One Thing Leads to Another
“Some of you seniors may have seen this at parties,” said Coach Greene, standing at the podium in front of the upper school assembly, holding a green glass bottle. “The manufacturer calls it ‘Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler,’ but the Charleston County Police Department calls it ‘rape juice.’”
Sitting next to Abby, Gretchen jerked forward, flinching. She turned to see who had touched her, but of course nobody had. Hushed whispering and snickers broke out behind them: Wallace Stoney and his football buddy sidekicks, John Bailey and Malcolm Zuckerman (who had taken to calling himself Nuke for some unknown reason).
“It tastes sweet,” Coach Greene continued. “It costs about a dollar, and in hot weather, if you’re not careful, you’ll drink three or four of them without even noticing. But do not be fooled. Each one of these contains more alcohol than a can of beer. If you’re a young woman, these make it very easy to put yourself in a situation where that which is most precious to you could be permanently ruined. Y’all know what I’m talking about.”
She took a dramatic pause and scanned the audience, daring a single student to make a single joke. Laughter was lethal when you were being told something For Your Own Good.
“Some things that are broken cannot be fixed,” Coach Greene said. “Sometimes it only takes one mistake to ruin what cannot be repaired, be it your reputation, your family’s good name, or your . . . most . . . valuable . . . gift.”
Abby wanted to lean over and whisper it to Gretchen in solemn tones: Your . . . Most . . . Valuable . . . Gift. It had the potential to become something they said to each other all the time, like “Nik Nak Woogie Woogie Woogie,” the love cry of the Koala Bear, or “Hefty, Hefty, Hefty . . . wimpy, wimpy, wimpy” from the television commercial. But ever since she’d dropped into the shotgun seat of the Dust Bunny that morning, Gretchen had been bleary-eyed and miserable, all herking, jerking raw nerves.
Invisible hands had been touching her all night, she’d told Abby. Touching her face, tapping her shoulders, stroking her chest. She’d laid in her bed for hours, holding completely still, praying the flashbacks would stop while tears ran down her temples and pooled in her ears. Around 2 a.m., Gretchen snuck the cordless phone into her bedroom, called Andy, and talked to him for two hours until she finally fell asleep. When she woke at dawn, she was excited that she’d managed to sleep for two solid hours. Then she felt a hand brush her stomach and she ran into the bathroom and threw up.
“I cannot tell you the number of students who come into my office crying,” Coach Greene said from the podium on the big blond-wood stage at the front of the auditorium. “You don’t know how valuable something is until it’s gone.”
Abby wondered if maybe Gretchen was exaggerating. How long could flashbacks really last? But it seemed real. Earlier that morning, Gretchen had fallen asleep in U.S. History, which made Mr. Groat rap on her desk and moan through his mustache that maybe she’d find the front office more interesting.
“This is your future I’m talking about, people,” Coach Greene shouted. “A little bit of carelessness and you could ruin it permanently. Like that!”
She snapped her fingers and they sounded like bones breaking. Coach Greene paused to let the import of her remarks sink in. A sheen of sweat coated her upper lip.
The massive air-conditioning system rumbled on and shoved cold air out the ceiling vents. Someone on the other side of the auditorium coughed. In the silence, Gretchen jerked forward again, making her chair rattle. Abby shot her a look. Gretchen’s right shoulder was twitching like someone was pushing it again and again, joggling it back and forth. Abby never prayed in chapel but right now she prayed that Coach Greene didn’t notice the disruption.
“Stop it,” Gretchen said, under her breath.
Cold sweat ran down Abby’s ribs.
“Shh,” she whispered.
“One gift,” Coach Greene repeated, waving the green bottle dramatically. “And you can only give it away one time, and that should be to the person you love, not—”
“Stop it!” Gretchen shouted, standing up and turning around, face flushed.
Every head in the auditorium whipped in her direction, every student leaned forward, everyone suddenly focused on Gretchen, her face bright red, arms tense, body quivering.
“I didn’t do anything,” Wallace Stoney said, leaning back, holding up his hands in the “I surrender” position.
“May I help you, Miss Lang?” Coach Greene asked.
“Gretchen,” Abby whispered out the side of her mouth. “Sit. Down.”
“Is there a problem, Miss Lang?” Coach Greene repeated, landing hard on each word.
“Someone keeps touching me,” Gretchen said.
“And then you woke up,” Wallace Stoney murmured, getting a ripple of laughter from the boys sitting around him.
“Quiet!” Coach Greene shouted. “Am I boring you, Miss Lang? Because I can repeat this in Saturday School if you’d prefer. Or maybe you can hear it again when you’re crying in my office after you’ve thrown your treasure in the gutter and shamed yourself, your family, and your school. Would you like that?”
Gretchen should have said “No, ma’am.” She should have apologized. She should have sat down and taken her lumps. Instead, to Abby’s horror, she argued.
“Wallace keeps touching the back of my neck.”
“You wish!” Wallace said, and even Mrs. Massey sitting at the end of their row laughed before putting on her faculty face and leaning forward, extending a silencing finger at Wallace.
“Enough,” she said.
“But I didn’t do anything,” Wallace protested.
“We saw him,” Nuke Zuckerman said, jumping to his buddy’s defense. “He was just sitting here. She’s psycho.”
Coach Greene pointed at Gretchen with the wine cooler bottle.
“Wait in the lobby, Lang,” she said. “Better yet, march yourself to the front office and wait for Major. He’ll have a better idea of how to deal with you.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Gretchen shouted.
“Outside, right now! March!”
“But—”
“Now!”
Abby looked down, studying her hands, twisting her fingers around themselves.
“S’not fair,” Gretchen mumbled as she dragged herself over Abby’s legs and stumbled down the row, exhausted and loose-jointed. Maybe she lost her footing, maybe somebody stuck out a leg, but when she reached the end she went sprawling into the big aisle that led to the exit doors and landed on all fours. And that was when the woo sound started.
No one knows how it happens, or who starts it, but it’s the same sound that arises spontaneously when someone breaks a glass in the cafeteria. A long, low sound of chiding and shame that slipped softly out of three hundred throats and filled the auditorium: A-woooooo. As relentless and unchanging as an air-raid siren, it accompanied Gretchen on her long march up the aisle to the double doors while Abby sat ramrod straight, mortified, refusing to join in.
“Stop that!” Coach Greene shouted from the front of the auditorium. She clapped twice into the microphone. “Cut it out!”
Then she took the whistle hanging around her neck, leaned into the microphone, and blew a single sharp blast. The microphone shrieked feedback, the woo sound stopped, and students grabbed their ears in exaggerated pain.
“You think this is funny?” Coach Greene shouted. “There are people out there waiting for you to turn your head for a single second so they can put drugs in your Coca-Cola: GBH, LSD, PCP. You think I’m lying? Read a newspaper.”
Which is when Major heaved himself up out of his chair in the first row and trundled to the podium, bulldozing Coach Greene aside.
“Settle,” he mumbled in his clotted monotone. “Settle, everyone. Thank you, Coach, for that valuable information.”