I FIRST noticed the whispers Tuesday morning.
Having just finished breakfast with Mr. D, where I turned in my essay on the movie, I left the cafeteria and headed for my locker. As I passed through the hall, kids gave me odd looks. Some pulled out their phones and hurriedly sent texts, or leaned toward each other, exchanged whispered messages, and laughed. It was like when Mom showed up drunk on campus all over again. What the hell?
ABEL CAME up to me while I was digging through my locker for the package of pens I’d tossed in there a couple of weeks ago. “Hey, man,” I greeted him without looking his way.
He got in close, leaning with his backpack against the locker next to mine. “Dude, I just got this crazy text about you.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear that, and I was determined I wasn’t going to give people the pleasure of watching me freak out the way I did when it was about Mom. “Yeah? What kind of text?”
He held his phone up to my face. On the screen was a picture that had been sent to him—a picture of me kissing Mr. Dakota in his living room.
Panic ripped through my head. I grabbed the phone from him, staring at the picture in horror. “Shit!” The picture had clearly been taken from outside the house, through one of the large windows that overlooked the porch.
Abel was breathing rapidly, almost as upset as I was. “Man, you told me it wasn’t true.”
“It’s not true. This isn’t what really happened. I mean, I know what it looks like—”
“Yeah, it looks like you did it with Mr. Dakota. That’s what people are saying, that you and Mr. Dakota had sex.”
“But we didn’t. Nothing happened, Abe.” I looked at the picture again, wishing I could tear it right out of cyberspace. “Who sent this to you?”
“Fawn did. She wanted me to talk to you.” He took his phone back. “This started going around last night. It’s got to be all over the school by now.”
I cursed again, this time beneath my breath. “I gotta tell Mr. D.”
“Brodie, wait a second—”
I didn’t even take the time to close the door of my locker, just tore off down the hall in a frantic run.
Kids jumped out of my way. A teacher called for me to stop. Nothing slowed me down until I was rushing through the hall of the performing arts wing and saw Mr. Dakota step out of his classroom.
He turned and saw me as I stutter-stepped to a halt maybe ten feet away from him. I opened my mouth to tell him that we had to talk, but he abruptly turned away before I could say anything. Then Principal Perry emerged from the room in his wake. She spotted me right off, and her face got grim.
“Ah. Brodie Baker,” she said, looking as if finding me there was exactly what she’d expected. “You just saved me the trouble of notifying your homeroom teacher to send you to my office. Follow me.”
THE RECEPTION area of the school’s main office isn’t all that big, just an open space with a few wooden chairs lining the wall. The wall facing the hall is mostly glass. I was slumped in one of the chairs, waiting. In the hall, kids passed by. Some pointed. Some laughed. One guy put his mouth to the glass and made obscene motions with his tongue.
None of that mattered to me. Mr. Dakota had been in Principal Perry’s office for something close to an hour now. I was afraid for him.
“Hey.” One of the secretaries, a young, thin Hispanic woman with long, fluffy dark hair, was peering at me from her desk. She had been giving me little worried looks since I’d sat down. “Can I get you anything? I’ve got some bottled water in the fridge.”
I tried to smile at her. “No, thanks, I’m okay.” It wasn’t a good idea to put anything else on my stomach. It felt as if I might throw up any second.
The door to Principal Perry’s office finally opened. I watched as she escorted Mr. D out. Mr. D didn’t seem worried or upset or anything, just… sad. He gave me only a fleeting look as he walked quickly through the reception area and into the hall. I was staring after him when the principal said, “Brodie, I wasn’t able to reach your father, but I spoke with your mother. I’ll bring you in once she gets here.”
She retreated into her office, and I settled down to wait some more.
“HEY, BRO.”
I raised my head. Abel was standing in front of me.
“I brought you this.” He put my backpack in the chair beside me. “And I closed up your locker.”
“Thanks, man.”
He glanced at the closed door to the principal’s office. “So what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Perry says she’s waiting for my mom to get here.”
“Say no to the worries, dude.” He flashed me a thumbs-up.
MOM SHOWED up a few minutes later. She came right over to me, and I could tell she was concerned but trying to keep things low-key. “Brodie, what’s going on?” she asked. “Are you in some kind of trouble? Why does the principal want to see me?”
Seeing her made me want to cry. How could I explain it to her? “Mom, I did something stupid.”
“What? What did you do?”
I shook my head at her, my stomach roiling, tears threatening, unable to say more. Mom gave up and turned to the Hispanic secretary and said, “I’m Jennifer Baker. Would you please let the principal know that I’m here?”
Mom sat down beside me and took my hand.
Barely a minute passed before Principal Perry stood in her doorway looking out at us. “Mrs. Baker, you and Brodie can come in now.”
I grabbed my backpack. We stepped into her office and each took a chair positioned in front of the contemporary metallic-looking desk there. Principal Perry closed the door and sat down across from us, folding one hand over the other on her desktop. She was a trim, middle-aged African American woman, pretty with a sort of refined air about her, probably from the dark gray Hillary Clinton power pantsuit she wore.
Her expression was neutral, but she sounded grave when she said, “Good morning, Mrs. Baker. I’m sorry to have to ask you down here, but I’m very disturbed by a picture I found in my email this morning of Brodie and one of his teachers.”
“What kind of picture?” Mom asked in this hesitant voice.
“The picture shows Brodie and the teacher kissing.”
Mom clutched the arm of the chair tightly. “What?” She glanced over at me. “Who’s the teacher?”
I couldn’t answer her, too choked by the implication that there was something dirty about what happened between Mr. D and me. Principal Perry said, “Mr. Dakota.”
Mom looked surprised only for a moment. Then she nodded as if things suddenly made sense to her.
IT WAS like one of those interrogations you see on TV cop shows. Principal Perry seemed determined to either trick me into saying something damning about Mr. D or force me into a self-incriminating corner. She wrote down everything I said on a little pad in front of her. My answers were all variations of a theme: Nothing happened.
Still, Principal Perry kept pushing.
“How many times have you gone to Mr. Dakota’s house?”
“Has he touched you inappropriately on this campus?”
“Was there any exchange of text messages or emails between you?”
“Did he give you any money or presents?”
“Besides the movie theater, what other places did he take you?”
“Did he have sex with you?”
I was scared and felt cornered. Impulses burned through my head, urging me to get up, walk out of there, run. Somewhere in the midst of all that questioning, I lost it. Like some stubborn toddler, I folded my arms across my chest and snapped, “You can suspend me or whatever, I don’t care, but I’m through talking about this.”
Principal Perry sighed through her nose, a soft, barely audible sound that carried a ton of frustration. “Mrs. Baker…,” she said, turning to Mom in an overt appeal to get more cooperation out of me.
“I think, Mrs. Perry, that Brodie is too upset for this now,” Mom said patiently with the friendliest smile on her face. “In fact, I think he’s too upset to be in school today. I’m taking him home.”
“I understand,” Principal Perry replied. “I think I have enough information from Brodie. But I have to get a good understanding of what happened between him and Mr. Dakota. I’m obligated to notify the police of any incident that reasonably indicates sexual abuse of a minor, and in any event, I must prepare a report to the Board of Education about this. If I have more questions, I’ll have to meet with Brodie again.”
“Of course. I’ll talk to Brodie, and if you have more questions for him, I promise he will cooperate completely. But I’d like for either his father or I to be present if you do talk with him again about this.”
“Certainly.”
Mom got me up and ushered me out of there. As we moved through the cold fall air of the morning toward the street, I felt a great swell of relief that, at least for today, I wouldn’t have to deal with all the whispers and taunts.
“Thanks for getting me out, Mom.”
“Brodie, you didn’t tell me that the guy you’re attracted to is your English teacher.”
“I know, Mom, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“So, this kiss….”
“The kiss was nothing, Mom. I kissed Mr. D, he didn’t kiss me back, he pushed me away and said we could never be anything but friends, and that was it.”
“Okay, I believe you. Come on, I’ll walk home with you.”
“You don’t have to do that. You have to work today. Go ahead to your job. I’ll be okay.”
“No, I already called in and took the day off after I got the call from Mrs. Perry. I’m going to call your dad, and I want to be around once he gets the news because I’m not sure how he’ll react.”
“God, Mom, do you have to tell Dad?”
“Honey, Mrs. Perry told me she called your dad first but didn’t get an answer. She probably left a message on his voicemail. Even if she didn’t, he’ll hear about this sooner or later. And if the situation was reversed, I’d want him to tell me. So yes, I have to tell him.”
Fuck!
“Language, mister.”
“I didn’t say anything foul.”
“Yes, but by that expression on your face, you were thinking it.”
WHILE WE walked through the neighborhood, Mom called Dad and told him everything. The information didn’t go over too well with him. By the time Mom and I reached the house she once shared with us, Dad was speeding down the street in his car. He whipped into the driveway, his tires squealing to a halt, and he climbed out as if courtesy of an ejector seat. He swept right past Mom and got in front of me.
I stumbled a little as I stopped, so nervous I opened my mouth and the dumbest question fell out. “What’re you doing here, Dad?”
“Get in the house,” he said tightly.
I was really glad Mom was there.
The minute the three of us were inside with the door shut, Dad lit into me. “What is this, Brodie? What the hell was that teacher doing kissing you?” He was upset but he wasn’t screaming at me. His voice was steady and relatively low-volume.
I tried to respond in kind. “Dad, Mr. Dakota didn’t kiss me. I kissed him.”
“Don’t give me that,” he said with a brushing motion of both hands. “I knew there was something off about that Dakota guy the second I laid eyes on him. The way he walked, the way he talked, that damned rainbow flag on his tie—everything about him screamed gay.”
Mom laughed in that I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that way. “Come on, Cedric. Are you serious?” She tossed her purse onto the coffee table and sat down in Dad’s recliner, perching on the edge of the cushion. “You can tell a man is gay by his walk and his tie pin?”
“What other kind of man goes around kissing boys, Jennifer? I’d bet my pension the man is a fag.”
Mom looked shocked at first, and then outraged. “Oh my God, Ced—”
“And I don’t want him around our son ever again,” Dad snapped, cutting her off.
I wasn’t nervous or scared any longer; now I was just pissed. “You’re right, Dad. Mr. Dakota’s a fag. And so am I.”
That shut Dad up for a second. His face trembled as he stared at me with frightened round eyes. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know that I like him, Dad, the same way I liked Fawn. I know that I kissed him. I know that I would do anything he asked me.”
“That teacher did this. He’s got you thinking this way. What did he say to you?”
“For God’s sake, Cedric,” Mom practically yelled. “You can’t talk a person into being gay, and you know it.”
Dad never took his eyes off me, ignoring Mom completely. “What did he do? Brodie… was it more than a kiss?”
“No, Dad.”
He didn’t believe me. His eyes showed that as they narrowed again in anger. “I’m going to that school. I want this goddamned pervert fired. I want him arrested!”
“Dad, I told you…. Mr. Dakota didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Cedric, would you just calm down and listen to Brodie?” Mom got up and reached for his hand.
But Dad was beyond listening to either of us. He pushed past me and slammed his way out of the house.
I started after him, fearing what might happen if he confronted Mr. Dakota at the school. Mom caught me by the arm. “What’re you doing? We have to stop Dad.”
“He has every right to talk with the principal about this, hon.”
“But what if he goes after Mr. D?”
“Your dad’s hotheaded, but he’s never been a violent person. He’ll blow off some steam yelling at Mrs. Perry, make some demands, and then he’ll calm down. It will be okay.” She took my face in her hands, making me look her in the eye. “You are going to be okay, Brodie.”
I hoped that would be so. I’d caused enough trouble for Mr. D already, for my parents too. That was my specialty. Fucking things up.