I entered her office the next day. Purplish lipstick stained her front tooth, and I pretended not to notice. “Dr. Duvall told me you’re doing good work,” she said, and I smiled back at her because I loved being one of the good ones. I may never have been the best, may not have been Columbia material, but I’d always been good—the good influence, the good guest, the good student, the good daughter. I never tired of hearing about my goodness; without that reassurance, I might think I wasn’t any good at all.
I sat across from her at her desk.
“Everything else going well? Those little shits aren’t giving you a hard time?”
I laughed hesitantly, a laugh that wasn’t my own, because I never knew what else to do when adults cursed in front of me. “No, no, they aren’t. My students have been great.”
“And the other apprentices? Everything going well with them?”
“Yeah, they’re all great.”
She raised her eyebrow questioningly.
I shifted in my chair. “You see, I’ve been having difficulties with a student outside of my class.”
“What sort of difficulties?”
“He, well . . . His behavior towards me has been inappropriate for a student.”
Ms. McNally-Barnes opened a notebook on her desk and clicked open a pen. “What’s his name?”
“Duggar Robinson. He’s a fourth year on the lacrosse team. The captain, actually.”
She nodded and scribbled down the name. I sat on my hands to keep them from shaking. A rhyme from childhood played in my head. Tattle Tale! Go to jail! Hang your britches on a nail!
“Imogene?”
I looked up at Ms. McNally-Barnes, realizing I had missed a question. “Sorry?”
“I said, what sort of inappropriate behavior has he displayed?”
“He just . . . He doesn’t treat me with the respect he shows Coach Larry.” It occurred to me then that Duggar didn’t exactly treat Larry with any respect either and that, perhaps, Duggar Robinson was not the kind of boy to show respect for anything.
Ms. McNally-Barnes looked tired. “I need some specifics, Imogene.”
“He talks back to me. And one time he punched me in the stomach.”
“He what?”
“Well, he didn’t exactly punch me. He pretended to.” I hesitated, my face burning. “It was a game the boys were playing. To find out their sex noises.”
“Sex noises?” She said this the way one might say “foot fetish,” and I wished I had never walked into her office. It was as terrible as the first time I’d seen my therapist in high school, when I’d had to try to explain why I picked and prodded at my pores until my face was ruined, until I felt sick with myself but unable to stop.
“It was just . . . inappropriate,” I concluded lamely. Inappropriate. Back in college I’d learned about a psychological phenomenon called semantic saturation, in which the repetition of a word causes it to temporarily lose meaning. Inappropriate.
“Alright.” She scribbled another note. “I’ll be sure to talk to Larry about this. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Imogene. It’s important to speak up when these sorts of things happen. You never want to find yourself too involved to get out.”
Feeling emboldened, I said, “Actually, there’s one other thing.”
“Yes?”
“There’s another student who I think might have a crush on me.”
She clicked open her pen again. “And his name?”
“Clarence Howell. A third year on the team.”
“Has he acted inappropriately towards you as well?”
“Not exactly. His behavior has just seemed to suggest . . .” I trailed off, feeling stupid once again.
“Imogene.” Ms. McNally-Barnes leaned over her desk towards me conspiringly. “A teenage boy will fall for anything with hair and a pair of breasts.”
I never thought I could be made so uncomfortable by this, by the acknowledgement of my breasts by a relative stranger.
“Hell, I’m pretty sure half the boys at this school have a crush on me!” Ms. McNally-Barnes cackled, showing that smudge of purple on her tooth again, and I thanked her for her time before quickly excusing myself from her office.
_ _ _
Before lacrosse practice began the next day, Coach Larry called us in for a huddle. Clarence had gotten the cast removed from his nose, but the bridge was still bruised a purplish-blue. He glanced at me from across the circle, and I looked away guiltily.
“It has come to my attention that some of you boys have been acting inappropriately,” Larry began, and my stomach churned. That word again. No, this couldn’t be how he handled the situation. Not like this, not in front of everyone.
The boys stared at him blankly, wondering where this was going.
“Every teacher and apprentice in this school deserves to be treated with your upmost respect,” Larry continued. “They are your superiors, regardless of age, regardless of sex.” A bit of spittle sprayed between his teeth with the emphasis of this final word. I was embarrassed for him, that he didn’t even realize that the word he’d meant to say was utmost. “This includes me, and this includes Coach Imogene.”
Clarence’s gaze probed me like a finger, but I refused to look.
“Aw.” Duggar put a hand to his heart. “We respect you, Coach.”
“Then act like it, you entitled little shit.”
Duggar’s mouth fell open, and the other boys shifted uncomfortably, half laughing, half nervous that they were next.
Larry grinned. I could see his teenage self, finally vindicated. “In fact, why don’t you run a few laps, Robinson? Show me just how much you respect me and Coach Imogene.”
Duggar stared a moment, ready to argue, before he turned on his heel and took off around the field.
“And if I hear of any more disrespect from you,” Larry called after him, “you better believe that captainship can be revoked!”
That practice, I ran a defensive drill as Larry supervised. I heard myself yelling, “Let’s go, let’s go!” in a voice I didn’t know I possessed. I called Duggar by his last name, and he didn’t talk back. I ignored Clarence, though I could feel his eyes from where he sat on the bench behind me. When I blew my whistle—I’d never utilized my whistle before—a couple of the boys even jumped.
Something had shifted, too imperceptible to name, but taking Kip’s hand and crossing the rope no longer felt irredeemable. I wanted Ms. McNally-Barnes to like me. I wanted Larry to like me. I wanted to prove to everyone—to the boys, to myself—that I was worthy of a position at Vandenberg. That I was worthy of a position of authority.
That afternoon on the lacrosse field, for the first time since I had arrived at Vandenberg School for Boys, I felt in control.
DARBY LI HAD BEEN RANDOMLY ASSIGNED MY ROOMMATE THE summer before our freshman year at Buffalo State, and when I looked up her profile page, I was terrified. She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful you couldn’t fake with professional photographs and manufactured confidence. With her gray eyes and thick dark hair and caramel-colored skin (the product of a Chinese father and a Jamaican mother), she was the poster child for palatable exoticism—the kind of exoticism I secretly longed for. She was from Soho, I discovered, daughter of a curator and visual artist.