“I just do,” I say. “I know my dad.”
“Do you, though?” she asks, tilting her head, and I frown at her. I feel my resolve wavering, because she has a glint in her eye that makes me wonder if she knows something that I don’t somehow. But if that’s really the case, I don’t want it to be revealed right now, in front of all the Chorus Girls. I don’t say a word more, but Sloane fills up the silence.
“I mean, he left school in such a hurry and without any explanation, really. Didn’t you ever wonder why?”
She shifts her weight and gestures with her hand like she’s talking about the weather and not the downfall of the most important person in my life. I want her to stop talking, but I also need to know what she’s acting like she knows.
I swallow hard, and a drop of sweat trickles down my spine.
“What are you talking about?” I ask quietly.
She squints at me. “Did you even see the text?”
“No,” I say, “but that’s not the—”
“I never said he hooked up with a student,” Sloane explains, cutting me off. “I said he left Chisholm because of an illicit relationship.” She raises her eyebrows like I’m supposed to know what that means. “But you know how facts can get distorted. You know how these things can take on lives of their own.” She studies her fingernails like they’re infinitely more interesting than I am.
I blink away from Sloane and look around at the other girls. They’ve shifted away from us the tiniest bit, and they’re all huddled around Layla’s phone like they’re watching a video or something, but I can tell they’re still listening. My throat feels tight.
I was sure that it was all made up. That Sloane was just being bitchy and that my dad was the victim. I wanted to be right, but suddenly I’m not sure I am anymore.
Sloane says, “Well, I don’t want to be late to class,” knowing she’s clearly won our little standoff, if you could even call it that.
When the other girls turn and start to walk down the hall away from me, Layla looks back once and her eyes seem sad. But I don’t want her pity. I don’t want a thing from her anymore.
Just before Sloane leaves me behind too, she takes a step closer to me and leans down to whisper in my ear. “Your mom and Layla’s mom are still tight, right?” She barely pauses long enough for me to nod. “Well, Mrs. Hassan tells Layla a lot more than she probably should. And Layla? She tells me everything.”
I jerk away from her, and I try my hardest to keep my face composed. To keep myself together while she’s watching me, clearly looking for a reaction. I don’t give her one even though alarm bells are ringing through every inch of my body. I’m almost shaking trying to keep my cool.
Sloane smirks. Then she jogs a little to catch up with her friends. She tosses an arm around Layla’s shoulder, and it only sharpens the pain that is slicing its way through me. The second they’re out of sight, I lean against the lockers to try to catch my breath.
I don’t believe the rumor—no way—but there’s clearly more to why Daddy left Chisholm. If Sloane isn’t lying, Layla knows something, and that makes me more upset than maybe anything else. That she kept something this big and painful from me but told Sloane. And while I’d love to say I’m surprised, I’m not. At all.
I want the truth, so I know I need to go straight to the source.
MEN SHOULD BE WHAT THEY SEEM
All the days that I’ve missed this month were days when I didn’t enter the building at all. So I’m not the kind of kid who would normally need to know how to sneak away from school—how to skip, say, one class—and I have no idea how to get out of here before last bell undetected.
I know I can’t use the front door, so I head to one of the side stairwells. Some of them have emergency exits, doors that have to remain unlocked in case of a fire or some other disaster. But this feels like an emergency to me. Bits and pieces of my life have been going up in flames for months, so I need to get out of here to save myself, to get away from everything that’s burning.
The first stairwell I check has no exit at all, and the next one has a sign that says an alarm will sound if the door is opened. In the third one I find two people making out against the only way out, and while I’d normally pretend I hadn’t seen anything and keep moving, I’m desperate.
“Hey, look, I’m sorry,” I say. A brown-skinned guy with curly black hair pulls away from the person he’s kissing—another guy, with cornrows and a round hickey on the left side of his neck. Looks like they’ve been at it for a while, but you wouldn’t know it by the annoyed expressions on their faces. “I just need to—” I point to the door behind them.
They both move, as one, to make room for me to pass. “Thanks,” I say. I don’t look back, but I bet they’re making out again before the door even closes.
The subway isn’t crowded because it’s only a little after eleven a.m., so rush hour is over, and no one’s headed out for lunch yet. My mood lightens a little as I fade into the bigness of the city and become just another face in the crowd. On the platform, no one is staring at me. On the train, no one knows what the kids at my school are saying about my dad. On the windy sidewalk, I’m just like everyone else: cold, busy, and on my way.
I don’t text him. I don’t want to give him a chance to know I’m coming, or a chance to charm me with one of his all-caps replies. Once I get there, I skip up the library stairs two at a time and head straight to the ground floor.
This part of the library is never exactly quiet, but it seems oddly empty today with the riot going on inside my head. I step into the reading room, and he looks up from the computer on his desk and smiles.
“Well, this is quite a surprise,” he says softly. He doesn’t scold me for being out of school like I thought he’d do right away. He doesn’t ask why I’ve come. And instantly, just from the sight of his crooked glasses and bow tie, and the sound of his Librarian Voice, I feel the ice around my heart start to melt. I don’t want to cry here, but the weight of it all comes crashing down at once. I sniff, and before the first tear falls, Daddy is out of his seat, stooping in front of me.
“Baby Girl,” he says. “What’s going on now?”
I don’t want to ask him, because I feel like I should know that this isn’t true, not about him. That this is an evil rumor made up by someone who wants to destroy me. But I’m so unsure of everything now. Every piece of the life I knew has turned out not to be true. So I have to ask. I have to hear him say that I’m not an idiot to think I know the man he is.
“Someone at school started a rumor about you.”