The Takedown(57)

Even above the loud beats, the shock in my voice was audible as I said, “Mr. E., with the exception of my face in it, I know the video is real. And since my best theory right now is that you’re in some pervert-teachers’ AV club, I’d very much like to know who knew it existed other than you. I know you’re a victim in this too.” Or so I’m telling myself. “Please help me.”

Maybe we weren’t going to Sherlock Holmes this together, but he couldn’t refuse to help me. Mr. E. chucked his now-empty beer can at the garbage. It bounced off the wall and then rolled across the floor until it was resting against his foot. He hung his head.

“You know, I used to live in a cute two-bedroom close to the park? I mean, not the fancy side of the park, but the park. But my ex was on the lease, so she got to keep it. She was going to get a roommate, she said. Except somehow suddenly they’re married.”

Mr. E. shouted this last sentence into silence. The music across the hall was suddenly swiped off. He cricked his neck side to side.

“Finally,” he said, “Two hours that’s been going on. I thought he died.”

He shuffled to the sink and began to fill it with water.

“Anyway, yeah,” he continued. “It was my first year teaching. She and I had only been together a few months. One night I brought home the wrong stack of tests to grade. We stopped at the school on our way to dinner. Park Prep was empty. She sat in one of those tiny desks and said she wanted to see me teach….This is not appropriate to talk about.”

He squeezed soap into the sink, apparently intending to let the dishes soak. I kept quiet. I didn’t need to take AP Law to know that when a witness was freely divulging information, you let them talk.

“The whole thing was her idea. I didn’t even know she’d hit record on that stupid classroom hub until she showed me the video later that night. I was pissed. She swore she’d erased it from the school hub. I went in at, like, dawn the next day. She was telling the truth.”

Mr. E. took a recycling bag from beneath the sink and began tossing takeout containers into it. He twisted the bag, tied it, and then took out another.

“We broke up a year later. It wasn’t cordial. Maybe I accidentally smashed her windshield after a night of drinking. Maybe it was some punk from our—her—block. Whatever. Anyway, do you know about that site My Ex Is an A-hole?” I shook my head. “It’s supposedly a women-only site. Women dump bad photos, stories, and videos of their exes on it. Guess what ended up there? Naturally, she airbrushed out her face.”

He pushed his glasses up with the back of his wrist. “She titled the post ‘Bad Teacher,’ like we broke up because she caught me with a student. One of my friends from college saw it and played it for me. I got in touch with the website. But obviously it was too late.”

Now with two filled bags of garbage next to him, he attacked the kitchen counter.

“Fast-forward two-plus years. On Tuesday afternoon when the fake video posted, Dr. Graff called me at home.”

“Wait,” I said. “Tuesday afternoon?”

Ignoring my confusion, Mr. E. kept talking. “I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about. I mean the video was obviously shot inside Park Prep. That right there goes against everything in the teacher handbook. Maybe if I acted like I didn’t know about it, I wouldn’t lose my job. Chalk it up to a spiteful ex.

“The next day, first thing, Graff called me into her office. When she said it was you in the video, I laughed, relieved. I thought it had to be a gag one of my students made. For a minute I thought maybe it was even you who’d made it.”

“It definitely was not me.”

“When I truthfully”—he paused in his scrubbing to jab a finger into the air—“told Graff I had no idea what she was talking about, she said she couldn’t take the chance. Said I was suspended pending investigation. When I saw the video after it reposted first period, I didn’t blame her. I mean, Kyla, I have no idea how they did it.”

I thought of the T minus countdown txts I’d received all that morning.

“So when it appeared on the Student Activities board, it was a repost? The first time the video went up was actually the day before?”

Mr. E. nodded. “It popped up on the Faculty Activities board on the Park Prep website, right about when school was letting out.”

“There’s a Faculty Activities board?”

“Yeah, where teachers list, like, the readings or lectures they’re giving. It gets loads of traffic.” Mr. E. shook his head no. “For the record, if I’d known from the start that it was a doctored video, I would have come clean immediately. I swear. I’ve wanted to ever since, but Graff and Park Prep’s legal counsel have ‘strongly advised’ me against speaking out. I think they’re afraid I’ll make everything worse.”

“Does the original video still exist?”

“NYPD has been searching the My Ex Is an A-hole website. Unfortunately, no luck.”

“The police are in on this?”

“You’re telling me you haven’t spoken to them? Maybe your parents ran interference.” Mr. E. wrung out the sponge. “I mean, Ms. Cheng, I’m a teacher. You’re seventeen. What do you think? Of course the police are involved.”