In the principal’s office, there is a wide metal desk the color of the olives my mom likes to toothpick into her martinis, and a wall clock that marks the minutes with an angry thonk. The black arm makes its rounds as if carrying the weight of the world, each minute followed by a hefty and disgruntled sigh.
Ms. Latson sits on one side of the desk and I sit on the other. She’s brought me in here before, although I’ve never done anything wrong. I am the type they like to keep a close watch on, alternating, I suspect, between fear I will stab someone and fear I will stab myself.
Rumor has it that no one other than Ms. Latson has ever been on the other side of that desk. Not even the janitorial staff is allowed back there and so students gossip endlessly about what might be in the five-foot space between her desk and the wall. Perhaps a bed with one sad blanket where she can curl up like a troll and sleep at night. Or that kid who never came back after freshman year, only hair, teeth, and fingernails left to reveal their identity.
There are photos on her desk, frames that carefully face her and only her so that delinquents like me cannot see who she is outside of this fucked-up place. Who is in those photos? Are they all photos of her? Are they her extended family? Photos of students from a long time ago when she liked her job?
The door to my left is clear glass. Mrs. Lowe and Scary Mary bustle around out there. They always look busy and annoyed but how hard can it be to take attendance and answer the phone? Students enter and leave the small space, shame heavy on their shoulders. None of this can be heard from where I sit. With the door closed, you enter a weird vacuum. An icebox of silence. The time bomb ticks, waiting for my story.
“What is it you need to tell me, Miss Powers? Take your time,” she says, and yet there is no patience in her voice. “You called this meeting.”
“Does one decide to be a high school principal or is it just something that happens to you?” I ask.
“Excuse me?” she asks. The clock quiets, skips a thonk.
“Did you always want to do this? Was it, like, your dream? Other kids were all ‘I want to be an astronaut, veterinarian, firefighter’ and you were like ‘I want to be a principal of a miserable high school.’”
“Oh,” she says. The question bores her. “My father was a principal. You’ll find that paths are often set for you before you realize. Not that my father told me I had to do this, but people tend to follow the paths they recognize.”
“So you’re saying I’m destined to be a drunk auto mechanic?”
“What? No.” She is flustered now. She knows my backstory. Everyone does. “You can be whatever you want to be. That’s why we are here, isn’t it? To get a good education. To go on to college. Have you spoken with Ms. Zee?”
Ms. Zee is the guidance counselor. She is young and glows with an optimism that makes me feel sad. Students call her Cornbread for the sticky, flaky way she comes after all of us. Her good cheer so clingy, so messy.
“She doesn’t like me,” I say, and it’s true. Cornbread has had no success breaking through my don’t-give-a-shit exterior and it has begun to bother her. She recently recommended community college and then stumbled all over herself when I accused her of underestimating me.
“Well now, that’s just not true. She likes everyone.”
“She pretends to like everyone. There is a difference.”
“Fine. It’s almost final bell, Emma. Why are we here?” She slips her glasses off her nose, the left side catches on her ear for a second before it falls to her breasts, hung there by a silver chain so that she will never, ever lose them. She has brown eyes, crow’s-feet at the corners.
“It’s about Coach Matt.”
“Okay,” she says, and I can see she knows what’s coming. Some version of it anyway. The bitch knows he’s not right and has done nothing about it. I’m doing the right thing.
“He…” I pause for the show of it.
“You can tell me, sweetie,” she says, but the affectionate nickname is not comfortable for her. “There are, of course, things I’d have to report. You understand that, right?”
“Like what?”
“Like if you tell me you are in danger or he is. If someone is a threat, it can’t be kept secret.”
I can see that she doesn’t fully believe this is what I’m going to say. Maybe she doesn’t know about the late-night, weed-riddled poker games or the rumors that he sleeps with all the girls. Maybe she isn’t worried about his pretty face. Maybe she doesn’t think I’m brave enough to speak truth and ruin a life.
“Is someone hurting you?” she asks.
“What?” Her question is a non sequitur. The “someone” part disconnecting it from Coach Matt in a way that I don’t like. I’m about to say This isn’t about me but then I realize what I see on her face is dread. She doesn’t want to know. She wants me to keep it to myself.
I stare at her for a while and she lets me. There is still a chance I will say Little Johnny cheated on a test or I’ve decided not to go to college or I’ve been cutting myself. Any of these would be a brilliant alternative to what she worries is coming.
Her hands are folded on her lap where I can’t see them.
I flick my eyes to the back of one of her framed photos. My arm reaches out before I give it permission to do so and latches on to the biggest frame. I pull it to me. Flip it around.
It’s the beach. A stretch of it on either side of a boardwalk leading down to water so blue it doesn’t look real.
“What is this?”
“Florida,” she says.
I look at her and I can see she wants it back. That anything I tell her will slow down the time it takes for her to get out from behind that desk and into this photo.
She hates me. She hates all of us.
“Coach Matt touched me,” I say.
“What do you mean ‘touched’ you?”
“He makes out with all the girls and I was over there and we got high and…”
“Over where?”
“His house.”
“You were at his home?”
“I’m late,” I say. “Two weeks.”
This makes her stop breathing. The clock marks a minute, two before she takes a deep breath. She puts her glasses back on as if there is something to see.
“Well, if this is true, we will need to call your mother. Get you to a doctor.” It’s a test. Maybe I’ll back down.
“I don’t want him to get in trouble.”
“If what you are telling me is true, he is in trouble. He will be fired. Arrested, perhaps, if you want to press charges.”
“Okay,” I say quietly, as if I am sad for all of this. “No charges.”
“That will be up to your parents. This isn’t your fault, sweetie.” The endearment comes out more genuine this time. She is thinking of me now. “He’s young, but he’s the adult. The teacher. It’s his responsibility to know better.”
“Okay,” I say again.
“How many other girls?” she asks. The situation is unfolding before her now. She sees how bad this is going to be. “Will others come forward?”
“I don’t think so. Does anyone have to know it was me that talked? Besides my mother, I mean.”
“I should tell Ms. Zee. Can I get her? Yes, that would be the best next step. Let me get her in here and you two can talk it through.”
“Ms. Zee hates me,” I say.
“She does not.” Ms. Latson is already up and walking to her office door. Her relief about getting away from me is palpable.
The door shuts behind her. I am left alone in the icebox of an office. I wait a clock beat, two, and then three before I stand and move to her side of the desk. I sit in the office chair, feel the indent of her butt under mine. I pull myself up to the desk. She has five frames. Two are of a beach scene. One is old. Her and her parents, perhaps. The other two are empty. The frames are ornate, silver, one has a turquoise stone at the bottom. The black mat of the frame shows through. No picture. A sign of an empty life. Either that or she has already begun to slowly move out, disappearing her life one picture at a time.
I open the middle drawer, a single pencil rolls forward. Three paper clips sit rusting. How does one measure a life? Half empty? Half full?
I stare into the drawer and the sadness in me grows. Blooms huge in my heart, the lie I’m telling growing, stretching its blue veins through my body.
“What did you do, Emma?”
Ray is standing over me. He’s crying and I can’t remember what I’ve done right away, although I know I’ve done something. He’s woken me from a deep sleep. I was having a nightmare or what seemed to be a nightmare. I wasn’t scared. In it, I was a house. Tall windows for eyes, a spiral staircase up one leg through my torso into the attic of my heart. Inside someone is banging at me to get out. They have a hammer in their hand and it hurts, purple bruises spread with each hit and the sound is familiar. The hit thudding like a big black minute hand shifting into the future. Thonk. Thonk. Thonk.
“I’m sleeping, Ray,” I say. “Go away.”
“He’s gone.”
“He who?” I ask, and now I’m awake. It’s been a week since I reported Coach Matt. Since Cornbread got to do her best job ever, making me process the proper emotions. Calling my mother in so we could tell her together. When Ms. Zee left us alone, she said, “Jesus, Emma. I wanted better for you.”
“I don’t know that I’m pregnant.”
“Easy to find out.”
“I went to his house last night and everything was gone. Everything.”
“Who’s gone?” I ask, buying time.
“Coach Matt! You’re the only one who knew,” Ray says.
“He was hurting you,” I say.
“That’s not what you saw and you know it.”
“Oh, ick. Not that. He is your teacher. He was twenty-something. It’s against the law.”
“Did you tell them you caught us having sex? Is that what you told them?”
This is not what I told them, but I want to hurt Ray. Even as he sits in front of me hurting, I want to hurt him more so I lie.
“I told them he was molesting you. That he was gay and you were scared.”
“Jesus, Emma.”
“What? How is that not true?”
“Does my dad know?”
“Know what?”
“That I’m gay!”
“You’re not gay,” I say. It isn’t something I’ve even considered. Not really. Ray loves me. I love Ray. We will be together forever. “Please. I have gay friends. You are not gay.”
“Emma,” he whispers. His sadness is deeper than I realized. It is shrinking him. His chin to his chest. His arms curling into his torso. A little crippled thing. “You know me. You know this about me.”
“He made you think you’re gay.”
“Emma! Don’t be so fucking stupid! I loved him. I love him, and he’s gone!” Ray screams louder than I’ve ever heard him scream. He screams until his voice won’t let him scream anymore and his arms begin to scratch, rip at the soft skin on the insides of his arms.
“Ray! Stop it. I’m sorry.” I try to grab his wrists but he won’t let me get to him and then he is on top of me, holding me down so I can’t move.
“You are selfish like your mother. An addict like your father,” he says in a voice so calm that I believe him.
“I love you, Ray. You are my best friend.”
He smacks me then. Hits my face hard. My eyes blur with tears and I stare up through the haze into his face. Our eyes locked to each other and I see how much he hates me. I’ve never seen that look on his face before.
“Fine, you’re a fucking faggot.”
I’ve never said the f-word before and it startles us both.
“I’m not a faggot,” he says. His arms weaken and I flip him on his back.
I’m selfish. I’m psycho.
I kiss him and he kisses me back as if it is a dare. I know what we will do next to prove to ourselves what we are and what we are not, and even in the moments when I know I want to stop it, I don’t. I let it roll. The beasts of us both crawling out into the light.