Please note that this episode contains mature and potentially
triggering subject matter. Veronica, hey, do you have time
to talk? I found a lot of stuff in the
box. May 12th, 2003.
I'm good at a lot of things, but school has never been one of
them. Now I make up for it in spades
with my wind and personality, varied interest in pop culture,
and a round off into a full split that could easily make me
cheerleading captain senior year.
But I know what people think of me when they see me dumb blonde,
which is why I fell in love with math.
I think it was the certainty of it all.
When you were right, you were right.
You can't make 12 * 18. Anything other than 216.
Plus, being able to raise my hand and get the answer first
surprised people around me defied their expectations.
I was in 6th grade when I realized I was good with
numbers, and that made me put even more energy in.
If I was naturally good, I could become great by trying hard.
So I became great. I skipped ahead to geometry by
7th grade and started taking classes at the high school next
door, which had the added bonus of putting me in social circles
with kids who are older than me, more mature than my middle
school friends, who weren't yet interested in boys or boos.
I was ready for everything, and being good at math led me there.
Plus I had a really great teacher.
This is the Chroma Camp Ashwood episode 10.
You Plus Me equals us. It was Halloween and I dressed
as a fairy sparkly purple tube top and a flowy skirt with wire
framed wings that made it impossible to sit normally in
chairs but looked stunning. I put glitter gel over my
eyebrows and flipped purple extensions into my hair.
When math class rolled around, there was a quiz.
I knew I was acing it, but I guess I didn't realize how much
faster I was running down my answers than everyone around me
was. Because when I put my pencil
down, he noticed. Miss Cameron.
Is there a problem? He said.
Oh Nope, I'm just done, I replied.
Chickens are done. You're finished, he said.
But he raised his eyebrows when he said it.
I'd impressed him. I smiled, He said.
Want a chance to add extra credit, too?
I nodded, giddy, and he began writing a new problem and chalk
on the board. I started working out the new
problem on the paper in front of me, but he shook his head and
pointed to the board. Come solve it up here and there.
He paused, looking over my work. Slowly.
For a moment, I started to get nervous that maybe I'd gotten it
wrong. I shifted back and forth in my
giant platform, sandals teetering.
But then his hands gripped my shoulders, studying the above my
fairy wings. He gave them just the littlest
of squeezes before letting go and walking to the board, where
he wrote a giant check mark next to my answer.
Great work, Miss Cameron. Have you thought about joining
the math club? I told him I didn't think I'd be
allowed. I was still a 7th grader and had
to go back to the middle school next door for my other classes,
which were at the same time the club met.
Let me see what I can do about that.
I think you belong over here, he said.
I nodded and practically skipped back to my seat.
Jacqueline, the sophomore who'd been sitting next to me all
year, looked at me and said That was really weird.
Are you OK? I didn't think it was weird at
all. Never been better, I said.
My stupid middle school principal wouldn't let me join
math club. She said she didn't want me to
fall behind in my other classes or lose my lunch period time
with friends my age. It was bullshit.
But Arcade made extra time for me anyway.
First we set up tutoring sessions after school in the
courtyard. I would do the same projects
that the kids in Math Club would, he decided, so I could be
part of the club, even if unofficially.
It was our little secret. He even got me a club T-shirt.
It was bright red with apples and numbers all over it.
It was so ugly, but I work to bed almost every night.
When I finally became a real high schooler Arcade and I
became real friends, I was able to join Math club.
So we started skipping the courtyard hangs and doing other
stuff, grabbing take out, going back to his apartment and
watching movies. He wasn't that much older than
me, really 27. There's almost the same age
difference between my mom and my dad, and I've always been, like
I said, a little older. That's what I told RK one night.
I was wearing my cheerleading uniform.
We were watching cheese all that at his place.
He reached for the popcorn at the same time as me.
Our hands grazed for a second. He didn't pull his away, so I
grabbed his whole hand. Sadie, He scolded me.
I apologized and he said I didn't need to be sorry, but
that we just couldn't do that. It wouldn't be right, he said,
to make me keep that kind of secret.
But I reminded him that us hanging out at all had already
been a secret for a long time. And look how good I've been at
keeping it. I liked keeping it.
I told him that I wanted that, and so we did it.
I've been getting Cat Called On sidewalks for years.
Boys in school spread rumors that I've done this or that with
them. I was branded as a slut before
I'd even kissed one boy. I was so glad to be getting my
first time on the record for real, even if I knew it had to
be a secret. Actually, the secret was maybe
the best part of it all. I knew something nobody else
did. I was powerful.
While the other girls in my grade were navigating mixed
signals from boys who still barely knew how to brush their
own hair, I was in a whole relationship with a man.
It was perfect with a capital P For a while. close to it would
have been our first anniversary. RK had started sneaking into my
bedroom at night. We were pushing the limits.
I knew it. And I guess I'd also started to
know that this whole thing wasn't exactly right.
The fun of The Secret had started feeling like it was
holding me back when the homecoming dance rolled around
and my friends had dates. I had to make secret eyes at RK
while he's chaperoned instead of slow dancing under the lights
with him. So RK and I made a deal.
I could have a decoy boyfriend to take to school events to go
on double dates with to present a facade of normalcy.
Enter Paul, who I hate lying to because he is so nice and fun
and I think he really loves me a lot.
So much that it makes me wish I could just love him back.
It would be convenient, simpler. So many things had gotten so
complicated in the last year. Plus, I stopped being good at
math. Actually, I've started
struggling pretty badly in all my classes.
My dad had always expected perfection out of me.
Even though my parents were, to put it mildly, too busy with
their own drama to pay any attention to the fact that my
calculus teacher was coming over to bone me Almost every night,
my dad started going in on me. When they got my report card.
Dad screamed at me that if I didn't pass my classes, I
wouldn't graduate, and if I didn't graduate, I'd never get
into college. And if I didn't get into college
and never leave home and my dad would have to tell his friends
that I was too stupid to do anything good with my life.
He said that he heard me and my boyfriend, or whoever that guy
is that night doing bad things. I'd turned out to be a little
slut. I know my mom heard all this.
No, she saw me expertly covering bruises with her makeup.
No, she must have felt like something was off with me in
arcade when she went to math club competitions and saw us
giggling together in the corner. She never said anything, though.
One night he hit me so hard I had to skip school the rest of
the week to avoid anyone seeing the bruises.
That's when I decided to leave, and I've been putting the plan
together ever since, setting a record of what's happened.
My dad's escalating violent behavior, the love between RK
and I so that my friends will understand why I had to go into
hiding, so that they won't hate me and so that they'll
eventually be able to come find me.
The plan is like numbers. If I make sure people can add
them up right, there's no way to change the answer.
I can't believe we never knew any of this.
Why didn't she say anything or ask for help?
Maybe she thought that her plan would get messed up if we
reported it, or that this arcade person's identity was at risk.
Do you know who that is? It was a big school.
I never had math with her. Honestly.
We hung out a lot more in the summers than we did there.
Different friend groups. She was a cheerleader and I was
a nerd. You were smart.
Same difference. Do you have a yearbook we could
look? Through.
Great idea. I'll bring it right over.
OK. See you soon.
If you'd asked me to describe Sadie when we were 16, I'd have
told you that she was the picture of confidence, that she
had the whole package. A perfect life.
She was so cool that. I couldn't.
Even believe that she still wanted to be friends with me.
I never would have guessed that underneath it all, she was
hiding so much That her world was being shaped by abuse and
manipulation. That she was so good at doing
her own makeup because she'd had to be an expert in covering
bruises. And that she seemed so sexually
mature compared to me. Because her teacher had coerced
her into a twisted fantasy world he'd designed.
That she'd staked her whole future on some runaway scheme.
That her expectation was that people like Veronica and I would
just add up the pieces and come find her in some West Coast
villa and go along with this plan like it was a good idea.
I've kept her playing that summer over and over as this
last period of innocence in all of our lives.
Those moments with June and the Cabins laughing and telling
ghost stories over S'mores, when all along Sadie's innocence was
gone years before then. This is from 2002 to 2003.
Faculty pages are back here. Rachel Horton?
Bonnie Kronfeld. Rick Klein.
He missed Picture day. Shit.
Wait. Klein.
Yeah. As in Councillor Rick Klein,
Paul and J JS Cabin councillor at Rockland.
Holy shit, Councillor Rick. He would have been right there
at the dance that night. Sadie went skinny.
Dipping he? Was her high school math
teacher. Marco.
He was also June's secret boyfriend.
Where? Is he now?
If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence,
support is available. Call the National Domestic
Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or the National
Sexual Assault Hotline 1800 six 5646 7/3 Thank you for listening
to this episode of The Crime at Camp Ashwood.
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