Deb OKane

“She says nothing, staring at me with that same pained expression. I know what she thinks, that I’m pathetic, intent on creating my own doom. “I tortured him,” I say. “I don’t think you understand how much I contributed to everything. His whole life descended into hell because of me.” “He was a grown man and you were fifteen,” she says. “What could you have possibly done to torture him?” For a moment I’m speechless, unable to come up with an answer besides, I walked into his classroom. I existed. I was born. Tipping my head back, I say, “He was so in love with me, he used to sit in my chair after I left the classroom. He’d put his face down on the table and try to breathe me in.” It’s a detail I’ve trotted out before, always meant as evidence of his uncontrollable love for me, but saying it now, I hear it as she does, as anyone would—deluded and deranged. “Vanessa,” she says gently, “you didn’t ask for that. You were just trying to go to school.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa