Page 18 of Devil

“Well, you’re not giving me much reason to believe otherwise,” Kaitlyn said. She stared at me with a hard, unyielding gaze. “It’s not like the department chair heard you screaming for help, and it sounds like you have no physical evidence that you were fighting him. What else am I supposed to think but that you were fucking a student of your own free will?”

Swearing—like many things for Kaitlyn—was something she despised in other people but that she did sporadically herself and felt justified in whenever she did it. Hearing it now was a slap of cold air. It meant I deserved the harshness in her mind.

“Are those the only two options?” I asked, chin trembling. “Rape or…or…”

“Whoredom?” she supplied. An old-fashioned kind of word. A biblical one. She didn’t say it viciously, but there was a sharpness to it.

With the first unfurling tendril of dread, I recognized that sharpness from the last twenty-some years of being her friend. It was the bite of efficiency. Oflet’s get this over with.

“Rape or whoredom,” I said quietly. “There can be nothing other than those?”

She stared at me, and I could see the moment her stare slid into the future, into the problems that needed solving and how she would solve them. Looking back, I know she was already working through how to evict me, how to separate her ascendant career as a Catholic lawyer from my now-poisoned life. But at the time, I’d hoped she was really thinking about it. I was hoping she’d sayNo, of course you’re right. Of course there is something more than rape or whoredom. Of course the truth is complicated, and we’ll listen to you as long as it takes to understand.

I was hoping she’d sayI believe you. It’s not fair to punish you for what he did. Are you okay?

She didn’t say that. She didn’t ask me if I was okay, if I was trembling because I’d been caught or because the beautiful, golden-haired student everyone adored had pushed me against a wall and shoved my skirt up to my waist.

In fact, no one asked if I was okay that night; no one seemed to care. Not Kaitlyn; not Father Alvarez; not Brianna Shotwell, the Fine Arts Department chair; not the residency director. Not the dean of student affairs, not a senior lawyer from the Office of General Counsel. It was like being orphaned all over again.

They came in before Kaitlyn could say anything, and with a handful of clipped and uncomfortable sentences, it was decided that we should relocate to the conference room down the hall. I sat on one side of the long wood laminate table, and they sat on the other. Six people staring the hard stare of righteousness at me, waiting for me to give testimony they already knew they wouldn’t believe.

Dante was wrong. Hell has only one level, and it was a conference room with a broken projector and a scatter of plastic ballpoints on imitation wood.

The room was so bright that I caught myself squinting, but I was also grateful because I could pretend it was the reason for my glassy eyes. I could pretend I wasn’t struggling to keep myself from crying.

They asked me to tell them in my own words what had happened, and my eyes strayed over to Kaitlyn. Her vape had vanished the minute Father Alvarez and the others walked into the room; at some point, a laptop had appeared. Her eyes met mine over the laptop screen, and I could hear her flat, skeptical words again in my mind:You’re not giving me much reason to believe otherwise.

I couldn’t bring myself to try to explain the way Bell had evaded my consent. If my best friend wouldn’t believe me, then how could I expect these five people across the table to? These people who represented the college that I’d just embarrassed by being caught with my skirt up in front of donating alumni?

In the face of what it had undeniably looked like, how could I claim that it was something else when I had no idea how to clarify what thatsomething elseeven was?

I spoke quietly, briefly, while Kaitlyn typed, her face settling into a hard, blank expression. Neva Weeks, my boss and someone I’d always gotten along with, had a more sympathetic expression, and when I glanced up, I found myself looking to her for comfort.

I just wanted someone to ask if I was okay.

The hour I was alone with Bell in the studio flattened into a handful of declarative statements. He came in unexpectedly. I thought he was there about grades. He kissed me. I protested but I didn’t stop him. Things continued and I didn’t stop him then either, not until the end. We had never touched before this. This was the first time I’d had sexual or romantic contact with anyone at Evelyn: student, faculty, or staff.

Yes, I was aware that this was a violation of my employment contract.

Yes, I was aware that this violated Evelyn’s commitment to student safety.

Kaitlyn’s fingers moved over the keys with aggressive, determined finality. Every space was hammered like a nail and every return like a shovel into stubborn dirt. When I finished talking, I looked up to see four scornful faces and two pitying ones.

Father Alvarez was one of the latter; Neva was the other.

Father Alvarez was the first to speak. He cleared his throat and shifted in his cheap, mesh-backed chair. “We are in a constrained position, Birdie. At a non-Catholic college, a liaison with a twenty-two-year-old student, particularly on the eve of his graduation, might be a matter of a written reprimand. But Evelyn stands for more. Evelyn stands for the work of God and his Church. Evelyn has to represent that Church. And I hope you understand why the Church cannot tolerate any kind of sexual impropriety, why we must be ruthless in transparency and consequences. It’s to rebuild trust. It is to make sure there is no home in the Church for sin and no shelter for those who would harm the vulnerable.”

I flinched.HadI harmed the vulnerable? I was the teacher after all, however counterfeit the position had felt, and I was seven years older than Bell. Could I have done more to stop him? Save us both from his impulses?

Neva came next, putting her hands on the table. She was a painter and there were flecks of paint on the deep brown skin of her fingers. Her eyes were dark and kind, but she spoke with an unhesitating certainty. “The artist in residence program is already fragile. It’s only two years old, and every budgetary meeting, I’m asked to justify it. I’m asked not only why the fine arts are necessary at all but why are we literally paying an artist to make art? What good does that do the college? The students? I love this program, Birdie. I believe in it. Having an artist accessible to these students is so valuable. But we can’t have someone credibly accused of sexual misconduct on the payroll. We can’t look like we’re not only protecting an abuser but funding them in a place where the abuser has access to more students they could abuse.”

“The Church is repairing itself,” Father Alvarez said. “It’s our mission and calling to make the Church safe and honest. Sexual misconduct of any kind, but with a student…”

“You’ll be put on suspension without pay,” the dean said, taking over. The words were curt. “There will be a full investigation over the next week, and then you’ll be sent the results of that investigation by mail. The results will include our final determination about your residency contract. You will have thirty days after receipt to appeal our decision. Do you have any questions?”

I had so many. For the first time since high school, I wished I were Busy, that I had just an ounce of her confidence or ferocity. That I could ask them why it didn’t matter that my only sin was being unlucky enough to like pomegranates. That I could ask them why the Church’s policy of total transparency around sexual misconduct still seemed quite opaque when it came to quite a lot of other sexual misconduct.

But I wasn’t Busy. I was only shy, terrified Birdie, and I shook my head.