Tenure Track (35 page)

“
Well, it wasn’t like he was armed,” Dennis noted. “I knew he wasn’t gonna kill me. Besides, he’s gotta wimpy punch. Dana could kick his butt. After he got me on the ground and broke my glasses, I tried to block my head and he went after my ribs.” He pulled up his sleeves to exhibit the multiple defensive bruises already beginning to show on the backs of his arms, then removed his eyeglasses from his left front pocket to reveal bent frames and one missing lens. He put the broken glasses on his face and covered the empty frame with one hand. “Hey, this side still works!”

Jane was getting annoyed by his cavalier attitude. She turned to Dana. “Did you see this happen?”

“
No,” she said, leaping up from the desk upon which she had been leaning. “I just heard about it and came to check on him.”

Jane paused. Dana sounded truthful, but there was anxiety in her voice and facial expression, as if she feared getting punished herself. Jane dismissed the notion and turned back to getting the facts of the case. Mark fiddled with his son’s broken glasses, saying very little.

The principal explained that the attacker would be immediately suspended, with expulsion considered at the next school board meeting. Also, the police had been notified and Dennis had the right to file assault charges if he wished.

At this, Dennis spoke up. “Oh, I don’t wanna mess with that.”

Jane was puzzled. “Dennis, this kid needs a wake-up call. If he has violent tendencies, they need to be addressed. Filing charges will be the best way to make sure that happens.”

“
Aw, Mom, maybe he was just havin’ a bad day,” Dennis insisted.

His attitude was beginning to annoy her. “You call this a bad day?” she asked, pointing to his wounds. She looked sharply at Mark, who still had very little to contribute to the conversation. Jane fumed at her son’s inaction for a few more minutes until one of the uniformed police officers entered the room. He was rather young, but very polite, introducing himself as Patrol Officer Kenney.

The officer explained that he had already spoken to Dennis once, but now that he had spoken with the suspect, Mitchell Tighe, he needed to go over a few things with Dennis. Jane found it amusing that the officer had no qualms about naming Mitchell, while the principal would only refer to him as “another student,” in a useless but familiar administrative effort to protect the boy’s privacy.

“
Now,” said Patrol Officer Kenney, “before, we talked about the attack itself. I got that. Tell me again what happened leading up to the attack.”

Dennis sat up, looking puzzled. “Whaddya mean? The guy just jumped me.”

“
You didn’t say anything to provoke him?” Officer Kenney quizzed. “Maybe mouth something?”

Jane could see where this line of questioning was headed. “Dennis,” she interjected, “did you say something to Mitchell?”

“
I didn’t say anything,” he stated defiantly, though Jane’s motherly instincts told her he was lying.

“
Dennis Jacob Straussman, did you do something to provoke this?” she demanded.

Dennis glanced sideways at his mother, knowing exactly what she was thinking. “Oh, I may’ve mouthed something about his sweet ride,” he admitted. “Ya know, his Christmas present. He’s kinda sensitive about it.”

“
Why would that make him attack you?” Mark asked.

Patrol Officer Kenney piped in, “Apparently a couple of days ago someone vandalized Mitchell’s new car by putting sugar in the gas tank. Mitchell named your son as a suspect, but the case was just assigned to a detective, who hasn’t had time to follow up on it yet.”

Jane looked from Dennis, who sat silently, to Dana, who glanced away as if she feared revealing evidence with her eyes, to Mark, who just looked bewildered.

The officer filled the void. “According to some of the other students, Dennis and Mitchell have been engaging in some kind of ongoing cyber-feud.”

“
Cyber-feud?” Jane repeated.

Patrol Officer Kenney kindly explained, “Having a fight over the Internet. E-mails, insults, nasty postings on their Web pages. Apparently a lot of the other kids have been keeping up with it. It seems to have escalated with some comments about Dennis’s sister and a basketball coach.”

Mark spoke up. “Dana?”

Jane spun around to face her daughter. In an instant she felt her mind putting together all the clues, fears and suspicions that she had long been trying to ignore.
Dana. Coach. Extra gym time. Moodiness. No dating.
She thought she finally saw the puzzle clearly.

Now that the direction of the conversation had taken a surprising turn, Jane was the speechless one and Mark took charge. “Sir,” he directed to the baby-faced police officer. “I think we’d like a few moments alone to talk to our children. We don’t want to interfere with your investigation, but I think there are some private issues we need to discuss.”

Officer Kenney shuffled his feet, but seemed to trust Mark’s paternal intentions. He nodded and left the room to give the family some time alone.

As soon as he closed the door, Jane exploded, unsure which child should bear the brunt of her wrath first. She decided that both should get it at once, so she ordered Dana to sit next to Dennis. Mark stood up next to her, arms folded tightly across his chest. “What is going on here?” she bellowed.

“
Nothin’,” Dennis shrugged.

“
Don’t you lie to me, young man!” Jane pointed an index finger in his swelling face. “I know you. I know you messed up Mitchell’s car. That’s why he assaulted you. Now explain what this feud is all about.”

Her son just shrugged again. “Nothin’. We just started a little cyber trash-talkin’ and I guess it got outta hand.”

“
Trash talking about what?”

No response.

“
Answer your mother!” Mark blurted uncharacteristically.

Dennis flinched slightly, not used to hearing his father yell at him. “Just the usual stuff—ya know, you’re so ugly blah, blah, blah. Then he started spreadin’ some crap about Dana and Coach, so I told him to knock it off.”

“
And when he didn’t quit, you sugared his car?” Jane asked.

No response.

Jane lowered her voice. “Dennis Jacob—”

Dana broke her silence to come to her brother’s defense. “It’s not true.”

“
What, about the car?” Mark asked.

“
No,” she said, drawing a glare from Dennis. “Well, yeah, yeah, that’s bogus too, but I meant the stuff about me and Coach. It’s not true. ‘Just a load of crap some people are sayin’.”

“
Dana,” Jane tried to coax gently, “I know you have a lot of respect for your coach, but if there’s something going on between you two, we need to know about it. It’s not your fault. You won’t be in trouble.”

Dennis reached over and gently squeezed his sister’s hand supportively. She looked over at him, then directly at her parents. “There’s nothing going on. Coach is a good guy. He’s helped me a lot.”

Jane and Mark could see that she was not prepared to turn on her predator, as was often typical of young people who had been enticed into such relationships
. Horndog’s victims . . . Jessica Hampton . . . Mandy Taylor?
Jane instructed the twins to sit still, while she and Mark met with the principal and Dr. Tighe, who turned out to be very reasonable. Like them, he had been unaware of the cyber-feud. Together, the adults pulled up their children’s Web pages. What they read was, just as Dennis had described, a back and forth of insults posted for all the world to see. Postings from early in the fall semester reflected more of a friendly competition between the two, as Dennis mocked Mitchell’s academic performance and suggested he would be better off applying to Dumb U. than an Ivy League school. Mitchell mocked Dennis’s geekiness and supposed inability to obtain sexual partners, etc. etc.

Then, around Halloween, Mitchell started posting vicious comments about Dana. The language and venom of the comments shocked all of the adults. They ranged from “dildo-loving pussy eater” and “gives great head. I bet she practices on her brother;” to “fucks her Coach every afternoon to get playing time.” Dennis had responded in various degrees of sarcasm, first trying to deflect the commentary away from his sister, then advising for such comments to stop, to retribution such as posting altered photos of Mitchell engaged in sexual acts with a variety of animals, people, and objects, including the tailpipe of his own car. That one appeared a day before the vandalism occurred.
Mark was visibly shaken by the images and words. Inwardly, Jane was equally as shocked, but outwardly retained her cool demeanor.

All three parents apologized profusely for their sons’ actions. Dr. Tighe promised that Mitchell would lose his computer privileges as well as his car. Everyone agreed that neither side would pursue criminal charges, although Mitchell would still be suspended for fighting and possibly expelled for the rest of the year. Mark and Jane offered to pay repair costs on the car, while Dr. Tighe agreed to cover Dennis’s medical expenses. After the doctor left, Mark commented that they probably needed to get Dennis’s ribs checked out, but Jane wasn’t quite ready to leave. She leveled a steady stare at the principal. “Did you know about this feud?”

He answered in the true tone of a bureaucrat. “I had heard some rumors, but since nothing was taking place on campus, there was really nothing I could do about it.”

“
Did you even check to see if the rumors were true?” she asked, incredulous. “All you had to do was pull up their Web pages.”

“
Did you?” he shot back. “Dr. Roardan, I have a lot of students to deal with and a lot going on at this school. I don’t have time to go running down every rumor that floats through the halls. High schools are by nature gossip mills. Some things turn out to be true, others not. And some things just really aren’t my business.”

“
What about the rumors of my daughter and one of your faculty members?” she demanded. “Isn’t
that
your business.”

Now he was on the defensive. “This is the first I’ve heard about this accusation. What did your daughter say about it?”

“
She says it’s not true.”

“
Well then, it’s probably not. ‘Just trash-talking, like the kids said.”

Jane, empathizing more and more with Katherine Benedict, was ready to explode at this pencil-pushing bureaucrat. She could not believe that in this day and age he would be so dismissive of such an accusation. She was sorely tempted to throw the example of Jessica Hampton in his face. “You should know that victims of abuse by people in authority are often reluctant to admit what happened,” she noted instead. “Do your job! Find out if it’s true!”

The principal glared at her, wanting to reiterate the parents’ responsibility in this situation, but he refrained. Instead, he replied more tactfully, “I’ll investigate the matter, but it would be helpful if you could get your children to tell the truth. We have to balance the protection of students against persecution of teachers based strictly in innuendo. I assure you, if it’s true, we’ll report it to the proper authorities and will take appropriate action here. That’s the best I can do.”

Jane expressed satisfaction that he would at least do something. Then she turned to Mark, who was sitting in his chair just staring into space. “Do you have anything to add?”

“
I want to take my son to the hospital,” he announced brusquely, jumping up from his seat. Since the twins had driven to school in his car that day, Mark took Dennis to the emergency clinic and Jane drove home with an icily silent Dana.

Jane tried to break the tension, hoping it would get her daughter to open up and relax a bit. “Rough day, huh?”

Dana just looked out the window. Jane refused to let her child retreat into her turtle shell. “Dana, I read the stuff that Mitchell was saying about you on the Internet. . . . I know how hurtful such things can be. But you did nothing wrong. Kids can say some really mean things, especially when they’re hiding behind a computer. There’s not much you can do about lies like that. However, if some of it’s true, if someone is doing something illegal, or dangerous, then it’s best for us to know about it. I know it’s painful, but sometimes it’s better to talk about these things than to hold them in. If you want to talk, I’ll listen. Just listen.”

Dana would neither speak nor look in Jane’s direction. She just sniffled silently as tears ran down her face. Her mother’s heart broke for the child’s obvious pain, but she had no idea how to fix it.

When they arrived home, Dana went straight to her room, still not talking. Jane decided to give the girl some space while contemplating her next move. Four hours later Mark brought Dennis home with gauze wrapped around his midsection. “Bruised, but not broken!” the boy proudly announced. “And still champion!” He struck a mock boxer’s pose that failed to elicit a smile from either parent. He would have to wait until the next day to get his glasses fixed, so he planned to wear them to school covered in duct tape. “The true nerd look,” he bragged. Before letting him eat dinner, Jane stood over his shoulder and watched as he completely obliterated his Web page. He was then banished to his room while Mark and Jane tried to decide how best to handle the situation.

“
Did he say anything to you?” Jane asked.

Playing with some reheated noodles on his plate, Mark shook his head. “No, he just made jokes. Listen, maybe we’re blowing things out of proportion here. Teenagers gossip, they insult one another, they play tricks. It’s part of growing up. Dennis just pushed it a little too far this time. I talked to him, though; reminded him of the importance of keeping his record clean, the fine line between pranks and crimes, yadda, yadda, yadda. I think he’ll reign it in now.”