Harmless Read online

  I wondered if people knew. If they could see when they looked at me that I was now someone who a boy wanted to spend his whole night kissing. And not just any boy, but a senior named Brian. He even whispered in my ear at one point that I was a really good kisser.

  I was sitting in English class thinking about what it would feel like to kiss Tobey Endo. I was sure he'd kissed girls before, but now I'd kissed a boy, so we were even. Ms. Christofar was talking about The Scarlet Letter. Usually I do a lot of talking in class, but I'd fallen behind a few chapters. I didn't crack the book all weekend.

  All that time, when everyone around me was talking about boys and boyfriends, I was totally missing out.

  Suddenly I realized Ms. Christofar had called on me.

  “What? I'm sorry. What was the question?”

  “Anna. I asked you …” She stopped and looked at me and sort of shrugged. “Oh, don't worry about it.”

  She knew. I could see it in her eyes. Ms. Christofar and Tammy Frost and Rachel Engel and Tobey Endo. They all knew.

  “I'm sorry, Ms. Christofar. I'm having a little trouble concentrating today.”

  “Well, that is perfectly understandable. Would you like to go sit in the nurse's office?”

  I looked around. Everyone was staring at me, but not with the oh-poor-Anna-I'm-so-worried-about-her kind of look Ms. Christofar had. They were looking at me like this past weekend I'd just had the best puppet-show birthday party ever.

  “No. I'm okay. Really. It's just …”

  Part of me wanted to crawl under my desk and hide, but there was another part of me that didn't want this moment to end. I wanted it to last for days.

  “What is it, Anna?” she said. She walked over to my desk and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Nothing.”

  “Can I say something?” I turned around. It was Melissa Sands. She was the first girl in our class to get her ears pierced, when we were in second grade. I wanted to get my ears pierced so badly then, but my parents wouldn't let me. I wanted to wear tiny red sparkly stones shaped like hearts.

  “Please, Melissa, go ahead,” said Ms. Christofar.

  “Yeah. I mean, I think it's, like, so cool that Anna and Emma and Mariah stood up to that guy. They did it by themselves and they didn't need to be rescued and that's, like, totally powerful. I don't know how many other girls in this school or anywhere would have been strong enough to do what they did.”

  “Thank you, Melissa.” Ms. Christofar walked quickly back to the front of the classroom to where her copy of The Scarlet Letter lay open on her desk.

  Hilary Johansson's hand was up. Ms. Christofar nodded at her.

  “Hilary?”

  “Yeah. I just want to say that I hope the cops find that guy and that he gets the death penalty.”

  Jonathan, who sits two seats behind me, spoke up without raising his hand. “You can't execute somebody for doing what he did. You can only execute someone for killing somebody else. I'm not defending him. I hope they find him too and that he goes to jail. I'm just saying that the punishment has to fit the crime, that's all. And also I think what Anna and Emma and Mariah did was awesome.”

  Okay. This was starting to get weird. I'm used to sitting in English class analyzing characters and what happens to them and their actions and motivations. We do this all the time. We just spent thirty minutes doing this with Hester Prynne. That's what English class is for. That and learning about use-less things like dangling participles. But there we were talking about me like I was the heroine of some novel or play or short story. Me.

  I wasn't used to anyone talking about me at all.

  At lunchtime I found Emma sitting all alone. I told her that I, which I figured meant we, had an official invitation to sit at Tammy's table, but she didn't want to go. I looked over to where Tammy and her friends were sitting. I caught Tammy's eye and shrugged and she gave a little wave and then shrugged back and I put down my tray and slid into the seat across from Emma. It felt like the right thing to do, keeping her company. She seemed really down. When I asked what was wrong she just looked at me like I was crazy. I know I was totally freaking out on Friday night and I was sitting there crying, all worried about what would happen, but today Tobey Endo said “Hey” to me in the hallway. Things were looking up.

  It's not like I couldn't imagine how she felt. I felt bad at first too about all of this. Really bad. I felt even worse when we all had to go to the police station and talk with Detective Stevens. But now it was over and it was time to put this all behind us. We had a clean slate. We could start over. And even though I wasn't planning on doing anything like that again, it kind of felt like it was worth it. I'd kissed a senior and now we were spending half of English class talking about me instead of some boring book.

  What I didn't get was why Emma wasn't talking to me.

  “Are your parents giving you a hard time about this?”

  “No.”

  “Are they making you talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Is this about Owen?”

  “God, no. Will you give that a rest?”

  She had an untouched plate of chicken fingers and French fries in front of her.

  “So what's bothering you?”

  “Jesus, Anna. I'm just having a hard time with everything. Can't you understand that?”

  “Sure,” I said, although I didn't really mean it. I didn't understand anything about Emma anymore. I thought I knew her, I thought I knew everything about her. I thought we had no secrets between us.

  But here's something I know about friendship: Sometimes the right thing to do is to not point out that your friend hasn't touched her chicken fingers or French fries and not point out that maybe she's overreacting. Instead, you just smile and sit with her and say “I understand” when really, you don't under-stand her at all.

  Emma

  On Tuesday morning, about halfway through algebra class, this boy named Stuart came into the room and handed a note to Mr. Santiago. He looked up and said, “Emma, Principal Glasser would like to see you in his office.”

  I'd never been in Glasser's office. Silas and his friends called him Glasser the Harasser, not in a pervy kind of way, even though that's how I thought it made him sound. They called him Glasser the Harasser because he's one of those principals who seem to have no life of their own, so he's always on top of absolutely everything that's happening all the time, no matter how small. He chewed out the varsity basketball team for not being neater in the locker room. He scheduled a meeting with this eleventh grader because he'd become aware that she was throwing away her plastic water bottles rather than placing them in the recycling bin.

  But everyone knows that the thing that makes Glasser the maddest is when students skip class, so you know when you get called to his office in the middle of one of your classes, it has to be for something pretty big.

  I should have been in a panic. I should have been dizzy and short of breath. Palms sweating. Mind racing. But instead I felt nothing but a dull ache, an endless expanse of white nothingness, filling up the whole of me.

  When I got there I saw Anna and Mariah sitting silently on the leather sofa. Their hands were folded in their laps and they were looking down at the floor. I hadn't talked much to either of them since the police station on Saturday, except for lunchtime the day before, when Anna sat down and asked me what was wrong and I just wished she'd go away, and finally she did and she went over and sat at the table with the popular crowd.

  Glasser came in and sat behind his desk. He had a beard that I was pretty sure he grew only to mask the fact that he's younger than at least half the teachers at ODS. His desk was covered with pictures of a golden retriever and a small black mutt. No humans in sight.

  “Girls,” he said, “or, I suppose, the proper way for me to address you is as young women—so, young women, I want to start by saying how proud I am, how proud the entire ODS community is, of you. You have displayed remarkable strength, courage and poise in what I c
an only imagine is a time of great turmoil. You stand as a shining example to all of us here at Orsonville Day School.”

  He stood up and walked over to a wall where a large bronze plaque with the school seal on it hung. He used a pen to point to it. “Do you know our motto? Ad Vitam Paramus? It is written here, below our seal. Ad Vitam Paramus: We are preparing for life.”

  He considered it for a moment. He tilted his head as if the words might change if he looked at them from a different angle.

  “That is what we aim to do at ODS; it is our humble goal. We strive for nothing greater than to send you off into the world prepared for life. Prepared for what this world is and will be and to make certain that you have in your arsenals whatever it takes to meet this world head-on.”

  I could feel Anna looking at me, but I didn't turn to meet her gaze.

  “Here you sit. The three of you. You are only freshmen, and yet you have already proven that we are doing our job. You exemplify our motto. You faced a real-life challenge and you were prepared.” He sat on his desk and folded his arms in front of him.

  “I want the other members of our community to be thinking about what they might do, given the current climate and the unexpected dangers that lurk outside these walls, to keep safe and avoid this kind of situation. I would like, with your permission, to schedule a special assembly tomorrow morning on community safety.” He scratched his beard and then put up his hands, palms facing toward us. “Now, I understand if this idea makes you uncomfortable—if you feel, perhaps, that it draws too much unwanted attention. You each have my permission to skip the assembly and spend the hour in the library doing your homework instead.”

  There was a pause in the room. A moment of quiet. Glasser walked around to the back of his desk and took his seat again. I was relieved. His energy was making me antsy.

  “I think we should be there,” said Anna. “This involves us. People already know anyway. What good does it do to hide out in the library?”

  Was this Anna talking? Anna who stumbled, big-footed, into my room a few weeks before the start of third grade? Anna was always hiding out. That's what Anna did. She was the expert at hiding out. Once, when we were in sixth grade, our whole class sang “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' ” before an assembly and Anna retreated to the back, behind the tall girls in the last row, so nobody could see her. Anna thought we should be at an assembly with the entire school where, even if they were guarded and politically correct about it, they would be talking about us? That wasn't the Anna I knew.

  “I guess Anna's right. We might as well go,” Mariah added.

  “Well, okay, then. As long as you're comfortable.”

  I wasn't comfortable in any way with anything happening in my life but I nodded when Glasser looked at me because I didn't know what else to do right at that moment.

  “Let me ask you one more thing,” he said. “I know there is all manner of speculation about what happened circulating in these halls as we sit here right now. I wonder whether there isn't an appropriate way to clear things up and set the record straight, without revealing any of the details that might be too personal.”

  He paused, briefly, as if we were supposed to offer an idea, before he continued.

  “I'm thinking of the Sentinel. Our award-winning student publication. I hate to pile anything extra on any of you right now, but if you were, again, comfortable with the idea, I think it'd be fantastic if you might write a small article? Your story is inspirational. I think your fellow students will be truly in awe of your strength of character. And I know that they have much to learn from you.”

  “Sure,” said Anna.

  “No problem,” said Mariah.

  They looked eager. Excited by the idea. Anna in particular.

  “Why don't you go ahead without me,” I said.

  When Glasser the Harasser raised his eyebrows I added, “Three people are too many people to write an article. It'll get too confusing.”

  This seemed to make some sense to him. Three people telling one story. That was hard.

  And anyway, what did anyone have to learn from me?

  Mariah

  When we left Principal Glasser's office we still had about twenty minutes of class time left but no one was there to escort us back to our rooms like they usually did in this Odious prison, so I suggested we go hang out in the quad. Even though it was a beautiful day, the quad was practically empty except for a couple of juniors playing Hacky Sack in their bare feet under a big leafy tree. We sat down in the warm April sun.

  “Little Anna is growing up fast,” I said. “One minute she's all blubbering about oh my God what are we going to do boo hoo hoo, and the next she's offering to write an article about what happened for the ODS Sentinel.” I couldn't help teasing her; she was such an easy target. Usually she turns red and hangs her head like a wounded puppy but instead she just looked at me and told me to shut up.

  “Everyone's talking about us anyway,” she said. “We might as well set the record straight.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “You know what I mean, Mariah. We just tell our version of the story and then maybe instead of talking about us, peo-ple will start talking to us. In fact,” she added, “Tobey Endo talked to me today.”

  “I thought you were all in love with Brian.” I gave her a playful shove.

  “Whatever about Brian. He's fine, but Tobey Endo is cute, don't you think? And he goes to school here. With me. Every day.”

  We both looked over at Emma. She was lying back with her eyes closed and the sun on her face without saying a word. I could see why Silas was worried about her. She was withdrawn and sulky and I felt like telling her to get her act together before she drew too much attention to herself and the whole story. But then I realized she was probably thinking about Owen. She was probably into him and now that I wasn't with DJ anymore she knew she'd never hear from him again. Owen was cute and all but I didn't really get why Emma was taking it so hard. It's not like he had sex with her and then told her he was taking someone else to his prom. She hardly knew Owen.

  I felt kind of sorry for her. I patted her knee.

  “I'm sorry, Em. I'm sorry this whole thing with the guys from Orsonville High didn't work out. But there are other guys out there. I'm even starting to think I've been wrong all this time about Odious. I think there may be some guys right here in this lame little school of ours.”

  She still didn't smile. She didn't sit up or open her eyes or give any sign that she even knew there was anyone sitting right beside her.

  After school got out I went over to Anna's house to work on the article. Emma caught a ride home with Silas. I saw them getting in his car. He waved at me and I think maybe he even winked at me too.

  Anna's mom gave us some brownies she'd baked with peanut butter inside and a glass of milk. I don't think I've had a glass of milk after coming home from school since I was a little kid and lived in Dexter County but I have to admit it tasted damn good. We went upstairs to Anna's room and closed the door.

  I sat down on the floor, grabbed a pen and opened up my notebook.

  “I was thinking,” I said. “We could start with something like: ‘You never know what you're capable of until you find yourself staring down the barrel of a gun.’ ”

  That was good. Dramatic. It would get everyone's attention right away. See? I was a pretty good writer.

  Anna was standing looking at herself in the full-length mirror attached to the back of her bedroom door.

  “It sounds good but that isn't how we said it was. We never said he had a gun. We said he had a knife. And anyway, we said that he said he had a knife. We never even said anything about him pointing the knife at us.”

  “I was using the barrel of the gun as a metaphor. You know what a metaphor is, right?”

  “Of course I do, Mariah. You don't have to patronize me. I'm the one with good grades. I just think talking about a gun is too confusing.”

  Now she was standing with her back
to the mirror, looking over her shoulder. I think she was checking out her butt.

  “Right. Okay. How about: ‘You never know what you're capable of until you find yourself staring evil in the face’?”

  “That's fine. Do you think I need a haircut?”

  “A haircut?”

  “Yeah. I think I need a haircut. Maybe I should cut it to my shoulders. Or maybe even cut it short like that girl in that movie.”

  I put the notebook down and stood next to Anna and stared at her reflection.

  “Can I be honest with you?”

  “Please.”

  “I think we need to start with your clothes. And maybe some makeup.”

  “Really? Do you think you could help?” She looked happy, not like the wounded puppy I was so used to. She looked ex-pectant, like a puppy waiting for you to throw back its favorite ball. I took in our two reflections side by side in Anna's mirror.

  “Don't worry, Anna,” I said. “By the time I'm done with you, you won't even recognize yourself.”

  Anna

  I went to the mall with Mariah. My parents didn't seem to mind that it was a school night. My mom agreed to give us a ride and then return for us two hours later. My dad even slipped me his credit card. I knew lots of girls went shopping with their dads' credit cards but I wasn't one of those girls, or I guess I should say, my dad wasn't one of those dads.

  Things had changed.

  My mom called Mariah's mom. This was Mariah's idea. She thought her mom would be more likely to say she could go to the mall on a school night if my mom was the one doing the asking. Sure enough, she said fine, and we were on our way with the windows rolled down and my favorite radio station blasting on the stereo even though Mom usually insists on lis-tening to NPR.

  First we bought some makeup. We didn't go to one of the counters at the department store like I thought you were sup-posed to, where the women wear white overcoats as if they practice some kind of medicine. We went instead to Abby's Habit, this little store with dark purple walls and tattooed twenty-somethings looking bored behind the counter, and eye shadow with names like Turquoise Trash and Goblin Green.