Part One
CHAPTER
ONE
April 23, 2020
How does she survive?
How does she manage to get through this torment every single day?
Day after day. Week after week. Year after year.
She sits in the school assembly hall, her eyes fixed, unseeing, unblinking. Her face is stone, a mask. She doesn’t look left or right. She doesn’t move at all.
She just stares straight ahead.
She is surrounded by classmates, including Matthew, but she doesn’t look at any of them. She doesn’t talk to any of them either, though that doesn’t stop them from talking to her. The boys—Ryan, Crash (yes, that’s his real name), Trevor, Carter—keep calling her names, harshly whispering awful things, jeering at her, laughing with scorn. They throw things at her. Paper clips. Rubber bands. Flick snot from their noses. They put small pieces of paper in their mouths, wad the paper into wet balls, propel them in various ways at her.
When the paper sticks to her hair, they laugh some more.
The girl—her name is Naomi—doesn’t move. She doesn’t try to pull the wads of paper out of her hair. She just stares straight ahead. Her eyes are dry. Matthew could remember a time, two or three years ago, when her eyes would moisten during these ceaseless, unrelenting, daily taunts.
But not anymore.
Matthew watches. He does nothing.
The teachers, numb to this by now, barely notice. One wearily calls out, “Okay, Crash, that’s enough,” but neither Crash nor any of the others give the warning the slightest heed.
Meanwhile Naomi just takes it.
Matthew should do something to stop the bullying. But he doesn’t. Not anymore. He tried once.
It did not end well.
Matthew tries to remember when it all started to go wrong for Naomi. She had been a happy kid in elementary school. Always smiling, that’s what he remembered. Yeah, her clothes were hand-me-downs and she didn’t wash her hair enough. Some of the girls made mild fun of her for that. But it had been okay until that day she got violently ill and threw up in Mrs. Walsh’s class, fourth grade, just projectile vomit ricocheting off the classroom linoleum, the wet brown chips splashing on Kim Rogers and Taylor Russell, the smell so bad, so rancid, that Mrs. Walsh had to clear the classroom, all the kids, Matthew one of them, and send them all out to the kickball field holding their noses and making pee-uw sounds.
And after that, nothing had been the same for Naomi.
Matthew always wondered about that. Had she not felt well that morning? Did her father—her mom was already out of the picture by then—make her go to school? If Naomi had just stayed home that day, would it all have gone differently for her? Was her throwing-up her sliding door moment, or was it inevitable that she would end up traveling down this rough, dark, torturous path?
Another spitball sticks in her hair. More name-calling. More cruel jeers.
Naomi sits there and waits for it to end.
End for now, at least. For today maybe. She has to know that it won’t end for good. Not today. Not tomorrow. The torment never stops for very long. It is her constant companion.
How does she survive?
Some days, like today, Matthew really pays attention and wants to do something.
Most days, he doesn’t. The bullying still happens on those days, of course, but it is so frequent, so customary, it becomes background noise. Matthew had learned an awful truth: You grow immune to cruelty. It becomes the norm. You accept it. You move on.
Has Naomi just accepted it too? Has she grown immune to it?
Matthew doesn’t know. But she’s there, every day, sitting in the last row in class, the first row at assembly, at a corner table all alone in the cafeteria.
Until one day—a week after this assembly—she’s not there.
One day, Naomi vanishes.
And Matthew needs to know why.
CHAPTER
TWO
The hipster pundit said, “This guy should be in prison, no questions asked.”
On live television, Hester Crimstein was about to counterpunch when she spotted what looked like her grandson in her peripheral vision. It was hard to see through the studio lights, but it sure as hell looked like Matthew.
“Whoa, strong words,” said the show’s host, a once-cute prepster whose main debate technique was to freeze a baffled expression on his face, as though his guests were idiots no matter how much sense they made. “Any response, Hester?”
Matthew’s appearance—it had to be him—had thrown her.
“Hester?”
Not a good time to let the mind wander, she reminded herself. Focus.
“You’re gross,” Hester said.
“Pardon?”
“You heard me.” She aimed her notorious withering gaze at Hipster Pundit. “Gross.”
Why is Matthew here?
Her grandson had never come to her work unannounced before—not to her office, not to a courtroom, and not to the studio.
“Care to elaborate?” Prepster Host asked.
“Sure,” Hester said. The fiery glare stayed on Hipster Pundit. “You hate America.”
“What?”
“Seriously,” Hester continued, throwing her hands up in the air, “why should we have a court system at all? Who needs it? We have public opinion, don’t we? No trial, no jury, no judge—let the Twitter mob decide.”
Hipster Pundit sat up a little straighter. “That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
“There’s evidence, Hester. A very clear video.”
“Ooo, a video.” She wiggled her fingers as though she were talking about a ghost. “So again: No need for a judge or jury. Let’s just have you, as benevolent leader of the Twitter mob—”
“I’m not—”
“Hush, I’m talking. Oh, I’m sorry, I forget your name. I keep calling you Hipster Pundit in my head, so can I just call you Chad?” He opened his mouth, but Hester pushed on. “Great. Tell me, Chad, what’s a fitting punishment for my client, do you think? I mean, since you’re going to pronounce guilt or innocence, why not also do the sentencing for us?”
“My name”—he pushed his hipster glasses up his nose—“is Rick. And we all saw the video. Your client punched a man in the face.”
“Thanks for that analysis. You know what would be helpful, Chad?”
“It’s Rick.”
“Rick, Chad, whatever. What would be helpful, super helpful really, would be if you and your mob just made all the decisions for us. Think of the time we’d save. We just post a video on social media and declare guilt or innocence from the replies. Thumbs-up or thumbs-down. There’d be no need for witnesses or testimony or evidence. Just Judge Rick Chad here.”
Hipster Pundit’s face was turning red. “We all saw what your rich client did to that poor man.”
Prepster Host stepped in: “Before we continue, let’s show the video again for those just tuning in.”
Hester was about to protest, but they’d already shown the video countless times, would show it countless more times, and her voicing any opposition would be both ineffective and only make her client, a well-to-do financial consultant named Simon Greene, appear even more guilty.