Page 8

I snort to signal my understanding that this is a joke.

My last therapist—Dr. Terry Lý, her name was—said that I overcompensate for the deficits endemic to both autism and extensive childhood trauma by becoming socially and emotionally hypervigilant, at the expense of making every social interaction overly draining and potentially retraumatizing. Whatever.

“Anything to say in your defense?” Vincent continues.

I shrug, plucking at one of his desk toys. “I left the door unlocked for you.”

Not a real defense, but a continuation of the joke. Vincent finally cracks a half smile. Signal: Bit’s over, kiddo. Good job on the human interaction.

“Did you eat breakfast?” he says instead. “I brought muffins. Chocolate chip.”

So I get a muffin while he preps for the day. It takes guts for a grown man to be alone with me, but he’s chill, and there’s a camera in the room to make sure his ass is covered. He answers emails as I walk around his office: setting off the clacker-ball toy, watering the plant on top of his file cabinet, inspecting his halo of diplomas. Bachelor’s in secondary education. Master’s in education leadership. Certificates in special education and positive behavior supports. Plus a Black Excellence Award from when he was a teacher.

Eventually, the front doors unlock and other students start trickling in; we can hear them in the hall, shouting and mumbling and shuffling to class.

“Your mom giving you trouble?” Vincent asks.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” His stapler is empty. I grab it from his desk and pop open the supply drawer to refill it.

“Well, I’m glad you came in.”

I roll my eyes. “Here. Fixed your stapler for you.”

“Your attentiveness to my supplies is appreciated,” Vincent says. “First bell’s in ten.”

“I know.”

When the bell rings, though, I’m still in his office. He gives me a look over the top of his thick-rimmed glasses. “Class.”

“I know,” I say again.

But then the tardy bell sounds, and the receptionist comes in to ask a question, only to flinch when she sees me. Vincent pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Ms. Penny,” he says to the receptionist, “can you escort Ms. Slaughter to class?”

I knew this was coming—it always does, inevitably—but I still look away with a sneer. He knows what I mean. Traitor.

Jenna St. Clair, or her boyfriend, has apparently decided to punish my outburst at the party, because I get a text from Alyssa while Ms. Penny walks me to homeroom.

Alyssa

The video’s going around again :(

“Phone off, please,” Ms. Penny chides.

Great.

The video makes the rounds every few months. Every time I lose my cool, someone digs up the grainy clip from my old school, of my scissors hitting William Campbell’s radial artery in freshman-year history class. It oozes from group chat to group chat, five seconds of screaming fourteen-year-olds and scraping chairs and blood vomiting onto the tile.

I make it to homeroom and sink into my desk at the back of the class while the teacher takes attendance. She pauses and marks me present, begrudgingly.

“She was at Jenna’s party?” someone in a gaggle of popular girls whispers to my left. She looks green, like she’s watched the video for the first time and it’s the only real gore she’s ever seen. “Oh my god.”

For what it’s worth, I didn’t aim for the radial artery. I wanted him to stop touching me, and I had scissors, and I didn’t know what I’d hit until it was too late.

Daddys girl.MOV. Tagged “nonfiction,” “video,” and “evidence.”

A few minutes after the final bell, though, after a day of keeping my head down and my mouth shut, Alyssa leans into the mirror to touch up her lipstick and says, “Have you … considered saying something about the video?”