Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  But this wasn’t just a picture. There was a play button in the very center.

  I didn’t dare press it.

  “Remember that blowjob I told you she gave Thad? Well, apparently he made a home movie. And since I know you’re wondering—no, she didn’t know she was being filmed. I don’t think she even knows this film exists.”

  I felt sick. I felt furious. I felt sick and furious, and it was a deadly combination. Like I could kill Thad and simultaneously puke on his corpse.

  “Jayden texted both the pic and the video to me just a couple minutes ago. But it was a group message. It went out to, like, a dozen people.”

  I snapped. My head swiveled like a heat-seeking turret locking onto a target. Thad, Jayden, and a couple other guys had already changed out of their costumes. They were now crowded around something, laughing. Even Patrick was hovering on the outskirts of their group.

  I stormed toward them.

  “Ezra, wait!” Wynezra hissed.

  It wasn’t until I drew near that I realized Thad was holding up his phone, playing a video for them, and that’s what they were crowded around. That’s what they were laughing at.

  My blood was boiling. My blood was molten magma, bubbling and spewing from the depths of the earth. My blood was a volcano.

  The boys noticed my swift approach and parted awkwardly. Thad smoothly pocketed his phone. He was unfazed, playing it completely cool. And then he had the gall to check me up and down like a slab of meat.

  I punched him in the throat.

  Thad’s mouth flailed open—gasping, wheezing, choking on his own windpipe. He dropped to his knees, hands cradled gently around his trachea.

  “Fucking bitch!” said Jayden—although this seemed more an exclamation of shock than anything else. The whites of his eyes were more visible than his nipples in that tight-ass polo shirt.

  I grabbed his nipples like a pair of volume knobs and cranked them until he was screaming in falsetto.

  A tan, wristband-laden arm attacked me from behind, wrapping me in a chokehold. Thad’s arm. I released Jayden’s collar, scraping desperately at the crook of his arm, gasping for air. Nothing was coming through.

  “I’ll kill you…” said Thad, wheezing into my ear, “…you fucking cu—”

  There was a delicious smack of flesh to flesh and bone to bone, and suddenly, I could breathe.

  Wynezra had decked Thad clean in the face, and now she was on top of him, her fist moving in straight lines, up and down, up and down, like a vertical battering ram, pummeling his skull into the crust of the earth, to be excavated by archaeologists in the distant future and preserved in the Museum of Natural Douchery.

  Something grabbed me by the hair and jerked my head back.

  “I’ll cut your fucking tits off, you fucking whore!” Jayden screamed.

  I glanced down and spotted the tip of his shoe next to mine. I stomped on it. Jayden howled and let go of my hair. I spun one hundred and eighty degrees, swung my leg back, and then kicked like a cheerleader, aiming for the sky but connecting with his testicles, punting them into the top of his skull. Jayden’s pupils shrank to mere specks in his irises. He crumpled to the floor, but that wasn’t good enough for me because I was immediately on top of him. Unlike Wynezra, I took the two-handed approach, beating his face with both fists, whipping his head left, right, left, right, left, right—

  It took the biggest person in the vicinity—Daisy—to pull me off Jayden’s would-be corpse. Her big arms wrapped around my waist, hoisting me off, while my arms flailed, and my legs kicked, and I screamed.

  I screamed words.

  “SHE’S MY SISTER, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT, MY SISTER, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU IF YOU EVEN LOOK AT HER AGAIN, I SWEAR TO GOD, I’LL CUT OFF YOUR COCK AND MURDER YOU IN YOUR FUCKING SLEEP—”

  Ziggy attempted to pull Wynezra off Thad. She swatted him away—like a human-sized fly—but stood up and backed away with her hands in the air like this was a routine.

  She was cool. She was done.

  our sleepover. She was suddenly feeling very sick.

  and I had separate meetings with Principal Durden that evening. She seemed to find it incredibly ironic that we were getting into trouble at the very place where we were being punished for getting in trouble last time.

  Though Principal Durden was the one asking questions, I had more than enough questions of my own. Slowly, we got to the bottom of the truth.

  It all started with a picture. And a breakup. And a very disgruntled ex-boyfriend.

  It all started with Patrick Durfee.

  The nude pic Wynezra showed me—the one Jayden sent to her and a dozen other people—had actually gone around school last month. It was the reason Thad, Jayden, Patrick, and Willow (yes, even Willow) had been punished and enrolled in theater.

  You see, while Willow and Patrick were dating, Patrick asked for a nude. She sent it to him. Then, months later, she broke up with him.

  Patrick was not happy about the breakup. As revenge, he turned the picture into a meme. But instead of a joke, it had an address—my and Willow’s home address—and he sent it to several boys at school, including Jayden and Thad. From there, a rumor was born, spreading around school about how easy Willow Slevin was. That you could just show up at her house, and she’d give you a blowjob or whatever.

  That’s why there were so many random cars showing up at my house.

  Some, like Jayden, seemed nice at first, and she let them inside. Then she learned what they really wanted, and she chased them off.

  Some, like Thad, she had really liked.

  Jayden was actually jealous of Thad’s blowjob. He told Willow that Thad filmed her, and he had a copy of the video, and he would spread it around school if she didn’t give him one, too.

  Willow told him to go fuck himself. That’s how Wynezra and a dozen other people ended up with the video and the original nude.

  “So wait,” I said. “What was Willow being punished for?”

  “She sent the picture to Patrick,” said Principal Durden.

  My jaw about fell through the floor.

  “They were dating!” I said. “The little fucking weasel pestered her for a picture, and she gave it to him! He’s the one who spread the picture. Willow’s the victim here!”

  “She still shouldn’t have sent that picture. That’s unacceptable behavior at Piles Fork High School and is not tolerated. Also, do not swear in my office—”

  “FUCKING BULLSHIT,” I screamed. “She didn’t take the picture at school. You’re punishing a teenager for having an intimate life, and then being taken advantage of by her little fuckwit ex-boyfriend. Do my—do Ezra’s parents know about this?”

  “I called and left voice mails on both of their cell phones. I took their silence as agreement on the conditions of her disciplinary action.”

  My stomach plunged into a deep, dark abyss.

  I stood up.

  I walked out of the office.

  “Where do you think you’re going, young lady?” said Principal Durden. “You assaulted two classmates. We’re not done discussing—”

  “I am,” I said. “I’m so done. Willow isn’t going to be punished because she has a couple of shitty no-show parents who don’t check their voice mail.”

  Wynezra was sitting in one of the chairs outside of Principal Durden’s office, kitty-corner from Jayden and Thad, exchanging eyeball daggers with her. At least, Jayden and Thad were trying to do the dagger-glaring thing. But mostly, their faces looked like blueberry strudel. If they were glaring anything, it was razor-sharp pieces of strudel.

  I grabbed Wynezra’s hand, pulled her out of her chair, and dragged her behind me.

  “Whoa, uh, where are we going?” she said.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Principal Durden echoed.

  “To the hospital!” I shouted.

  • •

  “Are you okay?” said Wynezra. “You look…distracted.”

  We had just entered
Memorial Hospital of Carbondale from the parking garage elevator. The walls were utopia white, the tile floor was speckled in colorful geometric shapes, and—in regard to Wynezra’s observation—I was eyeing everyone in scrubs or a lab coat like they were raging nymphos.

  It was stupid. I knew it was stupid. What did I think Memorial Hospital of Carbondale was? A porno? Where every flat surface was fair game, reflex hammers and stethoscopes were bondage toys, and the climax happened inside a giant X-ray machine? My parents obviously weren’t doing it here. But they did have sixty-plus-hour workweeks, and they were meeting their lovers somewhere. The way I figured, it was either here or Tinder. They didn’t have time to meet anyone anywhere else.

  Just the thought of it seized up my insides.

  But then I thought of Willow.

  Blood raged through my veins.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Finding my parents was easier than I thought it would be. All I had to do was go to the well-lit front desk of the well-lit lobby of Memorial Hospital of Carbondale—where lighting was more important than sex-in-the-workplace regulations—and say, very politely and very urgently, “Excuse me, we’re having a family emergency, and we need to speak to our parents, Mark and Janet Slevin, they’re doctors here, and they’re our parents and this is a very urgent family emergency.”

  I was only half-lying about the “our parents” bit. It was half-true for both of us. The important part was repeating and emphasizing “family emergency.” It was a well-known buzzword that few people questioned and possessed an almost magical ability to Make Shit Happen.

  The woman at the front desk—a tired old lady with hair like cobweb-flavored cotton candy—gave us an alarmed look and quickly picked up the phone and started muttering urgently and Making Shit Happen. She nodded a couple times and then lowered the phone to her chest.

  “Doctor…er…Mark Slevin is currently in surgery,” she said. “But Janet is on her way over.”

  Wynezra and I stepped awkwardly to the side of the front desk, allowing the man behind us to complain about his pain medication, and no he didn’t have an appointment, why should he need a damn appointment if that crock of a doctor of his prescribed him damn placebos, damn sugar pills, he’d sure like to see that doctor’s doctor license, where’d he get it, Chuck E. Cheese’s?

  And then Mom appeared.

  Mom was lean and healthy-looking, with a round—but certainly not soft—face. She gave the impression of being all hard edges, but maybe it was just her presence that was intense. Her teeth seemed to be in a perpetual state of clenching, and her eyes were constantly skeptical, and her brow was furrowed to the point of creating a labyrinth of forehead. In short, she seemed stressed. Maybe even angry that she was so stressed, which, in turn, only amplified the preexisting stress. It was a vicious cycle.

  When she saw us—saw me, particularly—her brow furrowed so tight, she could have cracked a pistachio.

  “Sorry,” said Mom, returning her gaze to Wynezra. “I thought Willow was here. Is she okay?”

  “Hi, I’m Wynonna, Willow’s best friend,” I said, kind of proud of myself that I wasn’t even bending the truth—about being Willow’s best friend, that is. I obviously wasn’t Wynonna. “And no, Willow’s not okay. This was just sent around school. For the second time.”

  Wynezra and I didn’t even look at each other. I extended my hand palm-up, she slapped her phone into it, and I shoved it in my mom’s face. It was the sort of thing that looked like we had rehearsed it, but I can assure you, we didn’t. We were simply that cool.

  “Oh my god,” said Mom. Her skeptical eyes became huge, swelling with sickness. And then she blinked. “I’m sorry, did you say second time?”

  Now that I had her undivided attention, I started from the beginning—that little shitbag Patrick Durfee—and proceeded through the whole harrowing story. The emphasis points were that Willow was being punished for this, that Principal Durden left her and Dad voice mails about this, and now we had a blowjob video on our hands—which I showed her. The good news was that “Ezra” and I might have assaulted and/or battered Jayden and Thad to the point of a felony—which was also, arguably, bad news.

  Mom was trembling.

  Mom was furious.

  Not at Willow (although she certainly wasn’t happy with Willow’s life choices), and not at Ezra (although she had extremely mixed feelings about her son’s sudden career in juvenile delinquency). She was mad at the little fuckers who did this to her daughter. She was mad at Principal Durden—her son’s best friend’s mother!

  But—most importantly—she was clearly the most angry with herself.

  By the time we finished, Dad showed up in his turquoise surgeon scrubs. Although the moment he saw Mom, his pace dropped rapidly, and he seemed to immediately reconsider whether participating in this family emergency was in his best interest. God, if this was what marriage was like, sign me up.

  Mom noticed him, but not with her usual disdain. Instead, she returned her gaze to us.

  “Thank you,” she said. She looked at me specifically. “Thank you both. I’m glad Willow has such a good friend.”

  My smile faltered, if only slightly.

  “Could I borrow your phone, Ezra?” she said. “I’ll handle your father.”

  • •

  What happens when two high-paid, overworked doctors leave their jobs early to address a family emergency and work together—despite their infinite differences—to be parents for once?

  For starters, they threatened to press charges—against every boy involved, against the school, against Principal Durden herself—unless this shit was fixed. Like, miracle-from-Jesus fixed. Basically, someone had better walk on some fucking water. Otherwise, the Slevins would burn this school and its reputation to the ground. They would take this story to the Chicago fucking Tribune and the Sun-Times if they had to. And boy, did they have a headline for her: “Teenage Girl Sexually Harassed by Male Classmates, Is Punished for It by Principal.”

  With one parent, Principal Durden might have stood her ground. Maybe. But with two parents who had simultaneously left work early—still in their lab coat/surgeon scrubs—demanding blood and retribution, Principal Durden caved and admitted that maybe the punishment was “a tad hasty” and perhaps she “misjudged the situation.” She promised to have the incident erased from Willow’s records, and that she was free to drop out of theater.

  Except that Willow didn’t want to drop out.

  “Are you kidding me?” said Willow. “The play is in four days! If I drop out two days before the performance, they’re screwed. Then Wynonna is screwed, and she’s the star of the play! Then Ezra’s screwed, even though he only has three lines, and he auditioned to be a tree. Besides, I want to be in the play! Do you know how long I’ve practiced for this role?”

  “Wait, Ezra’s in the play?” said Dad. “I thought this was a detention sort of thing?”

  “He and his friends, like, broke into school on a holiday.”

  “They did what? Why?”

  Willow shrugged. “Your son’s a menace to society. Anarchy is why.”

  “You know what?” said Mom. “I don’t want to know why. That’s not the issue right now. The issue is that you’re in this play with at least three boys that have been sexually harassing you—God knows if there’s more—so if you’re not dropping out, I want them to drop out.”

  “What? No! They all have important roles!”

  “You’re kidding. You’re telling me all three of those little bastards have important roles?”

  “Jayden is Sir Toby Belch, and Patrick is Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Thad is Fabian,” said Willow, like this was all self-explanatory.

  “So, what? You expect us to just let this play go on, as is? Then it’s like you were never un-punished? Where’s your justice, Willow? You may not care about your justice, but I, for one, want justice for you!”

  “Wynonna and Ezra did beat the shit out of them,” said Willow. “Well, two
out of three. Wynonna kicked Jayden in the balls so hard, I’m pretty sure he’s never going to have kids, and if he does, they’ll probably look like Play-Doh people. Like, Wallace and Gromit. Besides, I’m pretty sure Jayden and Thad’s parents might press charges against Ezra and Wynonna. If we can, like, nullify the charge-pressing on both sides, that sounds like justice to me.”

  By the way, this conversation was happening inside Principal Durden’s tiny, undersized office. Mom, Dad, Willow, me, Wynezra, Principal Durden—we were all crammed inside it like outraged, argument-prone sardines. Wynezra and I, however, had resolved to sit quietly in the corner and not say a single word. Partly because things were resolving themselves well enough on their own, and partly because you couldn’t buy drama this good on premium cable.

  Mom looked at Principal Durden. “Are those boys’ parents pressing charges?”

  Principal Durden shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  It was very possible. Both Thad and Jayden looked like we had beaten them with the ugliest stick from the ugliest tree of the ugliest forest. Their faces made me not want to eat blueberry strudel ever again.

  “However,” said Principal Durden, “given the circumstances, I’m sure we can come to an understanding. No doubt the Hoxsie and Magnino families don’t want their boys on the front page of the”—she whipped out her index and middle fingers—“‘Chicago fucking Tribune.’”

  Mom smiled. “An understanding sounds good. I think we can do an understanding.”

  our sleepover after all.

  Technically, the Slevins invited me over for dinner, at which point, Willow piped up, “Can she sleep over, too?” It was a Monday, mind you. But today had been a crisis. Willow seemed okay, but I think everyone was still worried about her. I know I was. As for Mark and Janet Slevin—high on the victory of Being Good Parents—they couldn’t very well refuse. Instead, they sort of adopted me.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” said Mom, “Wynonna is welcome to sleep over anytime she wants.”