Page 5 of What Boys Learn

She looked shocked. “Such as?”

“Drugs, bullying, sexting. I don’t know. Something Summit parents would prefer to pretend doesn’t happen here.”

Duplass’s eyes looked pink and pouchy. I instinctively looked around for a tissue box, because it’s what I did in my office when a student was about to cry. But she didn’t cry. She hardened.

“Do you know why the board got rid of your predecessor?”

Rita, my friend who taught Spanish, had informed me. “Because she told one of the top-ranked students he could afford to spend spring break relaxing instead of studying.”

“Not just any top-ranked student. He was the son of one of our founding families, and they did not send their son to Summit in order to slack off. We are not a public school.”

That I knew. They paid only 60 percent of what a public secondary school pays. That also meant they were willing to hire someone straight out of grad school. It furthermore meant they could fire employees for minor infractions or even smaller misunderstandings.

“Sending you home wasn’t a punishment,” Duplass said. “It was a tactic. To remove you from the board’s sight. Just for now. In the hope they’d forget about you until we’re through the worst of this. But you don’t understand that, because you’re—”

“Worried about the students,” I interrupted.

“No. Because you areinexperienced, I was going to say. And far, far out of your depth.”

I waited a moment for her to go further, as Jack Mayfield had. To say that I was unqualified. The closest thing they had to a scapegoat.

I said, “A girl like Izzy won’t make fast friends with an older male psychiatrist she’s never met before.”

“I’m sorry,” Duplass said, eyes boring into mine. “Did she become ‘fast friends’ with you?”

2

It was one fifteen when I left the school—a half hour after Jack Mayfield had slammed through the exit doors. I crossed the parking lot, squeezing the banker’s box filled with books and framed photos, careful to peek around one side to watch for careless student drivers backing out without looking. If I’d known what my day held in store, I wouldn’t have worn a pencil skirt, too tight around the knees for quick walking. When my ankle turned, I nearly dropped everything.

“Shit,” I said. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

I stifled a sob, focusing on the twinge in my ankle. I couldn’t break down here. Pain was better than tears. Indignation was even better. I should be screaming. No one was listening to my concerns for our students.

I hobbled in search of my parked car, scanning the parking lot to see how many people had witnessed my stumble. Then I saw him. Standing near the bumper of his black car, arms crossed over his tight polo shirt, eyes hidden behind expensive-looking aviator sunglasses.

“Hey,” he said from fifty feet away. “You owe me the rest of that conversation.”

It felt wrong to say nothing, but any reply would embolden him.Keep walking.

“Bitch,” he called out. “You talked to my daughter for months. Youknowsomething.”

I kept my eyes focused on my silver hatchback, only three cars away. Over my shoulder I started to say, “I’m sorry—”

But then I saw him take a step, shouting, “You think an apology brings my daughter back?”

I opened the driver’s door, shoved my boxes of office stuff onto the passenger seat, and pulled my door shut, locking it before I reached into my purse for my antismoking tablets. I hadn’t had a cigarette in sixteen months, but the pills did triple duty: anticraving, antianxiety, and antihypertension.

Just when I was about to step on the gas, something slammed against the car’s thin metal roof. I shrieked. Jack Mayfield’s face appeared in my window, mouth open in a ragged, wailing expression of unprocessed grief. He motioned for me to roll down the window.

“No,” I shouted through the glass. “Step away. Please.”

“You’re not even trying to help!”

I went back to college at the age of twenty-seven. I neglected my own child for nine years. In grad school, I took on a ridiculous amount of debt. All because I wanted to help. But not at this moment. Not with that raging face so close.

He ordered, “Roll down your fucking window!”

Sidney’s father drummed his fist twice more against the car’s roof, delivering a final pound on the hood even as I backed out. I kept going, turning the wheel fast, knowing I was doing a shitty job checking my blind spot.