The Drowning Girls

by Paula Treick DeBoard

  And she was beautiful the night of the dance, too, her hair sprayed in a dramatic faux-hawk, gold earrings dangling from her lobes. She looked as if she’d stepped off an album cover.

  Phil whistled when she came down the stairs, heels dangling from one hand.

  “Gross.” Danielle mock-swatted him. “Stepdads aren’t supposed to whistle.”

  “Maybe I should come along with you,” Phil said. “Ward off attack, keep young men from dancing with you, that sort of thing.”

  “Creepy, but no thanks.” She turned to me.

  “Gorgeous,” I pronounced.

  She grinned. “Really?”

  I gave her an air kiss, careful not to smear her makeup. She would be picked up in the limo by seven, have dinner with her friends and be at the Miles Landers multipurpose room by no later than nine thirty, when the doors closed. I reminded her, “No alcohol, no drugs, call me if anything makes you feel uncomfortable and I’ll come pick you up.”

  Danielle sighed. “Right, I know.”

  “Or call me,” Phil said, puffing out his chest, Tarzan-style. “I’ll beat them away with my club.”

  * * *

  As chaperones, Aaron and I were stationed at different doors, giant orange plugs protruding from our ears like the knobs on Frankenstein’s monster. Even with the earplugs, the music thumped and my teeth vibrated. It was my favorite dance to chaperone—if favorite was the right word for a compulsory situation—because the students had put so much effort into their hair and clothes that they generally stayed out of too much trouble.

  The multipurpose room was essentially the school’s cafeteria by day, the site of board meetings and choir concerts and fund-raisers by night. For the dance, the walls had been papered in black, and thousands of white Christmas lights glittered from the ceiling and floor, illuminating the perimeters of the space. The only other lights came flashing from the stage, where the DJ stood behind a massive set. In the pulse of these lights, hundreds of students were exposed in staccato flashes of dresses and tuxedos and corsages and boutonnieres, their arms over their heads, bodies close together.

  There was a photo booth behind the curtain on the stage, and at first the line was long, populated by groups of girls and couples holding hands. In the crush of students I noticed the clock—nine, then nine fifteen, nine twenty. The cafeteria was filling up, a large cluster of students dancing in the middle of the floor, couples scattered here and there. On the chairs around the perimeter, girls were perched on their dates’ laps. I left my post at the door and wandered around the room, looking for a sign of Danielle. At one point, in flashes of the strobe light, I saw Kelsey. The lighting gave her an almost magical quality, her pulsing, jerky movements accompanied by the swinging of her blond hair.

  I met up with Aaron at his post. He shouted something that sounded like Kill me now.

  “Have you seen Danielle?” I shouted back.

  He shook his head.

  I wandered toward the main entrance, pulling my cell phone from my pocket. There were five missed calls, all in the past half hour, all from Danielle’s number. With the noise, I hadn’t heard it ring. She’d left me one voice mail, but I had no hope of hearing it inside the building. I pushed through the double doors of the lobby, trying to get away from the music. “I’ll be right back,” I told the staff members minding the cash box.

  I had to take about twenty steps away from the building before I could hear anything other than the relentless, booming bass. My heart racing, I popped the foam earplug out of one ear and listened to the message. Danielle was sobbing so hard, I had to play it twice to understand. Mom...you have to take me home. Something horrible has happened. I’m in the bathroom.

  I raced back inside, brushing past Sharon Hegarty, the home ec teacher.

  “Liz?” she called after me, but I couldn’t stop to explain myself. I was thinking of a million horrible scenarios at once. Danielle never asked me to bail her out of situations. I’d never picked her up from a sleepover or summer camp. Once, in elementary school, she’d scraped her knee on the playground, ripping her jeans and requiring her to change into a pair of too-big shorts from the school’s clothes bin. But still—she hadn’t called for me. When I’d picked her up at the end of the day, she’d simply handed me the ruined jeans in a plastic bag.

  Maybe she was sick now. Appendicitis, food poisoning, cramps, any one of a hundred things that could go wrong with a person’s body. Or she was hurt. Someone had hurt her. One of the boys from the limo ride, from dinner.

  I had to fight my way through a group of girls clustered around the bathroom door. A few of them gave me uncertain, wavering smiles and quickly scattered. In their sparkling dresses and painful heels, I barely recognized them. I pushed open the door, stepping over coats and bags stacked on the floor. Six stalls gaped, empty, but the last one was locked.

  “Danielle?” I asked softly. “It’s me.”

  She threw the latch and peered at me from behind the stall door as if I were a stranger on her doorstep. She’d been crying; mascara ringed her eyes, and her cheeks were streaked with the remains of her glittery eye shadow.

  “Oh, honey.” I pulled a few yards of toilet paper from the dispenser, wetted them in the sink and returned, locking the stall door behind me. As I dabbed at her makeup stains, I felt her body shaking, shoulders rising and falling in silent, thrashing heaves.

  “Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

  “It’s—it’s too—horrible.”

  I pulled out another stream of toilet paper and held it to Danielle’s nose. She blew obediently, and I tossed the soggy mess into the open toilet.

  “Whatever it is, you can tell me, Danielle. You know you can.” I drew her close, but at the same time I allowed my glance to rove over the rest of her body. Her hair was slightly flatter than it had been when she’d left the house, but it wasn’t mussed. Her dress was the same—not ripped or wrinkled. She had kicked off her shoes and was standing barefoot on a bathroom floor that had seen cleaner days.

  I pulled back to look her in the face. “Dani—tell me.”

  “They’re saying that I—”

  The outside door opened then, music that had been a dull throb in the background becoming, briefly, a full roar. Danielle shrank back against the wall, bumping her shin against the toilet. More girls had entered. Through a gap where the door locked, I saw them huddle in front of the dingy mirrors and I stepped back to tuck my feet out of view.

  “Are you kidding me? It has, like, four hundred favorites already.”

  “Oh, my God. Let me see.”

  “I would so die if this were me.”

  Danielle closed her eyes and leaned against the stall wall, tears streaking down her cheeks.

  “I know she’s only a freshman, but doesn’t she know that—”

  “Please. Some bitches are just stupid.”

  I grabbed Danielle’s hand and felt her grip in return, sweaty and desperate, as if she would fall if I let go.

  “What happened to her, anyway?”

  “I wouldn’t show my face if that were me.”

  There was some laughter, then the sound of water running in the sink, a towel being ripped off the automatic dispenser, and we were alone.

  I looked at Danielle’s tear-streaked face and said, “Let’s go home.”

  “I thought you had to stay,” she sobbed.

  I shook my head. “This is an emergency. They’ll understand.”

  She yanked my arm, frantic. “I can’t go out there!”

  “Well, we’re not going to wait in here for two more hours.” I looked around. “You don’t have a coat?”

  “No.”

  I unlocked the stall door and grabbed a black peacoat from the pile near the doorway.

  She looked at me. “I can’t just steal someone’s
coat.”

  “I’ll bring it back to school next week and put it in the Lost and Found. Come on.” I helped her into the sleeves, pulling the collar high around her face. I went first, peering out the door. After the fluorescent brightness of the bathroom, I blinked, my eyes adjusting. The area around the exit was clear because the dance floor was crowded, writhing with bodies. It took me a moment to place the song as “Billie Jean.” Really? Michael Jackson in 2014?

  I jerked my head, and Danielle slipped her shoes on, one hand against the bathroom wall for balance.

  She kept her head down as we went through the lobby. I mimed an apology at Sharon Hegarty and we headed into the cool night. On the sidewalk, Danielle stopped to take off her heels as we rounded the corner in the direction of the staff parking lot.

  “Dani—”

  “Let’s just go,” she moaned. In the passenger seat, she bent double, head in her hands.

  “Hold on a second.” I dug my phone out of my jeans and sent Aaron a text. Emergency. Had to leave. Tell the others for me? I shoved my phone back into my pocket, not waiting for a reply.

  Danielle bent forward, head in her hands, until we were on the freeway, cars zooming past us in the left lanes. Finally, I asked, “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  She didn’t look at me. “I don’t even know how to say it.”

  “So just say it, then.”

  She took a deep breath, and her voice came out as a whisper, almost lost in the exhalation of the heating vents. “Someone started a rumor that I’m gay.”

  “Oh.” I steadied myself, aware of my own breath, my hands on the wheel. The thing to do...the thing to do was to be supportive and encouraging, to be a listening ear. I’d been witness to a few of these conversations in my office over the years, and I knew how badly they could go wrong. “I’m glad we’re talking about this, Danielle. It’s absolutely okay if—”

  “Mom!” Danielle shook her head. “Hello? I’m not gay. It’s a stupid rumor started by stupid small-minded...” Her voice trailed off. I watched as she pinched her eyes shut, catching the tears with her index fingers.

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning? What happened after you left the house?” The words were out of my mouth before I realized they were coming, as if by rote. I’d questioned students this way before—reluctant girls who wanted to talk but didn’t know how.

  “Well, we went to dinner. It was that Italian place in Pleasanton, the one with the striped awning and the big statue out front.”

  “And what happened then?”

  Danielle shook her head, her gold earrings flashing. “That’s what I don’t get. Everything was fine. We were just laughing and eating and I went to the bathroom, and when I came back they were all talking about me. And one of the guys, Josh—the one who’s a senior?—said he didn’t know I was a dyke.”

  “Do you know why he said that?”

  She was less hurt now, more angry. “Yeah, one of the girls showed me something that had been posted on that stupid Twitter account. You know, that gossip account?”

  I nodded, heart sinking. I knew it all too well, and so I knew what Danielle was up against, gay or not—the nasty rumors, the slurs and innuendos. That was what the girls in the bathroom had been talking about; the favorites and comments and shares meant it was already all over the internet. I tried to keep my voice even. “What did it say?”

  “That’s the stupid thing. It was that picture you took of me, in the dressing room, remember? I posted it on my Instagram, and someone made a meme out of it.”

  “That picture was completely innocent,” I said. “How in the world—”

  “Because that other girl was in there, trying on her dress. It looks like I’m checking her out. So someone wrote this nasty comment—” She wiped her eyes again.

  I swallowed. This was the great trick that social media had played on us. Take any image, pair it with any language, and the two were linked. Taken out of context, everything was titillating, ridiculous, revisionist history.

  “The worst part was Kelsey,” Danielle continued, and I froze, my arms stiff against the wheel. “I know I’m not gay, so—whatever. But she was just laughing, like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She said that must be why I invited her to spend the night, so I could sleep in the same bed as her. She said that she was flattered, but we weren’t playing for the same team.” Danielle stared out the window. We were nearing the end of the access road, the last turn where the road widened and split. I slowed down, sensing there was more to the story.

  “And then, the guys wanted us to kiss. They kept, like, saying it. I tried to just laugh about it, but it was awful. And Kelsey said she was up for it, just once, but I wouldn’t do it. I don’t know. It just wasn’t funny anymore.” She cupped her face with her hands.

  At the entrance to The Palms, the gates rolled back, slowly. I had a mad urge not to wait for them to finish, but to take out the gates and the post with the front of my car, to drive and not care who or what got smashed in my path. Instead, I rolled slowly down the street, pulled into our driveway and shut off the engine. Neither of us moved.

  Finally, I said, “I’m so sorry, honey. She’s not a good friend, to treat you like that.”

  “I know. You were right.” Danielle got out of the car, picking her way across the slate landscaping path in her bare feet.

  A moment later, still seething, I followed her.

  * * *

  Phil met us in the entryway, looking at his watch. “I thought you were...” He stopped, seeing Danielle’s blotchy, tear-streaked face.

  I shook my head and his thought dangled, unfinished. Upstairs, Danielle’s door closed with a quiet click.

  “I need to use your laptop,” I said.

  “What? Why?”

  “I need to look something up, right now.”

  “And you can’t use your laptop?”

  I stared at him.

  “All right, fine,” he said, moving past me. His laptop was open on his makeshift desk, facing away. “Let me just—”

  When I came around the side of the folding table, he was closing out his open tabs. I watched as a screen with a scales-of-justice logo and a multipart name disappeared. Someone, someone and Fitch. What the hell was that? A law firm?

  He shifted out of my way and gestured to the keyboard with a flourish. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  My fingers unsteady, I navigated to Twitter, then to the MLHS Stories feed.

  Danielle’s picture was the most recent post on the page, with 537 favorites and more than a hundred retweets. It was the picture I’d taken in the dressing room, with Danielle in front of the mirror. Next to her was the other girl in the white dress, the fringe a blur. It was just an accident of timing, a trick of the camera, but it looked as if Danielle was checking out the girl’s backside. On top of the picture, in heavy white font, it read Watch your booty girls. The thought was finished beneath the picture: Babydyke is coming for you.

  Phil leaned in to get a better look. “What the hell is that? That’s supposed to be Danielle?”

  “That is Danielle.”

  “Oh, my God. Who posted that?” He reached in front of me, navigating on the mouse pad. He clicked on the replies—a stream of them, littered with dyke and queer and the ubiquitous lol. One read Hey, I went to science camp with that girl. No idea she was a lesbo. Another said I heard she put the moves on her best friend. Phil barely got his fingers out of the way before I slammed the laptop shut.

  I dug in my pocket for my cell phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Gopal—he’s the assistant principal. Maybe he can get the picture taken down. I know it’s too late—it’s everywhere by now. But at least it’s a start.” I left a message on Gopal’s voice mail, telling him to l
ook at MLHS Stories and call me back.

  Phil had opened his laptop again. “These comments are awful. Who did this?”

  “Who do you think?”

  He stared at me, his face a mask. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “It had to have been Kelsey. And if it wasn’t, then she didn’t do anything to make it better. Danielle said she was laughing along with everyone else.”

  “Why would she—”

  “I don’t know, Phil,” I said, my voice a sheet of ice. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  * * *

  Danielle’s room was completely dark, and she was facedown on her bed. “Go away,” she mumbled.

  I pushed the comforter to one side and lay down next to her.

  “Mom, come on. I just want to be alone.”

  “Me, too. Let’s just be alone together.”

  Danielle groaned. She was still wearing the black dress, bunched now around her thighs.

  “You want to change out of that? You’d feel more comfortable.”

  “Why, sure, Mom. That would make everything better.”

  We lay side by side in the dark. A phone buzzed, and I reached reflexively into my pocket, hoping it was Gopal.

  “It’s my phone,” Danielle said. She was holding it in her hand, facedown. “It’s Kelsey again.”

  “She’s texting you from the dance?”

  “Only a hundred times. You want to see? Here.” She passed me her phone. The screen was stacked with lines of green text bubbles, all from kelseybelle.

  Saturday 9:21 PM

  You think I had something to do with this? That’s crazy I was just playing along. Stupid joke but I’m sorry.

  Saturday 9:38 PM

  Come on I’ll tell them it was a stupid joke.

  Saturday 9:45 PM

  It’s just a joke, srsly. Let it go.