Because what would he say if I told him how everything is really going? What would he do if I said my ex-boyfriend is sitting in a jail cell, awaiting arraignment? Or about the fact that I’m the type of person who kisses other people’s boyfriends and likes it?
“Theo, Principal Detz is asking the faculty to help out as much as we can in . . . the wake of Donovan Pratt’s return,” he says, nudging the base of the water fountain with his toe.
And?
“And,” he says, reading my mind, “I wanted to give you a heads-up that I’ve planned my lesson today around Stockholm syndrome.”
“Stockholm syndrome.”
“Yes, it’s—”
“I know what it is.”
When the victim sympathizes with their captor. Like people who have been abducted and don’t hate their kidnapper. Maybe they even like them a little bit, start to feel like their abductor cares for them. Everyone talks about Patty Hearst, but that was a million years ago and she can’t be the only one.
“I think it could be helpful.” Jacobsen is talking again. “An open discussion. But it’s your call whether or not you want to be there. I can write you a pass to the library. Or maybe you could talk to Mrs. Crumbaugh. I’m sure she’d be happy to make time for—”
“I’ll be there.”
Why not? It’s all hypothetical at this point. Chris is just a suspect, and maybe everyone else thinks they know what he did, but I won’t know for sure until I talk to Donovan.
What would Jacobsen do if I raised my hand today and asked, How do you know if your best friend and boyfriend ran away together? Or, Could you find a way to be happy, even if you’d been kidnapped? Because I know he saw the video. Everyone saw the video.
Jacobsen pauses long enough to look surprised by my answer, then says, “I’m sorry we’re able to tie the lesson to something that hits so close to home, but I’m glad your friend is back, Theo.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Me too.”
And then he pats me on the shoulder and I smile as I walk back to Sara-Kate and Phil because otherwise he’ll know something is off and I can’t risk that. Besides, world gov only lasts an hour. I can put up with anything for an hour.
Until that hour arrives and suddenly it’s like everyone in class has everything in the world to say about Stockholm syndrome.
“Okay, but here’s the thing.” Klein Anderson is talking. He sits two rows ahead of me. I watch him chew on the eraser of his pencil, which is about the most action that thing has gotten all semester. “We’re not talking about a few months with some militant kook. He was gone four years.”
“Yeah, and imagine what he went through for that long,” says Phil. He’s sitting in the row between Klein and me, sliding his pen lazily across a blank sheet of notebook paper.
This is the only class I have with both him and Sara-Kate, and I’ve always loved that until today. Today—right now—I want everyone to shut the fuck up. Including him. They don’t know everything about this case. They don’t know anything.
“What about the video?” Klein counters. I think he would have stopped if he wasn’t arguing with Phil, but their friendship is so tenuous. The line between hatred and respect is thin enough for them to enjoy testing it. They push and pull and poke at each other until one of them is seconds away from snapping.
“What about it?” Phil’s voice is calm but when I look over, his mouth is holding so much tension, I think his lips might crack from the pressure.
“It’s not like he was some little kid who couldn’t figure out how to get away,” Klein says, his head darting around the room for support like a pastor looking for an Amen. “He was thirteen. You know what I was doing at thirteen? Not running off with strangers.”
Thirteen. I learned how to put a condom on a guy when I was that age. Not every time. Only when Chris felt like it. Which wasn’t often.
“Don’t you think that’s a little disingenuous?” Phil shoots back at Klein. “The guy didn’t see him on the street and randomly pick him up. People are saying he worked at the convenience store. He was probably talking to him for weeks before the whole thing went down. The guy was setting him up—grooming him.”
Grooming. It sounds so textbook, like Chris opened up a manual on how to abduct a child and followed the steps one by one. It’s hard for me to think of him as a predator, when all I can see is Donovan laughing in the video.
“Good point, Mr. Muñoz.” Jacobsen brings the attention to the front of the room again. He stands in front of the whiteboard, to the side of his desk. “The fact that the victim knew the defendant puts a different spin on the case. Is the extent of the victim’s danger diminished when we learn that he had a seemingly normal relationship with the defendant prior to the abduction?”
Bingo. Is it? I will give one million dollars to whoever can answer that question right now. I’d also come up with one million dollars if it meant Donovan would answer his phone.
“Absolutely not. He was brainwashed,” says a voice from behind me.
Sara-Kate.
“We don’t know what it’s like to be kidnapped,” she says, her soft voice growing stronger as she continues. “Or how hard it would be to get away. None of us do. Lots of times . . .” She pauses and I feel her eyes on me before she goes on. “Lots of times they’re threatened. Maybe he thought he would be killed if he ran away. Or that someone in his family would be killed. He has a little sister . . .”
Killed? That’s extreme. Chris may not be the person I thought he was, but he’d never kill someone.
But who was the real Chris? Was it the one who offered sweet words and sweet sex, the guy who traced figure eights on my back, told me he loved me? Did he say and do those things with Donovan, tell him they belonged together? Or is the real Chris just a sociopath?
I wish I could tell Sara-Kate the good things about Chris. Like the way he told a story. He had hundreds of them. About growing up in Michigan playing Little League, and learning how to fish with his older brother, and cutting class to sneak into Detroit for the day, looking for trouble. It didn’t matter who or what he was talking about. The way he gestured and looked at you when he talked, the way his amber-colored eyes danced, made you feel as if you’d been right there with him. I could have listened to those stories forever. Now I don’t know if any part of them was true.
“Yeah, and the fact that he may have known him doesn’t mean he wanted to run away with him,” says Phil. He’s really doodling now, the pen crosshatching furiously across the page as he talks. He looks at Klein as he says this next part. “How do you know he wasn’t just trying to stay alive?”
“Okay, fine.” Klein again. “Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to be kidnapped, but I think if some dude was trying to fuck me every night, I’d find a way to get out of that situation a little faster than he did.”
The room falls completely silent.
It’s not because of Klein’s language. Jacobsen doesn’t care how we talk, so long as we pay attention to the lesson. I’ve only seen him flinch once, and it involved the c-word. It’s not for everyone.
But what the fuck, Klein? His revelation is hardly new and yet the way he said it—so loudly, so matter-of-factly—makes me feel like someone drove their knuckles square into my stomach.
“Let’s reel it in a little, Mr. Anderson,” Jacobsen says evenly.
He’s looked about five seconds away from shitting his pants the entire time we’ve been talking about this, and now he’s afraid Klein has said the thing that will break me. I don’t move. I keep my eyes on the whiteboard behind Jacobsen, on the part where he’s scrawled STOCKHOLM SYNDROME in red and underlined it twice.