"The One That Damned Me" by DL Shirey
A high school counselor's life is ruined when he is wrongly accused by a cocaine snorting student.
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"The One That Damned Me" by DL Shirey
“Sent u email about Jesmyn. Please read.” S
The text from the Ex was short and sweet, like Susan used to be. The message nearly sobered me up. I was suddenly warmer, caused by the friction of memories rushing back from five years ago. The flip phone in my hand felt twice as hot, so I dropped it in the sand as if scalded. I stared at the message until the screen blanked black. Like my life after Jesmyn.
I don't know how Susan found me. I go by Neil Daniels now. Anyone who remembers the Old Me was in Olathe, Kansas. My neighbors changed my name before I did, a convenient transposing of letters from Nate Draper to Date Raper.
Even in Jesmyn's version of the story no intercourse occurred. But according to Kansas law, sexual misconduct with a minor, any act at all, is charged as statutory rape. And that awful nickname followed me through hearings and firings, trial dates and death threats. Even after my innocence was established, in the eyes of Olathe, I was never not guilty. By the end it was easier to change my name. To change the circumstance I would have had to see it coming.
Jesmyn always got by. Smart girl, a solid B-average, without even trying. That was the trouble, nothing was ever hard for her, except maybe her upbringing. She was always delivered to me for counseling after one mishap or another. She never asked for my advice, but I gave it anyway; standard language from the Counselor's Handbook: concentrate on school, up your GPA, get involved in extracurriculars, volunteer in the community. She wasn't interested in my opinion about what good colleges required. She wanted to go, all right, but the only two requisites I ever heard her mention were 'is it far away?' and 'do rich boys go there?'
I knew her family enough to recognize a low-rent life on the wrong end of town. I asked Jesmyn how they were going to afford a scholarship if it didn't pay a full ride? She didn't answer. Jesmyn had this way of crooking one eyebrow, as if to say the rumors were true: the same way she got her new clothes or would get the car she wanted. Daddies were easy to find, even at 17.
* * *
I live cheap in Baja. My old teaching certificate gets me jobs: ESL for those looking to do business north of the border; a seasonal cruise ship gig teaching Spanish phrases to fat touristas who want to barter at the shops in port; tutoring local high-schoolers who aspire to college in the States. Some things never change.
My ex-wife used to say I gave too much time to everybody else's kids and none to my own. Her sarcasm was code for disappointment that we never had children. For Susan, there was no affording a family without her high-paying job. She said she would have gladly resigned her paycheck to have babies, if there was more than my teacher's salary coming in. Not like I didn't try. I got my Masters at night and pushed for promotion to school counselor, with an eye on vice principal. But a family for us didn't happen. While my career rose like a low hill-climb on a treadmill, hers spiked the mountaintops. My wife set all thoughts of motherhood on the back burner after her promotion, just as the rumblings about Jesmyn and me heated up. When the whispers grew louder, Susan was staying late in Kansas City to work. And when the accusations surfaced, Susan didn't come home at all. She never believed my pleas of innocence, not when she saw the infidelity with her own eyes. Our family of two ended then and there.
Now, about the other two: Jesmyn and Melissa called themselves unidentical twins and were inseparable, even before high school. From the back, Melissa looked like a guy. She was skinny-straight from shoulder to hips, blunt haircut, baggy jeans and t-shirts. Jesmyn was all curves, clothes too tight to pack them all in, and chestnut hair billowing down her back. They'd walk hip to hip, each with one hand shoved in the other's back pocket, their tanned arms forming an X. And they laughed exactly the same: over-the-top, with the first ha extending long and shrill, sputtering away to a cackle. You could hear it all over school, like the mating calls of birds; first one would start and the other would rise up in tandem. In public, they were never apart. In private, word had it that they teamed-up on boys. I imagined the crook in Jesmyn's eyebrow when asked if it was true.
They were certainly together that day in the girls' locker room when caught snorting coke. Coach Mercanti's camera phone snapped proof: Jesmyn face down next to a sink, Melissa with her head tossed back, a rolled-up dollar between her fingers. Coach sent me the picture after she delivered Jesmyn to my office. It's one of two pictures I've kept from 2009. As self-torture, I guess, I also kept the one that damned me.
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