Early the following morning, I got to school needing to catch up on the work I missed the day before.

“Hey Jason, are you going to the football game Friday?” asked Susan, a young, Spanish teacher who carried herself like someone who enjoyed the fact that every teenage boy in the school wanted to fuck her. “I guess a bunch of the teachers are getting together beforehand.”

That Friday we were playing our school’s rival, so it was a big deal to a lot of adults who should know better. As a former player, it was surprising how little I cared about football now. I rarely went to games and even more rarely made appearances at any staff get togethers.

“I’m not sure,” I replied, looking down.

Finding my way to my room, I sat down to grade an assignment I gave to my 11th graders on the chapter “Robber Barons and Rebels” from People’s History of the United States. I didn’t use a textbook in any of my classes. I preferred to piece together information from various texts and force the students to absorb information from multiple viewpoints. Pairing Zinn with a conservative historian like Walter Webb and then asking, “who’s right and why?”

Out the corner of my eye I saw Vanessa, a senior from my gov/econ class, walk up my ramp before throwing my door open with force. The rain from the day before had yet to subside, and the thunder sounded closer today.

“Mr. Smith,” she asked, walking inside, “can I talk to you?”

“Sure, but on the ramp,” I said, standing up. “Outside.”

Reaching the door she stopped short of the exit, standing in the doorway while tiny drops of rain ricocheted off the ramp and smacked me in the face. “Mr. Smith…” she said, unable to finish the sentence. Placing her face into her hands, she cried, deep cries, not 20 feet from where Mike had cried the day before. Loud. Louder than my music, songs about lonely views in the background.

As she cried she leaned to her left, placing all of her weight against the side of the doorway. I didn’t hug her because any contact with a female student, even one who was bawling her eyes out, scared the hell out of me. Keeping my distance physically would also keep a safe distance emotionally from whatever I was about to hear. At least, that’s what I told myself.

“Vanessa,” I said, trying to look at her from underneath her hands, “Vanessa — what’s wrong? What happened?”

She tried to tell me but couldn’t stop crying long enough to form words. Placing myself in the doorway on the left side, I leaned back and waited.

“Vanessa, it’s ok. Hey, it’s ok,” I said, expecting her to tell me some sob story about how her boyfriend fucked so-and-so at a party, and he was the love of her life, and her life is ruined, and what will she do now, and, “I WAS RAPED.”

That’s what came out of her mouth. “I was raped,” she repeated softly before breaking eye contact and looking down. The three words lingered in the doorway, sitting there, at eye-level, impatiently awaiting acknowledgement.

My immediate response was to want to get high. If you’ve never felt it, there’s no sense in explaining it.

Since getting high was out of the question with Vanessa around, I was left to deal with a young girl’s rape.

“Ohh… shit, ok,” I said, language transforming from professional educator to real person, since this was real life shit that transcended verbal propriety. “Ok, when did this happen?” I asked her.

“Yesterday morning,” she explained, listing off the names of two football players. “I had a party Saturday night and they spent the night,” she continued, “and in the morning I woke up to them forcing…” her voice trailed off.

“Ok Vanessa, I need to get you to a female counselor, like, right away,” I said. “I have to get you to a female counselor. I’ll talk to administration, you talk to…” and then my voice cut off. I didn’t know any of the female counselors, but I assumed they’d be more equiped to deal with this than I was. “Kathy. We’ll talk to Kathy.”

All I knew about Kathy was that she was a counselor who I’d seen at a few staff meetings. But surely she knew how to handle this better than I did.

“No,” begged Vanessa, “I don’t want to tell them. I don’t trust them. I don’t trust Kathy. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Look Vanessa, we have to,” I explained. “I have to. Like by law, I have to. I’m a mandated reporter. I don’t have a choice. And you need to talk to a female counselor or teacher.”

“No. Please! Why?” she yelled before I snapped back, “Because I don’t know what the fuck to say to make this better.”

Uncomfortable silence followed while we looked each other in the eyes, totally vulnerable, the two of us exposing parts of ourselves we wished we could keep hidden.

“Come on,” I said, waving her to walk with me. “Let’s go to talk to someone.” She grabbed my hand and held it as we walked down the ramp. Once we got to the bottom, I pulled my hand away because that was as close as I was going to get to this.

Leading Vanessa to Kathy’s office, I knocked on the door. “Hi Jason,” said Kathy with a giant smile, opening the door. “Are you going to the game this Friday?”

“What? I — n — I don’t know. Look, do you have a moment?” I asked, annoyed by her question. Grabbing Vanessa’s hand, I led her into the office where she began sobbing. My hand on Vanessa’s back, I explained what Vanessa had told me and then walked out the door. Two doors down, I knocked on the vice principal’s door. He waved me in.

“Hey Jason, how’s it going?” he asked, big smile. “You going to the game Friday? We’re all getting together beforehand and you’re welcome to come.”

“Umm… I’m not sure. Hey, listen, I just had a student come to me and tell me she was raped,” I said, sucking the air out of the room. “I walked her to Kathy’s office next door. I’m not sure how this works, but I need something somewhere to show that I reported this.”

He stood there, still smiling, nodding along as if I was telling him about what I did last weekend.

Listing off the names of the football players Vanessa told me had raped her, he just listened.

“Ok,” he said. “Got it.” Still smiling. Still nodding, as if to say “…anything else?”

“So… do we need to call the police?”

“We got it,” he said, sternly.

“So… that’s it?” I asked.

“Jason,” he said, this time more forcefully, wearing what looked to be a giant, plastic smile. “We’ll take care of it.”

He began walking directly toward me, forcing me to walk toward the door to avoid being crushed. Reaching his hand out, still wearing a giant smile, he asked once again, “see you at the game on Friday?”

“The game?” I asked, incredulous at the topic of a fucking football game.

As I asked the question the door closed, he on one side, me on the other. I walked past Kathy’s office where Vanessa sat crying and Kathy looked completely detached and uninterested, making me realize why Vanessa didn’t want to come to her with the information.

Finally with a second to myself, I dipped into the staff bathroom in the office after nodding a polite hello to the secretary who was always on my ass for forgetting to take roll in my classes. Reaching into my back left pocket, I pulled out a handful of yellow Norco that I usually kept on me for times like this. Every once in a while I’d be stricken with a surge of anger. Or maybe it was fear. Or anxiety. To tell the truth, I’m not exactly sure what it was I needed to numb. I just knew I needed to numb it. It hurt, not so much the feeling itself, but the degree to which I felt it.

Once again, if you’ve never felt it, there’s probably little sense in trying to explain it.

Cupping water from the sink with my right hand, I washed down 10 or 11 pills, knowing that amount wouldn’t get me high, but might, if I were lucky, make a dent in whatever the hell I was feeling. Staring into the mirror, I looked at my pupils. They were tiny, but unnoticable to a population fixated on a football game that was three days away. The vice principal’s reaction bothered me. Kathy’s demeanor bothered me. The secretary who I was certain would make a comment about taking fucking roll when I exited the bathroom bothered me. All I wanted to do was get high and disappear, something my brain would no longer allow.

I’d crossed that line, that point of no return, between wanting the drug and needing the drug. There was no going back now, not without revealing my problem and getting help. It was all of the downside of addiction — inevitable withdrawal, constantly needing more and more to not be sick — without any of the upside of feeling good.

I was fucked.

Drying my hands, I opened the door and walked through the office, trying to avoid the secretary.

“Don’t forget to take roll today,” she said, smiling.

“I’ll do my best,” I countered. “No promises.”

“You going to the game on Friday?” she asked.

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders, worried at what might come out of my mouth if I spoke.