Chapter 2

We all woke to the alarm early on Friday. I’d set it a little earlier than normal, since we had equipment to load in the car and Gina and I were picking up Tricia on our way. Everyone seemed excited or nervous about today’s seminar, and we were planning on spending some time tonight watching the tape. I was also sending the girls shopping after school for dresses. Most of them said they didn’t need one, but Gina did, and I knew she’d be more comfortable if she wasn’t the only one going.

We chatted casually over breakfast and then we were off to school. We loaded cameras into Lana’s trunk and each of us carried our school books. Tricia was waiting for us and came out right away, pausing to lock the front door before we drove to school to meet Lana and Beck in the student parking lot.

We all hugged and went into school together. When we got to my locker, I glanced at Tricia. “It’s okay to sit with Cheryl today,” I told her gently. “I think, if Roberta comes to talk to me today, it will be a very different conversation than she and I have been having so far this week.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

I nodded. “I’ll tell you more about what upset me yesterday when we go shopping after school,” I promised.

She nodded and kissed me before we all separated for our morning classes. Beck waited until everyone was gone before voicing her opinion. “I don’t think she’ll want to talk to you,” she said quietly.

“You’re probably right, but she might decide to come talk to me about your conversation yesterday either to tell me I was right or to ask if I could change your mind.”

“You really think she’ll try that?” she asked skeptically.

“We’re going to dinner tomorrow night so I can sell my father into slavery,” I said dryly. “That seems normal, but Roberta trying to beg me to change your mind is beyond belief?”

She laughed. “You’re not selling him, though,” she pointed out. “It’s more like you’re posting an ad for a free puppy.”

We both laughed at that and went to our seats as class started. The morning was blessedly normal. I was prepared for the seminar. I knew what I wanted to say, and I knew how I was going to say it. Most people have a certain amount of anxiety surrounding public speaking, but for once, mine seemed to be asleep at the switch. I guess most of that anxiety was caused by the desire for acceptance by the audience and fear that they’d fail to get it. I had the unwavering support of my girls. No fumbling on that stage was going to change that. The rest of the school either despised me, feared me or just ostracized me. There was nothing I could do that would make that worse and I didn’t care about making it better.

When I got to first lunch, the girls were a bundle of nerves. “Calm down,” I said lightly. “You’ll be fine,” I assured them. “All you need to do is keep the cameras pointed at me and auto-focus will do all the work.”

“We just want you to be great up there,” Lana told me.

“I’m talking to the students about rape, not performing Shakespeare,” I reminded her gently. “I’ll do it as well as I can. Our girls will still support me, and the rest of the school already avoids me anyway. Short of dropping my pants and pissing on the front row, most of them aren’t going to hate me more.”

That made her laugh at the thought and we all settled down to a normal lunch. The three of them were going to the school auditorium from here and I’d follow when it got a little closer to the time of the assembly. Mr. Peterson had announced it this morning, but it hadn’t exactly been a secret at that point. All the students knew it was happening.

When the bell rang, they all got up and I was treated to a lot of extra hugs, kisses and whispered words of encouragement. Some days life was good. I took a moment to call Diego and cancel today’s session since I was shopping with the girls. It was the first appointment I’d cancelled, and I didn’t feel bad about it since I’d worked so hard to get here.

“All right, but you better not hurt yourself before Monday. I’ll stop by the gym and see how you’re doing,” he promised.

“You’re just sniffing around the cheerleaders since I won’t hook you up with Ingrid,” I teased him.

“I don’t need your white-boy abuse,” he laughed. “I can get way better abuse from my mama.”

“I’m not even gonna tease you about that,” I conceded. “If I made a joke, you’d tell on me. Latina women are fierce, so I’m told. I want no part of running for my life.”

He laughed and told me he’d see me on Monday, and we hung up.

I settled myself back down into my seat with my bottle of water and waited for the late lunch crowd to start filling the cafeteria. It seemed like this was my class for having interesting things happen this semester.

Roberta came right over to me. ‘Here we go,’ I thought to myself as I watched her take the seat across from me.

“You knew?” she asked. I could see she’d been crying.

“I know that Beck loves me,” I told her. “I had no idea how she felt about you. It’s not really surprising to me that she doesn’t feel strongly enough about you to turn her back on me though. How’re you handling it?”

She laughed hopelessly. “Really?” she blurted, on the verge of tears. “How do YOU think I’m handling it?!”

I looked back at her calmly and saw that we were getting a little attention as other people started taking their seats. “I’ve been where you are,” I reminded her quietly. “It’s a lot of despair and hopelessness and wishing someone would walk up to you and beat you to a pulp so you’d be distracted from the constant, gnawing pain in your chest. After that, it’s a lot of being numb all the time and wishing someone would walk up to you and beat you bloody just so you’d feel something, anything. Then there’s a lot of days that you wake up and feel a vague sort of disappointment that you didn’t die in your sleep and a dull hope that maybe tonight you’ll get your wish.”

She looked at me in a stark horror that I sympathized with. “How do you deal with that?!” she begged me to tell her.

“You keep moving,” I told her gently. “Find something that takes your mind off it. For me, it was working out. I could put my mind in neutral while I was doing sets. It didn’t stop the pain, but it kept it at bay and distracted me from wanting to die for as long as I was pushing myself. Then you find something that genuinely soothes the hurt, even if it’s just a little bit. Make that your passion for a while. I had the study. I threw myself into it and it helped me until the pain wasn’t quite so bad any more. After that, I had a body that looked like a monument, I had my courses and I stopped being in pain all the time. I could feel proud of how I looked, proud of the work I was doing toward my degrees. You just have to weather the storm. Once you get through it, you’ll be different, but you’ll be stronger. Take up training for baseball in the spring. Start reading the classics. Try the theater. Push the pain aside by pretending to be someone else for a few hours of rehearsals. So long as you pick something constructive, you’ll walk out the other side with some new skills and a head-start on being a new woman.”

She looked at me like I was out of my mind. “Your advice is to take up a hobby?”

I shrugged. “I took twenty university courses, worked out religiously, took dance classes and started Kung Fu lessons. So, I picked up three hobbies and four degrees. My situation was a little different from yours, though. You still have family at home that loves you. At the time, I didn’t. I’d also suggest a dog if you don’t have one. One of my girls got me a dog for Christmas and she’s been a Godsend. A good dog is sensitive to its owner’s moods. Dawn comes and lays her head in my lap and whines when she knows I’m hurt or upset or suffering. Dogs also love their owners unconditionally. Dawn’s a gentle dog, but she’d fight a bear for me if I was in danger. Having someone like that is a powerful draw to keep moving, even if she walks on all fours. Dawn needs me. She depends on me for food and shelter and affection and in return, I’m her everything. Just don’t name your dog ‘Beck’,” I requested. “That would be weird.”

She laughed a little at that and wiped her eyes. “You think it’s just that simple?” she asked, her voice sounding dull, as she stared out at nothing.

“There’s nothing simple about any of this,” I said gently. “What you’re going through is about the worst pain that a person can feel. There’s no drug that can kill that pain. The only thing that does make it go away is time and perspective. These are healthy things you can do to keep yourself alive and involved in life until something comes along that soothes you and makes that wound scar over. Maybe you meet someone in the Theater group that you start to fall in love with. Maybe you get that dog and run into another dog owner that makes you forget about it. Maybe you decide to hit the gym and find a workout partner that lights your soul on fire. Or maybe you don’t meet anyone right away and your hobbies become your passions for a little while.”

She still didn’t seem convinced and I shrugged. “It might not work for you,” I admitted. “But it’s what got me through those days. I had one person that stuck with me through all of that. She cared for me when no one else did. That helped me a lot.”

“So, you weren’t completely alone,” she said.

“Emma was my friend,” I told her. “We’d meet up once a week and hang out for a bit. She knew I was drowning in pain, so she went out of her way to give me something to laugh about as often as she could manage it. Three or four hours a week. Between her classes, that’s what she had to spare, and she gave it without hesitation. She saved my life more times than she’ll ever know. The day I asked Lana to kill me, she talked me into telling her where I was, came and got me, warmed me up, and promised me that she wouldn’t tell anyone where I was, so that I could have a chance to calm down and get it under control.”

She nodded. “Becky mentioned how miserable you were,” she admitted. “I really am sorry that I was such a shitty friend to you last year.”

I shrugged. “I don’t hold many grudges,” I said, casually.

“She told me about her list too,” she said hesitantly.

I nodded. “I asked her to make that, after she realized what she’d done. I wanted her to see how much harm was done to our relationship. Or are you referring more to her list of how to make it right?”

She nodded. “She’d really let you...” She trailed off, unable to voice what she’d been told.

I nodded. “She still wants it,” I told her. “I burned that list and declared it fulfilled. She’s still insistent that she wants me to do some of it with her.”

“That’s what it takes to make things right?” she asked. She was trembling a little, whether in fear of what I might require from her for my forgiveness or from a reaction to the thought of Beck putting herself through them, I couldn’t say.

“That’s what Beck thought of when I asked her what she could accept from someone else as a suitable apology. She thought it was fitting for me to punish her for what she’d done,” I said carefully. I wasn’t about to ‘out’ Beck’s desires to this girl who lusted after her.

“Is that what you want from me?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “To punish me?”

“If I’d wanted to punish you, I wouldn’t have given you that note,” I told her. “You still believe that you can fix this, and we can all be friends?”

She shrugged. “You’re right. What I did to you was the worst thing I’ve ever done. I’m so sorry that I did that to you. I can’t say I’m sorry I got to be with her, even if it was just once, but it was never about hurting you. I want to make that right.”

“I don’t know that there’s a way back for you and me, Roberta,” I told her honestly. “I won’t stand in the way of you being friends with Beck if she’s okay with that, but I’ve had too many people who turned their backs on me come back and ask my help in getting me to forgive them. Beck doesn’t even know all of it, really. She said she told you a lot of it. It never ceases to amaze me, how people think I have an endless capacity to forgive. But none of them seemed to have an ounce for me when they thought I’d done something wrong.”

“So that’s it?” she asked, becoming agitated. “Just slam the door and goodbye?”

I looked at her critically. “What do you REALLY want, Roberta?” I demanded, starting to get bothered by her attitude. “You want me to forgive you? Be your friend? Help you through your shitty day? What’s your endgame, here?”

“I don’t know!” she wailed loudly. Suddenly, I was unpleasantly reminded of the day I’d screamed those same words to Tabby as we sat on the bleachers at the ball field where I’d searched for this girl’s baseball glove when we were seven. “Everything’s a mess! You hate me! SHE hates me! Nothing is the way it should be!”

I ignored the stares I knew we were drawing from the rest of the cafeteria and took her hand. No matter what she’d done, she was still a human being in pain. My compassion wouldn’t let me sit there and let her go to pieces. I picked up my backpack and hers. I slung them both over my shoulder and drew her to her feet, leading her out of the cafeteria so we could find a more discreet place for her to cry herself back to calm.

We found ourselves in the boys’ washroom again and I let her cry on my shoulder for a while until she was quiet. I waited for her to wash her face and then I spoke again.

“I don’t hate you, Roberta,” I told her. “Beck doesn’t hate you either. I asked her how she felt about you last night and there was nothing in her tone or words about hate or even anger. For the most part, we’re both sad about how fucked-up our friendships are because of this. We’re all damaged by it. Beck’s having problems forgiving herself for it. You’re clearly having problems with it. And my doctor believes that I’m suppressing too much pain and she’s not letting me avoid the topic anymore. I would suggest you look for a counselor of your own. Beck and I both see doctors for our issues. This has caused you a lot of pain. Don’t let it eat you alive.”

She nodded, but didn’t lift her head. She was still hunched over the sink, her fingers gripping the edges in a pose similar to how I’d stared into the drain when we’d been standing here Tuesday.

“If I...” she started and faltered before finding her voice. “If I do one of those lists, will it help?”

“I don’t know,” I told her truthfully. “I’ve treated you with a lot of compassion today. I think you might have shattered if I hadn’t. I don’t want that to happen to you. Do I want you back as a friend?” I thought about that for a moment. “I think you and I have a long way to go before I can even answer that. At some point, I stopped being your friend. You started to think of me as an obstacle to Beck. That eroded our friendship, even before the rumor reached you. Once the rumor got to you and Beck approached you ... Well, I wasn’t lying when I said you crawled over my dead body to get her.”

“Yeah, she said that you’d been pretty low,” she said.

“There’s parts we don’t normally talk about outside the family. I lost a whole weekend, locked in my own head. I was completely catatonic. No one could get through to me. My mother and I got into screaming matches because she refused to believe I wasn’t at fault and then because I didn’t forgive as quickly as she liked. I lost more than I can ever really calculate. Today’s not really about me, though. Are you feeling a little better?”

“I dunno,” she admitted. “A little, I guess. You want me to do one of those lists?”

“That’s not for me to decide,” I told her gently. “I think it’s a good idea, though. Even if I never see it, do it for yourself,” I encouraged her. “Be honest about what’s happened and go back as far as you think you need to. Tally it all up and see how you feel about it once you can see how much there is. Do another list if you feel you did things you need Beck’s forgiveness for. If you show us, that’s your choice. If you don’t, then you’ll have to shoulder it alone. If you talk about it, you can get a different perspective on what happened. The only thing I want you to promise is not to hurt yourself.”

She looked up, shocked. “You think I’d...” she whispered, horrified.

“I wanted to ... when I was at that point,” I told her. “Some days the only thing that held me back was a promise I made to my girls not to. They were deliberately hurting me every day, but I kept that promise in my heart. I knew that even if they hated me, I couldn’t put my death on them like that. I couldn’t hurt them that much. Neither of us hates you and neither of us is interested in hurting you, so hopefully that makes it a little easier to cope with.”

She nodded. “I ... I won’t hurt myself,” she said, quietly.

She sounded shaken by the prospect and I sincerely hoped that was the end of it. “Good,” I said. “Look, I have to go help set up for the assembly. I’ll see you around. Feel better.”

I put her backpack down next to her and took mine to my locker to stow it before going to the auditorium. Lana, Beck and Gina were standing on stage, talking to Mr. Peterson and a couple of officers that I didn’t know. I came up and introduced myself and they went over their part of the lectures before asking me what I was planning on saying.