of anything, same as me. He’d guide her to the desk chair and make her a cup of tea. He’d slip the photo into his pocket, a movement so subtle and quick she wouldn’t even notice.

“Why are you protecting him?” Mom asks. She breathes hard, her eyes searching. It’s not a question of anger; she truly doesn’t understand. She’s baffled by me, by all of this. “He hurt you,” she says.