My phone continues to ping wildly.
Then Paul Luger is knocking on my open front door with wide-shocked eyes, darting between the police officers and me. “Claire? Are you okay? What’s going on?”
The officers ask him a thousand questions, but I’m in too much shock to hear any of them. I don’t know what’s really happening, all I know is it’s all rushing at me fast and the world is spinning frantically out of control.
Then he’s sitting next to me, grabbing onto my hands. They’re wrapped into tight little fists, my hands, and Paul has to pry my fingers open to be able to hold them. “Claire, sweetheart, you have to breathe. Just take deep breathes in and out. That’s it. In and out.”
I want to punch him in his face. I need to get the bag I packed and run away. I need to leave now.
“Claire, you have to try and talk to me,” Paul pleads. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down, up and down as he talks.
I shake my head. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. It’s not going to be good.
“There was an email blast, from the school’s newsletter,” he says gently.
I shake my head, vigorously. No, no, no. I don’t want to hear this. Why can’t he shut up? I yank my hands back and cover my ears. I’m blind with tears.
“Claire,” he says, sternly as he pulls my hands away from my ears. “Claire, talk to me. Why did you send that email to the whole faculty and the parents? Claire, who else did you send it to? Did you send it to the diocese? Claire, how could you do this? Help me understand what happened and why you felt you needed to do it.”
I can’t speak. All I can do is sit here, shuddering, sobbing, and shaking my head. Why would anyone think Iwoulddo this—that Icoulddo this? How could Paul think so little of me? How could they all think I would do such a thing? It’s like none of them know the real me, all they see is Libby Radcliffe’s daughter.
The whore.
Paul shows me his phone. There’s a video of a breaking news report. My school picture is plastered in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and a reporter is telling the locals about what every parent in my private school received in their school newsletter mid-morning. Not just the parents and faculty. It was sent to every student email as well.
My students saw those pictures.
My second-graders.Why would anyone do such a thing to seven-year-olds?
The emails were sent during the first lunch period.
Paul continues to speak, while he plays the video, but I hear nothing. I see nothing.
I feel nothing.
I never understood what a suicidal thought was, until now.
It’s like every cell I’m made of seeps out from me, leaving me utterly empty, dead inside. The only escape I can see, reasonably to stop existing.
Paul shouts to get my attention. I flinch from the sound of his harsh voice. He’s asking me why I did this to him. I don’t understand why he thinks this has to do with him. “You ruined it for us,” he whispers, “we could have—” I close my eyes and ignore the rest. Us? I don’t know who this us he’s talking about is; I don’t even know who I am right now.
How am I going to be able to survive this?
The cops take my phone. My laptop. I told them this would happen when they first got here, but the story had already broken, I had been too frozen with fear and in shock to realize. That’s why they stayed so long. Not because of a burglary, but because everyone believes I’m a horrible monster who wants to scar children.
Everyone talks over me, through me. Paul has me wrapped up in his arms, but I don’t feel him at all. It’s like my body is floating somewhere above it all. It’s as if I’m already dead.
By dinner time I no longer have a job. I’m fired immediately. My belongings will be dropped off at my apartment sometime in the future, but I am not allowed within a specific distance of the school grounds. The headmaster talks at me over my phone. I’m not allowed to speak back or explain what I’ve gone through at all.
There is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty in my world.
On another news report a parent to one of my favorite students calls me a pedophile.
I remain sitting on the couch, motionless, devoid of any feeling, while the rest of the world keeps on moving around the sun without me.
Me, a pedophile? I wish that mountain would have crushed me.
* * *
