“Ethan? It’s Teri Merchant.”
Her calm, professional voice wipes my mind like a blank slate. “Oh,” I say. “Um … hi. How are you?”
“I wanted to check in with you,” she says. “I understand you stopped by my office yesterday after school? Jean said you wanted to talk with me.”
At that moment I realize I’m still wearing my gym clothes from this morning and that I smell like a ripe alcoholic. “I … yes, I did,” I say. “I mean I do. Want to talk. Actually, that’s a great idea.” I’m babbling. Focus, asshole. “In person would be better,” I say. “I mean, not now.”
“No, tonight isn’t great,” Teri says. “How about tomorrow afternoon? Say, four o’clock? My office?”
“That’s perfect,” I say. Tomorrow is Sunday, but the sooner I can talk to her about Marisa, the better.
She pauses. “Are you okay, Ethan?”
I nod. “Yeah, fine,” I say. “I mean, I have some family stuff going on. My sister is in town.”
As if I’ve conjured her with those words, through my front window I see Susannah running up the driveway in her workout gear, arms pumping, knees jackknifing, her face red with exertion and running with sweat.
“That’s good,” Teri says. “It must be nice catching up with her.”
Susannah almost makes it up the driveway before she staggers, weaves into the front yard, and pukes all over my lawn.
“It’s wonderful,” I say into my phone.
ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, I walk into Teri’s office ten minutes early, but Teri is already there, sitting behind her desk. So are three other people. I stop just inside the doorway. Coleman Carter stands off to the side as if trying to blend into the woodwork—he looks about as conspicuous as a boar in a bowling alley. A white-haired woman in a black dress and severe-looking glasses is bending down to speak to a third person in an armchair. When the woman straightens up, I see the person in the chair is Byron Radinger, Archer’s head of school.
“Ethan,” Teri says, and the other three turn and look at me. “Come on in. Shut the door behind you.”
In my head, unbidden, I hear Uncle Gavin’s voice. You’ve walked into it.
Then I shut the door behind me and cross the room to stand by the chair in front of Teri’s desk.
“Thanks for coming in,” Teri says.
“Of course,” I say. “Thanks for meeting with me. I …” I clear my throat. “I wasn’t expecting everyone else. Hello, Byron.”
“Ethan,” Byron says, standing and shaking my hand. He’s a patrician guy from an old family in Charlotte, an East Coast prep-school kid now running a prep school himself.
Coleman smiles at me, but it looks a little sickly. I smile back, then glance at the third person.
“This is Deborah Holt,” Teri says. “She’s the school’s attorney.”
Don’t tell her a single word more than she needs to know, Uncle Gavin insists in my head.
“Mr. Faulkner,” Deborah Holt says. Her handshake is firm and dry and perfunctory. We all sit.
“Ethan, before we begin,” Teri says, “please know that everyone in this room—myself, Coleman, Byron, Deborah—is your friend.”
My heart freezes in my chest for a moment before it resumes pumping. That is the kind of statement someone makes just before he—or she—cuts your feet out from under you.
“I know that, Teri,” I say.
Teri glances at Byron, who nods as if acknowledging his own cue. “Ethan, we’ve received some disturbing information about your teaching and your behavior in class.”
The skin on my back crawls. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t—what’s going on?”
Teri turns her laptop around so I can see her screen. “This is your class webpage, isn’t it?” she says.
I peer at her screen. “Yes,” I say.
Teri clicks the Assignment menu. “Is this an assignment for your AP English class?”
I bend forward to read more closely:
Creative writing assignment: Write about a situation in which one person wrongs another. Like, for example, maybe you were dating someone, perhaps even sleeping with them, and then that person breaks up with you, and it turns out that person has her own history of trauma—a parent badly injured in a car accident, say—and might not even be stable herself. How would you react? Length: 700 words, typed and double-spaced.
I stare at the screen. Marisa, I think. My mouth is the Sahara—I would kill for a glass of water. “When … when was that posted?” I ask.
“Yesterday,” Teri says. “Twelve nineteen PM, to be exact.”
About an hour after I found Marisa in my house wearing Susannah’s T-shirt. I read the assignment again, confusion giving way to anger. “That’s not mine.”
“But it’s on your class website,” Teri says.
“I didn’t post that. I didn’t write that.” Then a thought hits me. “Is this still up? Are students seeing this?”
“Coleman took it down as soon as he saw it,” Teri says. “This is a screenshot.”
I look at Coleman, who clearly wishes to be anywhere but here. “When?” I ask.
He frowns. “When—?”
“When did you take it down? How long was it up?”
“Yesterday,” Coleman says. “Around three thirty.”
“Ethan,” Teri says, “have you received any emails from students about it?”
“I didn’t check my email this morning,” I say. “Look, this assignment isn’t mine. It’s … weirdly inappropriate—”
Byron leans forward in his chair. “Do you often assign students creative writing exercises like this?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “Not like this.” I look around at everyone. “What else is wrong?”
Deborah Holt raises one eyebrow a millimeter but otherwise doesn’t react. Everyone else looks uncomfortable.
“What makes you think something else is wrong?” Teri asks.
“Because my employer said he had received disturbing information about my teaching and my behavior in class,” I say. “This can’t be it.”
Teri turns her laptop to face her, taps some keys, then turns it back around. Now the screen shows a Twitter page. The handle is EthanF8 and there’s an old Archer yearbook photo of me
