Dee raises her eyebrows, and I follow her gaze. Breanne, with her arm around Paige, walking toward the exit.
She passes our table and leans in. “You are such a loser, Stevie. Just because you have no friends doesn’t mean you have to take it out on everyone else.”
Dee laughs loudly and puts her hands in the air in mock surrender. “Okay, sheriff, take it easy. Don’t you guys have some books to burn or something?” I laugh, and so do a few other kids around us. Someone yells at the girls to get out, and a French fry comes flying at them from somewhere. Paige bursts into a sob. I almost go after her but swallow it down.
Dee stands up. She opens her arms. “Justice!”
I look across the room and see Lottie. She shakes her head.
* * *
The next day in homeroom, Pete addresses what he calls “the recent stream of immature and potentially dangerous acts of mischief.”
Dee scoffs and rolls her eyes, smiling at me. Urging me.
I raise my hand. “But couldn’t you argue that they are just responding to the school administration’s failure to act on the real issues of bullying that take place in our school community?”
Everyone is silent, watching me. It feels great.
Pete raises his eyebrows and sighs. “Okay. I get it. Sure, stuff happens in a high school that goes under the radar of the teachers and administrators. And I’m all for activism. But vandalizing, causing real harm, and bullying in retaliation is not the solution. The solution is to talk to someone. Come to us. Tell us your concerns. Let us handle it.”
Right. The teachers could never know or get a handle on the wide range of crap happening here every day, happening online, outside these walls, inside our homes, everywhere, everywhere. And everyone else seems to feel the same way, because they are all looking anywhere but at Pete. They are looking at me. No one will tell. They can’t prove anything, they don’t want to snitch, they’re not 100 percent sure; they just want to mind their own business, they don’t want to be next. All the reasons to say nothing. To look away.
“Okay? Okay. Moving on.”
* * *
I deflate when I leave school. It used to be the opposite, but now I get my energy from the action, the attention. It’s like a literal charge into my body, whereas being home gives me nothing. I want to keep the feeling going, the rush of the eyes on me, the feeling of people by my side. Because when it’s gone, I am completely alone.
I push open the door and smell something cooking.
Mom calls from the kitchen, “Hi, honey!”
I slump in, throwing my bag on a chair. “What are you doing?”
“Making spaghetti and meatballs for us! I thought you and me could hang out together tonight.”
I look around. “Where’s Reg?”
“Oh, he’s out with his buddies tonight, so it’s just us girls!”
I walk over to the stove, where she’s standing, her hair sweaty against her forehead, and stick my finger in the sauce, then taste it.
Mom puts her hand around my waist and smiles at me. “What do you want to watch?”
I smile in spite of myself because I can’t help it. She is flighty and sweet and innocent, and she just wants to be loved, and I miss her.
* * *
Totally stuffed but still sharing popcorn, we stretch out on the couch to watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for the 100th time. It’s still light out, so we’ve pulled the curtains shut and are hunkered in together. It is so good. Just like old times. But then, just as Ferris is serenading the city of New York, Reg walks in.
“You started without me?” He laughs, and Mom jumps up and hugs him.
“I thought you were going out with the guys?” she gushes.
“Couldn’t stay away, could I?” he says, her hero, and the next thing I know he’s telling me to scooch to make room on the couch for him.
I get up. “Never mind. You two go ahead.”
Mom tsks and protests. “Stevie, come on, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do this, Mom? Seriously? I don’t know why I ever believed you. You never have time for me anymore. Only your boyfriend.”
“What? No, honey! I thought he was— Hon, we can all watch a movie together, for God sakes.”
“Stevie,” Reg says, “don’t be mad at your mom. It’s my fault.” He shares a look with Mom like eek, sorry! but she dismisses it with a slight shake of her head. “I’ll just go, girls, seriously.”
“No! No, Reg. She’s fine. She’s just acting spoiled,” Mom says, and that is it.
I walk right out of the family room, pulling a stupid print of a girl on a swing off the wall as I go. It crashes to the carpet, and I hear the glass break.
“What the—? Stevie!” Mom yells.
I slam the front door behind me.
There are bees in my ears, and they are buzzing around, and I’m afraid they’re going to take over my brain. I am out of the house and walking down the street now, feeling like I’m dreaming. My face is wet, and I realize I’m crying. When I snap out of it, I see that I have walked to school, through the smokers’ alley, which is covered in graffiti, and am standing outside the football field, hanging on to the chain-link fence, the metal making red grooves in my skin. The only thing that calms me down is planning. The only thing that makes me feel a pulse is action. Everything that we’ve been doing here, in this gladiator stadium of learning, is making me feel alive, seen, when everything else makes me disappear.
19
Antar still isn’t really talking to me, but even if he is mad, other people have been inspired. Suddenly lots of others are in on the revenge action. It has caught on, the vengeance bug. There are more people, more acts of—as the administration calls them—“mischief,” over the next two weeks. It’s surprising and unsettling and I’m not even sure what to make of it, because we didn’t plan this, me and Dee, and don’t even know who’s doing what now. Things are happening outside our control and the LOVE, HEATHER stunts have taken on a life of their own. Random acts of retribution by people we don’t know. I’m watching; things at Woepine High have taken a turn. The stakes have been raised. It’s a movement. It’s a revolution. It’s verging on chaos.
A senior, who is a known MRA misogynist, has eyes—real eyes, like from a cow or something—left in his bag, with WOMEN ARE WATCHING YOU. LOVE, HEATHER written in red on a note inside. One of his friends pulls it out and reads it out loud while he keeps screaming, “What the fuck? What the fuck?” over and over and shaking his hands. It’s a real Godfather horse-head-in-the-bed moment.
“Where’d they get the eyes?” I ask Dee on the way to class, and she shakes her head in gleeful disbelief while the boy’s screams echo down the hallway.
The photo of a handsy Biology teacher’s children is removed from his desk, returned later with the addition of paper speech bubbles that say, I AM WATCHING YOU, DADDY and DON’T BE A PERV. LOVE, HEATHER.
A bunch of homophobic guys on the basketball team have their lockers painted pink and NO HOMOPHOBES written across them. LOVE, HEATHER.
The captain of the soccer team, who made the position, people say, because her dad is the coach, is blatantly tripped in a crowd and twists her knee, incapacitating her, Tonya Harding style. No one saw who did it. No one fesses up. I don’t even know why anyone would do that. But someone wrote on her locker, too, just a sloppy, red heart and SUCK IT, CUNT. No artistry at all.
A guy who keeps a “slay list” of girls he’s slept with is found to have shoplifted from the store where he works in the mall. A T-shirt in his backpack sets off the alarm, and he’s fired.
The student council freshman rep, a tall and skinny kid who everyone seems to think is a “totally nice guy,” is swarmed and beaten up in smokers’ alley, but later won’t snitch on his attackers. He was spray-painted red and staggered, crying, into the front foyer of the school, looking terrified with snot and spit and tears running down his face. I am shocked by this. There is no way he deserved that, I think, but t
hen realize that I don’t know who is doing what, who has what coming, or why.
Up and up and up. More and more and more. All grades, not just freshmen; all the people, not just those I know. Like everyone gave permission, got permission, to take what they want, give shit to the rest, to knock people down. Maybe we are behind some of these, but maybe not, not all of them, anyway. At this point, it’s so hard for anyone to tell. Dee never admits to anything, and neither do I. No one does.
At lunch, Antar and Marta, and even Ava sometimes, have started sitting a little further away from us, but the table where we sit is full of other kids. We are not alone, even if our friends are spreading out, away. People talk excitedly about all the pranks, and about whether they were warranted or not. Sometimes people fantasize about getting even with those who tormented them and others over the course of their lives.
People scrawl calls for vengeance and condemnations in red lipstick in bathrooms. There are sloppy notes left behind on chalkboards:
Rob is an asshole, someone Heather him.
Heather can suck my dick.
Heather help me
Suddenly LOVEHEATHER Instagram and Snapchat accounts have cropped up. People talk about HEATHER on the student-only Facebook group, everyone tirelessly ranting about how the pranks are great or they suck or WHAT THE HELL IS ALL THIS or FUCK OFF or LOSERS or HEATHER CLAPS BACK or WE ARE ALL HEATHER. It is more than one thing; it’s so many things. Dee wanted to turn the tables on the power dynamic at the school, and at first, I thought this was working, but I don’t know what to think anymore. We have no control over any of it. Who are the bullies, and who is bullied; who is right, what is true.
People steal and humiliate and scream for justice. There is a paranoid whisper gaining volume in the halls and online. It gathers strength, becoming a furious wind of retribution. It howls through the corridors and bangs all the lockers shut. People are called hypocrites and snowflakes and bullies and social justice warriors. No one is safe. No one knows what it is, or how it started, or what it means. If it’s the victims fighting back or a new many-headed bully-monster.
Letters go home to parents, and posts show up on the school’s social media accounts.
WOEPINE HIGH SCHOOL HAS A ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICY FOR BULLYING OF ANY KIND. ANY STUDENT FOUND TO BE PERPETRATING ACTS OF VIOLENCE OR HARASSMENT TO THE STUDENT BODY OR STAFF WILL BE DEALT WITH IMMEDIATELY.
Zero tolerance for bullying. Where were they when I was afraid to go to school?
My mom asks me about it while we’re getting groceries. She is looking at her phone in the middle of the pasta aisle, her cart blocking the way for anyone else.
“What is all this stuff about bullying at the school? Do you know anyone doing that?”
I examine the back of a box of macaroni and throw it in the cart, shifting it so an old lady can get by. “Not really. The school is just being paranoid. They’re probably afraid of getting sued or something.”
“Well, I hope everyone is okay,” she says, doubtfully, “No one is bothering you, are they?” She puts a hand on my back and rubs it in quick little circles.
“I’m good, Mom,” I say, giving her a small smile.
“I know you are, honey,” she says. “You’ve never been a troublemaker. Just make sure that you stand up for yourself, right?” She puts on a tough face and clenches her fist, then laughs, “Or you just call on your old mom.”
“Haha. Okay, tough guy.”
She lifts one of my hands as I put some sauce in the cart and says, “I like your new nail polish, by the way.”
I look at my nails: a bright fire-engine red.
“Thanks.”
* * *
Pete talks to our class again, about how this is getting out of control.
“This might seem like harmless fun to some of you,” he says gravely while Dee and I exchange looks, “but people are getting hurt. Physically and emotionally. I will not name names, but this should be a safe space for every single student. I do not take this lightly.”
“There’s blood in the water,” Dee says to me, quietly.
The thing is, though, even though it’s unsettling, it’s so great to see people rise up. Pete doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know what it’s like down here in the trenches. It’s different than when he was young, and even when Lottie and I were young. I don’t think he really could possibly understand. People need to play dirty sometimes, and yes, maybe it’s a little out of control, but I kind of love that.
Pete asks me to stay after class.
I saunter up to his desk, which still has a sign on it that says MRS. SHERMAN. I jut my chin out and try to effect some attitude, but this is a person who cleaned up my Brownie tights when I peed in them in kindergarten, so it’s a little hard to pull off.
“How long are you going to keep that name tag?” I ask, pointing to it.
“I’ll ask the questions, thanks.” Pete sighs, gesturing for me to sit down on the chair in front of the desk, the one reserved for kids in shit. I sit and lean way back, lifting up the front legs of the chair. He raises his eyebrows.
“What’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you behind any of these, I dunno, pranks?” He leans forward, folding his hands. I notice that his face has broken out in a rash of tiny pimples, and I remember what he said about how transitioning would be kind of like going through puberty again. I briefly wonder how he’s doing with it, then push that out of my mind.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t.”
“Nope.” I let the chair fall forward with a bang.
“I revert to my original question: what is going on with you? You seem kind of out of control lately. Things okay at home?”
I don’t know why grown-ups always ask this. They think it’s the kind of question we have to answer, the secret key that is going to get kids to open up. Man! If someone would just ask me if things were okay at home! I mean, for Pete standards, this is pretty weak.
“Sure, things are okay. Things okay at your home?” I pick up one of his pens and start to fiddle with it, spinning it over my knuckles in a way Dee taught me.
“Watch yourself, kiddo. We have a relationship outside of school, but part of the condition of my being your homeroom teacher, as you know, is that you don’t cross the line.”
He’s referring to the fact that I begged for Pete to be my teacher and agreed to any conditions, not that my mom cared either way—namely that I would not be overly familiar or informal with Pete, and that I would accept his authority as my teacher. And until now, I always abided by these. But things are different now. Everything is different. But something bubbles up inside me and it comes out like a mumbled apology. I’m looking in my lap and noticing there is a long pen smudge on my jeans.
“Stevie, look at me.”
I do. He looks tired. There are bags under his eyes, and he needs a haircut.
“I don’t want you lashing out or getting into trouble for attention. Are the other kids bothering you? If there is anything wrong, I want you to know that I’m always here, okay?”
“Yeah, except you’re not.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” I grumble.
“No, what do you mean?”
“Fine. You act like you’re all clued in, like you know what’s going on with young people, but you are so out of touch, you have no idea. I mean, do you even know me? Do you even know Lottie?”
“I like to think I do, yes, although sure, I’ll grant you that sometimes teenagers are a bit of a mystery to everyone.”
“Well, she’s totally different. I’m totally different. And you never even noticed.”
“That is not true, Stevie.” He puts his hand on my arm briefly. “Hey,” he says gently, “you don’t need to be tough, okay?”
I feel my lip quivering. No. I will not let him get in my head only to give me some pat on the head and then leave me to the wolves. I nee
d to shut him out and be strong on my own. I look out the window, lift my eyes to the blue sky so the tears won’t gather in my eyes.
“I wanted to talk to you because you seem different. I’m concerned about you.”
I say nothing, but return his gaze with a hard stare. He sighs, seeing that I’m not giving him an inch.
“Try and stay out of trouble. It’s not worth it. I don’t want to have to call your mom in here,” he says.
I scoff.
“She loves you. And so do I.”
I nod and look away again. Pete stands and comes around the table, and I stand up, too. And in a moment of total weakness or forgetting, I hug him. His body tenses in surprise, there is a pause, and then he gives me a quick squeeze. I almost lose it, in that moment. I feel eleven again, like I’m going to dissolve right into his arms, which are like the best sweater, the comfiest couch, like the home I wish was mine. Pull it together, Stevie. I wipe my eyes and pull away, and as I do, I see that Breanne is just outside the room, watching us. I sniff, mutter a thanks, and leave without saying another word.
I pretend not to see Breanne as I move through the doorway but feel her eyes on me. She follows me down the hallway, then grabs my arm. I spin around like I might punch her out. She sees it in my face and steps back.
“What?” I demand.
She quickly regains herself. “Wow, that was kinky. I mean, I knew you were a slut, but I didn’t know how far you’d go to get good grades.” She smirks.
“Shut up,” I say, turning around again.
“Does Lottie know you are having after-school cuddles with her mom?”
Before I know it, I am back, inches from her face.
“Do not make me hurt you, Breanne,” I hiss, surprising both of us. Her eyes widen and her mouth clamps shut. My chest is heaving. There’s a beat, a moment between us, when neither folds, but then she looks away and mumbles “Whatever” and walks away, her hair swinging at her back. I watch her go and head for the doors, my eyes squinting in the sun.
Love, Heather Page 14
