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I tell Sara what’s up as we head to our lockers, the promised announcement drawing groans from the kids in the hall.
“Why can’t you have connections that can get us a hot tip for good seats to a Reds game?” Sara asks.
“I’ll see if they have a Lutheran night or something coming up,” I tell her, and she elbows me.
“What’s in the bag?”
I lean in a little closer to her than necessary when I answer. Carrying around church bulletins at school is not going to break me out of the preacher’s-kid label anytime soon. Sara’s trying not to laugh at me when Branley’s very bronzed, perfectly smooth shoulder knocks into mine hard enough to send the bag flying out of my hands, a hundred copies of the Lord’s Prayer and next week’s hymn numbers spreading out in a fan down the hall.
“Sorry,” Branley says. She’s on her knees restacking bulletins before she even looks up to see who she obliterated with her bony knob. Her eyes meet mine as I start scraping piles of paper into the bag, not caring that a bunch are getting bent.
“Oh,” she says, her hands freezing. “Sorry,” she mutters again, before her similarly tanned friend Lila pulls her to her feet and they head off toward the auditorium. Sara helps me with what’s left and we’re the last kids in the hall. Someone is tapping the microphone in the auditorium, the knock-knock sound filling our ears as we turn the corner to the double doors. Branley and Lila are standing in the doorway, heads craning as they look around the darkened room for the rest of the in-crowd.
“What’s going on?” I didn’t hear Alex come up behind me, so I jump when she asks, drawing the attention of the teachers lining the back wall.
“C’mon, girls, let’s go,” Miss Hendricks says, shepherding me, Sara, Alex, Branley, and Lila up to the front row—the only place there are five seats left.
“Good seats, sweet,” Sara hisses in my ear.
“Shut up,” I say, settling in with Sara on one side of me and Alex on the other. At least I didn’t end up next to Branley, both of us trying not to share an armrest or keep our legs from touching the entire time.
The principal takes the podium and tells us about how a member of the local police is here to give an important presentation, and reminds us that we’re representing our school. He trots out a few more stock phrases that none of us even hears anymore. We politely clap as the officer comes out, a few girls paying more attention once we get a good look at him.
He’s got the clean-cut thing going on, a good jawline, and the kind of body that makes me wonder if they actually rented him from somewhere. But he’s wearing a gun and walks like he’s taking each step really seriously, so I’m pretty sure he’s a legit cop. He takes the microphone off the podium and walks to the middle of the stage so we can see his whole body. No dumbass, this one.
“Hey, I’m Marilee Nolan’s brother,” he says, instead of introducing himself as Officer Nolan, which is smart since we were all going to surreptitiously text one another until we figured out why he looked familiar anyway. Over in the right wing Marilee buries her face in her hands, which I totally get because I feel the same way every graduation when my dad blesses the senior class.
“I graduated from here eight years ago,” he says. “Back then the rough kids smoked pot and the National Honor Society kids drank. Now the NHS kids are smoking pot and the rough kids are on heroin.”
There are a couple of giggles. Sara leans over to whisper in my ear, “And the preacher’s kid drinks,” to which I say “Damn straight” and give her a fist bump.
“Here’s the thing, guys,” Nolan goes on. “I’m supposed to come in here and talk to you about drugs, but I’m guessing most of you already know plenty.”
It’s really quiet in the auditorium. Nolan doesn’t have notes; the big screen is pulled down and there’s a laptop on the podium, but he’s not showing us pictures of meth teeth or heroin sores like we expected. He’s just talking to us. And we’re listening.
“I know a lot of you drink,” he says, and Marilee’s head goes a little farther down into her hands. My cheeks are burning for her because this is way worse than Dad saying a prayer over a bunch of teenagers. “I know because I did it and I know because I find all the Natty Light cans out on 27.”
There are more than a few concerned glances shared at that point. Drinking out on County Road 27 was definitely something we thought flew under the radar.
“So you’re drinking, no big deal,” Nolan says. “Except maybe it is, not because you’re under twenty-one and it’s illegal, but because of what happens next.”
I expect the slides to start up then. Pictures of ruined kidneys or maybe a car crash where someone went through a windshield. But the screen stays blank and Nolan’s eyes land on the front row instead.
“What happens next is you’re more likely to be a victim of sexual assault,” he says, and I feel Alex tense beside me. “Girls, one in three of you.” He points right at me, Alex, Sara, Branley, and Lila. “There are five right here, so let’s be generous and say it’s just one. Which one of you will it be?”
From the left a boy yells, “Please say it’s Branley,” followed by a chorus of laughter.
“Let me guess, she’s the hot one, right?” Nolan says, smiling along with them. “Guess what—one of you is the one who’s going to do it.”
That shuts it down, fast.
“It’s a small town,” he goes on. “Ninety percent of rapes are acquaintance rapes—that means you know your attacker, girls. And guys, that means you know the girl you damaged physically, emotionally, and mentally. One in six of you boys is going to be sexually assaulted too, by the way.”
And that really kills the room.
“Boys are also more likely to OD than girls,” Nolan says, his eyes off us and narrowing in on Jack Fisher and his friends. “You’re also twice as likely to die in a car crash, a full quarter of which was your own damn fault because you were drinking at the time.”
The principal clears his throat at the use of the word damn, which I think is kind of ridiculous considering it’s the least alarming thing we’ve heard since Nolan opened his mouth.
