“I attended this high school fifteen years ago,” she was saying. “Sat in this room and listened to how drugs and alcohol ruined young lives. I didn’t think it applied to me, and didn’t really care if it did. So I ignored it. Did all the things I wasn’t supposed to do.”
She looked out at the room before she continued. “Until one night I got high and decided to go for a drive.”
Everyone in the room stopped shifting around, stopped whispering, waiting to hear about how she plowed into a pregnant lady, or woke up hours later hanging upside-down from a tree with four broken ribs.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
“Which was a terrible idea, of course, especially since I was too bombed out to actually open the garage door first, so I only got three feet before I smashed into it.”
There was a smatter of laughter in response, as well as a distinct wave of disappointment that the story didn’t have a juicier end.
“I was grounded for a month,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “And my parents made me pay for a new garage door and for the repairs to the car. And let me tell you, garage doors are a lot more expensive than you’d think. I’m talking years of babysitting money down the drain.”
She stopped smiling. “That’s the thing—it sucked, and it was embarrassing as hell. But now it’s a funny story because in the end nothing really happened. Because the door was closed, I didn’t end up hurting anyone, didn’t even have the space to get up enough speed to hurt myself beyond some minor whiplash. If it had been open, though, who knows what would’ve happened? What I might have done to a neighbor or a friend, what I might have done to myself? That’s the thing. You never know. In mere seconds, your life can change forever.”
There were over three hundred students and teachers in the room, including kids whose substance abuse had long passed from open secret to running joke—any number of people at whom that message could have, should have, been directed.
Instead, for what felt like an eternity, she looked right at me.
—
“DID YOU SEE THAT?” I asked Sarah quietly as we streamed out of the gym after the assembly finally finished.
“What, you mean those slides she showed at the end?” she said. “Yeah, but I wish I hadn’t. Those were grim. Also, is it just me or did she spend a really long time talking about not letting anyone come near your drink when you’re at a party? I mean, a really long time on that?”
I shook my head. “No, before that. I meant how she looked at me.”
“Looked at you when?”
“Right after her whole banging-up-the-garage-door story.”
She shrugged. “No, sorry, I didn’t notice. She probably wasn’t really looking at you, though. She was probably just looking out around the room. I’ve heard there’s a technique people use to make everyone feel like they’re being looked at so they pay attention or whatever.”
“No, she was definitely looking at me.”
“Fine, she looked at you. So what? Unless you’ve been secretly getting wasted and plowing into garage doors, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”
I was about to argue and then I stopped myself. Sarah was probably right; it didn’t mean anything. People had to look somewhere and her gaze had simply happened to fall on me.
Still, it was like a piece of sand in my brain the rest of the day, a low-level irritant that kept resurfacing.
—
I CALLED THE POLICE STATION that night and asked for Officer Heron. I was told that she’d just left for a family vacation and would be out of town for the next two weeks.
“Did you want to leave her a message?” the chirpy voice on the other side of the line asked. “I can send you to her voice mail.”
“No,” I said after a moment had passed. “That’s all right.” And then I hung up.
It was probably nothing, I told myself, my phone still in my hand. Probably nothing at all. Probably. Still, I opened my phone’s calendar and marked the exact date that Officer Heron would be back in the office.
This was a mistake, I told him. We need to stop.
I must have looked panicked, determined, because he didn’t argue with me—didn’t try to talk me out of it. He said he’d been thinking the same thing, that he should never have let it happen to begin with.
I felt so relieved.
I LET SARAH TALK ME into going to the basketball game with her. “He’s intense,” I told her as the coach blew his whistle, forcing all the players on the court to skid to a stop.
“Yep,” Sarah said. “That’s part of what I love about these games. So much blood, sweat, and tears over nothing. My only regret is that Mona isn’t a cheerleader anymore—I enjoyed making fun of her bopping around in formation.”
“Do you know why she quit?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess she came to her senses. That or she got sick of my awesome cheerleading impression.”
I leaned forward and tried to focus on the game. As a whole, not just Nick. Although he was an important part. Even from an unbiased perspective.
As I was watching him, the coach blew his whistle again—loud and hard.
“What happened?”
“Another foul from Charlie,” Sarah said. “Not even a subtle one that time. One of these guys will get fouled out soon if they don’t watch themselves.”
“Fouled out?”
“Too many fouls and you get benched for the rest of the game.”
I shook my head. “This game is bizarre—more than half the team isn’t even playing.”
“The couch will sub them all in at different points.” She pointed as Brian headed from the court to the bench and another guy jumped up and headed into the fray. “See, the coach is
