Secret Lucidity(83)
“No,” I assert, giving him the complete truth.
“Then what was it that made you run to him and not to me?”
Sadness builds between us, and I feel his heartbreak. I want to give him the truth so he can understand. I want to tell him that I was able to relate to David in a way I couldn’t with him. That David understood me, and that despite our age difference, we connected in a way I never thought was possible. I want Kroy to know that he didn’t do anything wrong. It was simply life taking affect over me that caused me to need something different, and that different happened to be David.
“I want to fucking kill him,” he eventually says, seething under his breath. “You have no idea how much this is fucking with my head right now. One second, I want to beat the living shit out of that guy, and then . . .” His words drift, and his jaw flexes as he fights to blink back tears. “and then I want to hate you when I think about you giving yourself so easily to another guy when I’ve loved you for so long and we never . . .” A tear slips out, and he drops his head.
“Kroy, don’t,” I wrap my arm around him in an attempt to console. I hate that my actions have wounded him, but it isn’t enough to make me sorry for my choices.
No more words are spoken as we lean against each other in gut-wrenching somberness, but it’s when my phone starts vibrating from my pocket that I sit up and read the text that just came through.
Ming: Coach Andrews is all over the news!!
My heart rate catapults, and I jump up.
“What’s going on,” Kroy calls out as I run into the living room.
Grabbing the remote, I turn on one of the local news channels, and there he is.
“Oh my God,” I cry out the moment I see his mug shot.
I turn up the volume as the news anchor speaks.
“Local high school teacher, David Andrews, was arrested earlier this week after the school received a tip, claiming sexual misconduct. The victim, a seventeen-year-old student of his.”
I drop the remote, and my hands fly to my mouth.
“The teacher was put on administrative leave immediately following the allegation and has since resigned from his position at Edmond Ridge High. Andrews appeared in court yesterday, where he was formerly charged with three counts of second degree rape of a minor and soliciting sexual conduct or communication with a minor by use of technology, all of which combined, hold a maximum sentence of fifty-five years in prison. He has since been released from jail on a twenty thousand dollar bond and is currently under house arrest.”
A horrifying sob rips from my chest, and I collapse to my knees.
I wish I could tell you what happened next, but everything spun out of control so quickly. It was a guillotine to my heart, and I knew, in that very moment, that I would never forgive myself. Because I was the one who ignored him when he told me to stay in my hotel room. If I had never gone to him that night, Taylor never would have seen me leaving his room.
The news covers the story all weekend long. Kroy doesn’t check in on me again, not that I want or expect him to do so. He had been so disgusted when he left my house Saturday afternoon that I doubt he will ever speak to me again.
Monday morning, I am forced to return to school. It takes me by surprise when Linze sidles up to me as I walk through the main entrance. She doesn’t say anything. She simply stands by my side and walks with me through the halls so I don’t have to do it alone. The rumors had already been floating around, and now that everyone has seen his mug shot and heard the charges, those rumors have morphed into facts. It doesn’t matter that the media is keeping my identity a secret, everyone already knows it’s me, and it doesn’t take long for it to spread through the town.
There is no hiding from it.
No matter where I go, someone stares, someone whispers.
School is the worst though. If they’re not calling me a slut, as if I’m some Nabokov creation, then they’re calling me a victim. But it isn’t what they call me that hurts the most, it’s what they call David.
Pervert.
Rapist.
Child molester.
Pedophile.
They’re taking something so beautiful and turning it into something so vile—so repulsive.
There’s a permanent substitute that has taken over his class. I sit in fourth period, day after day, while the other students stare at me in morbid curiosity, knowing they were so close to the scandal. After all, they spent most of the year in this room with David and me and had no idea what was going on right under their noses. Some even have the nerve to ask me questions about the so-called torrid affair.
It’s excruciating.
Randall calls from time to time, but I tell him that unless there’s something I can do to help David, I have nothing to say. But that doesn’t stop him from continuing to check in to give me updates on the case.
And then there’s the media, mistaking our love for a crime. They flash his mug shot with every report and remind the public of the charges against him.
Rape. That’s what they’re calling it. Rape.
I want to scream every time they say it—sometimes I do. But most of the time, I curl into myself and hide behind the wall I’ve slowly been able to rebuild around my heart that feels more like a dormant organ hiding in the burrows of my ribs. And in my moments of complete weakness, the moments when my tears find their way onto cracked skin, I cut.