Tradition Read online

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t Ethan and Freddie and those guys tell you all about me?”

  “Fuck those guys. I don’t listen to them.”

  “Have you?” she pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God, were you some asshole player back home?”

  “I don’t think so. I slept with one girl.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Oh, wow. Thanks.”

  She smiled. “Seriously? Only one?”

  I shrugged. “We had a lot of sex, though, me and her. Does that count?”

  Aileen laughed so loudly, I thought for sure someone was going to come find us. I didn’t understand what had made her bust out.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m right here, you know.”

  “I’m sorry.” She collected herself. “You really weren’t just being nice to me so we could sleep together?”

  I was feeling pretty stupid sitting there talking to her with my pants below my knees, chatting away with her in my boxers, so I pulled up my pants and started getting dressed.

  “Are you mad?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Aileen, do I want to have sex with you? Yes. Yes, I do. Have I been having a ball just goofing around not knowing what the hell is going on between us? Yes. Does that have to end in sex? No. Especially right now? Hell, no.” I guess I did sound a little mad as I said it, but I didn’t mean to sound so pissed. I was telling her the truth.

  She nodded along, listening. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “Plus, it’s a little easier for me to figure out what I want,” I said. “I have a smaller brain, right? So less room for possibilities.” I shrugged, did my best sheepish expression.

  Aileen relaxed. She didn’t say anything, but I could see it in her body; she unpinned her shoulders from her ears, let go of her knees. When she held her clothes out in front of her, I turned around.

  “I won’t look,” I said, burying my face in my hands and pitching forward into the ground. “I want too, though! Real bad!”

  “Don’t!” she said, teasing.

  I waited until she said it was all right to get up and she was fully dressed again. While I put on the rest of my clothes, she walked down to the lip of the water. It was dusk, and I couldn’t tell if there were bats swooping or it was the last run for swallows. It seemed kind of late in the season for all of them—but nothing seemed right anymore. It was colder than it would have been back home, but everything still felt more alive. The ground still felt soft. There were so many trees, and they wavered in the dim light, dark shadows against even darker shadows.

  I walked down to the river edge and stood beside her. Water lapped at the rubber tips of her boots. I pointed up to the evening star, and she leaned closer to follow the direction of my finger. That’s all I’d ever called it, but now, after Mr. Hale’s literature class, I knew so much more—Venus. I barely understood half the lines in Paradise Lost, but I’d learned astronomy. I loved it. I loved knowing something. It made me feel a part of something larger than myself.

  “Have you ever seen the northern lights?” she asked. We were close enough to kiss again, but I didn’t. I stood stone stiff beside her.

  “Yeah, once. On a lake in Minnesota. I was on a camping trip with my family.”

  “Cool.”

  “The trip? Actually, it kind of was. We caught pike and smallmouth bass. There were hummingbirds all over the place in the woods around the lake. My dad and I saw these three giant pelicans take a running leap up into the air from the water. You could listen to the loons calling all night. But the northern lights. They were amazing. They were gray, and shimmering, and they stretched and crawled out across the sky. At first we thought they were clouds, but then we realized they were moving toward and away from us—not right to left like the clouds. It was amazing.”

  “I’ve heard loons out here before.”

  “Cool.”

  She stepped away and dug her hands in her pockets.

  “Hey, Aileen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we hug, or something?” I asked.

  She stepped close, gripped me hard, and squeezed. “I’m sorry about all that,” she said into my chest. “I just can’t do that right now. And not here.”

  “That’s really okay,” I said.

  “You’re not going to go running back to Jules now and try to get with her?”

  “Seriously, please stop with that. It’s not like that with her.”

  “Why not?” Aileen pouted.

  “It’s not about that.” I could feel her breath warming my shirt. “Jules and me? We’re just friends. Or, we were.”

  She stayed quiet.

  “But what’s up? Did I do something?”

  “I’ve been with more people than you. Like, a lot more.”

  “Okay.”

  She was quiet again.

  “I don’t care about that,” I told her. “Seriously. Let’s not be all judgy. Let’s start from like right now.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “I feel like you are going to hate me when I tell you, but I don’t know, I just have to. Look, I really have been with more guys. Slept with more guys. Whatever.”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “No. It is, because maybe I don’t even know if I really wanted to be with all those guys.”

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe even the first one didn’t even listen to me. He just did what he wanted.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Oh Jesus, Aileen.”

  “I knew you’d be weirded out. I knew it.” She stepped away and back up the beach toward the path.

  “Wait,” I said. “Please. Talk to me.”

  “Really? You really want to hear all about how some asshole walked me down this same exact path after the Winter Ball my freshman year and told me not to worry and just kept telling me to be quiet. Be quiet and don’t worry. Be quiet and don’t worry. That’s what he said.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “He ripped my dress, by accident, and then he just bought me a whole new one later. He didn’t want me to think less of him. I spent the whole spring semester thanking him for being so nice. That’s what I told myself! That he was nice! But then I heard. I found out. I was just his Senior Send-Off. Nothing more. That’s it. Like a freebie. Like his graduation prize. And then, like that, he was gone. He changed his number, he blocked me. He graduated, went to Yale, and was gone. I felt so bad, I spent the summer a mess. A serious mess. I had the old dress in a ball on the floor of my closet, the new one hanging right above it. So messed up. But I got out of it, just enough. Just enough to come back to school. And when I got back, something just clicked, and I ate up all those soft boys. I just went after them. The ones who looked a little more scared, the ones who weren’t chasing down all the more popular girls. I don’t even know why; I just did it at every party—not even at parties, whenever. I did that for two years and then just felt so gross. Now it’s senior year. I still have the fucking dress. Both of them.”

  She walked away from me again, marching up the path back toward school.

  “Aileen,” I said behind her. “I’m so sorry I brought us here. I didn’t know.”

  She waved me off and kept marching. “How could you? You can’t know everything about a person.”

  “Wait up,” I said. I ran up ahead of her and stood in the path looking back at her. “Let me just say this. I spent a year feeling so shitty about myself—I know what that feels like, and I know it enough I don’t want to make anyone else feel that shitty. It’s awful. I don’t want to do that. I’m telling you. I don’t hate you. I’m just so sorry. But here’s something else. Don’t for a minute think anything you said right now changes anything I said back there a few minutes ago. I’m telling you. It’s okay for me to like you. If you don’t like me, that’s another thing. I’ll try to deal with that. But
I can still like you the way I do.”

  She stopped walking and stood staring at me with her arms folded.

  “I care. That’s all I want to say. I want to do something, but I don’t know what. I mean, have you talked to anyone else about this?”

  “No.”

  “Like maybe a girl?” I took a deep breath, hoping I was doing the right thing. “Like, I know this is going to sound weird, but what about Jules?”

  Aileen shook her head.

  “I know. I know. But I believe you a hundred percent. I think she would too.”

  Aileen nodded. She stepped closer and closer, until she was within my reach. I opened up for a hug and she leaned into my arms. It was so impossible for me to understand what it was like to be afraid like that. To walk afraid. I didn’t. Ever.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  JULES DEVEREUX

  “What do you want to do?”

  Her voice hung in the air, hung in my ears, dangling, tinkling like a wind chime in an almost nonexistent breeze. I’d told Ms. Taggart my whole story, start to finish, with my eyes closed, while lying on the couch in her office. She wasn’t a psychotherapist exactly, but she was a counselor on staff, and most importantly, she was the only adult in all of Fullbrook who I considered a friend.

  “I don’t know,” I said, opening my eyes. I still didn’t look at her directly. I focused on the scuffed tips of my boots propped up higher than my head as they rested on the arm at the other end of the couch.

  “You’re brave,” she said for the third time. “And you’re right.” She took a breath. “I will help. But what do you want to do?”

  “Besides watch him burn in the fiery pits of hell?” I risked a glance at her. She was sitting on the edge of an armchair on the other side of the coffee table, her legs crossed, pitched forward at the waist as if she had a stomachache. She wasn’t looking at me either. Chin propped on a woven knot of fingers, elbows digging into her knees, she stared at the spread of magazines on the coffee table.

  “Yes,” she said absently. “Besides that.”

  Javi was the one who had suggested I make it a priority to talk to Ms. Taggart. I felt bad, with her son really sick, but Javi was right. Who else did I have to go to? It sucked having only one teacher I felt close enough to talk to like this. Only one adult I could really trust to understand.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She snapped back to attention, pulling herself upright, blinking, finding a smile out of nowhere. “Yes. Just thinking. Want some tea?”

  “Sure.”

  She got up and flicked the switch on the electric kettle. She knew I wanted pomegranate; I knew she was dropping a bag of green tea into the blue mug her son had glazed at school. But there was so much more stillness in the air than usual.

  “Ms. Taggart? Is it all right I told you?”

  She turned back around and marched across the room with her arms open wide and I sat up straight into a hug. “Absolutely,” she said as she held me. “I’m here with you. I’m here for you. I’m sorry I’m not myself, but, honey, I’m absolutely glad you told me. You can’t keep this all bottled up.”

  We hugged until the water boiled, and then she got up and I stood too, because I was sick of lying there or sitting there—I wanted to do something. Ms. Taggart handed me my mug and I took it to the mantel over the little fireplace. It didn’t work anymore, as far as I knew—Ms. Taggart kept a bunch of candles she never burned in the hearth, instead—but it was a reminder, a symbol of how long the school had been here. Even the health center was in an old colonial building with a stone hearth.

  “I do want to do something,” I said. “I think we should tell Headmaster Patterson.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “He’s always going on about how he will make time for students. Well, now’s his chance.”

  Ms. Taggart warmed, a blush blooming in her cheeks and neck, but not from embarrassment. Her smile filled with excitement. “Good.” She set her tea down on her desk and flipped open her calendar. “I have my monthly one-on-one with him in early December, but I wonder.”

  “Right now.”

  She looked up at me. There was hope in her eyes, or at least that’s what I saw.

  “Let’s go right now,” I repeated. “Even if he’s busy, something will clear up at some point. He can’t ignore us if we’re camped outside his door. He needs to know.”

  “Okay,” she said, more resigned. “I’m with you, Jules. Let’s go.”

  We gathered our things, left our tea cooling in our mugs, turned off the lights, and marched out of the health center. I was nervous, but I felt better walking alongside Ms. Taggart. She had an air of purpose. Her style didn’t come from her clothes—leather boots, cracked all over the toes, a fraying shawl and faded sweater she hid under—but rather from the way she stared ahead with resolve. Her style, it swept before her like conviction. It was late afternoon—the sky blue but dark, the sun gone—and there was still enough time to catch Mr. Patterson before dinner. I was bright with the fire within me.

  We rounded the corner of the admin building, and I was surprised to see the leaves from the old elm littering the walkway. It was a relief to have one un-manicured moment at Fullbrook. Maybe the maintenance crew had the day off. Maybe they had quietly refused to clean the walkway, had just let it go for one day—their own private rebellion.

  Inside, we were shocked at how empty it was. Even Mrs. Packard, his receptionist, was leaving early for the day. He was in a meeting but wouldn’t be long. She poked her head into his office to let him know we were waiting before she left. Ms. Taggart and I sat in the outer office, barely able to relax in the overstuffed armchairs, and we didn’t speak much. Ms. Taggart only said to let her do most of the talking until I was invited to share—and when I was, to speak my mind as I wished.

  “Share any and every detail you want,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you to censor the details of your pain.” I’d been full of resolve on the walk over, but as I glanced around the room, moving from the vase of improbably brilliant goldenrods and orange roses to the enormous oil paintings of the first headmaster and Mr. Patterson’s predecessor on the wall above the bookshelf of yearbooks, I began to feel dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of dark oak and gloomy history. Who was I in the midst of all of this?

  “Come on in,” Mr. Patterson said to us.

  Coach O’Leary stepped into the outer office ahead of him. He waved awkwardly. “Ladies,” he said. He cocked and popped a forefinger-and-thumb gun at me as he passed. “Sure I can’t wrangle you into a season of water polo this spring?” he said. “I’ve seen you in the pool. You’re a strong swimmer.”

  That he had seen me in the pool and I hadn’t seen him creeped me out. When was he referring to? Yesterday? Two weeks ago? The beginning of the year? All my years at Fullbrook? I was so stunned by it, I couldn’t say anything. I just looked at him and blinked.

  He smiled and shrugged at my nonresponse. “Last chance,” he added as he walked out the door.

  “Come on, Jules,” Ms. Taggart said. She was already standing, and she led me by the arm into Mr. Patterson’s office.

  He offered us water, and poured from a pitcher into two cool highball glasses. He set each one on a felt coaster on his desk in front of the two chairs. He swung back around to his chair on the other side and sat down. He leaned back, kicking his feet up on what might be a partially opened drawer. Then he suddenly thought otherwise and took a more businesslike pose, sitting forward with his hands in his lap.

  “Mr. Patterson,” Ms. Taggart began. “We have some very serious issues to discuss, and I hope you won’t mind if we get straight to it.” There was no way I could have done this without her.

  “By all means. Please.” He gestured for her to go on, the cheer and welcome erased from his face.

  She took my hand. “Jules and I are coming to you to report an assault.”

  He remained silent, glancing slowly back and
forth from Ms. Taggart to me.

  “Jules has been assaulted.”

  “My God,” he finally said. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “Yes.” It wasn’t what I wanted to say exactly, but I spoke automatically, like the way we say “How’re you doing?” when all we really mean to say is “Hello.”

  Ms. Taggart squeezed my hand. “Sexually assaulted.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Patterson said. He leaned back, then forward again, and perched his elbows on the desk. He rubbed the knuckles of one hand in the palm of the other. “Oh, this is very serious.”

  “Yes. And we’d like to file a report and begin the process.” She took a sip of water, but never let go of my hand. She cleared her throat. It occurred to me that she’d never done this before, that she and I were both fishing for the right words. “Ethan Hackett sexually assaulted Jules,” she said. “We’d like to discuss the ramifications of this with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Ms. Taggart stiffened slightly. She let go of my hand. Her tone sharpened. “Yes. So we want to discuss what we are all going to do about this now because . . .” She hesitated. “Well, for instance, we’ll have to talk about getting Ethan off campus as soon as possible.”

  “May I ask a few questions?” Mr. Patterson broke in, and he didn’t wait for a response. “This is extremely serious, and first and foremost I’m glad to hear you say you are okay, Jules. I want you to know that’s my first concern.”

  “Thank you.” It came out of my mouth, but it didn’t sound like me. Who was speaking?

  “And you’re in your final year here, only a few months left, really. I hope you feel well enough to see it through. To finish with us.”

  “Wait, what?” Ms. Taggart said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

  “I’m glad.” Mr. Patterson smiled, but it didn’t feel at all like he was smiling to rally me. He leaned back and folded his hands in front of his belly. “The most important thing is that we secure your path to graduation, and that you carry on and fulfill those dreams of yours.” He paused, summoning the kind of starry-eyed reverie of his dining hall speeches. “Because, Jules, you are an amazing young woman with tremendous goals and dreams and energy, and I’m the first to say I want to see you spring out into the world and take those with you, and not let any bump in the road slow you down. You’re too good for that.”