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“Why are you so determined to get me to tell you what you should do about Steven, Ms. Miller?” I interrupted. “I mean, you’re the expert, and I know you know all about his recent history. Shouldn’t you be able to use your degrees to figure this out or whatever?”
“I don’t want to make a mistake based on judging a situation too quickly, Tamara,” said Miller. “I sincerely believe that every person is entitled to redemption in their lives… but what Steven did was particularly heinous, even considering the mitigating circumstances. I think I run the risk of jumping in the opposite direction, giving him a chance that will empower him to harm other young women.”
“Have you ever asked him about the heinous act behind those mitigating circumstances, though?” She just stared at me. “I guess he told you some of the facts and that’s why you feel a bit sorry for him, but you’ve never tried to talk him through what happened to him, have you? How do you expect to help him? Is he supposed to just stew around feeling shame over what he did and eventually maybe work out how to do better from that?” At least I could say I had asked the right questions of everyone I needed to… eventually.
Ms. Miller had nothing to say to my challenge. I got up and started to pace in her tiny room. “Do you know what my theory is?” She reached for her pen and paper. “I don’t think you want to give Steven a break at all. I think you’re looking for someone else who will tell you he’s bad all the way through, so you can tell yourself it’s all right to discount him completely.”
I smirked at her. “He’s bad, Ms. Miller… but I don’t think it’s all the way through.”
She shook herself, as if she could stop what I’d said from even touching her. “Well, Tamara, there’s going to need to be some sort of reckoning for that punch you’ve given Rodney.”
“I could have sworn his name would be able to be abbreviated to ‘Dick’,” I muttered.
Ms. Miller was a long way from smiling now. “Some advice, Miss Hills, which you probably won’t deign to take on board, but you are going to get it anyway. Those of us who have been here for more years than you, we aren’t so boring and restrictive because we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young, to feel all those things for the first time. It’s just that we’ve been here long enough to see what happens when you just do what you feel. The people who get hurt at the other end of it. The long-term consequences. We give you these serious looks and we try to enact discipline because we want to protect you from all of that.”
I wanted to scream at her, to demand to know where anyone had been to protect me all the years of my life until this very moment, but I knew that like most people twice my age, she really believed she was wiser than me. We younger people still felt powerless enough to accept it didn’t do anyone any good trying to tell them the truth. “Please, Ms. Miller,” I said. “Don’t try to protect me from anything. I’ll face my punishment for what I did here today, I’ll be completely gracious about it. I’d do it again in a second, but I’m willing to face the consequences.”
It clearly didn’t please her as much as it should have, but she just shuddered again and muttered, “At least you have something that looks like integrity.”
I had a feeling I knew where Steven was going to be when Ms. Miller finally let me go, so I ducked around the quickest route I could think of to the side of the school where he parked his car. I didn’t have any plan to approach him or anything. I just wanted to see him for some reason, see how he was looking after everything that had just happened.
I was almost there when I rounded a corner a little too quickly and crashed straight into Tyrell’s chest.
He laughed as he took a few steps back, closer to his friends. “Looks like our resident fighter has decided to try a few rounds with me. How about that?”
I just stared at him, hoping he’d let me pass if I didn’t make a big fuss. When the lot of them backed off right away, giving me all the space I needed and then some, I was almost too scared to actually go past them. Had I managed to pull off one of those looks the really confident popular girls did, the ones they used to keep the really confident popular boys in line?
I made myself start walking again. No point in ruining whatever I’d done by showing I couldn’t live up to it.
I leaned my back against the brick wall facing the end of Burgundy’s property and cupped my hand over my forehead so I could see to the corner where Steven parked his car. I didn’t care so much if he saw me; I didn’t think he’d approach unasked.
Then I was walking forward, my plans changed in an instant because the first figure I’d been able to focus on over there was a small female, and she was following Steven around his car with a playful, swinging gait while he took big strides to try to keep his distance. The girl was dressed up, but it seemed to be a stylistic choice in regular clothing rather than a uniform. There would be no prizes for guessing her identity.
And as if I hadn’t learned my lesson from everything that had happened this morning, I was so far over there that Julia had already noticed me coming, and stopped to stare.
My face heated up. It wasn’t like I thought she was better than me or anything, but I knew she was on a completely different level to me when it came to what she’d already done to get her way, and just the thought of trying to compete embarrassed me.
I forced myself to speak and hold onto the initiative, though. “Julia, I assume from the fact that you’re hanging around here.”
“Steven,” said Julia, in a pretty voice that perfectly matched her pretty face. “You never told me you had a new girlfriend.”
It was like I wasn’t real enough for her to speak directly to me.
“Julia.” The cajoling way Steven was talking to her really hurt me, because I knew it wasn’t him. I couldn’t imagine him speaking to me like that and I didn’t want him to. “Leave Tamara out of this. Okay?”
Her pout made her less pretty, and I was glad of it. “I don’t know what you’re even talking about. I’m just here trying to salvage what we once had, except now I’m finding out you’ve been finding someone else while I’ve been thinking about this on my own…”
“Julia.” I tried to capture whatever energy I’d been putting out on my way there, and even though I thought I was doing a bad job of it, I clearly managed enough that she turned back to me. “It’s no use your coming back around here trying to stir things up. The two of you are broken up permanently.”
Julia turned her nose up at me. “Steven and I share a history you couldn’t even imagine, coming in five minutes later like this.”
“I do know about him kidnapping you.” She wasn’t quick enough to cover for her surprise at that one. “I can’t excuse that, but I do wonder why you even want to be here bothering him, if you’re apparently so afraid.”
Her anger at that seemed real—but so had her fear, to get that restraining order. “Are you the sort of woman who tries to invalidate the experience of other women, just for the sake of a man?”
It was pathetic. I tried not to let myself get too caught up in judging her, though. I didn’t know what she was coping with at home.
I glanced at Steven, almost cowering behind his car, and I knew that what I had to say was very simple.
