The agreement itself was cold and detached. Facts only. But the last page was a victim statement, which shattered my whitewashed assumptions of what had happened to Kristen. Yes, it had been consensual at the beginning. But just because she wasn’t being forced into that car or dragged into that classroom didn’t mean she wanted to stay there.
My mind flew back to the girls in the north quad the other day, testing the power of their youth and beauty, no clue how quickly that power could be snatched away and held in a vise, out of reach.
I flipped back to the agreement page and read it with fresh eyes. In exchange for his participation in mandatory therapy and a quiet exit, Cory would get a letter of recommendation for an administrative position at a different high school and no formal charges.
This was what a young girl’s life was worth. Some sessions with a counselor and a promotion.
Kat
Frank dropped a stack of yearbooks on my desk in the newsroom and said, “Look through these for background—quotes about Cory Dempsey, awards he won, clubs he sponsored. Don’t skim, be thorough. I want eyes on every page.”
I grabbed the one on top and stared at the cover. Northside High 2005–2006 and a student-rendered illustration of a breaking wave and a sunset. I sighed and thought back to my own high school years, my own senior yearbook only four years older than this one. I flipped open the cover and started paging through candid shots of kids who looked exactly like the ones I went to school with. People who knew how to have fun while I became consumed with living up to my mother’s unfulfilled potential. Trying—and failing—to make up for the opportunity stolen from her by a positive pregnancy test two years into her career at the Washington Post.
I’d poured myself into the task. Not just writing for the school newspaper, but becoming the editor of it. Attending football games with a notebook instead of a water bottle filled with vodka, waiting outside the locker room looking for a quote instead of a hookup.
My true passion had been fiction—filling pages with short stories and bits of dialogue that popped into my head at odd times. I fantasized about book tours and being short-listed for prizes—possibly even winning one of them. My favorite college professor had written me a letter of recommendation that had landed me a coveted spot in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for grad school, but my mother had said no, convincing me that journalism was the more distinguished field. Fiction is for teenagers and bored housewives. I’d ended up at Northwestern’s journalism school instead. Over $200,000 in student loans and two years of my life for the privilege of looking through yearbooks for Frank Durham.
I flipped through the senior portraits, skimming names and faces—tuxedo bow ties, pearls and off-the-shoulder formal wear—pausing when I reached Kristen’s. It would have been taken at the beginning of the year, fresh off summer vacation. I imagined her spending her days at the beach, the center of a large group of laughing girls, flirting with surfers and lifeguards.
I stared at her smiling face, the way her hair swept back across her shoulders. Her senior quote was one by Charlotte Bront?. I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward. I wondered why she chose it and whether it might mean something different to her now.
On an adjacent page was a candid of her, arm in arm with another girl. The caption read Kristen Gentry and Laura Lazar. I jotted Laura’s name in my notes and kept flipping. Page after page of seniors, each one the same as the last. Until I saw a name I wasn’t looking for. Meg Williams. There she was, staring into the camera, a half smile playing across her lips. She looked unremarkable, someone you’d see and then promptly forget.
I glanced around the newsroom, everyone consumed with their own work—talking on the phone, fingers flying across a keyboard, leaning on a doorjamb chatting up Marty at the Metro desk. Then I thought about my team—three men, plus me—all of us hungry to contribute something relevant. To see our own name at the bottom of one of Frank’s stories. Additional reporting by Kat Roberts.
I turned to my computer and logged in to one of the search engines we used to track down sources and entered Laura Lazar’s information. In seconds I had a current phone number and address.