I WOKE WITH THE SMELL of David on my skin. Too scared to open my eyes to reality, I remained in bed with his sweatshirt cloaking me in illusory comfort for hours. I haven’t taken it off since I left the pool last night. I haven’t left my room either. What’s the point? It isn’t like I have anything to do or anyone to see.
Most of the day was spent reading. David once shared with me that his favorite book was Cosmopolis by Don DeLinno. When I asked what it was about, he told me, “Movements and counter-movements of contemporary culture.”
“Sounds thrilling.” My remark was drenched in sarcasm.
“When you dig through the layers of the writing, and trust me when I say there are many ideas explored, it’s basically just a story about a guy who wants a haircut.”
I remember laughing when he was trying to explain the book to me, but he assured it was a great read once you got the hang of the author’s writing. Since downloading the book to my e-reader earlier today, I’ve been consumed with it, dissecting what’s being said and finding how much of the two of us are within the themes of the story. The writing is fascinating and so far beyond brilliant that I curse myself for not reading it the minute he told me it was his favorite. But I’m reading it now, more than anything, to feel connected to David, to experience something that was able to resonate in him, so much so, that he read it countless times.
A pounding startles me, and I jump off the bed and rush out to the hallway. The loud knocking on the front door continues, and when I head down the stairs, I hear Kroy’s voice from outside.
“I know you’re home, Cam. Open up.”
When I do, I bark, “Why are you banging on the door like that?”
He pushes his way inside, ignoring my question and asking his own. “Is it true?”
“Not now.” I push the words out on an exhausted breath. After yesterday’s fight with Taylor, I’m drained. But he’s already in my house, and with the distraught look on his face, I doubt I’ll be able to get him to leave.
Unable to stand still, he paces around the foyer. “I’ve been hearing the rumors at school but never once thought to question you because they were so insane. So far from the person you are, but then Linze called me just a while ago and told me what happened yesterday. She told me that you got into a fight with Taylor, and that you hit her, and it made me realize that I don’t know you at all. Because the Cam I know would never do something like that.” He then steps toward me and slows down his talking. “I can’t even think straight right now when I think about you . . . with him.”
“It’s not true, Kroy.”
“It’s not true? That’s all you have to say to defend yourself against this? You’re not even willing to lie better to cover it up?”
“I’m not lying. It’s a sick rumor Taylor made up out of jealousy,” I tell him, but I know he isn’t buying it.
“Just like she made up the lie about you cutting?” he antagonizes, and the moment I open my mouth to defend myself, he shuts me down and speaks over me, saying, “Linze saw the cuts, Cam. When Kyle was holding you back from Taylor yesterday, your shirt had gotten pulled up, and she saw everything.”
A rush of cold spirals around my skin when he says this, silencing me as I stand in front of him.
“You swore to me that it wasn’t true. You begged me to believe in you and not Taylor,” he reminds. “I’m just wondering if you’re going to do the same thing right now—beg me to believe that you and Mr. Andrews weren’t involved with each other.”
“Kroy, please—”
“How did this even happen to you?”
“It didn’t.”
He rakes his hands through his hair as he walks over to the stairs and sits down. When I join him at his side, his back slumps over and his head dips forward.
“Tell me how this happened to you, Cam. How you’ve become this person,” he says, no more an indulger of my lies, but I can’t give him the truth. When he looks deep into my eyes, a mutual understanding as to why takes root. I can deny his words all I want, but he’s far past the possibility of believing me anymore. All I can do is listen as he speaks. “The fact that you won’t admit it . . . that you’re lying to protect him . . .”
It hurts me to see how much he’s struggling to get his thoughts out.
“God, Cam. Why do you want to protect this guy when he took advantage of you?”
“He—”
“No,” he interrupts. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t, because the fact is he was your teacher. He was mine too. I mean, how old is he anyway?” He shakes his head, sickened by the thought, before looking back at me. “Was he the reason why you broke up with me?”
“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.
And even though he begged me to try not to hurt myself, I’ve managed to etch nearly every thought of him into my skin with boldness. And when I think about how disappointed he’d be if he knew, guilt takes over, and I cut even more.
There were a couple times I held the razor to my wrist instead of my stomach. Wicked thoughts fed my mind with all the beauty death would offer me. The idea that there was a place where pain didn’t exist had me begging for God to take my life from me, because why would I want to live when living hurts this much? But each time I contemplated killing myself, I grew terrified of the horror in my head, and I chickened out, keeping my veins intact.
The heartbreak is tremendous.
I can barely stomach food at this point. I don’t know how much weight I’ve lost, but it’s enough that my clothes now hang on me. His sweatshirt, which was always big on my slight frame, now swallows me. I’ve worn it so much that I’ve replaced his scent with my own. The day I couldn’t smell him in the fibers anymore, I cried so hard it felt like blisters were bursting in my throat. All I can remember from that day is the searing pain of losing another piece of him.
It’s been four weeks since the media broke the story. A solid month has gone by, and I’m no better, but I am a year older.
I’m eighteen today.
No one’s even mentioned it though, not even my mother. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve become invisible.
But then the unexpected happens.
The doorbell rings, and I find Linze on my front porch with a single cupcake in her hand.
“Better your ass than mine,” she says in a solemn tone, and I give her a weak smile.
Time has done nothing to heal our fractured relationship, but silently she’s been there. Whether it’s shutting people down at school when she hears them talking about me, or walking next to me in the halls, she offers support.
“You want to come in?”
She nods and follows me upstairs to my room.
“Feels like forever since I’ve been in here.”
She’s right. It does.
We used to spend countless hours together in my room doing typical teenage things. So much time spent talking about boys, watching movies, and painting our nails. I remember telling her about the first time Kroy kissed me when our friendship finally crossed the line into something more.
It’s scary to think about how different everything is now—how different I am when she still seems the exact same.
I set the cupcake down on my dresser and my stomach pangs when I lick a blot of frosting from my thumb.
The silence is uncomfortable between us as we sit on my bed, but eventually, she’s the first to speak.
“I’m scared I don’t know how to talk to you anymore.”
“I’m just me, Linz.”
Her eyes well up. “You’re not.”
Even though she’s a spitfire, she’s always been sensitive, so it doesn’t come as a surprise when her tears fall.
“We used to be best friends,” she says thickly. “I’ve been so worried about you. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to call.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t.”
I can’t remember the last time someone has willingly wanted to talk to me, the last time I’ve had any human touch. I’ve been so incredibly lonely that it’s been eating a hole in me that I’m so desperate to fill. I need support, I just need someone who cares about me, and to have Linze show up here tonight, to remember my birthday when the rest of the world has forgotten, makes me needier than ever for affection.
“I’m so alone,” I whimper. “I feel like I’ve lost everything.”
“You haven’t lost me. I know I was a bitch before, and I’m sorry. But I’m here now.”
She folds her arms around my neck and we hug. Her single touch makes me crave more, and I feel myself breaking down, weakening in her embrace, and my heart can’t take the weight of this secret any longer. I know I made a promise, but every day since, I’ve been dying a slow and painful death.
No matter the distance this year has put between Linze and me, she’s my friend, and I know she would never do anything to betray me. So, for the first time, I finally say it aloud. “I fell in love with him.”
To hear the words, to put them out here in the universe where they were always meant to be, is so bittersweet. She continues to hug me as both of us cry for broken hearts and lost time.
“So it’s true?” she asks when she pulls back and wipes her cheeks.
“No. It’s nothing like what people are saying. We just . . . we fell in love.”
She falls victim to a new slew of tears when she says, “I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“I feel so helpless. He doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“Did you . . . did you sleep with him?”
I look into the eyes of my friend who has always known me for the girl who makes all the right choices, the girl who always did right by her father, and I burst into tears. My head drops onto her lap, and she rubs my back.
“I’m so sorry, Cam.”
She stays with me, comforting me, and when the tears subside, she stays even longer. I don’t mention another word to her about David, and she doesn’t ask. Instead, she’s able to take my mind off everything by telling me about how serious she and Kyle have gotten, about her college plans, and about the new car she hopes to get for graduation. I can’t thank her enough for giving me a normal conversation.
She makes me promise to eat the cupcake after telling me that I look gaunt, but when she leaves, I toss it in the garbage. My shrunken stomach would most likely vomit it up anyway, but I’ll forever cherish the gesture. It came when I needed it the most.
It’s close to midnight when I turn off the lights and slip under the covers. Entirely drained, my eyes are just about to close, but my phone vibrates, illuminating the room in a soft glow when the screen lights up.
I lean over to see a notification of a text from an unknown number, and when I take the phone in my hands and swipe the screen, I’m flooded in warmth.
Unknown: Happy birthday, love.
There is no doubt—not a single one—that this came from the one who still holds my soul.
I want to text him a million things as I feel myself exploding in excitement and love, but I also can’t shake the fear. The judge put down a strict no-contact order against me, and I worry if anyone ever found out about this, it could mean even more detrimental consequences.
I know that.
I do.
But I also know that he’s putting himself at risk to text me, so I send him the most benign text back, one that I could defend if ever I needed to.
Your Honor, I had no idea who sent the text, but I didn’t want a birthday wish to go unthanked.
Me: <3
I wait anxiously for another text. Hell, I even cry for one. But after an hour of waiting, I know that was it, but it was enough. It’s the knowing he’s in his bed, thinking about me just like I’m thinking about him, that allows me to take a deep breath and finally relax into sleep.