Thousand Words

by Jennifer Brown

  “That’s stupid,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Even though Mrs. Mosely hadn’t gotten back yet and everyone was still hanging around in a loose circle down by the bathrooms talking and giggling, Mack and I slowly went back into the classroom, to our computers, chewing our candy.

  I was moving a text box on my pamphlet when Mack turned to me.

  “I’m not ordered,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “I didn’t get court ordered to be here. So.” He shrugged.

  “I don’t get it. What do you mean you didn’t get court ordered?”

  His eyes flicked toward the door, as if he was afraid someone was going to come through it and hear him. Then he lowered his eyes, and his voice. “My mom took off when I was eight. And then three months ago my dad killed himself.”

  “Oh,” I said, my hand still stuck to my mouse. I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t even sure if I was processing his words at that point. If his mom was gone and his dad was gone, didn’t that make him an orphan?

  “Anyway. I didn’t go into foster care, because I’m seventeen. That’s why I quit school. I don’t have a place. I was tardy all the time because I didn’t have an alarm clock and they were going to suspend me or some shit, so I quit instead. Made it easier on everyone. Plus I hated school so it was no big loss.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have a place? Where do you live?”

  He shrugged. “Wherever I can. I’ve stayed at Mosely’s house a few times. Friends’ houses. Sometimes, if it’s nice, I sleep outside. At the skate park or the creek or whatever. Places where my dad used to be.”

  Immediately, the image of a moonbeam illuminating the word SOLO popped into my head. Solo, as in just one. All those times I’d felt like I was so terribly alone, while my parents were fighting for me and Vonnie was checking in on me. I had no idea what “alone” really was. “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “At first, Mosely wanted me to come here so I could write up some stuff about suicide, because I’d seen firsthand what it can do to a family. But then after I was done with that, she let me keep coming in so I could have a place to go in the afternoons. Especially when it’s cold. It sucks outside when it’s cold. So to answer your question, yeah, Mosely knows about the game. She doesn’t mind.”

  “Oh,” I said again, totally aware that I sounded like a fool. But I kind of figured I deserved to sound like a fool, after how much I’d been whining to him and laying all my problems on him, having no idea what his life was like. “Okay.”

  The rest of the group began to file in.

  “Look at this. Two straight-A students getting their extra credit while the teacher’s away,” Kenzie said when she saw us.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say, Supermodel? I think all the brown stuff on your nose is making you talk funny. Maybe you should take a picture of yourself and send it to everyone.”

  Mack turned to face her. “She said shut the fuck up. Any problems hearing that?”

  Kenzie rolled her eyes. “Pfft, what are you, her dad? Oh, wait. No, her dad is upstairs about to get fired because his daughter is a ho.”

  I whipped around in my seat, but Kenzie was easing her big belly into her chair with her back to us already, and Mrs. Mosely was coming through the door. My face burned, I was so angry. And embarrassed. Here I’d just found out that Mack wasn’t a criminal, and Kenzie had reminded him that I was one.

  After a few minutes, Mack bumped my shoulder. “Just so you know, I got the text, too.”

  Of course he had. Why wouldn’t he? Because he didn’t go to Chesterton anymore? What did that matter? A lot of people who didn’t go to Chesterton had gotten the text. Probably everyone in this room had gotten the text. Who was I kidding? It was going to be a long while before I sat in a room full of people who hadn’t all seen me naked. I wanted to cry. I’d been fooling myself to think he’d been any different from anyone else.

  He leaned in farther. “Back when I still had a phone. But I didn’t open it up,” he said.

  I gazed at him.

  “I never looked at the picture,” he said.

  And something about the earnestness in his face told me he was telling the truth. And that gave me a little, tiny glimmer of hope, that maybe there were some people out there who’d received the text and not only hadn’t passed it around to their friends, or gossiped about it to everyone they knew, or uploaded it to the computer, or called me names and spread rumors about me… but flat-out hadn’t looked at it at all.

  Maybe those people did exist out there.

  Or maybe Mack was the only one.

  And I supposed that was okay, too. Because the simple fact that there was one made me feel so much better, I almost felt post-run floaty.

  I finished my box of Dots just as Mom came to the classroom door. She was five minutes early, but Mrs. Mosely said she understood and wouldn’t dock me the time on my sheet.

  Mack took out his earbuds as I logged off and gathered my things.

  “So you’re not going to the meeting?” he asked.

  “No way. You?”

  “I don’t have anywhere better to be. And I’ve got some stuff to print out. It could be entertaining.”

  I frowned. “It’s not entertainment. It’s my dad’s job. And it’s stupid, like you said.” I zipped up my backpack and looped the strap over one shoulder. “I, for one, don’t want to witness it.”

  “Come on, Ash,” Mom said from the doorway. She slid the sleeve of her turtleneck up to peer at her watch.

  “You could go with me,” Mack said.

  “I think I’ll pass,” I mumbled. “See you tomorrow.”

  I followed Mom, who turned left out of the doorway rather than right.

  “I parked in back,” she said, walking fast so that I had to work to keep up. “That way you don’t have to go through the hall upstairs. Not that there are that many people here yet.”

  So Mom had done it. She’d been the friend with the getaway car on the ground floor, not Vonnie. Mom was going to secret me out of here like a movie star. Mom had been the hero I needed, without my even asking her.

  “Thanks,” I said, but as we hurried down the hall and out the door into the evening, I began to slow.

  Mack was right. This was stupid. The whole thing—the scandal, the board meeting, the way I’d let it all define me. The cowering in corners at school, pretending I was blind and deaf and frozen and dead, the running away. The power I was giving everyone else over my life.

  How long had I been letting other people decide who I was? How long had I been Kaleb’s pining girlfriend? Or Vonnie’s sorta best friend? Or Slut Up for Grabs? When was the last time I’d said who I was? When was the last time I’d been just Ashleigh?

  Then you need to think harder….

  I stopped walking.

  “I want to stay,” I said.

  Mom turned. “What?”

  “I want to stay. I want to go to the meeting.”

  “Oh, Ashleigh, come on, let’s go. We don’t have time for this. I’ve got to get back here in—”

  “I’m not playing around, Mom. I want to go.”

  She took a few steps toward me, her hand still digging in the front pocket of her purse for her car keys. “Honey, I don’t think you should. This is going to get ugly for your dad.”

  “So that’s exactly why I should be there.” She still looked uncertain. “Mom, I know what I’m doing. It’s not going to be any tougher than anything else I’ve gone through since this all happened.” And that part was true. Everything I’d gone through had been humiliating and embarrassing and painful and lonely, and none of it had been important. None of it had had purpose.

  This was important. This had purpose.

  “Please trust me,” I said. “I’m fine. Frog fur.” I grinned, despite the butterflies that were batting against my rib cage, making me nervous and nauseous.

  Mom seemed to thin
k it over for a few minutes, then slowly pulled her hand out of her purse. She put her arm around my shoulders, and together we walked back inside the Central Office building.

  THE MEETING

  Central Office didn’t have a meeting room that would seat more than fifty people. Ordinarily that was not a problem. Most board meetings went entirely ignored by pretty much the whole community, so there was no need for something bigger. Dad had complained about it for years, that the community was so apathetic, it was impossible to get people to care about their kids’ educations until they were ticked off about something. Judging by the crowd that was stuffing itself into the meeting room today, it looked like he had a point.

  The first thing I noticed when Mom and I walked in was the TV camera. The local media had shown up. This meeting was news, I realized, and in our small community, it was big news. Mom kept her arm around my shoulders and we plowed through the people, who mostly seemed not to notice us at all, and into the back conference room, where Dad was sitting, putting together his notes.

  He looked somber, hunched over a worktable with a cup of coffee in front of him. He saw Mom and me come in and started to get up.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked Mom.

  “She wanted to come,” Mom said. “I couldn’t tell her no. This is about her.”

  “It’s not,” he said, his attention flicking back and forth between the two of us. “It’s not about you, it’s about me. You shouldn’t be here. You need to let your mom take you home.”

  “Dad, this wouldn’t even be happening if it wasn’t for me. Of course it’s about me. I’m fine.”

  His fingers trembled around the papers he was holding, and I felt a stab of worry about him. “I’m fine,” I repeated, and he seemed to accept this.

  We hung out in the back room until about a minute before the meeting was supposed to start. Then we headed out, Dad going to the long table where the board sat, taking his usual chair on the right-hand side of the president, and Mom taking a seat in the front row next to Dad’s secretary, her chin jutting up defiantly.

  I stood awkwardly in the doorway, trying not to look around much, but I couldn’t help myself. People were everywhere. Every seat was full, the perimeter of the room lined with people standing, even more people spilling out into the hallway. The TV camera rolled, and I blushed and held my breath when I saw it sweep over me. I pretended I didn’t know it was there, which was hard to do since it was so huge. Maybe the cameraman didn’t know who I was. Maybe to them I was just a part of the crowd.

  I saw Vonnie’s mom and Rachel’s parents and my English teacher. I saw a reporter I recognized from TV and a bunch of people I’d seen around Central Office, including Mrs. Mosely. Principal Adams was there, and some students were milling around in the back, and a couple of really old people were sitting at attention, including the woman with the cane who Mrs. Mosely had helped up the stairs.

  And there, in the last row, was Mack, sitting two rows behind Mrs. Mosely, his knees propped up on the seat back in front of him. He had one earbud out and dangling down the front of his shirt. He looked curious, amused.

  I didn’t know him. I didn’t. But I knew enough about him. I knew that he’d lost far more in his life than I probably ever would in mine. I knew that he wasn’t whining about it, he wasn’t cowering or raging or blaming. He was moving on, doing his thing, keeping going.

  And I also knew that he’d gotten the text, but he hadn’t looked, and somehow that was all I needed to know about him. He hadn’t looked.

  I made my way to the last row and sat next to him. He acknowledged me by tipping a box of Tic Tacs into my palm.

  The meeting started out pretty slow. The secretary read the minutes; they went over some budget issues, talked about some textbook changes they wanted to make for next year. People shifted uncomfortably in their seats, crossing and uncrossing their legs while they waited for the board to get to the reason they were all there—the juicy stuff.

  Finally the board president called for new business.

  “Of course,” he said, gazing down at the sheet of paper in front of him, “there’s the matter of the, uh, call for the resignation of Superintendent Maynard for the, uh, mishandling of the, uh, texting issue at Chesterton High School. We’ll open the floor for comments.”

  Mishandling? What did he mean by mishandling? Dad had confiscated phones, he’d contacted the police, and he—my own dad—had agreed to having me suspended from school. How else could he have handled it? This smelled like a setup to me. The president wanted Dad gone, and that was all there was to it.

  A woman came up to the microphone and straightened her sweater. She leaned forward like she thought her mouth needed to be right on the microphone for her to be heard. The result was that all of her “P”s and “T”s and “S”s blew thunderously into our ears.

  “My daughter goes to Chesterton High School,” she began, “and even though she didn’t receive the text, she was shown the photo by one of the boys in her class….”

  My hands balled into fists as I listened to her talk about how damaged her daughter had been by the photo, and I could feel my shoulders begin to ache with tension. After she was done speaking, another woman stood up, and then a man after her. Everyone somehow claimed to be a victim of what I’d done, and everyone was blaming Dad.

  As the fourth person stood and ambled toward the microphone, Mack bumped my shoulder with his.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

  I shook my head. “I need to be here.”

  “I’ve got something we can do, though,” he said, and he leaned over to one side and picked up a rolled bunch of papers from the floor.

  He unrolled one. It was a small poster. A poster made from the photo I’d taken for my pamphlet, with the shot of the pillow front and center: A PICTURE’S WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS.

  Only he’d changed it. Off to the side of the pillow he’d added: BUT THEY DON’T TELL THE WHOLE STORY.

  I blinked and reread it a few times, a smile curving my lips upward. It was perfect.

  He reached into his jean jacket pocket and pulled out two rolls of tape, then offered one to me. I took it.

  Together, we stood up and, ignoring the crowd as they turned in their seats to look at us curiously, we began edging behind and around people and taping the posters to the walls.

  “Young man,” the board president said, after it became clear that everyone was getting restless. “Young man, you may not disrupt this meeting….”

  But we ignored him, too, hanging up one more, slapping on pieces of tape as voices began to murmur around us, and then rushing out of the boardroom, laughing. My hands were shaking, but I felt great.

  “Thank you for this,” I said, and we turned and taped two each on the meeting room’s doors before going outside to place folded copies under as many windshield wipers as we could in the parking lot. Then we sat on the bench and waited for the meeting to adjourn, Mack’s earbuds stretched between us, his fedora perched jauntily on top of his head.

  Eventually, people began filing out of the building, some of them glaring at us, some looking amused. Mom and Dad were the last out of the building, their arms looped together as they walked. The board had taken a vote and decided, not unanimously, not to take further action at this time. Dad had never taken his resignation speech out of his sport coat pocket. He would not resign. At least not today. Not over this.

  DAY 30

  COMMUNITY SERVICE

  I bought my lunch. For the first time since the day I threw my pudding cup in the trash bin, I bought, and ate, lunch at my old table with my head up. A turkey sandwich, French fries, a brownie, chocolate milk. Like an elementary school kid.

  A group of girls had called me a slut when they walked by my locker earlier in the day, and I didn’t know if it was the school board meeting the night before, or the posters, or the ice cream sundaes my dad had made to celebrate afterward, but suddenly I was just done. Done being everyone’s victim.


  “Hey,” I called to their backs. They turned around. They were wearing snotty sneers on their faces, rolling their eyes as if it physically pained them to have to look at me. “You can call me whatever you want. It’s not going to bother me anymore. But if calling me a slut makes you feel better about yourselves, then you should probably look into that, because you have a problem.”

  They didn’t respond. Just shook their heads at me and marched off, whispering to each other. But I didn’t care. I felt triumphant anyway, and I had decided I was sick of being hungry because I was too afraid to eat lunch.

  I took my tray to the cashier and punched in my ID number to pay, then stood in the doorway of the cafeteria looking in.

  At first my brain saw it the way it had been for me for weeks now: frightening, cold, lonely. But I reminded myself that if I could hang posters at the board meeting last night, I could do anything. If I could call out those girls in the hallway, I could sit at a lunch table. I could take my life back. So I did.

  I marched over to my old table, where Vonnie, Cheyenne, and Annie were all sitting. I pasted a smile on my face and sat down.

  “Hey, Buttercup,” Vonnie said, pulling a bag of chips out of her Hello Kitty lunch bag.

  “Hey,” I said, and I made sure I made eye contact with all three of them. I wanted Cheyenne and Annie to know that I was taking my space back, whether they liked it or not. I was done hiding, and if they couldn’t handle what that did to their precious reputations, that was their problem.

  Cheyenne smiled. “Hi, Ash.” Annie followed with a smile of her own.

  That was all it took.

  I sat down and dug into my food, thinking it was the best meal I’d ever eaten in my whole life, and we chatted about school and homework and who was wearing what to the winter formal. Nobody brought up texts or naked photos or Kaleb or community service.

  After a while, Rachel came to the table and stood over Cheyenne’s shoulder, a sour look on her face. She had to wait a few minutes before everyone noticed her.

  “You’re not supposed to be sitting here,” she said.