Unfortunately, she knew this from experience.
“Okay.” Caitlin nodded slowly. “But Mom ... you need to know that ... this is like ... this is just what school islikenow. Some girls get ... videos ... from boys.”
“What kinds of videos?”
“Like, sick videos they make at home ... in their bedrooms.”
Her mother sighed, wishing she could unknow so many of the things she knew. “This is not normal, Caitlin. It’s not acceptable. You should not be threatened and harassed at school. You have a right to feel safe. All girls have a right to feel safe.”
She could feel herself launching into lecture mode and steered herself back to the matter at hand. “Write down the things he says. I’ll call the principal today and quietly put an end to this, okay?”
Caitlin crumpled into her mother’s arms again as fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just ... I don’t want it to become thisbig thingwhere everybody knows and I’m like, the bad guy for telling on him.”
“I understand,” Piper said. “We’ll handle it quietly, and we’ll make it stop. Okay?”
Her daughter had given her a weak smile as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Okay.”
The sharp rap of the gavel startled Piper, thrusting her back into the Stinky Room as the PTA meeting started.
“Thank you all for coming today.” The PTA president, resplendent in head-to-toe athleisure wear, gave a queenly smile to all the mothers in the room.
Yes. Mothers, Piper noted. They wrote the bills up for debate on the House and Senate floors, negotiated trade agreements, and were members of the Council on Foreign Relations, but somehow they were still the only members of their two-parent households who attended PTA meetings. Even this one, the inaugural meeting at the start of the school year, scheduled for maximum inconvenience in the middle of a workday.
Piper’s gaze wandered from the woman holding the gavel to the principal, who sat beside her.
His complacent smile triggered another flash of anger, and she sat up a little straighter. She wouldnotwait until Monday. She’d accost him today, as soon as the meeting ended.
Her daughter’s safety depended on it.
Chapter Three
Kiersten
Kiersten climbed into her car, exited the school parking lot, and drove her minivan to a nearby park, where she turned off the engine and sat staring ahead at a small cluster of moms sitting on a picnic blanket, holding infants.
She glanced at the clock on the dashboard and grimaced. She’d planned to attend the first PTA meeting of the year after the orthodontist appointment.
She didn’t necessarilywantto join the PTA, because how much could she realistically volunteer, with her HMO Call-an-Advice-Nurse job, and travel sports, and her husband always gone, and a giant pile of unpacked boxes in the basement? But she did want to make friends in this new place, and the PTA seemed like a good place to start.
Her gaze traveled to the rearview mirror, where she took in her unwashed hair and naked face. All the energy leaked from her body, and she sagged in her seat like a three-day-old helium balloon. She couldn’t go to the PTA meeting looking likethis.
Some of the moms out here in the DC area were ... intense. A little intimidating. She’d met a few of them at Sneak-a-Peek the day before school started. They looked like the kind of people who discussed battleground polls on CNN after a presidential debate. Half ofthem seemed to run vitally important government agencies, and the ones who didn’t wore head-to-toe Lululemon and looked like former Olympic athletes.
One of the women she’d run into had casually mentioned that she’d gone to Harvard. Kiersten was still trying to figure out how the woman had managed to insert this fact into a two-minute conversation about whether or not her fourth grader really needed the mini stapler she’d been unable to find at Target. In her mind, the conversation went something like this.
Were you able to find the mini stapler?
Yes. I went to Harvard.
She took a giant swig of coffee from her stainless steel travel tumbler, then closed her eyes and exhaled. She would attend thenextPTA meeting, after she’d taken a shower, put on under-eye concealer, and found a way to disguise the fact that she only had a bachelor’s degree from Mankato State.
Through the windshield, she watched as one of the mothers on the picnic blanket dangled brightly colored plastic keys in front of a baby who reached out with chubby hands to grasp the toy.
Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.
Someone had told her this, years ago. It felt condescending at the time, and she’d resented the person who said it. When Matt had colic and refused to sleep, it was a huge problem. But now she felt like she understood.
She couldn’t fix her son’s distress with a fresh diaper or a bottle. These big-kid problems seemed far beyond her abilities, above her pay grade. Fitting in at a new school, dyslexia, ADD, flunking, fighting.
