Good Girls Part 4

"Audrey?" My mother's voice warbles up the stairs.

It must be time for dinner-not that I want to eat any- thing, now or ever. My stomach has shut down, packed up, and left for a vacation. Bye-bye, stomach. It occurs to me that I could actually lose a few pounds by the time I'm ready to eat again, and then I can't believe I'm think- ing what I'm thinking. I must be sick. There's plenty of evidence. Once, when I was about eleven, my mom was asking me what kinds of words kids use in place of swearwords when teachers are around, because she had a kid in one of her books and wanted to have him swear without actually swearing. I told her we called people jerks, losers, and dorks. And I told her that sometimes we went all British, calling people prats and gits and say- ing "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l" with accents that made it sound like "bluddy hill." And then I told her about our very favorite non-swear swearword, one that we recently dis- covered and said all the time. "What is it?" she said.

"c.o.c.ksucker," I told her.

Her jaw dropped open almost to the table, and her eyes popped wide. "Audrey," she said. "That is most 46 definitely a swearword."

"It is?"

"Absolutely, definitely a swearword. You guys have to try and stop saying it, okay?"

By then I was blus.h.i.+ng so hard that my cheeks siz- zled. How could I have been so dumb to not know a swearword when I heard one?

"Do you know what it means?"

And I'd told her I did-and I did sort of-but I thought it was more like a kiss, and how bad could a kiss be?

I go downstairs, where things are more than bad.

They are worse. My mom is sitting at the table, which hasn't been set for dinner . There's no food on the stove, no pizza box by the sink, and nothing roasting in the oven. My dad stands at the kitchen counter, his jacket still on, as if he can't decide if he's coming or going. He pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and smooths it out on the counter. I don't need to see it, but I can't help but see. The picture, again. This time with a message: "Look at Your Little Angel Now."

47 A Beautiful Thing Dad does not know what to do with himself.

He takes off his jacket and holds it over one arm.

Then he switches it to the other arm. Then he throws it on the counter. He pulls it from the counter and hangs it over the back of a chair. As if there were a person inside, he pats the shoulders of the jacket. He doesn't look at me.

48 I am sitting at the kitchen table with my mom, count- ing the scratches in the wood. There are a lot of scratches. Most of the stuff we have is old or cheap or both. My parents love flea markets and antique stores.

Not too long ago, my mom thought about opening her own vintage clothing boutique, until my dad reminded her how much she hated the business end of business.

"Where did this come from?" my mom asks. Not me, my dad.

"Someone sent it to the store e-mail address," he says.

My mom turns to me. "Is this why you seemed so depressed before?"

I nod.

"What happened? Is someone playing a joke on you?

Did someone dress up like you?"

For a minute I think about saying, Yes! A joke! It's just a big joke! But I shake my head no.

My mom's fingers brush the edge of the paper on the table. "So this is you?"

My eyes on the floor, I nod yes.

"From Sat.u.r.day night?"

More mute nodding.

My dad's hands tighten around the shoulder of the jacket. "Did someone force you to-"

"No, Dad," I say. "n.o.body forced me."

"I don't understand," he says. "How could someone 49 take a picture? Did you let them?"

"No!" I say.

But my dad doesn't stop. "Is that what's going on at parties now?"

"John. . . ," my mom says. "Let her talk."

My dad s.n.a.t.c.hes up the picture. "Who is this?" he says, jabbing a finger at the naked chest floating above my hair .

"n.o.body you know," I say.

My dad's jaw quivers like I just smacked him.

"n.o.body?" he says.

I'm not crying. It's impossible that I'm not, but I'm not. I feel cold and hard, like marble. An Audrey-shaped statue sitting at the kitchen table. Stevie the marmalade catdog jumps in my statue lap and licks my statue fin- gers. I barely feel his teeth as he nibbles.

My mom's lips are moving, forming words and then biting them back. Finally she says, "Is this your boyfriend?"

I almost laugh, but my marble mouth just isn't that mobile. "Sort of," I say. "Not anymore. I broke up with him."

"Christ!" my dad says. He stares at me. "Tell me that you at least used protection."

"We didn't need protection," I said. "I mean, not for that. I don't think." I can't believe I'm saying it as I'm saying it. This is not embarra.s.sment. It's not humilia- 50 tion. It's something deeper and darker and more awful, like a giant black hole of spinning saw blades.

He looks like he has a bee caught in his throat. "You don't need . . ."

My mom gives him a warning look and he clamps his mouth shut. She says, "So you were . . . with your boyfriend, and someone took the picture. Do you know who did it?"

"No," I say. "I have no idea. Somebody must have snuck up on us."

My mom nods again as if she understands, but I can tell that she doesn't, that she's completely out of her ele- ment, that she's gearing up to call in the professionals.

They didn't do this in her day, maybe, or they didn't have the physical evidence. No digital cameras or picture phones. No e-mail or blogs or instant messages. No photographs to send to other people's dads. "Who else has seen this?"

"Everyone."

She winces. "Oh, honey."

My dad says, "What do you mean, everyone?" He's frowning so hard and so deeply that his dark eyebrows bunch up in folds over his nose.

"They've been sending it from phone to phone at school. All day today."

There's silence. I don't know how long. We can hear the clock tick. We can hear Stevie's tongue as he 51 patiently sands away my fingerprints.

Then my dad says, "I'll call the phone company."

"Why?"

"To find out who was sending the picture around."

"Can you do that?"

"I can try," he said. His mouth was a thin, tight seam. "I'm sure it's the boy."

"Who?" I said.

He points at the photo. "This one. He probably had some friend take the picture."

I sigh. "I don't think so. He couldn't have known."

"Known what?"

That I would unb.u.t.ton his s.h.i.+rt and spread it like a curtain. That I would slide his belt from his belt loops and fling it behind me.

But then, maybe he did know. Maybe he and every- one else could guess where it was all going and I was the only one who couldn't.

"Known what?" my dad says again. "He couldn't have known what?"

We used to play a lot of catch when I was little. I can still throw a baseball like a guy and my football pa.s.s has a decent, if wobbly, spiral. Good arm, good arm, my dad would tell me, grinning. Now my father is star- ing at me as if he has no idea who I am or where I came from.

"I don't know," I say. "Never mind." My dad whips 52 his jacket from the back of the chair and stalks out of the room.

"Audrey," my mom says. "He's just upset right now.

He'll get over it."

"Sure," I say. "Right."

It's clear my dad is not going to get over anything until he finds someone to sue. Or shoot. We spend Monday night in virtual silence while my dad does endless Google searches on laws regarding the transmission of photos over cell phones. My mom brings me hot tea and more hot tea and spends a lot of time trying to fig- ure out what, exactly, she should say to me. We try to watch a new cop show-my mom loves cop shows and she got me hooked-but the episode is about these boys who date-rape a girl at some exclusive Manhattan high school. Neither me or my mom can take it. We turn it off and go to bed early. I don't sleep.

Tuesday morning and still we're not over it, won't be over it for a long long time. My dad leaves before me so that he doesn't have to look at me. My mom, wearing her usual uniform of sweatpants and a sweats.h.i.+rt, sits at the kitchen table staring off into s.p.a.ce, a cup of coffee cooling in front of her. She looks like I feel. Dark circles, hair puffy and matted. The sun filtering through the cracks in the curtains highlights a web of wrinkles around her eyes.

53 "Did you sleep?" she asks me.

"Not really," I say.

"Me neither."

She stands, walks to the coffeepot, and pours another cup of coffee. She adds milk and lots of sugar, and hands it to me. I only drink coffee once in a while, but she knows I need it. I grab a yogurt, a napkin, and a spoon and we sit at the kitchen table. We've got two minutes before Ash comes to pick me up.

"I'm so sorry about what happened," she says.

"Me, too."

"I don't understand how someone could have been so cruel. To take that picture of you and send it around. I can't stand it. Who could be that mad at you?"

"It could be someone who doesn't even know me, Mom." I open the lid on the yogurt and take a spoonful.

It tastes like glue. "It could be a random person who just thinks it's funny."

"Funny?" my mom says. She turns her mug around and around in her hands. "I want to kill whoever did this."

"You mean you want to kill me."

Her head snaps up. "Of course not!"

"Dad does."

"Stop that," she says. "Your dad loves you."

"He still wants to kill me."

"This is hard for him. For any dad. He doesn't want 54 anyone to take advantage of you." She takes a deep breath. "s.e.x is a beautiful thing. If it's with the right per- son. Was this . . . have there . . . been others?"

I don't say anything. I get up, take the container of yo-glue, and go to toss it in the trash. I see that the pic- ture my dad printed at the store has been torn into little pieces and thrown in the garbage, right on top of the cranberry-orange-oatmeal m.u.f.fins.

"Audrey, I just want you to be careful," my mom says.

I don't say, Like you were? There's a honk from out- side. "That's Ash," I say. "I have to go."

At school, anyone who hadn't seen the picture has now seen it over and over again. I find a copy of it pasted on my locker. I grab it, crumple it to a ball, and throw it on the floor. I haven't said a word to Ash all the way to school, and she hasn't asked me to, but now I tell her about my parents.

She sucks her breath through her teeth so quickly that she whistles. "Scheisse," she says. "How did they find out?"

"Someone sent the picture to the store. My dad brought a copy home. They thought that it was someone playing a prank."

"How did they take it?"

"My dad's mad. At first he thought someone, um . . ."

55 I lower my voice. "Someone, you know, forced me or whatever, but I told them that no one forced me to do anything."

"You should have said someone forced you."

"Yeah, right. And have them call the police? I don't think so." I stuff my jacket into my locker . "My dad can't even look at me."

"What about your mom?"

"She's trying, but she doesn't know what to say. It took her till this morning just to say the word 's.e.x.'"