Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

was. Candace thinks so.
    Candace asked Kimi if any of these boys were bothering her and stiffly Kimi said, “No, Mom. I’m not popular. ”
    Candace knows that terrible things are said about the behavior of some of the middle-school students—both girls and boys—at Craigmore. Oral sex in the halls and beneath the bleachers, girls younger than Kimi exploited by older boys with a hope of becoming “popular”; boys bragging online about girls’ lipstick smeared on their penises. Not at this private suburban school perhaps but at nearby public schools—boys physically mistreating girls, sexually molesting them in public; grabbing and squeezing their breasts, even between their legs. Some of this behavior is captured on cell phones—and posted online. From the mothers of Kimi’s classmates Candace has heard these things—she’d been so shocked and disgusted, not a single joke had occurred to her. Where Candace can’t joke, Candace can’t linger. It is very hard for Candace to do earnest.
    She’d been upset at the time. Seeing poor sweet moon-faced Kimi, a shy girl, with not-pretty features, hair so fine it sticks up around her head like feathers—among such crude jackals.
    “If Kimi says she hurt herself accidentally, then Kimi hurt herself accidentally. My daughter does not lie. She is not deceitful. ”
    “I’m sure she is not, Candace. But if she has been coerced, or threatened—”
    “Kimi has always been accident-prone! As a small child she had to be watched every minute, or . . .” Candace has a repertoire of funny-Kimi stories to testify to the child’s clumsiness though the stories don’t include actual injuries, of which there had been a few. Just, Candace wants this hateful suspicious “school psychologist” to know that her dear sweet daughter is prone to self-hurt.
    “And Kimi’s friends are all girls. They’re all her ninth grade classmates. She’s known most of them since elementary school. Great kids, and I don’t think they ‘hang out’ with boys.”
    As if unhearing, or unimpressed, Weedle says: “Adolescent boys can be terribly predatory. They can sense weakness, or fear. At almost any age, however young, if there’s a ringleader—an ‘alpha male’—with a tendency to bully, he can manipulate the behavior of other boys who wouldn’t ordinarily behave in such a way. These boys can harass girls like a pack. And girls can turn against girls . . .”
    Candace protests: “Kimi has never said anything to me about any of this! I really don’t think what you are saying pertains to my daughter and I—I resent being . . .”
    Candace feels a sensation of something like panic: really she doesn’t know what Kimi is doing much of the time, after school for instance upstairs in her room, with the door shut; frequently Kimi is at her laptop past bedtime, or texting on her cell phone, as if under a powerful enchantment; sometimes, one of Kimi’s girlfriends is with her, supposedly working on homework together, but who knows what the girls are really doing on laptops or cell phones.
    If Candace knocks at the door, at once the girls’ voices and laughter subside— Yes Mom? What is it?
    A careful neutrality in Kimi’s voice. So Mom is made to know that this is not little-girl-Kimi at the moment but teenager-Kimi.
    The interview—interrogation—is ending, at last. Weedle shuffles papers, slides documents into a manila file, glances at the cheap little plastic digital clock on her desk. Candace sees a pathetic little array of framed photos on the desk—homely freckled earnest faces, in miniature—Weedle’s parents, siblings, little nieces and nephews. Not one of Weedle with a man.
    “You will call me, Candace, please, after you’ve spoken with your daughter this evening? I hope she will allow you to examine her injuries. We didn’t feel—Kimi’s teachers and I—that the injuries were serious enough to warrant medical attention any longer. But you may feel