The whole table turns. Jenny and Hannah do, too. I catch a glimpse of Jenny’s notebook, a list of names, before she hides it against her chest.
Twenty-six. That’s how many names are on Jenny’s list. I sit across from Mrs. Giles, this time only her and me in the office, no secretary or Strane. Mrs. Giles hands me a copy of the list, and I read down the names, mostly sophomores, classmates, girls on my floor. No one I’ve ever talked to about Strane. Then I see the last name on the page—Jesse Ly.
“If you have anything you want to tell me,” Mrs. Giles says, “now is the time to do it.”
I’m not sure what she’s expecting from me, if she still believes the rumor isn’t true or if this list has changed her mind and now she’s angry that I lied. She’s angry about something.
I look up from the list. “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”
“I’d like you to be honest with me.”
I say nothing, not wanting to take a step in any direction.
“What if I tell you I’ve spoken with a student on this list who says you explicitly told them you were romantically involved with Mr. Strane?”
It takes me a moment to understand she doesn’t mean “explicit” in a sexual sense, but that I told this person directly. Again, I say nothing. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth. It seems like the sort of bluff cops on TV shows use when trying to wrangle a confession out of someone. The smart move is always to stay silent, wait for your lawyer—though I don’t know who the equivalent of a lawyer would be in my case. Strane? My parents?
Mrs. Giles takes a deep breath, touches her fingers to her temples. She doesn’t want to be dealing with this. I don’t want to deal with this, either. We should just forget it—that’s what I want to say. Let’s forget all about this. But I know we can’t, not with Jenny leading the charge, and because of who her father is. The structure of Browick suddenly seems obvious, a blatant system of power and worth in which some people matter more than others, something I’ve always felt but haven’t before been able to comprehend so plainly.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” she says.
“We are at the bottom,” I say. “None of it is true. That’s the bottom.”
“So if I go get this student and bring them in here, will your story change?” she asks.
I blink as I realize she’s trying to call my bluff, not the other way around. “It’s not true,” I say again.
“Fine.” She gets up, leaves the office, the door still open.
The secretary pokes her head in, sees me and smiles. “Hang in there,” she says.
A lump rises in my throat from this small scrap of kindness. I wonder if she believes me, what she thought during the last meeting with Mrs. Giles and Strane, while she sat scribbling down everything we said on her yellow legal pad.
A few minutes pass and Mrs. Giles comes back into the office with Jesse Ly trailing behind her. He sits in the chair beside mine, but he doesn’t look at me. His face burns red, his neck, his ears. His chest heaves with each breath.
“Jesse,” Mrs. Giles says, “I’m going to ask you the same question you answered before. Did Vanessa tell you that she and Mr. Strane were having an affair?”
Jesse shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, she never said that.” His voice is high, frantic, the kind of voice you use when you’re so desperate not to tell the truth, you don’t care how obvious it is that you’re lying.
Mrs. Giles again presses her fingertips to her temples. “That isn’t what you said five minutes ago.”
Jesse keeps shaking his head. No, no, no. He’s distraught, so much so that I’m gripped with an overwhelming pity for him. I imagine reaching over and placing my hand over his, saying, It’s ok, you can tell her the truth. But I only sit and watch, wondering if I’m ultimately to blame for him going through this moment of obvious pain, if it matters that I’m the one with more to lose.
“What did you tell her?” I ask quietly.
Jesse’s eyes jump over to me. Still shaking his head, he says, “I didn’t know this was going to happen. She just asked me—”
“Jesse,” Mrs. Giles says. “Has Vanessa ever told you that she and Mr. Strane are romantically involved?”
He looks back and forth, from her to me. When his eyes sink to the floor, I know what’s coming. I close my eyes and he says yes.
If I were weaker, this would be it. I’ve been trapped, confronted with my own inconsistency. The way Mrs. Giles stares me down, it’s obvious she thinks this is over, that I’m about to break. But there’s still a way out of this tunnel. I see the sliver of light. I just have to keep digging.
“I lied,” I say. “It was all lies. What I told Jesse about Strane”—I correct myself—“Mr. Strane, none of it was true.”
“You lied,” Mrs. Giles repeats. “And why would you do that?”
I look her straight in the eye as I explain my reasons: because I was bored and lonely, because I had a crush on a teacher, because I have an overactive imagination. The longer I talk, the more confident I become, blaming myself, absolving Strane. It’s such a good excuse, it explains away anything I said to Jesse, plus whatever rumors the twenty-five other names on the list heard. This should have been my story from the beginning.
“I know lying is a bad thing to do,” I say, looking from Jesse to Mrs. Giles, “and for that I’m sorry. But that’s the whole truth. There’s nothing else to it.”
It’s a dizzy pleasure, like filling my lungs with fresh air after pulling the blankets off my face. I am smart and I am strong—more than anyone understands.
I skip lunch and go straight to Strane’s classroom, knock on the door. He doesn’t answer even though I can see the lights are on through the textured glass window. I tell myself he’s just worried about the optics still, but during English, Mr. Noyes is there instead of Strane, and as soon as I step inside the classroom, he tells me I need to go to the administration building.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
He holds up his hands. “I’m only the messenger,” he says, but it’s clear in the wary way he looks at me, like he doesn’t want to be near me, that he knows something. I walk across campus, unsure if I should hurry or drag my feet, and when I reach the front steps of the admin building, looking up at the columns and the Browick seals on the double doors, Dad’s truck pulls into the main campus entrance. I hold my hand up to shield my eyes and see they’re both in there, Dad driving, Mom in the passenger seat with her hand clamped over her mouth. They turn into the parking lot, get out of the truck.
I hurry back down the steps and call, “What are you doing here?” At the sound of my voice, my mother’s head whips around and she points a finger down at her feet, the way she calls to Babe when she’s done something bad. Get over here. Just like the dog, I stop fifteen feet away and refuse to come any closer.
“Why are you here?” I ask again.
“Jesus, Vanessa, why do you think?” she snaps.
“Did Mrs. Giles call you? There’s no reason for you to be here.”