Chapter 7

“Want us to come with you and explain where we were?” I asked, trying to be helpful.

She thought about it and nodded. “Would you?” she asked, relieved.

Emma nodded and shut off the car. We all got out and approached the house. We were met at the door by a frantic father who’d obviously heard the car doors. “TRICIA! Thank God! I was worried half to death. Where were you?”

Mr. Saunders was a slightly overweight man in his middle years. He was wearing a suit and looked like he was just coming down from a panic attack.

I could see she was struggling so I stepped in. “I’m sorry, Mr. Saunders. It’s my fault. We asked Tricia to go to the Halloween dance on Saturday and we were out getting costumes. We’ll have to go back on Thursday for final fittings. We would have called, but we didn’t realize that it would take so long.”

He fixed me with a hard look. “And who are you, young man?” he asked sternly.

“Dad!” Tricia warned him sharply, but I figured we’d earned a little of his ire.

“My name is Matt, Sir, Matt Russell. I know Tricia from school.”

“Matt ... Matt...” he repeated then looked at Tricia. “This is the boy that was saying he’d gotten you pregnant?!!?”

“He never said that Dad. I told you it was a rumor He didn’t start it. He didn’t even know about it. People just avoided him at school. He was very nice to me today. He found out about it on the weekend and wanted to apologize to me for any harm it caused.”

I don’t think her father bought that at all. The look on his face was much harder when he turned it on me.

“And what do you have to say for yourself?” he demanded.

“A girl at school started the rumor because I was dating her friend over the summer. She wanted to hook her up with her boyfriend’s brother so she told her I’d treated Tricia terribly so that she’d break up with me. I lost most of my friends because of it. The girl that started it got pulled out of school by her parents. I heard they’re sending her to school in Alaska. If she told you about it, then I guess this has been harder on her than she wanted to let on to me and I feel bad about that. Not because I did anything wrong, but because I don’t like people who pick on others. Even if the rumor was true, it’s no reason to treat her like she did something wrong.”

“So you’re just a victim?” he sneered, disbelievingly.

“He’s thinking about suing his family for emancipation because of this,” Emma piped up for the first time. “They believed it and didn’t bother to tell him. He had no idea. He begged for someone to tell him something, but everyone just clammed up and blamed him. I was around to hear about it and I heard some of the reactions from the other side, but no one would tell me because I wasn’t turning on him.”

“And you are?” he asked sarcastically.

“Emma Robinson. I’m in Matt’s classes at Harvard and his fiance,” she said evenly.

“Harvard! Right! He’s a high school kid. Are these the lies he tells?”

I shook my head and dug out my wallet. I pulled out my Harvard ID and handed it to him. “Yes,” I said before he could start. “I’m aware they can be forged, but what idiot goes and gets a fake ID to prove he’s underage? I’m taking part in a pilot project that studies how genius level youths can be better educated to nurture not only their intellectual gifts, but their social development and emotional health. I take my courses at the high school, but I take university courses through virtual classrooms.”

I paused to let that sink in before I delivered the next blow. “Also, the rumor that I was supposed to have defiled your daughter and convinced her to have an abortion to cover it up? I was laid up with a concussion and sprained ankle when that was supposed to have happened. If I’d known about the rumor any sooner than this weekend, I would have killed it as harshly as I could. The whole mess has hurt a lot of people. I get it. You’re pissed. She’s your little girl. The person responsible is on her way to Alaska for the rest of her high school career and I’m told she despises the cold, so that’s about the best we can hope for as punishments go. She left all her friends and her boyfriend behind and now she’ll be going to a new school in a new town in exile.”

He looked at me with a hard look in his eyes, but he wasn’t spitting mad. I think that’s the best we could hope for. “We’ll talk about this later, Patricia,” he said to her, handing my ID back. “Watch yourself!” he snapped at me.

I looked at him blankly as I took back my ID. I was really getting sick of this bullshit. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I finally shrugged and promised Tricia that I’d talk to her at school before we retreated to the car while they went inside, Tricia looked like she was fuming before the door closed.

“Well, that went well,” I said and she leaned over to kiss me. “Thanks for sticking up for me,” I smiled at her. I knew it was going to be a long time before I was through hearing about this damned rumor. Part of me hoped that Marlene got mauled by a bear when she got to Alaska.

“You get that a lot?” she asked, wondering how the teachers were treating me.

“I don’t notice for the most part. I don’t talk to many people at school. I just listen to my lectures and listen with half an ear to the high school work. Most of it is so easy, it’s like being in preschool, so I just spend my days attending the lectures as they’re happening. That’s how I can attend fourteen courses this semester. While the teacher is droning on about quadratic equations, I’m doing advanced engineering math. When the rest of the class is learning what a neuron is, I’m studying what neurotransmitters are out of balance in different disorders. It’s a little like rolling a tank into a bumper-car arena. So I pay so little attention to the adults that teach at high school that I’d barely notice if they hated me. They aren’t marking me down though.”

“His reaction isn’t unique though, right?”

“My own mother believed it right up until I pointed out that she was my alibi for it. My sister believed it enough to stab me in the back over it. Four women that I cared a great deal for all believed it so much that they collectively made a decision to abandon me. I’m getting used to people thinking I’m something they scraped off the bottom of their shoe. Except you. You never treated me like anything except me.”

She smiled at me and we chatted about happier subjects until we got back home. “Want me to come in?” she asked.

“I do, but not tonight. I expect my mother’s going to want to talk about today. That’s likely to make it worse.” I leaned over and kissed her. “I love you. I’ll message you online or text you if I need to vent.”

She told me she loved me and then I got out and went inside.

Sure enough, she was waiting for me. “You missed dinner,” she said, sounding irritable. “I thought you were going to talk to Becky.” She was looking at me darkly.

“I did,” I said simply and passed her on my way to the kitchen. I made myself a sandwich since there didn’t seem to be any leftovers. I assumed they’d eaten next door. They frequently did.

She came into the kitchen. “Don’t give me that. You left her to take off with other girls!”

I turned and looked at her. “I told you I wasn’t going to give up Emma and Tricia for this. You told me it was an emergency and I came home to fix it. Be fucking thankful I didn’t call Dr. Spencer and walk away. I told you that whatever good came of today, you’d done ten times as much damage to me. I pulled her up out of the hole she was in. She swore she wasn’t going to kill herself AND I left her to talk with Patty because she understands how bad guilt like that can eat at you.” I was aware I was shouting. “Why are you really mad? You actually thought I was gonna jump back into bed with them to make it all better? I told Patty you’d treated me like a prostitute. I hadn’t realized how literally that was true.”

I turned and grabbed the biggest butcher knife in the knife block and put the point to my throat. “If I slit my own throat right now, would you care that your son was dead or that you couldn’t use me to get the girls back to normal?” I demanded, staring at her with the point touching my throat.

I could see Lilly come down the stairs quietly. Her eyes were wide and I know she’d heard at least enough of the conversation to know what was going on. She wasn’t the only one shocked. Mom’s eyes flickered from the knife to my eyes.

“Matt,” she said carefully, trying to recover from this precipice. “No one wants you to be hurt.”

“No, I believe that’s true enough. You don’t WANT it. The problem is that you don’t care. Something comes along and it’s a choice between me being hurt or something else happening then you pick me getting hurt. You’re my mother. You’re supposed to protect me. The past two months it hasn’t been anyone here that’s kept the knife out of my throat. It’s been Emma. Today you demanded I throw her away for the people that put the knife here in the first place and now you’re angry that I didn’t. I don’t trust you any more. None of you. You’ll put this knife back here any time you need something. I’m a tool to you now. So I’m not letting you choose any more.” I lowered the knife and then dropped it in the sink with a clatter.

“Emma’s kept me sane and alive through all this. I need her. Stop trying to push me back to Lana and Beck or you’ll be sorry.”

“Don’t threaten me Matt,” she said warningly.

“That’s not a threat. It’s a prediction. I’ll choose Emma. If people kill themselves in despair because of that, well ... You already think I’m a monster. I guess I’ll have to live with that.”

“No one said you were a monster Matt,” she said.

“Yes they did. They said it with every look of disgust. They believed the rumor because of Miranda. They translated my actions there into the possibility that I could do the same thing to an innocent child. Whether I deserve it or not, that’s why it got believed.” I looked at the sandwich in my other hand and threw it across the room at the trash. I couldn’t stomach another bite.

I zipped up my jacket and headed for the door. “Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

“I promised them I’d check on them when I got back,” I said. “Congratulations. You raised a good little hooker.” I slammed the door behind me and crossed the lawn. I took deep breaths and tried to calm my temper. Lana and Beck didn’t need my anger, though they might feel better if I were to punish them.

I let myself in and tried to smile at Patty and Dan when I came in.

“I know that look,” Patty said, getting up and taking my jacket. “Sit down. We can’t send you upstairs like this.”

I nodded and told them about the fight with Mom.

“I’ll talk to her,” Patty promised.

I shrugged. “That’ll work for a little while. Then she’ll lose track of it and start at me again. She doesn’t get how bad this is. It wasn’t a fight and some harsh words. It took weeks of tormenting me every day, dozens of different guys and it wasn’t just them. Everyone helped. Lilly knew the whole story, you guys and Mom had weeks to get fed up and force them to tell you what happened, Tabby and Collie are supposed to be older and wiser and neither of them talked to me. I had NO chance to recover, but now that everyone knows it wasn’t my fault, I’m supposed to just flip a switch and turn all that off? Not only that, but she’s pissed that I kept my plans with Emma and Tricia for this afternoon. I dropped everything because Beck needed me, but once she was stable and talking, I left her with you to keep her from back-sliding. Emma got me through the last two months. I don’t know what I’d do without her and I don’t want to find out.” I knew I was babbling at the end, but I was wound up tighter than a cheap watch.

“No one’s asking you to break up with her Matt,” Patty said gently.

“Mom’s furious with me for ‘taking off with other girls’,” I told her sourly.

“Let me talk to her. You go say hi to the girls and I’ll go next door.”

I nodded. “I can’t begin to describe how pathetic it is that my mother needs to be brought to task like this,” I said. I took a moment to shake it off and then went upstairs to see the girls.

I knocked on Beck’s door and waited for her to answer. She gave me a sad smile and I wrapped her up in a hug. I couldn’t hate her. As much harm as she’d done to me, she was my best friend, or had been. I still had no idea what she was to me any more.

“How’re you doing?” I asked, sitting down on the foot of her bed to talk.

“A little better,” she admitted. “I dunno. I don’t feel like hurting myself, but I still feel like I deserve it, you know?”

I nodded. “When I felt like that, I concentrated on fighting that feeling because of you and the other girls. I knew that it would end my pain, but the pain wouldn’t go away. It would just multiply and move to you four.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I know if I killed myself, I’d only be hurting you and I don’t want to do that any more. I’m really sorry for everything I did Matt. You have to believe me.”

“I do. I know you’re sorry, Honey. Have you been working on your list?”

She nodded and pointed to her desk. I glanced over and there were pages of notes. “I cried for a while when I was done. It was so much. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d done.”

I nodded sadly. “That’s what I wanted you to see. It’s easy to lose track of it when you space it out. When you pile it all up at once, it makes for a different picture. Did you want me to read it or are you still working on the other list?”