Not good. What a stupid thing to say. This situation was clearly far beyond not good. I wanted to take the words back, but Tammy was already talking again.
“My aunt dangled the collage from two fingers like a smelly piece of garbage, and she said…” Tammy lifted her head and put on a fake snooty voice. “‘Could you tell us what this means, Tammy? We can see plainly it’s your handwriting, so don’t try to deny it. There’s no hiding your sin from the Lord.’”
“What did your mom say?”
“Nothing. She spent the whole time crying in the corner.”
I wanted to cry myself just listening to this, but Tammy only sipped her coffee. “What happened then?”
“Well, I was trying to think up some explanation to make it sound innocent. Say it was a joke, or something. But before I could think it through Carolyn shouted, ‘I didn’t want to do it! She’s the one who’s sick!’”
“What?”
Tammy’s lip trembled again. “She told them it was me who had a crush on her, and she obviously would never have felt that way, because she’s a good little Christian. She gave this whole speech about how she’d been trying to save me before it got to be too late.” Tammy set her coffee cup on the counter and slumped down on the linoleum floor, her long hair cascading into her face.
“They couldn’t have believed that!”
“Oh, they did. Aunt Mandy would’ve bought it anyway—she’s been waiting for me to screw up for years—but Carolyn laid it on thick, too. Said she was scared I was going to hurt her.”
“What, physically?”
“Yeah. She told them about me punching Tim at prom, and she said last week I followed her into the stairwell and tried to—God, she made it sound as if she was lucky to escape with her life. She said I was a…” Tammy pressed her knuckles into her forehead again and winced. “An unrepentant dyke.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s horrible. But it’s her word against yours, isn’t it?”
“Well, they’d already talked to Tim before I got there, and they had the stupid collage with my handwriting on it. Carolyn told them I’d slipped it into her locker when she wasn’t looking. She said she’d kept it secret because she wanted to help me without getting me in trouble. She said she’d thought that would be the Christian thing to do.”
“Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe her!”
“Yeah, well, all I could think through all those hours on the bus was how I should’ve seen it coming.” Tammy stretched up to retrieve her coffee cup from the counter and took a slow sip. As if she wanted to make it last. “Anyway, by then Carolyn was crying, and her mom was crying, and, of course, my mom was still crying. Aunt Mandy and I were the only ones with dry eyes.”
“What did they do? Suspend you?”
She shook her head. “Not on the last day of school. Besides, Aunt Mandy said the important thing wasn’t that I get punished, it was that I get healed.”
“What does that mean?”
“She called my dad and my uncle and told them to come to school right away.” Tammy fixed her gaze on her mug and barked out a humorless laugh. “She told Carolyn and her mom to let them know if Carolyn needed any pastoral counseling to help her ‘recover.’ I knew when Dad and Uncle Russell got there, I’d be trapped, so I waited until Carolyn and her mother were gone, and when Aunt Mandy went over to talk to my mom, I ran.”
“What, you just made a break for it?”
“They weren’t looking at me, so I knew it was the only chance I’d get. Mom was bawling so loud they didn’t even notice I’d slipped out the door at first.”
“How did you get away?”
“That was the easy part. I just walked down the hall and went out the first exit I saw. The problem was, I hardly had anything with me. Just that.” Tammy lifted her chin toward the counter, where her designer purse was tucked behind the O’Sullivans’ cookie