“Yeah, he was interested even then.” Now I’d gotten this far, I almost wanted to stop. Change the subject, pretend I’d brought it all up for some other reason.
But Mum was peering at me now, as if I’d given away something that troubled her. And given how sensitive she was to the whole issue, I probably had.
“Tamara, is there a problem with Callie and this boy?”
“I honestly don’t know for sure,” I said. “I was worried because it all happened so suddenly, without her really talking to me about it, and you know I’m not really part of their popular crowd. So I was just trying to keep an eye on her during breaks, and then this other guy from their group came up to me and pushed me up against a wall—”
Mum had gone all stiff and her eyes were wide, the way I saw her whenever we watched a man hitting a woman on TV.
“Tamara, he assaulted you. You need to report him to the police…” She shook her head at the posters on the back of my door. “They’ll put you through all sorts of torment and then give you nothing to show for it. Report him at school. They’ll have to address your concerns there. Suspend him, expel him. It depends on what’s appropriate for whatever he did to you.” She looked me right between the eyes. “I won’t ask you to go through the details with me. Unless you want to.”
Well I’d been scared by Steven, but I wouldn’t have called it ‘assault’. I didn’t get the feeling he’d been trying to hurt me. But I also knew better than to tell Mum that, or she was guaranteed to be all in on me saying I was letting myself get gaslighted or I wasn’t taking the situation seriously enough. And that was exactly what I was worrying about with Callie, so maybe Mum had the right idea on this.
“I just don’t want to overreact, you know?” I said. “I don’t want to make trouble for myself and anybody else involved if I don’t—”
Mum grabbed my shoulders so hard she was hurting me, but I just bit my lip a little and shifted my eyes around so she wouldn’t see it. “Tamara, you are not the one making trouble here. Never let yourself be tricked into thinking you’re the one at fault. This boy hurt you and it sounds like the whole group of them are abusers, based on what you’re telling me.”
I wasn’t sure how she could know that from the little I knew to tell her, but she was much more experienced with these things, it made sense she would see it from an angle I hadn’t.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk to the counsellor tomorrow. Should I go into the situation with Callie too, or…”
“I think you need to be careful what you say where Callie is concerned,” Mum said, which was a bit of a surprise to me. “Callie has to be willing to do something for herself in this sort of situation. Maybe if she sees you standing up for yourself, she’ll be able to do the same in her own way.”
I liked the idea that I might be able to help Callie through helping myself. “Okay, well that settles it for me.”
Mum glanced back towards the door. “I’m glad to help, and remember I am always here to listen to anything you need to tell me. Now, we should probably make sure Mike gets his dinner before he starts making noises.”
Ms. Miller sighed a little when she heard the name Steven Dillon. “Let’s hear it, then.”
It wasn’t an encouraging start, but I told her what I could about Callie’s situation, and then I gave as little detail as possible on how Steven had confronted me for watching their group. It was strange, because I had planned to be quite thorough, but then when I
thought back on it I wanted to keep the details a little closer to my chest. Ms. Miller looked so grim at what I did say I didn’t think I could have coped with facing her having admitted just how rough he’d been with me.
“You don’t need me to tell you we’re talking about something very serious here, Tamara,” she said. “The question is, how serious do you think it is? Serious to the point where you don’t think you can see him around again?”
The thought of seeing Steven again after what had happened made my heart pound so much I felt like I might be sick, but there was something about the way she was talking. It reminded me of this one time Mum had to drag me in to an after-school meeting with Ryan’s teacher, when he was being accused of being overly violent and disruptive. I’d tried to do as she asked and mind my own business out in the hall, but I couldn’t help hearing some of what Mum was saying. That overly controlled tone of voice, there’s a lot going on under the surface with Ryan. She hadn’t wanted to talk about our history to the teachers at our schools because she said that made things worse sometimes, but I thought Ryan’s teacher had probably figured it out that time, because she didn’t ask the usual questions about where Ryan’s father was, if there were problems.
So now I was wondering if maybe Steven had been hurt by his father, if there was some family background Ms. Miller knew about that she couldn’t tell me. Something that was making her hope I wouldn’t force her to land Steven in a whole lot of trouble.
Mum always used to say a history wasn’t an excuse, but then again she seemed to make an exception for Ryan, like most mothers would for their kid I guess. I wondered how she would feel if Ryan got in an altercation with some girl who didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt.
“I’m not exactly sure about my feelings to be honest,” I told her. “I’ve been trying to work that out. But I think not being sure isn’t enough of a reason to expel him or anything like that. Especially not when we’re all so close to graduating.”
“I’m glad to hear that, for both of your sakes,” said Ms. Miller. “But I’m going to encourage you to maintain a dialogue with me if the situation develops, and there are some things we can do just within the school. Is mediation something you would consider?”
Mediation sounded like the last thing I would want to do. I was certain I’d be setting myself up for a real world of pain if I pushed for it, far beyond the horror of needing to face Steven so closely.
“I don’t think that would help,” I said, and Ms. Miller nodded like she understood exactly what I meant. “I just felt like I needed to talk with someone about what had happened.” Egged on mostly by my mother. I didn’t blame her of course, she was just trying to help me the best way she knew how. But still, I sort of wished now that she hadn’t tried. That I hadn’t gone along with it.
“Well, for the moment,” Ms. Miller said, “if I can give you one piece of advice it would be to leave Callie and her new friends alone.” She raised a hand as my mouth opened. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but if your goal really is to help her, then you need to be willing to take some of your cues from her. And right now she seems to be telling you loud and clear she needs space, which will have the positive side effect of keeping you from antagonising Steven. So, how about trying it?”
I hated it. It felt like she was blaming me for some of what was happening, and that was so far from fair. But like I’d said before, we were graduating soon, and then none of this would matter: not Steven, and certainly not whoever Callie was dating if she wanted to suddenly throw away years of friendship for a guy who seemed a bit like bad news.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try it.”
If Callie did want to still be friends, she could come find me.
Chapter Three: Steven