A Step Toward Falling Read online

  I couldn’t tell anyone at school because the kids on the bus would say, “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” Then I thought of something smart. They hadn’t told me not to write anyone. I have always been a very good typist even though I have problems with my eyes and reading is hard for me. When I was in elementary school, I did a program called Type to Learn every day. My fingers memorized where the letters were and now if I have to, I can type with my eyes closed. Usually I don’t do this, though. I keep my eyes open and put the font on very big so I can see if I’ve made any mistakes, which happens a lot. Still, I like keyboard practice and sometimes it’s my reward at school for getting the rest of my work done. The computer knows when I start and stop. Afterward, it can tell me how fast I’ve typed a paragraph and how many mistakes I’ve made. Then once, right in the middle of my timed test, I thought: “My fingers can type what my mouth isn’t allowed to say.”

  So they did. They typed: Boys are stealing my lunch and my money every day on the bus. For that timed test, I had 321 mistakes which made the teacher wonder what happened and read what I had typed. I was surprised. She understood right away what my fingers were saying. She hugged me and said she’d get to the bottom of this, which she did.

  Later, she told me I could either ride a special van for other kids with disabilities or have my own reserved seat on the regular bus behind the driver with a monitor who would sometimes ride with me. I had never ridden on the special needs van because Nan says I’m not disabled like those kids are. I’m just a little disabled. I’m slow at learning things like math which I can’t do at all. I tried to learn addition and subtraction for a long time until I got to tenth grade and the teachers finally said, “That’s enough. Let’s quit trying to learn addition and subtraction.” Instead I worked on life skills math like telling time and counting money which is also hard for me. Even though Nan doesn’t like the van with all the disabled kids, she wanted me to ride it so I could be safe, but Mom said leaving the bus forever would be like letting mean boys win. So I kept riding the regular bus, in my new seat. I wrote Mr. Firth about all of this because I was proud of myself. And the next time I watched Pride and Prejudice, he looked at me in a new way. As if he was a little bit sad but also proud of me.

  I haven’t written him yet about what happened to me at the football game because I don’t want to worry him. I also don’t know what I would say. Even if I went back to school where the only computers I can use are, I don’t think my fingers would know what to type.

  Recently I’m starting to think Mr. Firth is looking at me different again. Like he’s wondering why I’m spending so much time watching him and not going to school. Like maybe he already knows the real reason even though I haven’t written a letter and told him.

  Today I look down and realize that even though I’m watching Pride and Prejudice, I’m wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Also, my hair isn’t brushed.

  I don’t know why I haven’t realized this before.

  I’m so embarrassed, I turn off the TV and start to cry. Nan rushes in and says, “Belinda! What is it? You’ve scared me to death!”

  I can’t tell her why I’m crying. That I can’t keep watching Pride and Prejudice in my pajamas because I’m scared Mr. Firth will look out and see me and I don’t want him to be disappointed.

  Nan helps me sit down and brings me water. I don’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve gone to school. I don’t remember if I’ve gotten dressed at all but I don’t think I have. Which means it’s been a few weeks at least that Mr. Firth has seen me watching him in my pajamas. My heart keeps beating fast but finally, after a long time, I calm down enough to speak. “I have to get dressed,” I say.

  The next day I do.

  My clothes are loose and my hair is longer than the last time I looked in a mirror. I’m so surprised at this I almost don’t recognize myself. I look in the mirror and talk to see if my lips move. They do. It is me. “Hello,” I say to the mirror. “My name is Belinda.”

  Seeing myself talk makes me cry again. I don’t know if I’ll ever look like the old me. I wish we had more pictures of the old me so I could remember what I used to look like but Mom doesn’t have a camera and Nan says cameras have gotten too complicated for her. We have my school pictures framed along the wall but they don’t look like the real me. In most of those, my smile is nervous, which means I don’t remember what the real old me looked like. Maybe when Mr. Firth squinted from the TV, he wasn’t worried, he just didn’t recognize me.

  Because my old clothes don’t fit, I wear Nan’s clothes around the house. Nan mostly wears dresses with matching belts and skirts with white shirts that button up. “In my day,” she always says, “ladies never wore pants except to work in the garden.” Usually this makes Mom stick her finger down her throat and lie down on the sofa. Wearing dresses makes me feel different, but not bad. I like the flowered prints and the little matching belts. One morning I try wearing nylons and orthopedic shoes like Nan, too, but those don’t feel right. I like wearing the dresses, though. They make me feel like someone in an old-fashioned story. Not Pride and Prejudice but something else. A story I haven’t seen yet.

  Sometimes I’ll wear one of Nan’s dresses and imagine people calling my name again. I picture boys saying, “Belinda! Hello! Look at you in that dress!”

  It makes me feel hopeful and then I remember about not leaving the house and not going back to school ever again. I don’t know when I’ll see people who might say hello or comment on my clothes.

  Even though I’m getting dressed now, nothing changes much except I let myself watch Pride and Prejudice again.

  It’s hard to be sure, but I think Mr. Firth notices my dress. He squints in the middle of one of his lines and then he stops speaking. It makes me smile. I almost stand up to show him the whole dress, but he has to get on with the story and I don’t want to waste time either.

  The first time Nan walks in the room and sees Pride and Prejudice back on, she says, “Oh good,” then turns around and walks back out. She’s happy because it means she doesn’t have to worry about me all day if I’m busy with this.

  EMILY

  IN MY FIRST MEETING with the guidance counselor, Ms. Sadiq, I told her that I didn’t remember everything that happened at the game, but I did remember trying to tell Mrs. Avery. Apparently Mrs. Avery remembered this, but also remembers me walking away without repeating what I told her. “So why didn’t you do more?” Ms. Sadiq asked. “There were three police officers at the game. Why didn’t you tell one of them?”

  “I only saw them later,” I stammered. “I knew someone must have called them to help Belinda.”

  “That was how long afterward, though?” She eyed me suspiciously. “Fifteen minutes? Twenty?” I knew what she wasn’t saying: A lot can happen in fifteen minutes.

  I had no answer. I told her my heart had started to race so hard I couldn’t breathe for a while. I told her I felt like I was choking and then I lost all track of time.

  She looked down at her paper, where she had notes written and a timeline of the events. “You sat there that whole time, having a hard time breathing?”

  “That’s right,” I whispered. I couldn’t look at her. How could I explain that I thought if I held still, if I closed my eyes and held my breath, maybe I could erase what I’d just seen? Or make it something else: A game they were playing. Or maybe a joke. Maybe there was some way to explain that what I saw wasn’t what it looked like.

  Then I remembered Lucas. “I saw the other guy run onto the field. I knew he saw them, too, and I assumed that he had helped her.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “He didn’t, though. You know that, right? He didn’t do anything either.”

  That was when I understood why her tone was so unrelenting. Belinda had been left entirely alone. She’d had to save herself by screaming loud enough to alert a custodian working near the snack stand. He came running; he called the police.

  Ms. Sadiq continued: “
What we’re trying to determine here is how culpable you two are for what happened to Belinda. If you witness an assault, it’s your responsibility to tell someone. We need to make that message clear to you and the rest of the student body.”

  She hardly needed to tell me this. Every year, Youth Action Coalition, the group I cofounded with Richard, sponsors an anti-violence ribbon campaign where we set up a table at lunch and hand out white ribbons to everyone who signs the pledge: I promise to never commit an act of violence against another living being and I promise to report any acts of violence I witness to an appropriate authority. Though Richard developed the campaign and wrote the pledge, I do most of the legwork for that one. In my drawer at home, I have three white ribbons for every year I’ve signed the pledge. It made me sick to think about it.

  “I understand,” I told her.

  In the week before our meeting with the disciplinary committee, Lucas and I didn’t speak at all. I wasn’t sure what he would say in his own defense, but I could have guessed: hundreds of people had come to watch a team he was part of. If I missed the second half kickoff, no one would notice; if he missed it, they would. I held a soda; he held a starting position on the defensive line.

  The morning of our meeting, I walked into the waiting room outside the principal’s office and Lucas was already there. I was with my parents, dressed in an outfit that felt ridiculous: a fair-isle sweater and wool skirt. Both items belonged to my mother. We’d had a fight that morning because I came downstairs wearing a black denim skirt and a long-sleeve T-shirt. “Absolutely not,” my mother had said. Sitting alone beside a potted plant, Lucas looked as if he’d given no thought to his clothes, which made me angry at my mother all over again.

  “Why does it matter if I look innocent?” I’d screamed at her. “I’m not innocent. And they shouldn’t base their decision on what I’m wearing today!”

  This whole business had been especially hard on my parents, who felt bad about Belinda and also worried for my future. A few nights before the meeting, my mother came into my room and told me I should show the committee how sorry I was, but also tell them I was afraid for my safety. I didn’t disagree with what she was saying, but I disagreed with the idea of walking into the meeting armed with an overly defensive list of excuses. What I did was inexcusable. I could have screamed NO! I could have rushed out to the crowd fifty feet away and yelled at the top of my lungs about what was happening. If I’d done any of those things, I would have changed the story. Belinda would still have been attacked, but instead of learning the brutal truth about violent people, she also would have learned that there are people in the world who will help her.

  As my parents got more anxious, I grew more dubious about mounting any defense. My father was afraid I might get suspended the same year I was sending off college applications.

  “Maybe I should be suspended,” I said when he brought it up for the second time.

  “Emily, please. I don’t see why the school should create more victims from this one dreadful incident. This is your whole future here.”

  “But what about Belinda’s future? Why should mine matter more than hers?”

  “Belinda will have a different kind of future than you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She’ll have supports in place. She’ll be taken care of. It’s different for you. You’ll be independent. You’ll need a college education to get a job.”

  “What if that’s what she wants too?” I knew Belinda well enough to know this wasn’t very likely—she spent most of her school day in the Life Skills room with a dozen other students with disabilities. I had no idea what Belinda wanted, I was only making the argument because I didn’t like the way my parents had spent three days thinking only about me and my defense. I was guilty too. I should be punished.

  Then we got to the office and I saw in the way Lucas looked at me and then looked away. He thought the same thing—that if anyone was guilty, I was. Certainly not him. Not a football player with the responsibility of being part of an undefeated team. Not a guy who had a job that night. He said all this without any words. He said it in the way his arms were folded across his chest. In the way his feet were stuck out and crossed. Like if we weren’t called in soon, he might use this time to take a nap. That he had no parent with him only underscored his point: he’d done nothing wrong and had nothing to worry about.

  Only someone worried about her own guilt would come to a DC meeting costumed in her mother’s clothes, hauling her parents along with her. (It hadn’t occurred to my parents not to come. With so much on the line? Did his not feel the same? Did he somehow reassure them, No need to worry, I didn’t do anything wrong. It was the girl’s fault.)

  He didn’t say anything when I said hello. He wouldn’t even look at me.

  It made me mad. Here I’d been lying awake every night for a week, measuring the magnitude of what had happened, composing ways to express my sense of responsibility and remorse to the committee, and here was this guy—dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, looking more resentful than anything else.

  Thankfully we were interviewed separately by the committee. I went first and made one point clearly: Lucas and I were equally responsible for failing to act on Belinda’s behalf. We saw the same thing; we both failed to act. I didn’t want him to be treated differently because he was on the football team. We might have had different reasons, but our crime was the same. We panicked and failed to help. I told them it’s something I’ll have to live with forever and I don’t know if I’ll ever understand why my instincts failed to do what my brain knew was right. I shook my head and told them I’d be haunted by it forever.

  My mother nodded the whole time I spoke, then squeezed my hand as if to say, That’s wonderful, sweetheart, but no need to go overboard. Make your point and move on.

  What was my point?

  “I am guilty,” I said to the committee. “But so is Lucas Kessler. We should get punished equally.”

  Beside me, my father leaned forward. “What she means here isn’t an admission of guilt, it’s a feeling she has. I hardly think when a minor witnesses a violent crime, they should be held liable for actions that took place under duress.”

  “Dad—” I stopped him. “It’s better for me if I take responsibility for this. But Lucas should, too. That’s all I’m saying.”

  My heart quickened a bit at my own insistence. I hardly knew Lucas at all. What if he found out what I’d just told the committee? Ms. Sadiq, the guidance counselor, said, “I’ll reassure all three of you that we’ve given this a great deal of thought and it helps Emily’s case to hear her speak about taking responsibility.”

  Lucas and I didn’t learn our punishment until the end of the day, when we were both asked to return to the guidance counselor’s office after school. By then I had changed out of what Richard called my 1980s librarian look. The wool skirt was balled up in the bottom of my backpack along with the sweater. I wore my usual school attire: long-sleeve T-shirt and a denim skirt.

  This time around, Lucas looked more nervous. He sat alone, chewing a thumbnail. He stared at me for a long time. “What, did you change?” he finally said.

  I felt stupid at first and then mad all over again. “It’s not that weird to dress up for a meeting with the disciplinary committee. Most people do.”

  “So shouldn’t you still be dressed up now? Isn’t changing like admitting, I’m not really Ms. Skirt?”

  What a jerk, I thought. “I don’t think it matters now. They’ve decided our punishment.” I sounded snappy and the words came out wrong. Like my outfit had been just for show and now the show was over.

  He shook his head as the door opened behind him. Ms. Sadiq leaned out. “Emily and Lucas, why don’t you come in together this time?”

  As we got to the door, Lucas stepped back to make a ladies first gesture with his hand. And he’s accusing me of putting on a show for the committee, I thought. Then I wondered why I’d spent so much time insisti
ng that we were both equally guilty, which might set us up to get the same punishment. What if we got after-school detentions in the same empty classroom?

  Ms. Sadiq started by saying that the committee was impressed by the sense of remorse both of us showed. “Their feeling is that you are both good, trustworthy kids who demonstrated a momentary but unfortunate lack of judgment. In ordinary circumstances, that wouldn’t necessitate a punishment on our part, but as you both know, this was not, in any way, a normal circumstance. A young woman was brutally attacked on school grounds. A uniquely vulnerable young woman whose life—if she recovers—will never be the same.”

  We didn’t dare look at each other. If she recovers? I knew Belinda hadn’t come to school this week, but did that mean she was in the hospital? No one had told us this. She might not survive? I felt the contents of my stomach crawl into my throat. I couldn’t speak for fear I might throw up in my lap. Instead I concentrated on swallowing.

  “She might die?” Lucas said.

  I turned and looked at him. This close, his face looked ashy and terrible. He’d shaved badly so there were patches of hair and a zit was blooming on the side of his nose. I wondered if maybe this had affected him more than I realized.

  “No, Lucas, but she’s been badly traumatized. Her grandmother says she’s hardly spoken since it happened. She’s also not eating much.”

  I kept swallowing. I breathed through my nose and concentrated on not throwing up.

  “Since you had such trouble helping someone as vulnerable as Belinda, we’ve decided that your punishment should include some education in working with people like her. We’re going to ask that both of you put in forty hours of community service at the Lifelong Learning Center, which runs classes for young adults with disabilities. I’ve contacted the program director there. I’ve told her you would both be in touch.”