Page 42 of The Catcher

It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with Tanner.

But when I sat down across from Mr. Wagner, I couldn’t sustain the hope. It all melted away at the look on his face.

“Ms. Finnegan,” he said. “I have received some very disturbing information. A young woman known to you, a Ms. Sibyl Taylor, has come forward to confess that the two of you cheated on your art therapy examinations. Her evidence, and admissions, are very damning. I’m afraid there is no possible explanation that can make this right, and I will be forced tosubmit this information to the official licensing board after our internal review. I wanted to warn you that you will most likely be stripped of your certification.”

I could feel my face flushing as the shame suffused me.

The worst thing was. . .it was all true. I had been so nervous and panicked about my exams that I had cheated, had smuggled that piece of paper in. Just a tiny piece of paper, really. But it had hung over my head for the past three years, the guilt eating away at me. I had done a shitty thing, but I was still a good teacher!

Mr. Wagner was looking at me like he wanted me to say something, but there was nothing to say.

But one thing was true.

There was no denying Tanner Courtenay. There was no escaping him when he could lay down money and get whatever he wanted. I wondered dully how much he had paid my best friend to confess.

“I’m s-sorry,” I said, furious to hear myself stuttering a bit.

“I would never have imaginedyoucould have done something so shameful,” Mr. Wagner said sternly. “Why did you not study hard instead of cheating?” He shook his head sadly.

I felt the words tangling in my mouth, trapped inside.

Ihadstudied. I had studied until my eyes ached. I was just so anxious to do well, not to fail, that I had cheated. The stupid thing was that I probably hadn’t needed to. After my first few minutes of panic were over, all my notes and lectures and reading had come back to me.

There was no help for it now, though.

I left the building with all my belongings shoved hastily in a box, the shame flushing my cheeks. The humiliation burned and tore at me. I felt tears blurring my eyes, and I walked on autopilot to where I had parked my car. I just wanted to get back to my tiny apartment and burrow under my covers for the foreseeable future.

But my car wasn’t there.

I looked up in baffled surprise to where my car should have been, and there was Tanner Courtenay, leaning against his car with crossed arms. Gray sweatpants, T-shirt stretched across his chest, messy ink-black hair, hard, cold gray eyes.

“Get in the car, Em,” he said.

Somehow I had known it would always end here.

He had made good on his threats. He had taken everything away and now he was here to collect.

“Where’s my car?” I asked.

“It’s gone,” Tanner said. “Get in mine.”

I could run, couldn’t I?

And he would chase me. He’d done it before.

He’d even like it. And then he’d fuck me when he caught me, no matter where he caught me.

I put my box in the backseat and got in the front.

A smirk crossed his face as his eyes rested on me. He put his sunglasses on, sliding his big body into the seat beside me.

I turned my head away from him, sitting on my trembling fingers. I felt frozen with shock, trying vainly to keep my body from shaking.

I heard Tanner’s low laughter as he put the car into gear, punching the gas so hard that my body slammed back onto the seat.

I tried not to look at him, but I couldn’t help it. He had the seat all the way back, his tall body barely fitting in the small sporty car, his big legs casually spread open.

I said nothing. The nightmare twisted my belly, and I remembered the looks of distress and confusion on my students’ faces as I was unceremoniously escorted from the room. The fact that I wasn’t going to be allowed to go back, would never be able to see the tall towers of my students’ projects or the smiles on their faces as they forgot their anxiety with a really damn gooddragon papier-mache, made me bite my lip hard so I wouldn’t tear up.

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