The Volunteer

by D. H Jonathan

  “Good luck,” Samantha said.

  “Thanks.” I got out and walked into the house through the front door. Daddy and Mom were sitting quietly in the living room, with Mom in the love seat and Daddy in his recliner on the other side of the room. Both of them had serious, almost sour, expressions on their faces.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Your mother seems to think I overstepped my bounds,” Daddy said.

  “Well, if what I heard on my way home is true, then yeah, you did,” I said. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that that bitch at the college was using and abusing, exploiting my baby girl, and I wasn’t about to let her get away with that.”

  “So your solution was to tell everyone I was a cheat and a liar? Great! Thanks Dad.”

  “I don’t know why you’re mad at me. It’s my job to look out for you and keep you safe from predators.”

  “Only up to a certain point,” I said. “I’m almost twenty-one years old. You have to let me live my own life, solve my own problems. Sure, I made a mistake, and I paid for that mistake in a way that would have been unimaginable to me a few months ago. But I did it. I had everything under control. Until you butted in and went to the media. Whatever possessed you?”

  Daddy stood up and tried to walk toward me, to take me in his arms like he had done so many times over the years.

  “Don’t,” I said, ready to bolt and run up the stairs.

  Daddy stopped and stood alone in the middle of the living room, looking lost and miserable.

  “I need to change my flight,” I said.

  “I already did.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I’ve got you on the 11:50 flight Friday.”

  “11:50?”

  “That was the earliest one I could get. Don’t worry; it lands in Palm Springs at 1:00 local time. You won’t have any problem making it to that hearing so you can nail the lid on that woman’s coffin.”

  “Is this a revenge thing?” I asked.

  “No, it’s justice. Just go to that hearing and tell the truth. If they’re human, I’m sure that Board of Regents will do the right thing.”

  I turned and stormed upstairs to my room. I still had five days in this house before I could get out and fly back to Coachella. I still had to share a roof with Daddy. I paced my room, asking myself over and over how he could have been so presumptuous. I wanted to scream, to throw something, to run away. But I continued pacing until I was calm enough to sit down and surf the Web on my phone, reading story after story about me and the nudity project until my anger at Daddy was redirected at Dr. Slater. The media had really crucified her, made her sound like the devil for taking advantage of a young church-going girl and corrupting her in such a public way. The truth, I realized, was that Dr. Slater did deserve to be removed from her position if only to prevent her from doing to anyone else what she had done to me.

  I turned the TV on in my room and found CNN. It didn’t take them long to broadcast a report about this latest development in my now very public life. I was surprised no reporters had knocked on my door, but the focus of the story now was Dr. Slater. I watched video of one of the CNN correspondents trying to ask her a question as she walked from Carlisle Hall to her car, but she held up a file folder in front of her face, and ran to get away from the camera. I almost felt sorry for her until I thought about her visit to my dorm room when she had basically ordered me to do the Stossel show. It was almost ten o’clock by the time I ventured back downstairs. Daddy was in his recliner, watching an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie on TV. Mom had apparently gone to bed.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he replied, his eyes still on the TV. Arnold was hanging on to the landing gear of an airplane as it started taking off. When he let go, he landed in what looked like a very conveniently placed marsh at the end of the runway.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I know you were looking out for me. And she does deserve everything she gets.”

  Daddy looked at me and smiled. “I’m sorry too. I should have checked with you first, seen what you wanted me to do.” He stood up from the chair and walked over to me, giving me a hug. “Don’t worry about that hearing. You just tell the truth exactly as it happened to you. Whatever happens happens. OK?”

  I nodded. Daddy returned to his recliner and to the Arnold movie. When I looked at the screen, I remembered watching the movie with Daddy several years ago. The bad guys had kidnapped Arnold’s daughter and were holding her hostage, threatening to kill her if he didn’t fly down to South America or somewhere and assassinate someone. Everything Arnold does after escaping from that plane, including the climax when he kills dozens of bad guys, is with a single purpose, to rescue and protect his daughter. I couldn’t remember the name of the movie, but it was one of his older ones. As I went upstairs, I had to shake my head at the thought that Daddy had purposely chosen to watch that particular movie on this particular night.

  I went to church with my parents the following morning. Daddy and I didn’t say much to each other during the ride over, and even Mom was unusually quiet. I hoped that after Friday’s hearing we would all be able to put this thing behind us. My reception from the churchgoers was subdued. Most of the people there had just seen me on the news the night before and didn’t quite know how to speak to me. I had wanted to ask my old youth pastor about the Project, but I learned that he had moved on to another church, taking a senior pastor position in a small town in east Texas the previous fall. A lot had changed in just two years, new faces and new wrinkles on the old faces, new staff, and even a new wing of the building. It almost didn’t feel like the church I had grown up in, and I couldn’t decide which had changed more, me or the church. I sat in service like I had sat in so many university classes lately, and I couldn’t help but imagine myself naked right there in the pew in the middle of everyone. They would have all freaked out, called the police, prayed over me, and had me carried away in a strait jacket. As soon as the service ended, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone and rushed outside to wait for my parents by the car.

  Later, when we turned onto our street, I saw two local news vans parked in front of our house. The people outside these vans mobilized when they saw our car, with well-dressed reporters grabbing microphones and shabbily dressed cameramen lifting their heavy video cameras onto their shoulders.

  “Crap,” Daddy said. “They were supposed to leave you alone.”

  “Did you really think one reporter could speak for all of them?” I said from the back, wishing I had Sylvia here to act as a shield.

  Daddy opened the garage door with the remote clipped to his sun visor, but we had so much stuff in the garage that we could never fit a car inside it. He parked on the driveway next to Mom’s car, and when I got out, the media people converged, stopping at the line in the concrete of our driveway, the two reporters talking at me at the same time.

  “Danielle, would you like to speak to us about Dr. Slater’s hearing?” the louder of the two asked.

  I shook my head and said something I’d heard often on television, “No comment.”

  I followed my parents into the garage, and Daddy hit the button to lower the door just as I cleared the threshold. Thankfully, the TV crews stayed on the driveway behind our cars. Once we got inside, we ate the casserole that Mom had put into the oven before we left for church and talked about trivial things, avoiding any topics having anything to do with Coachella Valley University or anyone there.

  The vans left before we finished eating, and I didn’t see them back at all the rest of the week. I did try to watch the news on both of those channels, but I never did see any video of myself saying “No comment.” Perhaps I had too many clothes on to be put on TV, I thought with some amusement. Daddy and Mom both worked all week, so I spent the first three days inside, watching movies and playing video games on the PlayStation 3. I was naked most of the time, getting dressed each day at about four o
’clock, knowing that my mother usually arrived home at 4:30 and Daddy around 6:00. On Thursday I did laundry and packed my big suitcase as full as it would go. Daddy and Mom took me out to eat at Olive Garden that night, my last in Texas until the Thanksgiving holiday. Conversation topics ranged from the classes I was taking in the summer to my possible graduation at the end of the following summer and which universities had good law schools.

  I got up early Friday morning to let both parents say good bye to me.

  “Remember, just tell the truth,” Daddy said, referring to the hearing, “that’s all you have to do.”

  My mom’s advice was a bit more abstract. “Remember who you are,” she told me before giving me a hug and walking out the door.

  Once they left, I stood in my living room thinking how strange it was that I would be seeing Dr. Slater that day, attending a hearing over a thousand miles away just that very afternoon. I figured that I would go straight from the airport to the hearing, so I wore my yellow dress, the same dress I had worn to that first fateful meeting with Dr. Slater in March. Wearing it, I thought, would convey my respect for the proceedings without being too dressy. I had my big suitcase and my smaller carry-on bag by the door when Samantha picked me up at 9:30.

  “Wow, you look great,” she said when I opened the door.

  “Thanks.”

  I hefted the big suitcase into the trunk and put the carry-on bag in her back seat. Samantha switched on the radio as she turned out of our neighborhood and toward the access road for Airport Freeway. We weren’t on the freeway long when we came to a sudden stop.

  “Shit,” Samantha said.

  She turned the radio to 1080, an AM 24 hour news station, and caught a traffic report. A fatality accident had occurred on the freeway at Central, and all lanes were closed.

  “I’ll try to get you there on time,” Samantha said, moving over to try to exit the freeway.

  The side streets were backed up as well. After waiting through at least six cycles of the stop light, she managed to turn left and get under the freeway, finally making it over to Harwood Street. We turned right there, and made our slow way over to Highway 121, which would take us up and around the airport, letting us take the North Entry. Samantha kept talking, trying to keep me calm, but I kept thinking about my flight, what I would have to do if it missed it. Would another flight get me there in time for the hearing? Once Samantha got onto 121, she floored it, driving at least 80 miles an hour most of the way. My legs wouldn’t stop moving just from nervousness, and I had to pee. We pulled up to the terminal at 11:15, but I still had to check in and get through security.

  “All right, hurry, and good luck,” she said.

  “Thank you so much for the ride,” I said as I jumped out of the car, grabbed my bag from the back, and sprinted into the terminal. I was able to check in at the machine without waiting in line, grabbing my boarding pass and going straight to security. Thankfully, there wasn’t a long line there either, but as I got close to the table with the trays for my shoes and things, my need to pee started to become overwhelming. I started bouncing from one foot to the other, a classic pee-pee dance. I got my bag onto the belt, loaded the tray with my purse and my shoes, and hurried through the checkpoint as rapidly as I could while still following the TSA agents’ instructions. I grabbed my stuff from the other side of the X-ray machine and didn’t even stop to put on my shoes before running to the nearest rest room.

  Once that crisis was averted, I hurried to the gate where I expected to be the last person on the plane only to see a big crowd waiting. The sign behind the counter said that the flight status was delayed and was now departing at 1:15. I did some quick calculations in my head. The flight took three hours and ten minutes, minus the two hour difference in time zones, and that put me in Palm Springs at 2:25. I would only have 35 minutes to get from the airport to the hearing, and that was only if there were no more delays.

  I pulled my phone out of my purse and called Greg.

  “Hey there,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be on a plane?”

  “My flight has been delayed by almost an hour and a half.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you that I would be late. That’s not going to give us much time to get to the hearing.”

  “It’ll be all right,” he said. “We don’t have to be there right at the beginning. Once you get off the plane, I guess we’ll have to wait on your baggage.”

  I froze. “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “I left my suitcase in the trunk of Samantha’s car.”

  I had to shake my head. It had been less than two weeks ago that my clothes had been locked in Samantha’s trunk, and now they were there again, this time almost everything I owned. I laughed at the thought, and Greg probably thought I was hysterical.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said when I finally stopped laughing.

  “Just take it easy,” Greg said. “Maybe you can get her to ship it to you.”

  “I’m not even worried about that now,” I said. “Just be ready to go when I get off the plane.”

  “I will,” he said.

  I hung up the phone and hung out at the airport, visiting the newsstands and the gift shops in the terminal. When my boarding group was finally called, I felt drained after rushing at a hundred miles an hour only to come to a dead stop and sit around waiting. I spent the duration of the flight with my head against the window fading in and out of sleep.

  I was sitting near the back of the plane, and I tried to maintain my composure while waiting for everyone ahead of me to get their stuff from the overhead bins and disembark. I called Greg while I waited and just told him to wait in his car by the curb where he had dropped me off two and a half weeks ago. Once I was finally off the plane, I hurried through the terminal, almost running into a lady taking a photo of her family members with the bust of Sonny Bono. Cars lined the curb outside the terminal, and I found Greg’s car several hundred yards back from where I had hoped he would be.

  “Sorry,” he said when, out of breath from running, I slipped into the passenger seat after dropping my carry-on bag into his back seat.

  “Just go,” I said.

  Greg went, somehow avoiding any traffic citations, and dropped me off on campus as close to the Administration Building as he could get with all of the news vans around. I grabbed my carry-on bag and hurried inside, ignoring any questions aimed at me from the people near the vans. The hearing room was easy to find with all of the reporters outside waiting. I pushed my way through them and was stopped at the door by two students in suits and ties.

  “This is a closed hearing,” one of them said.

  “I’m Danielle Keaton. I’m supposed to be here. I’m late.”

  “Ah,” the other guy, looking too young to be college age with his skinny frame and smooth face, said. “I talked to you on the phone last weekend. Come this way. I’ll take you to a room where you can wait to be called.”

  I followed the kid around the corner and down the hall. “I’m Wilson, by the way,” he said. “And I’m a big fan. Every time I saw you last semester, you were just – well, if I can say it -- beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” I said to him when he opened the door into a small conference room with a round table and plush chairs and a door on the far wall.

  “Just make yourself comfortable. I’ll let them know you’re here, and they will call you when they’re ready.”

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  Wilson closed the door behind him, and I set my bag on the floor in the corner next to the far door. I picked a chair, sat down, and tried to calm myself by taking long slow breaths. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. At some point, the hum of the building’s air conditioner shut off. Without that noise, I could hear faint voices from the overhead vent. I slipped my shoes off and climbed onto the table, trying to hear the voices better.

  “Why, for a first offense, was probation n
ot an option?” a man asked. I didn’t recognize his voice.

  “Because we were trying to get tough on academic dishonesty,” someone else said, and I recognized that voice as belonging to Dr. Hallam, the now former president of the university. “We had implemented a new zero tolerance policy at the beginning of the academic year.”

  “And was Miss Keaton the first student to have received such a suspension for a first offense?”

  “No, she was not.”

  “How many were there before her?”

  “I can recall two young ladies receiving suspensions.”

  “Two young ladies? Did these young ladies receive the same proposal from Dr. Slater that Miss Keaton did?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t recall. You would have to ask Dr. Slater that question.”

  “No male students received suspensions during this time frame?”

  “Not that I can remember,” Dr. Hallam’s voice said.

  “I have in front of me a list of the disciplinary actions taken during the current academic year. Dana Mitchell, one semester SUSPENSION. Michael Cooley, one year PROBATION. Jennifer Adcock, one semester SUSPENSION. Joseph Mitchell, one year PROBATION. Benjamin Sharp, one year PROBATION. Can you explain this disparity?”

  Before I could hear Dr. Hallam speak, the building’s air conditioner kicked back on, blocking out the sound of any more voices. I climbed down from the table, remembering something Ginger, the research assistant had said that first day when she had come to my room to pick up my clothes. Two previous girls had volunteered but had failed to even make it out of the building, she had said.

  I knew then that, at a minimum, Dr. Slater was going to lose her position at the university. And with that certainty came the realization that I didn’t want her to lose it, no matter what rotten things she had done. I was sure that the university owned the video from all the security cameras, and it probably owned everything else related to the Project. If she was dismissed, everything I had done, exposing my body to thousands of people, over those sixty days would have been for nothing. No one else would have her passion for this project, and therefore, no one would follow up on all the data collected.