“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“Because I like you too much to wait any longer,” she said.
But like the night I’d walked away from her, the first night I’d slept with Kip, nothing could make me stop. Not even the will of Chapin Dunn.
Sunday became Monday, which became Tuesday. Finals were approaching, and the campus seemed to be holding its breath, ready to burst. It made my head ache. When I forgot a notebook in my room Tuesday morning and returned after breakfast to retrieve it, I slipped into bed for a moment to alleviate the pain. Then I fell asleep. I woke hours later and laughed out loud when I realized what I’d done.
On Wednesday morning, when I stuck my face from my covers to find the room chill and uninviting, I slipped back beneath. Thursday as well. And all the while I sent text messages to Kip. I miss you. Where have you been? Why won’t you talk to me? Kip? Kip? He didn’t answer, just as he hadn’t answered that door. It didn’t matter; I was invulnerable from the safety of my room, my bed. My head. I continued to send them, sure I could wear him down, and even if I couldn’t, I knew he saw them, knew I was connecting to him, and that pleasure was too addicting to give up.
Dale emailed me Wednesday. Disregarding class two days in a row without explanation is unacceptable. Please contact me. I didn’t respond. I missed the days when he’d liked me. I hadn’t realized how much I’d relished in his flirtation until it stopped.
And then finally, Friday, the email from Ms. McNally-Barnes came. Report to my office at 3pm today. Failure to do so will require me to take legal action.
I stared at it, dazed. This wasn’t about my insubordination, my skipping class. The horror cut so deep, so immediate, that I thought I would give up all of it—anything I’d ever had with Kip, anything I ever would—if only to be small and anonymous again.
EIGHTEEN
Ms. McNally-Barnes sat alone in her office, her hands laced on her desk. Her face was tight and intolerant. I peeked around her office door quickly, discreetly, to the chairs opposite her desk. They were both empty. Of course Kip wasn’t there. I should have known we wouldn’t be brought in together.
“Imogene.” She gestured to the empty chairs.
I sat. I felt close to tears already, just from the cold way she’d addressed me. I would not cry, not yet. I was too old to think tears were still endearing.
“Imogene.” My name again—I shuddered at the sound of it. I hoped she wouldn’t say it again. “Are you familiar with our policy on maintaining appropriate student–apprentice relationships?”
It was a classic confrontation: the asking of rhetorical questions, the steady exposure of my obvious transgression. This was supposed to be painful and slow, the peeling off of a Band-Aid, the wrenching out of teeth. This was supposed to humiliate me. Any doubt I had about the nature of the meeting crumbled. “Yes,” I said, unnecessarily. “I am.”
“So you’re aware that text messaging with a student is inappropriate?”
“Yes.”
“And visiting a student’s dormitory room is inappropriate?”
“Yes.”
“And that having a sexual relationship with a student is entirely inappropriate?”
She said it; I’d so hoped she wouldn’t say it. That term, “sexual relationship,” clouded the room, choking the air. I might as well have sat before Ms. McNally-Barnes with my legs spread. What a humiliating thing it was, sex. I sank back into my chair, wrapped my arms around myself, willed myself to be swallowed by the fabric. “Yes.”
She held up a piece of paper—an email? A written testimony? An explicit tell-all? She was too far away for me to tell. “You understand then why these allegations are so serious?”
I contemplated whether it would be better not to answer at all. “Yes. I do.”
“And do you know the nature of these allegations?”
A trap. I hesitated. “Well, I’m not sure exactly what you may have—”
“How about you tell me your version of events then? You seem to be familiar at least with why these allegations were made.”
For the first time since I’d received her email the day before, the injustice of it all took hold of my skull, blurring my vision. Raj said he wouldn’t tell. He’d promised he wouldn’t tell. Unless, of course, it wasn’t him. Could it have been Chapin? Could my friend really have done this to me? Why would anyone do this to me? It was Kip that had hurt me, it was Kip that had destroyed me, it was—
I couldn’t help it. I started bawling. I bent over in the chair and clasped my hands to my face. After a minute of this, I collected myself a bit, peeked up at my supervisor. She sat staring, unmoved. Her indifference felt like a perversion. My tears had failed to illicit sympathy, and once again, I’d been stymied by my inability to predict human nature.
“I’ll give you a minute,” she said. She stood, started towards the door, and then thought better of it and snatched up the papers on her desk. “I’ll be back.”
And I was left alone, as I’d never really been before in another person’s space. I was afraid to touch anything, afraid to even look at anything. This place didn’t belong to me, but then again, I wasn’t myself anymore. I was someone who had had a sexual relationship with a student and who no one cared about if she cried.
After ten minutes, Ms. McNally-Barnes returned. “Monday,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“Monday is when you’ll have your disciplinary hearing. We’ll review the allegations and decide on a course of action.”
I felt stupefied, submerged underwater. I wondered when I would return to reality and this all would begin to sink in. “Monday.”
“Nine o’clock in Dean Harvey’s office.”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Imogene?” She peered at me, looking concerned for a moment, almost sad, a reminder of the person she’d been to me when I was still good.
“Yes?”
“I’d return to your room now, and I’d try and stay there as much as possible this weekend.”
“Yes.”
“And this probably goes without saying, but you are not to contact the student.”
The student. I wished she would use his name. I needed confirmation that she knew my alleged sexual relationship had been with Adam Kipling—an adult, an equal, not really a student at all—and not, say, Duggar Robinson, or Christopher Jordan. “Right.”
“Okay, then.” She crossed the room, opened the door. Her face softened—pity, perhaps? “Will you be alright?”
I wasn’t sure what was meant by this, and I also wasn’t sure that I would be. “Yes,” I said. And I left to return to my room, the place that had so long felt like a sanctuary but had now been transformed—condemned—into a prison cell.
* * *
The night was endless. The night was an immitigable horror. The reality I’d been waiting to set in while I was in Ms. McNally-Barnes office finally did, and with it, shame unlike I’d ever felt. With Kip, I’d loved my body—its dexterity, its dampness, its alternative softness and strength, its ability to provide unimaginable pleasure, the hold it allowed me to have over Kip. Now it felt like a source of disgust. My breasts, conical flesh baggies. My thighs, uncontrollable dimpled and wobbling masses. My feet, my stomach, my arms—it was all disgusting, all contemptible. Why had I thought this body deserving of anyone’s love? Why had I thought this body worth sacrificing everything for?
But still I believed Kip had been worth it. I imagined his smile as he pushed into me, his laughter. I wondered if he knew that I loved him.
The Hovel had been quiet when I’d returned, for which I’d been unspeakably grateful, and had remained quiet throughout the day into the night. I didn’t wonder where the other apprentices were; I wanted them to stay away. I’d always been a bit of a loner, had enjoyed my own company more than that of others, but my desire to be alone felt profound then, almost insatiable—I didn’t even want to be with Kip. I wanted to be in the mountains, on an island. I considered
a life of complete isolation. Never having to justify, never having to speak—what a life that would be.
I wondered if the other apprentices knew yet.
Outside, it began to snow.
* * *
I woke fully dressed and sweating, tangled in my sheets. Downstairs in the kitchen, I heard cabinets open and close, the sound of something frying. I smelled bacon. The voices of the other girls intermingled, barking, seeming almost purposely irksome. For the first time in a long time, I was hungry.
I listened to their conversation: final exams, winter break, the snow. Remembering, I hopped out of bed and went to the window. The sun reflected off the thick white carpet that covered the campus, a blinding white light. Sparkling flecks continued to fall. Despite having dreaded the snow, the sight filled me with childish glee. Snow, beautiful snow! I watched it fall another minute before the light began to hurt my eyes and I drew the curtains shut.
I heard a flush, the creak of the bathroom door. Chapin’s feet padded down the hall. I held my breath, but her feet stopped at her own bedroom and the door closed behind her. My disappointment surprised me. Perhaps I was tired of being alone.
I waited a minute, hesitating, before I knocked on the wall behind my headboard. No answer. I knocked again.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me.”
“I know, Imogene.”
There was a pause. It was mine to fill, but there were too many things to be said. “What are you doing today?”
“Work.”
“Oh.”
Another pause. “Did you want something?”
“Oh. No.”
A few minutes passed before I knocked again. She must have put on her headphones because it took three knocks this time.
“What?”
“They know. They found out about me and Adam.”
“Who did?”
“Ms. McNally-Barnes. The teachers. There’s going to be a hearing.”
Silence.
“You didn’t tell, did you?”
She didn’t answer. I was about to knock on the wall again when she burst through my door. She looked as though she might cry.
“What—?”
Chapin came to the bed and hugged me. “Oh my god, Imogene,” she said.
“So you didn’t—?”
“No, you dumb shit, of course I didn’t tell.” She hugged me harder. “Oh my god, Imogene. Oh my god.”
For the first time it occurred to me that my career at Vandenberg was over.
* * *
Chapin stole me a plate of bacon from the kitchen, and I ate in my bed, wiping my greasy fingers on my duvet. I felt as though I’d been told a relative had died—my parents, Joni, all of them at once in a fiery car explosion—and I was trying to understand what that meant. How long did it take to digest unthinkable tragedy? Was the body even capable? I could say the words aloud—I am going to be asked to leave Vandenberg. I will never see Adam Kipling again—but they meant little to me. Perhaps because, really, I didn’t believe them to be true. My parents, Joni, they didn’t die. I couldn’t be fired. Kip wouldn’t let me go. Tragedy was something that happened to other people. I was too ordinary, too inconspicuous, to fall prey to the universe’s wrath.
I tried to read, tried to watch TV, but my mind felt too sluggish to concentrate. Knowing I was imprisoned made me antsy. I paced my room. I watched the snow fall. I pulled a duffle bag out from under my bed at one point and began to pack, but I stopped myself. I wouldn’t know—couldn’t know—what would happen until Monday, and preparing for the worst felt unproductive and cruel.
I imagined instead an alternative ending. I imagined a courtroom, Dean Harvey acting as the judge, and Kip on the witness stand.
“Did you have sexual relations with Imogene Abney?” Ms. McNally-Barnes would ask, pacing the floor.
Kip would look at me briefly, sitting alone before him. “No, ma’am, I did not.”
“Would you say there was anything inappropriate about your relationship with Imogene Abney?”
“No, ma’am.”
“So you’re saying that any claims that have been made about a sexual relationship between you and Miss Abney are false?”
“Yes, ma’am. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
I looked at my phone on my nightstand. It had been silent all day. I knew I couldn’t text him, and sending an email would also be unwise. Perhaps I could leave a note in his mailbox—BURN AFTER READING, it would say, like in the movies—but he wouldn’t check his mail between now and Monday. My desire to speak to him was physical, a numbing pain that caused my whole body to ache. Little was more agonizing than being denied what you once had.
The worst part: I wasn’t even sure what I’d had anymore. It’d been less than a week since I’d last touched him, and it felt like a lifetime. The memories were already tremulous, fleeting, wavering in my consciousness like the surface of water. If I couldn’t have him, I’d give anything to have something physical to hold on to—A picture! A letter! For a desperate moment, I wished we had made that video together like he wanted. All I had was our text-message exchanges, which I read over and over, the words as familiar to me now as lyrics of a beloved song, as the lyrics to Rabbit Foot’s “For Luna.”
How do you prove something that no longer exists? How could I ever explain to anyone what Kip and I had been, what Kip and I had shared? We were accomplices, the sole witnesses, Kip and I. And because I’d failed to retain a tangible keepsake from what we’d had—a stolen T-shirt. A hickey, even—I’d always have doubt, always suspect that it’d all been in my head.
That was the most agonizing thing: not being sure that what you’d once had was even real.
* * *
I tried to will myself to dream of him that night. I thought of a conversation we’d had back in mid-October, back when things had been at their best. He’d just come, and he lay still on top of me, his heart hammering into my chest.
“Imogene,” he said. “What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, after this year. It’s just a year that you’re here, right?”
We never talked about me. We talked about him, and Hingham, and sailing, and his family, and Yale. There had never been a reason to talk about me. “I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know?”
“Well. I’m going to get my master’s.”
“In teaching?”
“Yeah, in teaching.”
He rolled off of me, so we lay shoulder-to-shoulder. He spoke to the ceiling. “Where are you going to go?”
I turned so I could see the side of his face. “Go?”
“To get your master’s.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“Where have you applied?”
“Nowhere, yet.”
“Do you even want to teach?”
He caught me off guard. “Yeah. I mean, I guess so. Yeah.”
Still speaking to the ceiling, he said, “Well, if you do, and when you apply, maybe you’ll end up somewhere in Connecticut.”
“Connecticut?”
“Yeah. Like New Haven?”
“Why?”
“Because.” Kip turned and smiled at me, almost shy. “That’s where I’ll be.”
I didn’t dream of Kip. I dreamed instead of a bathtub with a broken faucet that wouldn’t stop running, and it filled the tub until water spilled over the edges and leaked onto the floor and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to turn off.
* * *
I awoke Sunday morning to the sound of shouting. It was happy shouting, the yelps of children. I went to my window and drew aside my curtain. The snow had finally stopped; dozens of boys tumbled and scrambled through the giant white banks, hurling snowballs and throwing powder into the air. I watched them for a while, smiling. I loved them all, I really did.
I thought, for the first time in a few days, of Clarence. Since I’d humiliated him in front of his parents at the Homeco
ming Weekend dinner, we’d emailed intermittently. I’d proofread his art history final, a stammering review of the Italian Renaissance that I’d attempted to shape into something passable. He’d told me about Thanksgiving in Vermont, a sullen affair for an only child with elderly parents and no other family to speak of. He hadn’t once mentioned what happened at the dinner, and I began to think that I’d misunderstood the whole interaction—that perhaps he hadn’t made his parents believe I was his girlfriend, that he’d simply told them what I really was: the only friend he’d made during his three years at Vandenberg. I was ashamed of the way I’d treated him, but it was a relief to know he liked me enough to absolve me, that I’d been so easily forgiven.
I thought about asking him to do something that week—I hadn’t heard from him in a few days and I was starting to worry—but I was too ashamed to face him. I felt sick at the thought of him finding out about Kip, and it felt only a matter of time until he did. His finding out felt worse than my parents, worse than my fellow apprentices, worse than anyone. That, I couldn’t be sure he could forgive.
The Hovel was silent. I looked at the clock; it was already past eleven. They were probably already at the library preparing their final exams, or perhaps they’d also gone out to play in the snow. I felt an unfamiliar ache, one I hadn’t felt since high school, of having not been included. I’d been given an opportunity, and I had scorned it. I mourned momentarily the death of friendships that never had been and never would be.
My phone buzzed on my nightstand. My heart leapt into my throat. I’d been conditioned to believe that a phone notification meant Kip. Who else could it be but Kip?
I retrieved my phone, mind racing. It wasn’t Kip. It was Raj.
Hi. Chapin told me what happened.
I stared at the phone, still disbelieving that what I’d felt so certain of hadn’t been true.
The phone vibrated again. I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t me who told. I promised you I wouldn’t, and I didn’t.
One last vibration: I’m sorry this happened to you, Imogene.
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