Beyond furious, I stormed into Tommen on the Friday morning of Christmas break, feeling none of the usual peppiness or good cheer. The school’s winter ball was happening later tonight; I usually cared deeply about social events, but I was too blown away by the bombshell Gerard had dropped on me earlier to give a shit about dances.
Gerard thought I was overreacting massively.
I thought he was underreacting colossally.
This was sick.
What he told me was wrong.
What our school receptionist did to him was perverted.
After arguing the entire way from his house to school, we had parted on bad terms in the school car park.
Beyond revolted by his admission, I made my way straight to the office, determined to put that woman in her place whether he wanted me to or not.
“Can I help you?” Miss Pervert asked with a tight smile when I marched up to the desk.
“Yeah.” Resting my elbows on the countertop, I glared down at her. “I wanted to know if Mr. Twomey realized that he has a pedophile on the payroll?”
To give her credit, she kept her nerve when she replied with a polite, “Excuse me?”
“Well, what else would you call a grown adult taking advantage of a fifteen-year-old boy?” I demanded, having managed to squeeze that tidbit of information out of my boyfriend on our way to school. Yes, school. Where we were both students and his abuser was a member of staff.
Ugh!
“Then, let me make it clearer for you,” I seethed, leaning over the counter. Lucky for her, we were alone. “I know what you did. I know all about your dirty little secret and I think you’re sick.” My voice rose with my outrage. “You are sick in the head, lady!”
“I think you need to leave.”
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere until I speak to the principal.”
Her face paled.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I sneered, beyond furious. “Your ass is going to prison, Dee.”
“I was twenty-one,” she tried to explain. “I was going through a rough patch at home, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Nothing excuses what you did, you pervert!”
“Stop calling me that,” she cried, dropping her head in her hands.
“What? Stop stating facts?” I demanded, unwilling to back down an inch. “You are disgusting!” Furious, I reached over the desk and knocked a stack of her neatly piled papers everywhere. “He was a child, and you took advantage of him.”
“No,” she continued to protest, “it wasn’t like that.”
“I have friends at this school,” I told her, my body simmering with anger. “Friends with younger brothers who won’t be safe with a pedophile like you working here!”
“I haven’t—” she choked out, clutching her chest like she was mortally offended that I would even think such a thing. “I would never touch a child!”
“You have, would, and already did,” I shouted back at her. “You make me sick. People like you make me sick!”
The office door flew inwards then, and Gerard appeared in the doorway. “Claire!” His eyes were wild with panic. “Stop it, will you?”
“Stop it?” I swung around to glare at him. “Stop it? I’m not the one that you should be saying stop to, Gerard!”
“It was consensual,” he tried to placate, reaching for my hands when they flailed wildly. “Hey, hey, shh … just calm down for a second, please.” Tone coaxing, he pulled me close, and smoothed my hair back. “She didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do, okay?”
“None of that matters, Gerard,” I screamed, clutching onto his arms, and willing him to hear me. “Because she shouldn’t have touched you in the first place.”
“I never slept with him,” she strangled out, like there was a reward for being a slightly lesser version of a full-blown creeper. “I never touched his private parts.”
“No, you just manipulated him into touching yours on the off chance that you were caught so he could take the blame,” I spat. “Well, I see through you, lady, and I know him better than you ever could.”
“Claire,” Gerard snapped, snaring my attention once more. “Please don’t do this.”
I couldn’t hear him in this moment.
I couldn’t be reasoned with.
Because there was no reasoning to explain away what she had done to him.
It angered me that he couldn’t see just how badly he’d been taken advantage of. It infuriated me to the point where I felt like physically lashing out at them both, which was an abhorrent feeling for me.
I’d slapped a grand total of one person in my whole life and I still felt guilty for doing it. Still, it didn’t stop the urge I had to claw her pervy eyes out of their pervy sockets.
“You need to make this right,” I warned her, holding a hand up. “You need to go to the Gards and make a statement.”
“Absolutely not,” Gerard cut in, shutting me down in a commanding tone. “If you love me, Claire—” he grabbed my face between his hands and forced me to look at him “—if you love me like you say you do, then you won’t tell anyone.” His chest was heaving, his eyes wild with a mixture of betrayal and panic. “If you do that to me, if you break my trust like that, I don’t think I’ll be able to get past it.”
“Don’t say that!” I strangled out, feeling helpless, as he backed me into a corner with his unspoken threat. “It’s emotional blackmail.”
“It’s my truth,” he replied, still holding my face. “You need to hear me.”
“I am hearing you, Gerard.”
“Then do what I’m telling you I need you to do,” he urged hoarsely. “Please, Claire!”
“Okay, I won’t tell!” I cried out, feeling like a complete failure. Because I was a failure. I was failing the boy standing in front of me. “On one condition.”
“Name it,” he said with a relieved nod. “It’s yours.”
Sniffling, I pointed to his abuser. “She quits her job at Tommen.”
“I’m not going to quit my job.”
“Either you resign from your post with immediate effect,” I snarled, breaking free from Gerard’s hold to swing my glare on her, “or I’ll make sure that you’re behind bars by the end of the day.”
