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That bastard, Liam thought, as she began to shiver. He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around her, despite her having a coat.
“Thanks,” she said, forcing a smile. “The girl said she’d told him I was sick. Because she knew what he wanted to do to me. Turns out, he’d done the same thing to her. She freaked out too, when it happened, only she didn’t run like I did. She froze. He…did some things to her. Things no one should ever get to do to another person without permission.”
“He was forcing himself on his students,” Liam said, pausing as she hurled the rock into the sea. “It’s unspeakable.”
“Yes, it was.” She sniffed then, breaking his heart in two as he reached for her hand, which she gripped hard. “The girl told me he’d been doing it for years. Her parents had gone to the school’s principal, but nothing had been done. They’d accused her of lying or misinterpreting what had happened. That kind of thing would never go down at our school. They suggested counseling even. She told me I was going to need to be careful because when he picked a girl he wanted, he usually found a way to get her. I was terrified after that, scared to go to school. I pretended to be sick, like really sick.”
She’d been smart even then, and he knew telling her would keep her strong enough to face down this horrible experience. After, he would hold her. “Figuring out how to stay away was good, Taylor. Really good.”
She gave a rueful chuckle. “Yeah, I thought so. Only my grades tanked from missing so much school and being too worked up to focus, and my parents, who never noticed anything, noticed a note another teacher sent home about my unusual drop in ‘academic performance.’ I still remember the stale smell of my dad’s Cuban cigars in his office when he summoned me to demand I tell him what was wrong. My mother was clutching her little Pomeranian as she sat in the chair beside me. They thought I was pregnant, you see, and were ready to suggest I get an abortion.”
His mouth gaped. “That must have been a shock.”
“Yeah,” she said shakily, gripping his hand again, “and maybe it’s what made me tell them the actual truth. We weren’t close, and I didn’t think they’d have my back. But my dad said there was no way he was going to let some teacher get his little girl pregnant, so he went to the principal. It ended up being the same conversation the girl in the bathroom had told me about.”
He fought the urge to take her in his arms, but her eyes were glassy and the need to offer her comfort was hard to deny. So he rubbed her arms briskly. “Keep talking.”
“The administration thought I was crazy—clearly something was wrong given all my absences and my grades tanking. Maybe something at home? That enraged my father. He was going to pull me from the school, which I was fine with, only… That teacher was still going to hurt other girls.”
In that moment, he fell in love with her all the way. The goodness of her. The warrior in her. Now he could understand how she’d known how to handle a bully like Malcolm—he was far from the first she’d faced. “You had to do something, didn’t you?”
She nodded, her face pale. “Yes. Except I didn’t know what I could do. I was sixteen. A kid. My dad, who was a big booster at the school, and the other girl’s parents hadn’t been able to bring a stop to the abuse. The school wasn’t going to admit they had an issue. I changed schools, but I couldn’t let it go. I kept hoping for an idea.Something. Then I was walking one day, and I ended up at the Bowery Graffiti Wall. It captured my imagination with its incredible wall mural. That day it depicted a woman fighting for her human rights. She had on a multicolored dress and huge tears were running down her arms and legs, almost like she was crying a river of tears from her skin. I just stopped. All I could do was stare.”
In that instant he knew why she loved spray-paint. But he waited, watching as she gathered herself, standing taller now as the tide touched their bare feet.
“I thought…I can paint the scene with the teacher for everyone to see. Our school uniforms with our cute little preppy decals will give it away. Then I scoped out a place I’d researched in a neighborhood far from mine—one that street artists were known to use—and made a plan. I was terrified I’d get arrested. Or busted by my parents, who might figure out I wasn’t at my friend Patty’s house for a sleepover. I didn’t know there was a territory thing back then with street artists, but I got lucky. When one of the guys showed up, I told him what had happened, and he offered to help me.”
And you fell in love with him for it, Liam thought, as the next wave cresting on the shore sent her against him. He led her away from the shoreline but kept her walking. She was deep in the past now, and he knew she needed to keep going. With all of it.
“I painted what I’d drawn up in my design, and when I ran out of spray paint, which I’d never used before, the guy—his name was Darren—went to his place and brought me some of his cans. I had to improvise on the color scheme, but I finally got it done with his help. God, it took forever. My heart was pounding so loud, and my hand was shaking so it was hard to keep within my lines. It was crazy and terrifying and thrilling.”
He could almost feel her heart pounding as she spoke, and he saw a flash of her on a ladder, stretching up as she sprayed.
“Turns out that I was really good at it.” She laughed without humor. “My art teachers had always said I was mediocre, which was crushing at the time. But this… The teacher’s face was portraiture perfect, as was the schoolroom and the uniform’s decal. Even I knew I’d rocked it in a way I couldn’t with a still life or a landscape.”
She’d found her justice, he understood, and it had taken her art to a new level.
“When I got home later, after changing in a Starbucks’ bathroom downtown and throwing away my filthy clothes, I was exhausted but happy.” This time she gave a tight smile despite being pale. “I had a date with the guy who’d helped meandmy revenge, so to speak. And then the media got ahold of the mural, and it all went crazy. Bad crazy. The kind you wish you could wake up from.”
His impulse to comfort her couldn’t be ignored any longer. He pulled her to his chest, and she melted against him, breathing hard. She gave herself a long moment, clutching his back as he wrapped his arms around her.
Then she pressed back and exhaled audibly, shivering again. “The school I’d left thought of itself as elite, and the alumni list was like aWho’s Whoof important people. Seeing a mural of this teacher—Mr. Big Shit and Teacher of the Year—doing that to a girl was akin to lighting a gasoline station on fire. The teacher and the school demanded that the ‘prankster’ be arrested for defamation and a whole host of other stuff. I was terrified. It hadn’t gone down the way I’d thought. I mean, the school was still denying everything.”
Except there was more. He could feel the crescendo bursting up inside her as he rubbed her arms to keep her warm.
“They suspected an art student.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Since my father had gone to the principal and I’d changed schools, the administration gave the police my name. I was questioned in our home. I still remember the sugar on the lead officer’s shirt from the donut he’d had that morning. I lied about doing it, of course, since the officer was very clear about the severity of the crime. The perpetrator could go to jail.”
He couldn’t believe they would have put a sixteen-year-old in jail. And yet, who knew how far people with power would go to protect themselves?
“I did tell them what the teacher had done.” She reached down to pick up another rock and hurled it into the sea with an audible burst of emotion from her throat. “We’d already told the principal. Apparently, other parents had come forward, and old complaints against the teacher had resurfaced. The media found people who were willing to go on record. Newspaper articles started coming out, and two months later, after an inquiry, the teacher was fired. The school was beset with scandal.”
So she’d won. He’d hoped for a happy conclusion to this story. He reached for her hand again. “Good. I hope the teacher got jail time.”
She looked off and leaned down for another rock, although she kept his hand. “He didn’t. But he didn’t teach again, which was good for other girls. The principal ended up resigning, but he got a job later in Upstate New York. Not everything works out fairly, but sometimes things happen that you can live with.”
The tension inside of her started to shift as she flung the rock into the sea, and this time, he thought it would be her last. In his mind, a door opened, radiating bright light, and suddenly he understood what he hadn’t before.
Taylor was the one Caisleán had been waiting for.
