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“Off the record?”
“Off the record,” I confirmed.
Laura dropped her plastic fork on top of her half-eaten salad and pushed the container away. “It started in September,” she said. “Little things at first. Extra help during lunch. Then small gifts—a braided bracelet, a cute necklace—nothing expensive, but not exactly appropriate either.” Laura played with the straw in her soda, poking it down into the ice, and continued. “There were privileges. Inside jokes. I think she was flattered by the attention. Mr. Dempsey was handsome, and he’d picked her. What high school girl doesn’t love to feel chosen? Soon she started making up excuses to stay after school. He’d text her, and suddenly she’d remember a study group she needed to go to.” The wind kicked up and Laura’s napkin flew off the table and into the busy street. We both watched as it skittered across four lanes of traffic before getting flattened by a bus. “I told her it was creepy,” she said. “We fought about it a couple times, so I stopped bringing it up and hoped she’d move on. But in October she broke up with her boyfriend. She stopped eating lunch with us, wouldn’t go to football games. It was senior year and she just vanished. I mean, she was there, but she wasn’t, you know?”
“Did she ever tell you the specifics of what was happening?”
“Not until afterward.” She crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes on the passing cars, remembering. “What he did to her was sick. Oral sex in his office. In his car. He told her he wanted to teach her how to do it right, that it was a skill many women never learn to master.” Laura’s eyes cut to mine, her expression dead. “They’d drive up the coast after school, to deserted beach parking lots. Have sex in his backseat. She’d lie to her parents, telling them she was sleeping over at my house, but she was staying over at his instead.”
“They never caught her?”
Laura gave a sharp laugh. “Her parents were…” She trailed off, as if searching for the right words. “Absent. Her dad was some executive—I don’t know where exactly—but he made enough money so her mom could go shopping and have lunch at the beach club every day. Neither of them cared what she was doing so long as she played the part of perfect daughter. Don’t ask, don’t tell, you know?”
“How did their relationship get discovered? Did Kristen tell someone?”
“She called me, out of the blue, in November. Crying. Begged me to sneak out and meet her. I’d assumed the relationship had ended badly. Maybe he dumped her or came to his senses.” Laura swiped a strand of hair off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “But she was pregnant, and the baby was Mr. Dempsey’s.”
I sat back in my chair, imagining a seventeen-year-old girl caught in an illicit relationship with her teacher, pregnant with his baby, and what that must have felt like. The shock and fear of discovery, the irrevocable consequences that a girl as smart as Kristen would have understood immediately.
Laura sighed, her expression distant. “I sat with her when she told her parents.” She looked back at me. “You want to know what they said? ‘You should have known better.’ As if Kristen had been caught cheating on an exam or ditching school.”
“Then what?”
“They pulled her out. Kristen’s dad was a powerful guy, and I was sure his attorneys would have a field day. I kept waiting for Mr. Dempsey to lose his job, or for them to put him on administrative leave. Something. But when he showed up after winter break cracking jokes, eyes sliding over Kristen’s empty seat like it was nothing…” She shrugged. “What more could I do? At that point, I just wanted to get the hell out of that school and away from all of it.”
“How is she now? Did she have the baby? Graduate high school?”
“They moved away. Sorry, but off the record or not, I’m not telling you where. She had an abortion. Got her GED. I don’t really talk to her anymore, and she’s not on social media.” Laura looked sad.“She was brilliant. She wanted to be a doctor, and Mr. Dempsey stole that from her. It sounds like he tried to do it again.”
“Yes, but Meg stopped him.”
Laura shook her head and gave a hollow laugh. “I never would have guessed the Bag Lady had it in her.” She looked sad, still haunted by what had happened to her friend. “I should’ve done more—spoken out. I didn’t even tell my parents until last month when the news broke about Mr. Dempsey.”
“You were young,” I said. “You trusted the adults in the room to take care of it. To do the right thing. That they didn’t is on them, not you.”
“I’m glad Meg did what she did, but it should have been me.”
“Next time,” I said. Our eyes met and held across the table, a sad acknowledgment passing between us. Because we both knew there were plenty of men still out there like Cory Dempsey.
