by Sean Platt
Blake says, “Everything is fine. Just a bit of a misunderstanding, but it’s okay. Billy’s been through a lot the past two days.”
Dean Pritchard looks me up and down. “That right, Billy?”
A loud voice inside me is screaming, Say something!, but I can’t. I need to slow down and think about my next move. Do I tell an adult about the video? Or Billy’s parents? What if Chelsea comes out of her coma to disappointed parents who shame her further?
“Are you okay, Billy?” Pritchard asks after I say nothing.
I swallow and finally meet his eyes, nodding. “Yeah, just a misunderstanding.”
Dean Pritchard looks at me, then at Blake. I’m wondering if he’s buying Wellington’s bullshit. He looks like he’s thinking about it. Maybe thinking about dragging us all to his office where we can get to the bottom of whatever this is. But then his lips tighten, and he says, “Okay, well why don’t you all separate.”
Surprised, I nod.
Pete and I turn, leaving the scene of my embarrassment. I can feel Rocco and his friends’ gazes on our backs.
Once we make it back to the common area, Pete leads us down a few hallways until we find one that’s quiet.
He leans against the wall and sinks to the ground. “Oh my God, what happened to promising not to do anything stupid?”
“You said not to do anything crazy,” I remind him with a grin, “you never said not to do anything stupid.”
“Sorry, I assumed suicidal was on the list under crazy.”
His eyes widen as he realizes he just used what I imagine will now forever be called “the s-word” in Billy’s company if Chelsea doesn’t pull through. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …”
“It’s okay.”
“But seriously, what the hell was that?”
“I dunno. I just wanted to know who was responsible.”
“Have you ever watched a detective story? The detective never goes straight at the suspect, not without some evidence, or something! Man, the art of subtlety is lost on you, Billy Boy.”
“I had something … your word. If you say Rocco is the one who did it, I trust you.”
“Well, shit, I didn’t say I knew for certain! I think it’s him, yeah, but I don’t know.”
“So, what was I supposed to do?”
“I figured we’d tell someone, maybe the police or something. Let them investigate. But now you probably screwed that all up. If it is him, he’s probably gonna go home and delete anything on his computer, phone, whatever he used, and we won’t have dick.”
“Shit!”
I look down, staring at the tile floor.
Suddenly, I hear movement.
I look up to see the redhead cheerleader cautiously approaching.
Pete sits up straight, defensive. “What do you want, Becca?”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” she says, meeting my eyes. For all her friend’s insincerity, I get the opposite from Becca. She seems genuinely concerned.
“Yeah, me too,” I say, my eyes up from the floor and now staring at the wall, not wanting to look at her for reasons I’m not sure of. Maybe I still don’t trust her. And nothing would pain me more than to offer one of Chelsea’s enemies Billy’s naive trust.
“Listen,” she says, “I don’t know what you think Rocco did — if he actually recorded the video, or what. But I don’t think it was him.”
I stand and finally meet her eyes. Pete rises beside me and says, “What do you mean? He’s been passing it around like Skittles.”
“Yeah, Rocco and a lot of other guys have been. But that doesn’t mean they recorded the video.”
“So,” I say, “who do you think did it?”
“Someone she was sleeping with.”
“My sister wasn’t sleeping with anyone. She didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“No, not exactly.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, my voice growing louder.
“There are rumors that Chelsea was sleeping with one of the teachers.”
“What?”
Pete echoes my thought. “I haven’t heard that, and I hear everything!”
“I don’t know how many people know. Fewer than the number who know about the video, but I think it’s something you should probably look into.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Ms. Valencia, her art teacher.”
“No way,” I say. “Chelsea’s not gay. And she certainly isn’t sleeping with a teacher!”
Becca looks down. “I don’t know what to tell you so that you’ll believe me. I just thought you’d like to know, and so maybe you don’t go getting yourself killed by Rocco.”
“What do you care?” I ask. “They’re your friends, not me.”
“Yeah,” she says, looking at her crossed feet, “but that doesn’t mean I want to see you get hurt, or that I like some of the stuff they do. I liked Chelsea. We haven’t been friends for a couple of years, but that doesn’t mean I hate her or think she’s a dyke, or a slut, or deserves this bullshit.”
“If you like my sister, then why are you friends with these assholes who think it’s funny to slut shame her, to spread her video around until she tries to kill herself?”
Becca looks back up. “I wish I had a good answer. Sorry.”
And with that, she turns around and walks away.
I look at Pete, who, for once, is speechless.
Billy’s dad picks me up, on the phone — again. Still talking to his agent. I wonder if he is always this disconnected from his kids, or if this is an anomaly due to the family’s world crumbling around them.
It’s just as well. I still haven’t decided how to tell him about the video, or if I even should.
He drops me off at home and says he’s going to the hospital with Mom. This gives me time to search Chelsea’s room, see if I can find anything to verify that she was sleeping with Ms. Valencia.
As I cross the threshold into her room — a tidy room with eggshell-white walls, pastel accents, and soft-edged white furniture with clean angles and uncluttered surfaces — I think about all the bedrooms I’ve been an interloper in. After a while, one blends right into another. But all bedrooms are a place to keep treasures, particularly secrets of the heart — private loves, old flames, obsessions — tucked in the pages of journals, love letters buried in the closet, way in the back, or mementos buried in plain sight. Enter someone’s bedroom, and you’ll find what resides in their heart.
If Chelsea was sleeping with her teacher, I’m guessing I’ll find the evidence here.
I start in the usual places, desk, closet, under the mattress and bed, but find nothing incriminating.
There’s nothing in her computer, either, at least not that jumps out with a cursory search.
Since Chelsea, like Billy, is a neat freak, it doesn’t take long to go through her stuff, yet after thirty minutes, I’ve found nothing.
I sit on her bed, frustrated, looking around the room for any spot I might have missed or didn’t think to look.
Lying on her bed, I feel a lump beneath the blanket.
I reach down and find Pinky, a stuffed pink unicorn she got as a child and has slept with ever since.
I look at the unicorn, tears welling in my eyes as memories of Chelsea and Billy’s lives flash by. Billy, being four years younger, always looked up to his sister. As children, they’d been inseparable; Chelsea loved having a baby brother and, once he could walk, brought him with her wherever she went. When Billy was four, his sister bought him a “boy’s version” of the unicorn, a blue one, which he named Bluey, even if it wasn’t a real name. They often had “campouts” indoors, setting up makeshift tents made of sheets and blankets in the living room, where they’d play with their unicorns.
Suddenly, another memory.
During one of their campouts, Pinky told Billy about a loose floorboard in her hallway between their bedrooms where she could pass super-secret spy messages to Bluey. They used the spot for a couple of years passing “
secrets” to each other. Then, around the time that Chelsea went to seventh grade, the messages stopped. Suddenly, she was too busy to play Unicorn Spies with her brother.
I get up from her bed, then go to the hallway and search for the loose board.
My heart races as my fingers find the wooden plank.
I pull it up at the edge.
Inside the small dark space, I see a blue hardbound book: Chelsea’s diary.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Billy’s parents to come home. The diary is sitting closed before me.
I’ve learned two things from the journal.
One — Chelsea was sleeping with Ms. Valencia. Not just sleeping with her, but in love with her. Had been since the beginning of the school year, though she didn’t start sleeping with her until two months ago, well after she turned eighteen, something Ms. Valencia insisted upon, even though Chelsea wanted to be with her earlier.
Two — she was coerced into stripping on camera. A few weeks ago, someone, she doesn’t know who, messaged Chelsea with photos of her and the teacher taken from just outside a hotel room window. They said if she didn’t “perform” for them, they’d leak the photos to “every news site known to man.”
Scared, Chelsea did as she was told.
The last page in her diary she wrote to Billy:
Billy,
I knew you’d find this. Please don’t show Mom and Dad. They’ll be furious. They’ll try and get Ms. Valencia fired, or worse. You know how Dad gets.
But I want YOU to know the truth.
YOU deserve to know why I had to do it.
Yes, the rumors are true. I am gay. I know you won’t care because you’re not like Mom and Dad. And your best friend is Pete, who is the gayest gay dude ever.
Ms. Valencia was the first person to make me feel like I wasn’t a freak. The first person who made me feel okay with who I am.
I tried to keep it a secret, at least until I was out of school, off at college, away from the family.
But then THIS happened.
That awful video. I’m so ashamed. And now the name calling in the halls — slut, dyke, bitch. And they weren’t even the worst part. It was the whispers, the judgmental looks. The wondering if the person I’m talking to, hell, the teacher I’m talking to, didn’t see that video — hadn’t seen me at my most vulnerable, most ashamed.
I just couldn’t take it.
I know you always looked up to me and thought I was so strong, and brave. And I hate that you now see the truth.
I’m not strong.
I’m not brave.
And I can’t pretend any longer.
I’m sorry to leave you like this. And I want you to know that none of this is your fault. There’s nothing you could’ve done differently.
I know you love me unconditionally.
But I just couldn’t take the shit any longer.
I hope now that I’m gone, the fuckers will leave you in peace.
I love you.
Love,
Chelsea
P.S. Please take care of Pinky.
I cried the entire time I read it. I’m sickened to think that anyone would end their life because of bullying, and this makes me want to hurt Rocco and the others even more than I already did.
Chelsea didn’t want her parents to see this, but I have to overrule her. They need to see it. They need to know why their daughter tried to kill herself, and understand their culpability.
I hear the front door open, the sound of Jack’s keys being dropped in the bowl.
Billy’s parents enter the kitchen, surprised to see me sitting there.
“What’s that?” Jack asks.
I tell them. Everything.
Chapter Two
I wake up to the ringing of my phone on the nightstand.
Not my phone, Jack Caldwell’s.
I grab the phone, see that it’s only six in the morning, and am hoping it’s not the hospital calling to tell me that Chelsea is dead.
It’s not Chelsea; it’s Waylon, Jack’s agent.
“You up?” Waylon says in a slight Southern drawl. He grew up in Louisiana, played some college ball, then got hurt and entered law school, specializing in entertainment. From there, he became an agent, landing some of the biggest names in reality TV. Jack was his first Christian author, but he’s proved himself in steering his client away from ministry-type work and toward life as a self-help guru, increasing Jack’s net worth tenfold in the first year alone.
“Yeah, hold on,” I say, climbing out of bed, leaving Susan sleeping as I make my way out of the bedroom, downstairs, and into Jack’s study. I wait for his tired mind to fill me in on what happened — from Jack’s perspective — after Billy dropped the bomb last night.
From Billy’s perspective, it was a scary moment. At first, his parents stared. Then came the tears — followed by anger.
Jack was so pissed that he stormed out of the house, going God knew where for several hours. Jack’s memories tell me he went to a bar and got drunk — something he hasn’t done in nearly fifteen years.
When I, as Billy, had asked why Dad was so mad, Susan said, “Because that teacher ruined our Chelsea. She made her gay.”
I had argued otherwise, saying, “You can’t make someone gay. They either are or aren’t.”
That didn’t sit well with Susan.
“That’s just something the Devil and his followers say, to convince you that sin is okay. ‘Hey, it’s not my fault, I was born this way.’ Sorry, Billy, that’s not how it works. I know you have a homosexual friend, and while your father doesn’t care for it, I like Pete. But that doesn’t mean I condone his behavior … or Chelsea’s.”
I wanted to argue more, but in my experience, you can’t change someone overnight, and I didn’t want to get Billy into trouble with his family. They had enough going on already, without a volatile religious argument added to the mix.
I enter Jack’s office, close the door, and sit at his desk.
“All right, shoot,” I say, remembering how Jack was talking in the car yesterday. I’m not sure exactly what Waylon called to say, but I figure it must be something worthwhile if he’s doing it this early.
“Well, I looked into this teacher a bit. And as long as Chelsea consented to sex after she was eighteen there’s nothing we can do, legally.”
“Really?” I say, surprised.
“Yeah, some politician in California tried to get a bill made into law to prohibit teacher-student relationships, arguing that a teacher could groom a student before they’re of age, but it went nowhere, and that’s further than it’s gone here.”
“Wow,” I say, not knowing what to add. I’m not sure what Jack would say in this situation, and don’t want to light any unintended fireworks.
Waylon clears his throat. “While we can’t do anything legally, we can make this bitch’s life a nightmare. She’s going to lose her job the minute this is reported, might never be able to teach again, maybe lose her benefits. But we can go further. I say we call the police and tell them you suspect the relationship may have started sooner.”
“But Chelsea’s diary said it wasn’t until she was eighteen.”
“Yeah, but it’s at least possible that she lied, right? Maybe to protect this teacher she’s in love with. Who’s to say that this woman didn’t see Chelsea a year ago and start grooming her then, maybe convinced her to take an art class? We don’t know the truth, right, so it could be anything is all I’m saying.”
“I suppose.”
“Good. Now for this video nastiness, I’ve got my guy on it — an ex-detective, half bulldog named Mike Arrinson. He’s gonna chase down some of these porn sites and say the video with Chelsea is blackmail porn, which is illegal in some states. Then he can add that it’s possible that Chelsea was underage when she did that video, which should scare most of the legit sites from serving it.”
“Legit sites?”
“Well, yeah, you can’t get it down from everywhere. Th
ere are always some pervs who will be sharing it on less-than-reputable sites. Maybe they’ll even upload it to image boards, who knows? I’m sorry to say there’s no way to get the genie back in the bottle. Chelsea’s video is out there. Assuming she comes out of this coma, this is going to haunt her forever.”
I sigh. I want to make the person who did this pay.
“Can we find out who blackmailed her?”
“I can have Mike dig around. It’s gonna be tough because if we’re dealing with minors, we’re limited in what we can do, legally.”
The way he keeps saying legally makes me wonder if he’s opening the door for Jack to suggest less-than-legal methods.
I don’t bite.
“And these kids at your school have rich, connected parents, making shit that much more difficult. Fortunately, I have a few connections at the police department, and I might be able to figure something out.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Now, one last thing, Jack. And this isn’t me as your agent, so much as me as your friend. Are you sure you want to go forward with this story?”
“You mean go to the police?”
“Yeah.”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“Well, for one, we’ve got the suicide note that you didn’t mention to them. Right now, this is a case of accidental overdose, not a suicide attempt. Different story in the public eye.”
Jack’s memories tell me that keeping the note secret was at Waylon’s strongly advised suggestion. “You’re the one who told me not to give them the note.”
“And I stand by that decision. We can easily say that the note was in the diary. You’ll just need to get your family on board if that’s the story we’re going with. But we’ve also got to consider the elephant in the room.”
“What elephant?”
“That TV series you’re starting next month. This is Big Time, Jack. The network gets a hint of your daughter being a lesbian, or this sex tape, or the affair with the teacher, you can kiss this deal goodbye.”
