Rules for Being a Girl

“The weekend I told you I was with Kyra.”

“Oh my god, I knew there was no way you were voluntarily spending a weekend with her!” For a moment I’m weirdly, horribly vindicated—that I knew her that well, at least, that I wasn’t totally fooled—and then I realize how messed up that is. “What did you tell your parents?” I ask.

“School trip,” she says miserably. “I made a fake permission slip and everything.”

“Weren’t you worried I’d say something to them about it when I was at work?”

“Are you kidding me?” Chloe exhales sharply. “I was terrified. It was all I could think about all weekend, only I didn’t want to tell him that, because I didn’t want to remind him—”

“That you’re seventeen?”

“All right!” Chloe explodes, shocking us both into silence for a moment. When she speaks again her voice is barely more than a whisper. “After you went to his apartment . . . he told me he’d just tried to be nice to you.” Her nail polish is mostly gone by now, pale pink dust scattered across her lap. “Like, that it was this totally harmless thing, and you’d gotten the wrong idea, or whatever. But then he broke up with me.”

“And that’s why you were so pissed?”

Chloe nods. “He said it was too dangerous now, and I blamed you,” she admits. “I’m sorry, I know it’s like I’ve never seen a movie or watched a TV show or read a book in my entire life, but I just . . . I did. I thought this was different, and I blamed you. I felt like you took him away from me.”

“I get it,” I say. “I mean, it sucks, but I do.”

“And I hate telling you this, but then after a while, we started back up again, but it wasn’t the same. He wasn’t the same, and there was, like, this part of me that knew he was going to do something to you. I just . . . I should have been there for you,” she says, voice breaking. “You’re my best friend, and I was—you had to do all this stuff by yourself.”

I shake my head, trying to push away the picture of everything she’s telling me now. “I wasn’t by myself,” I promise her, thinking of my parents and the book club and Ms. Klein. Thinking, with a pang behind my rib cage, of Gray. “But I really did miss you.”

“Yeah,” Chloe says, wiping her face with a heel of her hand. “Me too.”

We swing for a while, neither one of us saying anything. I look out at the late-winter street. Jayden next door is pushing a plastic shopping cart up and down the front path, determined; Mrs. Lancaster is salting her sidewalk three ho

uses down.

“Do you think I should report him?” Chloe asks finally. “To Mr. DioGuardi, I mean?”

I shrug. “I don’t know,” I tell her. “You have to do what feels good to you, I guess. Or, like, not even good, necessarily—just, least bad. I mean, I thought reporting was the right thing in the moment, and maybe I still do. But honestly, I don’t know if it was worth it, you know? Half the school still thinks I made it up.”

I tell her about the process with DioGuardi and the school board and how that didn’t work. How, no offense, but they’d probably make it into Chloe’s fault. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. It’s not my place at all. I just . . . I don’t know. I wish I could say it would work.”

Chloe thinks about that for a moment, brushing the nail polish crumbs carefully off her jeans. Then all at once her head pops up.

“You know what?” she asks, turning to me with something like a smile passing across her expression. “I think I’ve got a better idea.”

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS: THE WHOLE TRUTH

BY MARIN LOSPATO AND CHLOE NIARCHOS

Dear Fellow Students, Faculty, and Administration of Bridgewater Preparatory,

Over the past several weeks, many of you may have heard rumors regarding allegations against a much-beloved teacher here at Bridgewater. As a community, it’s safe to say we have struggled to separate information from innuendo and reconcile our own personal experiences with others’ lived realities. It is never easy to come to terms with the idea that someone we admire—even adore, even perhaps love—may not be worthy of our continued esteem.

However: as the coeditors of the Beacon and young journalists ourselves, we are committed to the integrity of this newspaper and to using its power to speak truth. We believe in the power of the press to bring about positive change in the communities it serves, and it is in this spirit of truth telling that we write to you today.

The allegations against this teacher—that he has had inappropriate emotional and physical relationships with his students; that he has invited students into his home under academic pretexts and made advances of a sexual nature; that he has retaliated against students who have spoken up about his behavior—are true. We report this information with confidence in our sources, because our sources are each other. Both of us have experienced this teacher’s behavior firsthand.

We trusted him. We looked up to him. We found him charming and charismatic. And he took advantage of us. We were not special. We were not, as he told us, “old souls.” We were simply his students.

When one of us came forward with these allegations, Bridgewater Preparatory’s official position was that the administration did not have enough credible information to pursue further disciplinary action against this teacher. When the other of us admitted her strikingly similar situation, we could not help but question if she would be met with the same response. Would she, too, be asked if she was simply “confused” by the situation? Would she suffer the same rumors? Would she, too, be accused of looking for attention?

We write this letter today to shine a light on a dark place at Bridgewater, and also in the hope that any other student who has had a similar encounter—be it with this particular teacher, another authority figure, or someone else at this school—will feel safe and supported should they choose to come forward.

We believe you.