I Don't Know You

James had already forgotten about the dust up with Lisa by breakfast the next morning. It was par for the course for his ex, as he’d told all his friends so many times.

As usual for breakfast, the dining hall was not crowded. Besides, James was still half asleep without his coffee. So he didn’t notice the uncomfortable looks he got from his few acquaintances who were present. The same went for his walk to French class, where only the few others who were unlucky enough to have an eight o’clock class were out and about.

It was only when he arrived at Madame LaSalle’s room and spotted the empty seat next to Laurie, his latest crush, that he realized anything was wrong. He’d been chatting Laurie up amicably for a couple of weeks now and she’d been giving out encouraging responses. But now, for some reason, she looked horribly uncomfortable.

James took note as he smiled at her. “Bonjour, mon amie,” he said with his trademark shy grin as he took the chair next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“I…don’t know you,” Laurie said, and she snatched up her books and moved to a spare chair in the back of the room.

“What the…” James looked around, trying to figure out what had happened.

“Dude, this ain’t 1952,” said Brian, who was glaring at him from the next row. “You don’t hit girls. Ever.” He leaned back and cast an eye toward Laurie’s new seat. “I sure as heck don’t, Laurie.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” James demanded.

“It’s all over campus, James,” said Julie.

“As well it should be,” added her boyfriend, Tim. “Shame on you, man.”

“What’s all over campus?” James looked around again and, now that he was looking for it, he realized everyone was glaring at him.

“The picture, that’s what,” said Catherine, who was seated behind him. “Of you slapping Lisa.”

“What?!”

“It’s posted everywhere,” said a guy from the back row; James didn’t turn around to see who.

“You’re gonna hear from Judicial anytime now,” said Brian. “They’re gonna eat you for lunch, dude.”

James had just enough time to register that comment before Madame LaSalle breezed in. For the moment, at least, the others would have to stop berating him in English anyway. So James was left to stew in his panic over just what they were talking about. ‘Judicial’ was campus shorthand for the Student Conduct Judicial Committee. No one needed to explain to James what happened when a student was called before them; it invariably meant the case had already gone too far for the student to have any hope at beating the rap.

It didn’t take long for him to put the pieces together. Last night at the dance planning committee meeting, he’d remembered hearing a shutter click while Lisa was screaming at him. He could only guess exactly which moment had been captured, but that hardly mattered. At least the other committee members knew the truth, but in the horrible forty-five minutes he had no choice but to spend right where he was, that was of no consolation.

Just what did “posted everywhere” really mean?

When class was over and James was allowed to slink out of the room with only a few more dirty looks, he saw what it meant. Every bulletin board in the humanities building, every public notice post outside, every window that ever had any sort of event announcement taped to it…there was James, a gleam of utter contempt in his eye, grabbing Lisa’s arm tightly while she looked just as scared as he did angry, almost like she expected him to eat her alive. Every copy had the same message scrawled beneath the image in handwriting he didn’t recognize: “Are you going to tolerate this sort of treatment of women on our campus? Tell James this is not OK!”

James wasn’t thinking straight at all now. He couldn’t be sure just how many more dirty looks he was getting, for now he made a point of not making eye contact with anyone as he wandered around campus trying to see just how widespread the damage was. He didn’t know when he started tearing the flyers down, but at some point he realized he had a fistful of them. It seemed but a drop in the bucket, but it was the only thing that helped even a little bit.

His world only came back into focus when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Terrified that it might be a summons to Judicial, James pulled the phone out. It was Allie, the chair of the dance planning committee. At least she knew what had really happened…didn’t she?

James was taking no chances on that. In lieu of a hello, he burst straight into a defensive spiel. “Allie, I didn’t hit her! You saw what really happened, didn’t you?”

“James, yes, of course I did! Relax, I know you didn’t do it!”

“Relax?! Whoever did this has the whole campus thinking I hit Lisa or worse!”

“Not if they know Lisa, they don’t, but look, I get it! I’m sorry I told you to relax. You’re right, I wouldn’t be able to relax either. But listen, I’ve already called Dean Prosziewicz and she’s got people going around campus collecting the flyers. You haven’t taken any down yourself, have you?”

James looked at the clutch of crumpled flyers in his hand. “I’m afraid I have, a few.”

“Yeah, okay, I would’ve too, I’m sure. Listen, do you remember where you got them?”

“Some of ‘em,” James lied.

“Make a list. Have it ready when Dean Prosziewicz calls you. That’ll probably be as soon as her office has the other flyers.”

“Wonderful. I don’t suppose she knows who took the picture?”

“Not yet, but I talked to her about that too. We’ll find out.”

“How?”

“Better if you don’t know by now. Look, I know this sucks for you, but just try to lay low for the moment. Or you’re welcome to come to my room if you’d like some company.”

“Could I? Please?”

“I’ve just said so, didn’t I? I have class at ten, but you’re welcome to stay here.”

“Thanks. I’ll be right over!”

As he slipped the phone back into his pocket, James realized now he’d have to figure out for real where he’d snatched the flyers from. That wasn’t as hard to do as he’d thought at first; he just had to retrace his steps as best he could remember, and take note of which places he passed still had a copy of the flyer and which didn’t. On a couple of them, he was even able to match the remaining fragment taped to the windows to the missing pieces of the flyers he'd grabbed.

One by one he wrote down the locations on the ones he knew for sure, and took his best guess on the others. On each stop he focused laser-like on his sleuthing and writing down his findings, ignoring the comments that greeted him. “James, you scum!” “Rape anyone yet today, Jimmy?” “I see you around my girlfriend, you die, dude!” By the time he shuffled off to Allie’s dorm, thanking his lucky stars that it was a coed dorm and he wouldn’t be raising further suspicions, he felt almost inoculated against the abuse. Almost.

A couple of Allie’s floormates gave him the evil eye as he knocked on her door. But she made a point of greeting him with a hug and an “I’m so sorry about all this, James!” She cast a dirty look at her nosy friends and ushered him into her room. “Believe me, there’s going to be plenty of eating crow over this when it’s all over!”

“I wish I could believe that,” James said, handing her the flyers. “What did Churchill say about a lie getting halfway around the world before the truth can put its boots on?”

Allie gave him a sympathetic nod. “But everyone loves thinking they’re the one person who wasn’t fooled, you know? And everyone who was in the room last night knows what really happened.”

“One of them took the picture, though.”

“About that…” Allie began. She was interrupted by her phone, which she picked up from her desk. “It’s Dean Prosziewicz,” she said. She tapped the answer icon. “Hello? That’s great, and I’ve got the other ones he took down himself. Yes, he’s here. Oh, good idea, but can I request they be female RA’s? Exactly, yes. Okay. Thanks!” She hung up and set the phone back on her desk. “She’s sending a couple of RA’s over to escort you to her office. Don’t worry, it’s good news.”

“And they’ll be female RA’s, so people will see women are safe around me?”

“My idea.” Allie allowed herself a rather grand pat on the chest. “She said they’d be male ones, and I figured that’d send the wrong message.”

James knew Katrina and Sandy, the two RA’s, only to say hello. Nevertheless, on the walk across campus with them flanking him, he felt compelled to speak up. “I didn’t hit her, I swear to God!”

“We know,” Katrina said. “But it’s best that you don’t say anything until you get to the dean’s office.”

James more than willingly did not. He also stubbornly avoided eye contact with the many passing students, so he didn’t know they mostly looked confused rather than disgusted at his unlikely escorts.

He’d never met Dean Prosziewicz before, though he knew her on sight. So he was as surprised as he was relieved when she greeted him with a smile and shook his hand. “Thank you both,” she said to Sandy and Katrina as they took their leave. “James, have a seat,” she added, pointing to a chair in front of her desk.

Warily he sat down, and bit his lip. “I swear I didn’t –”

“I know,” she said. “Allie told me all about what really happened, and she put me in touch with half a dozen other students who were there. I’ve been on the phone all morning confirming her story. But I will need you to give a statement. If it matches the others, you’re in the clear.”

“But whoever took that picture of me will still get away with it,” James said miserably.

“Maybe not,” she said. “But first things first.” She set an iPad on her desk with a dictaphone app open, and pressed the record button. She recited the date and time, and directed James to state his full name, and then to give his account of events.

And so he did. “I’m on the Snow Ball planning committee, and – ”

“The Snow Ball is the end of semester dance?” Dean Prosziewicz interjected.

“Right. And we had a meeting last night. Just as the meeting was getting started, my ex-girlfriend, Lisa – she’s the one in the picture with me – she turned up at the meeting.”

“Is she on the committee?”

“No, she hates dances. That’s why when she turned up, I knew she was there to protest the Snow Ball. Just before Allie was going to call the meeting to order, Lisa goes to the podium and starts ranting about how dances are an invitation to seduction and rape, an archaic tradition that has no place on our campus, and she pointed at me and said, ‘My ex over there knows all about how I feel about this. How dare you support this, James!’ Now, I’m used to tirades like that from her, so I get up and go up to her and say, look, Lisa, you can yell at me about this later if you want, but now is not the time and you’re out of order. She calls me a misogynistic bastard and yells, ‘I always knew you were one of them, really!’, and she tried to slap me. I leaned back to dodge the slap, and that’s when I grabbed her arm, to stop her from trying to hit me again. That’s when someone must have taken that picture, but I don’t know who it was.”

He felt slightly better with the truth on the record now. But not much.

Three hours later, James was once again hunkered down in Allie’s room when she burst in, looking delighted. “We got him!”

“The photographer, you mean?” James stood up from Allie’s bed, feeling almost hopeful but afraid to feel too much of anything.

She nodded. “Once we knew the number of flyers with the picture, we just had to check the records from the photocopier in the student union.”

“Right!” James said. “Everyone has their own access code.”

“Then they just had to see whose code it was,” Allie confirmed. She opened her phone to read the text message from Dean Prosziewicz. “Brian Banks,” she said. “I don’t even know who he is! He’s not on the committee anyway.”

“I do.” For the umpteenth time that day, James felt like he’d been hit by a truck, even if it was tinged with a sense of shallow victory this time. “He’s in my French class. It all makes sense now.”

“Does it?”

“This morning, Brian was the first one to attack me over this…well, almost the first one. The very first was Laurie Pinard, you know her?”

“Yes, she was in my freshman seminar. Lovely gal.”

“I think so too, and I think the feeling might be mutual. We’ve been flirting a lot in French lately, and Brian must’ve noticed. He made a point of telling her he respects women this morning, when I got to class.”

“God, and men who say things like that never really do!” Allie clenched her fists in rage at the guy she didn’t even know.

“But I’ll bet he told Lisa the same thing,” James said. “That’s why she turned up at the meeting last night. He probably convinced her to come shake things up. All my friends know what she’s like, and most of them have seen me try to calm her down like I did last night. Of course he knew I’d do that.”

“All this to impress Laurie?” Allie said. “That’s horrible. I hope he gets expelled.”

Brian was not expelled, but he was suspended for the semester and placed on academic probation for the next one. Lisa got off with a warning when she confessed that Brian had paid her $100 to make a scene at the meeting. For James, the next two days were a barrage of apologies and pitying looks and more assurances that “I never believed a word of it, man,” than he could count. He accepted them all with a sad smile, while savoring his relief and worrying privately that maybe the other shoe hadn’t fallen yet.

It had not, in any case, fallen yet when he arrived at Madame LaSalle’s next class on Friday at eight o’clock. “James!” Julie said, snapping to attention when he walked in the door. “I’m so sorry! Can I give you a hug?”

“Me too, but I won’t make you hug me,” quipped Tim.

“Same here, James,” said Catherine.

James reluctantly let Julie hug him, and acknowledged the other apologies with a smile. “Thanks, everyone,” he said, forcing himself to tamp down his wary shyness with a look around the room. On that sweep, he saw Laurie was smiling at him and tapping on the empty chair beside her. He acknowledged that with a nod, and then helped himself to another empty chair on the other side of the room.

Class was a pleasant affair, with even Madame LaSalle giving him a sympathetic look here and there, and praising his participation. When it was over, he collected up his books and left the room, careful not to look back at Laurie.

But he had a feeling she would chase him down in the hallway, and he was right. “James?” she said, and he felt her hand on his shoulder.

Reluctantly he turned around. “What?”

“Just wanted to say I’m sorry, okay?”

“Thank you.” He turned back around and set off again.

“Are we all right, then?” she asked him.

“No,” James said without looking back. “You were right, Laurie. If you thought I would ever hit a girl, you don’t know me.”