“Yes, sir.” She opened the cabinet to retrieve the cookies for her grandmother. Emily’s fingers had barely brushed the orange and white packaging on the Bergers when her father’s hand clamped around her wrist. Her brain focused not on the pain, but on the memory of the handcuff-shaped bruise around her grandmother’s frail wrist.
You’ll get away. You’ll go to college. You’ll meet a boy who loves you …
“Dad, I—”
He squeezed harder, and the pain took her breath away. Emily was on her knees, eyes tightly shut, when the stench of his breath curled into her nostrils. “What did I tell you?”
“You—” She gasped as the bones inside her wrist started to quiver. “I’m sorry, I—”
“What did I tell you?”
“T-to go to my room.”
The vise of his hand released. The relief brought another gasp from deep inside Emily’s belly. She stood up. She closed the cabinet door. She walked out of the kitchen. She went back up the hallway. She placed her foot on the bottom stair, directly above the loudest creak, before putting her foot back on the floor.
Emily turned.
Her shoes were still beside the front door alongside her purse. They were all dyed a perfect shade of turquoise to match her satin dress. But the dress was too tight and she couldn’t get her pantyhose past her knees and her feet were painfully swollen so she bypassed the heels and grabbed her clutch on the way out the door.
A gentle spring breeze caressed her bare shoulders as she walked across the lawn. The grass tickled her feet. In the distance, she could smell the pungent salt of the ocean. The Atlantic was far too cold for the tourists who would flock to the boardwalk in the summer. For now, Longbill Beach belonged to the townies, who would never stand in a snaking line outside of Thrasher’s for a bucket of French fries or stare in wonder at the machines stretching colorful strings of taffy in the candy shop window.
Summer.
Only a few months away.
Clay and Nardo and Ricky and Blake were all preparing for graduation, about to start their adult lives, about to leave this stifling, pathetic beach town. Would they ever think of Emily again? Did they even think of her now? Maybe with pity. Probably with relief that they had finally excised the rot from their incestuous little circle.
Her outsiderness didn’t hurt now as much as it had in the beginning. Emily had finally accepted that she wasn’t a part of their lives anymore. Contrary to what Gram had said, Emily was not going away. Not going to college. Not meeting a boy who loved her. She would end up shrieking her lifeguard whistle at obnoxious brats on the beach or passing out endless free samples from behind the counter at Salty Pete’s Soft Serve.
The soles of her feet slapped against the warm asphalt as she turned the corner. She wanted to look back at the house, but she refrained from the dramatic gesture. Instead, she conjured the image of her mother pacing back and forth across her office, phone to her ear as she strategized. Her father would be draining the can of beer, possibly weighing the distance between the rest of the beer in the fridge and the Scotch in the library. Her grandmother would be finishing the tiny sweater, wondering what child she could’ve possibly started it for.
An approaching car made Emily move from the center of the road. She watched a two-tone Chevy Chevette glide by, then saw the bright red glow of the brake lights as the car squealed to a stop. Loud music pounded from the open windows. Bay City Rollers.
S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y night!
Mr. Wexler’s head swiveled from the rearview mirror to the side mirror. The lights blinked as he moved his foot from the brake to the gas, then back again. He was trying to decide whether or not to keep going.
Emily stepped back as the car reversed. She could smell the joint smoldering in his ashtray. She assumed that Dean was supposed to chaperone tonight, but his black suit was more appropriate for a funeral than a prom.
“Em,” he said, shouting over the song. “What are you doing?”
She spread out her arms, indicating her billowing turquoise prom dress. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
His eyes flickered over her, then did another, slower take, which was the same way he had looked at Emily the first day she had walked into his classroom. In addition to teaching social studies, he was the track coach, so he’d been wearing burgundy polyester shorts and a white, short-sleeved polo—the same as the other coaches.
That was where the similarities had ended.
Dean Wexler was only six years older than his students, but he was worldly and wise in a way that none of them would ever be. Before college, he’d taken a gap year to backpack across Europe. He’d dug wells for villagers in Latin America. He drank herbal tea and grew his own weed. He had a thick, luxurious Magnum P.I. mustache. He was supposed to teach them about civics and government, but one class he was showing them an article about how DDT was still poisoning the groundwater and the next he was explaining how Reagan cut a secret deal with the Iranians on the hostages to swing the election.
Basically, they had all thought that Dean Wexler was the coolest teacher any of them had ever known.
“Em.” He repeated the name like a sigh. The car gear went into neutral. The emergency brake raked up. He turned off the engine, cutting the song at ni-i-i-ight.
Dean got out of the car. He towered over her but, for once, his eyes were not unkind. “You can’t go to the prom. What would people think? What are your parents going to say?”
“I don’t care,” she said, her voice going up at the end because she cared quite a lot.
“You need to anticipate the consequences of your actions.” He reached out for her arms, then seemed to think better of it. “Your mother’s being scrutinized at the highest levels right now.”
“Really?” Emily asked, as if her mother hadn’t been on the phone for so many hours that her ear had taken on the shape of the receiver. “Is she in trouble or something?”
His audible sigh was clearly meant to indicate he was being patient. “I think you’re not considering how your actions could derail everything she’s worked for.”
Emily watched a seagull floating above a cluster of clouds. Your actions. Your actions. Your actions. She had heard Dean being condescending before, but never toward her.
He asked, “What if someone takes a photo of you? Or there’s a journalist at the school? Think about how this will reflect on her.”
A dawning realization put a smile on her lips. He was joking. Of course he was joking.
“Emily.” Dean clearly wasn’t joking. “You can’t—”
He turned into a mime, using his hands to create an aura around her body. Bare shoulders, too full breasts, too wide hips, the stretching seams at her waist as the satin turquoise failed to conceal the round swell of her belly.
This was why Gram was knitting the tiny sweater. This was why her father hadn’t let her leave the house for the last four months. This was why the principal had kicked her out of school. This was why she had been cleaved away from Clay and Nardo and Ricky and Blake.
She was pregnant.
Finally, Dean found words again. “What would your mother say?”
Emily hesitated, trying to wade through the torrent of shame being thrown at her, the same shame she had endured since word had gotten out that she was no longer the good girl with the promising life ahead of her but the bad girl who was going to pay a heavy price for her sins.