What Mr. Mattero Did (21 page)

“It had to have been more than that,” Mom insisted. I could feel her staring at me. “Jenna was up to something, wasn't she, Claire?”

I shook my head. “No. I mean, yeah, it was Jenna's idea and all that. And I guess she wanted to get back at her mom, or get her mom's attention or something—because her mom was seeing that other guy. But we didn't even know that stuff about Jenna's mom in the beginning. Mainly we did it because she asked us to and we were friends. Suzanne and me and Jenna—we three didn't have any other friends at Oakdale. We never thought it was going to hurt a whole bunch of people.”

 

 

I never saw Phoebe again. She was in and out of my life, just like that. She wasn't at school the next day, or the next week. Finally, I heard from another friend of hers that Phoebe's mother had taken her out of school because they had to move back to Kentucky for an emergency. Mom called Detective Daniels to find out if that was true, and he confirmed it. He told us that Phoebe and her family had moved. But her stepfather did not go with them.

The kids in the swim club don't know what happened to Phoebe. They thought it was really weird the way she disappeared. “What kind of family emergency?” they kept asking. On the bus, on the way to swim practice, while we ate peanut M&M's, I was tempted to make up something to cover for her, but I caught myself. What I said was, “Sometimes people have to move right away and there isn't even time for good-bye.”

I know that we'll be punished, Suzanne and me—and Jenna, too, even if she is in a different state. But I'm ready. Nothing that happens from here on out can be worse than what I've already been through. Hiding the lie was a lot worse than coming forward and telling the truth, I'll tell you that.

Plus, the whole thing has made me appreciate my family. We definitely talk more, especially my mom and me, even if it's just while we're making dinner or, like I said, in the van coming home from the pool with Corky and Izzy asleep in the backseat.

I love my parents for not holding what I did against me. That's not to say they weren't mad at me for what I did! No way. I spent a lot of time alone, in my room, but it made me smarten up. I mean, I'm definitely starting to eat normally because not only do I feel better, but I can think better, too! I'm swimming—and this is actually funny, my finger got better from all the chlorine.

I don't know, I am who I am, and there are kids at Decker who actually want to be my friends. Although I guess we'll see what happens to that after I go to juvenile court . . .

Suzanne and I aren't allowed to see each other right now. But I hope she feels relieved, the same as me. I will always remember that it was Suzanne who really didn't want to lie in the first place. It didn't feel right, she kept saying. Man, I wished I'd listened.

I wrote a letter to Mr. Mattero and to Melody, too. I told them how sorry I was that they had suffered. I asked Melody to please reconsider being a volunteer at the horse barns. But I know that letter wasn't enough. How could it be?

“It's over now,” Mom keeps telling me. “Put it behind you and get on with your life, Claire.”

“Yeah, it's over,” I agree and tell myself. “It's over.” Maybe if I say it enough times I'll believe it.

On the other hand, maybe I finally learned to recognize what's right and what's wrong, and so maybe I'm smart enough now to know that it will never be over. Because what Jenna, Suzanne, and I did in the seventh grade at Oakdale will always be part of who we are, and who we become.

It's really weird, but sometimes I can step back from it and, like, look into the future and actually feel a little bit good about it. Am I a totally heartless, evil person to say that? No, I don't think so. It's just that if none of this happened, well, for one thing, no one would have ever known about Phoebe.

Plus, besides that, it has, like, changed me into a different person. A person who will never be pushed around again by someone like Jenna. A person who knows it's not who you hang out with, or how skinny you are, or how you do your eyes that matters, it's who you are inside. I made a mistake, yes, but because of it, hopefully, I'm a little bit better person.

To thine own self be true. I don't ever want to be uncomfortable in my own skin again.

And
that
is the honest truth. Totally.

24

Melody

I REALLY WANTED DAD
to return to teaching, to show everybody how those girls didn't ruin his life. But he wouldn't. He wouldn't go back to Oakdale Middle School. Mom got him a job at the nursery instead, where he heads up a landscape crew. He drives a red pickup truck and works with three Hispanic men delivering mulch, mowing lawns, trimming bushes, and fixing sprinkler systems. He says he enjoys being outside all the time, and he likes his coworkers. Dad's teaching them English, and they're teaching him Spanish. They keep telling Dad how lucky he is, to live in a country of so much opportunity and wealth—and freedom of speech.

It embarrassed me—it made me angry—that Dad did not go back to school. He isn't making half the money he made as a teacher. Mom is even talking about getting a second job. But the worst thing was how Dad wasn't the same anymore, not even at home. Something inside of him died. I couldn't even ask my father about the annual canoe trip. Three whole days with just Dad? I wasn't sure what we'd talk about.

Mom has said all along we shouldn't tell Song about all this until the end of summer because she would feel bad the whole time she was away at camp in Maine, where she'd been hired as a counselor. A lot of people, not just my sister, have no idea what happened to Dad. What happened to
us.
If you don't read the local newspaper or have kids at Oakdale, how would you know? We kept it quiet to save Dad the embarrassment, but even that makes me angry, because it's like Dad was forced to live a secret life for a crime he didn't commit!

It seemed so unfair that those girls—Jenna, Suzanne, and Claire—were never publicly shamed the way my dad was. They remained “unidentified” in the local newspaper because they're “minors.”

It didn't stop either . . . we went to my brother's end-of-the-year sports banquet at the high school, and while we were standing in line, waiting to get a soda, one of Cade's coaches came over to Dad and shook his hand. “It's good to see you, Fred,” he said, clapping Dad on the shoulder. “I hope things are going well.” But he didn't stay to chitchat for long, and when he walked away, I saw him glance back over his shoulder. I wondered what he was thinking because I'd overheard Mom and Dad talking one night about how they feared people were still suspicious.
Three girls? Telling the same story? Sticking to it for so long? There had to be something going on there.

This is what we can't change. We can't change the way people think, the way people look at us. And don't say it doesn't matter because it does matter. That's the most frustrating thing. It's what those lies left us. Our legacy, Mom has said. I tried writing a poem about it once, but I only got as far as the title. So the title just sits there, at the top of an empty sheet of lined paper in my journal—”The Legacy of a Lie”—waiting for me to delicately pick the words from my aching, bruised heart.

 

 

A month went by, and summer came. Dad finally agreed to talk with a family counselor. And after all the phone calls from Mrs. Dandridge and that letter from Claire, I promised Mom I would reconsider going back to the barns. I missed the horses, yes, but mostly, I missed the kids.

Cade left for football camp in North Carolina. But when Song came home to unload all her boxes from college and start packing for her camp job, I sat on her bed and told her what had happened. I didn't do it to hurt her. I didn't do it to make her feel guilty and cry. I did it because I figured she was part of the family. I did it because I needed her. And I needed her to know.

“Why didn't you tell me?” she asked, throwing up her arms. “All this time? Come on! What's with you guys?” She was pretty upset we'd kept her in the dark. After stomping around her room and throwing a couple things around, she sat on the bed with me.

“I'll bet it makes you think twice about becoming a teacher,” I said, smoothing out a section of her bedspread in front of me.

We were sitting cross-legged, facing each other, and although I didn't lift my eyes, I could tell my sister had folded her arms and was looking at me. “Think twice about it?” she repeated my question. “Maybe. But it doesn't make me want to give up the idea of teaching.”

I looked up at her, surprised.

Song took my hands. “I think that's part of the challenge, Mel. Kids making mistakes and helping them figure things out.”

I may have rolled my eyes, I'm not sure.

“Look, I
know
how much this hurt,” Song went on. “It kills me to think about it. But it's all about forgiveness. You and Mom and Dad—Cade, too—you all need to let go of what happened or it'll eat up all the space in your hearts. There won't be room for anything else.”

I thought about what my sister said. I thought about it a lot. I don't know how she got so smart, but I think she's right. In the end, it's all about us, finding it in ourselves to forgive those three girls for what they did. It's all about us, forgiving the people at school—and everywhere else—who
still
don't understand. It's all about me, forgiving my best friend, Annie, and her parents for being afraid. And maybe toughest of all, it's all about me forgiving Dad for getting drunk that night and respecting his decision not to return to teaching.

One thing about Song: she doesn't just say something and walk away. She needled all of us until she left. She got me and Annie together and took us to a movie and for ice cream, and I came home knowing Annie and I could still be friends, even if the friendship was a little different. Then Song fixed dinner for our family one night—black beans and rice and fruit salad because she's a vegetarian now—and she actually made my parents laugh.

“Don't be so hard on yourself,” Song whispered into my ear before she drove off with a friend to Maine to begin work.

So I'm trying. I gave Dad a new box of clarinet reeds for Father's Day. And I asked him, “Do you think maybe we could schedule that canoe trip?”

He grinned, and I thought his eyes got shiny. “Let's do it in July before the water gets too low,” he said.

I keep thinking that it's a little like my mother struggling to yank out all that Virginia creeper in the garden. The weed is so stubborn that Mom has to pull with everything she has—and sometimes, when it finally lets go, she falls backward. But she's kept at it and, little by little, her efforts have made a difference. There's still a lot left. But now, in all the places where the weed's been pulled, the ivy is thriving.

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge and warmly thank the following
people: Christina Koch and Jennifer Lee of the Anne Arundel
County Department of Social Services; Detective Dan Long,
Anne Arundel County Police Child-Abuse Unit; Diane Finch,
Head of Guidance, Anne Arundel County Public Schools;
Catherine Shultz, Phyllis Crossen-Richardson, Maryland
Therapeutic Riding, and Indian Creek Middle School,
especially Anne Chambers (head) and teachers Greg Bush
and Brad Woodward.