Discipline

“You have to? Nina, you can disobey your mom for once in your life,” Kelsey said. “I mean, I’m no badass but I’d choose this moment to rebel ‘cause I’d much rather make a ton of cash every night while staring at hot Aussie bartenders instead of get my two hundred dollar paycheck taxed like crazy, and all for spending my days in a stuffy white room with a bunch of old people and a bunch of old oil paintings.” She pouted. “Please don’t leave Todos. Visiting you there is like, the highlight of my week. Why are you just letting your mom take away the fun from both our lives?”

I heaved a sigh. “Because I’m dropping the bombshell about Ben soon and it’s going to destroy her mood for at least the next few months. And then Jake and my dad will have to suffer through her tantrums all summer. So I’m just waiting for the right time to tell her. Probably sometime next week, when she comes down from the high of the graduation party.”

“Oh…” Kelsey squinted and puckered her lips. “So, pretending to be her good little daughter in the meantime?” she snorted. “Kidding. You are a good daughter. And a good cousin for putting up with me when you’re already stressed out. Which reminds me that I need to apologize for acting all PMS-y this whole weekend.”

I laughed. “Okay.”

“Basically my period’s coming but it’s being all late so I have all the symptoms but they won’t go away. And don’t make a joke that maybe I’m pregnant because you have to have sex to get pregnant and we all know that it’s been like, closed for business down there since the beginning of time. Which is less sad to me lately because turns out Reesa from my textiles class is a virgin! And she’s so pretty, so whattayaknow.”

“Ooh, really.”

All I could do was nod and kind of smile. I had just mustered up the courage to send a text that I’d somehow spent fifteen minutes composing, and I couldn’t stop reading it over and over.

Daniel, I’m so sorry about what happened yesterday. I can’t apologize enough for it — I didn’t mean to drag you into this and I wish I could thank you in person for what you did.

I couldn’t stop obsessing over “thank you in person.” I hoped that it didn’t sound desper

ate, though I was in fact desperate to see him again. After confessing my history with Daniel to Linh, she helped me get his cell number from Mike. I wasn’t about to raise suspicion and ask anyone for it, especially since the whole kitchen scuffle had drawn a witness. Following that whole mess, Daniel had stayed at the party for just long enough to know that Ben wasn’t coming back. I had planned to slip an apology in before he left, but I couldn’t with Mr. Davies glued nosily to his side, even as he walked to his car.

Defeated and racked with guilt, I took that time to go straight to my room, reaching the top of the stairs when Mr. Davies came back inside and spoke to me from the bottom of the steps.

“Mr. Cole told me that he saw the blonde haired fellow grab you,” he said in a hushed tone, continuing only when I stopped and turned. “I’m guessing that’s why he sprung into action. I would do the same if it were my wife or girlfriend, though I can’t say I’d have used quite as much force since I’m not a very angry man.” He paused. “But then again, Daniel isn’t a very angry man. And you’re certainly not his girlfriend.” He gave me a look. It wasn’t a question, but his old eyes squinted as if waiting for me to confirm. My attempt at a casual response was marred by the crack in my voice.

“Of course not.”

He stared for a few more seconds before nodding and starting back towards the kitchen. “Of course not. You’re old enough to remember how those stories end in this town.”

Kind of. The student-teacher scandals that rocked Woodhill happened before I reached the high school, so I never paid a whole lot of attention to the “Miss Mullens Thing” that happened when I was in elementary school, or the “Mr. Brown Thing” that happened when I was in middle school. But I knew who had probably scoured every last detail and stored them all in her memory.

“Hey, remember the Mr. Brown thing? Or the Miss Mullens thing?” I interrupted Kelsey’s story about Reesa from Textiles. She didn’t seem to mind.

“Omigod, yes?” Her answer was incredulous. “Definitely about Mr. Brown. Do you not? He was like a poor man’s Mr. Cole, which isn’t bad at all.” She drew her tongue across her lower lip. “God, I wish he still taught here. My student-teacher fantasy might’ve had a shot if he didn’t fall off the face of the earth.”

“You’d… sleep with him?”

“Yes. Sorry, not sorry.”

“But I thought… wait, what was his story again?”

“Really? Oh my God,” Kelsey groaned at my lack of knowledge, though she was more than happy to fill me in.

Mr. Brown had been one of the younger teachers at the high school — cute and apparently known for being a bit of a flirt, but mostly with pretty teachers and moms. I have a faint memory of Aunt Erin wondering if he was sleeping with Bree Hannigan, but dismissing the thought because of something or another about Bree’s C-section scar. That was the extent of Mr. Brown’s controversy. But after a friend of hers spilled, Woodhill found out that he had slept with an eighteen-year-old senior named Hillary Rice during winter break, and within months, a series of claims popped up from some junior girls in his Photography class. One claimed to her friends that she had slept with him around the same time, and that their affair carried on in the dark room. Once that story went around and eventually reached outraged parents, the school board investigated. It was then that a friend of the girl joined in on the story, and suddenly, there were two sixteen-year-old girls who had allegedly slept with Mr. Brown, something that seemed extremely believable considering the recent discovery of his affair with a senior. There were, after all, new rumors that he had begun sleeping with Hillary long before her eighteenth birthday. Perhaps in the dark room as well, because why not?

That ended up untrue. But text messages in Mr. Brown’s phone served as proof of his affair with the sixteen-year-olds.

He fled town before his car and house could be further vandalized. Assemblies and “grief counseling” were had, strict conduct codes for faculty were introduced and both girls and their families moved out of state. Also, to this day, the high school dark room hears many jokes about developing film with bodily fluids.

“The Miss Mullens thing was different though,” Kelsey said. “She was actually dating an old student who had already graduated, but there was a big ol’ shitstorm about whether or not they’d had sex before he graduated, like before he turned eighteen. So she was out of school during the whole investigation and some kid from one of her classes took that time to say that he slept with her too, which made the case even crazier and then she was put on suspension.”

“What’d they find out about all of it?”

“Pretty sure she never dated her boyfriend-student until he graduated, and that other kid turned out to be a total liar, but she still had ‘pedo’ and ‘whore’ keyed on her car and stuff. And all the parents hated her anyway. So she quit. And I heard she had trouble getting hired somewhere else.” Kelsey laughed. “My mom and her friends still think she slept with that sophomore though. They still talk about it.”

“But he admitted to lying, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, he said he just wanted to keep up the story for his friends. But ya know. I hear Mullens was hot and hot people are easier to hate. More fun to hate, too. I’m sure Adriana knows all about that. She seems like someone with haters.” She threw her hands in the air. “Me, for instance. Just kidding. But I do want her hair. And her face. And her body…”

I mumbled some sort of response, distracted as I thought about Daniel. With Woodhill’s history of scandal, I could hardly blame him for being so careful all the time. Other teachers were cautious and proper but he took it to a whole other level — probably because no one else looked like him or had such a devoted following of fangirls. There were Facebook groups dedicated to him, probably by the same students who peeked through the windows of his house. He was like an actual celebrity, one that the tabloids were aching to report salacious gossip on because his reputation was just too crystal clear and pristine.