Mrs. Devaney began at once, “Mr. Bloom, I’m here to tell you that Janie here has been raped by Mr. Gates, the math teacher.”
Shocked, Joe slowly formulated his speech, “Mrs. Devaney, that is a very serious charge to make against anyone-without evidence. Have you any physical proof of this?”
Growing more and more agitated, Mrs. Devaney croaked, “How could I when she didn’t tell me about this till yesterday, and he’s been banging her all year! I noticed something was the matter, and I kept asking her what was wrong. Finally, yesterday, she told me about this Mr. Gates and said she’d asked him for help after school with math problems. So Jane stayed. First, he told her to jump up on his desk, and that creep banged her every time.”
Dumbfounded, Joe could not respond. He had not encountered anything of this magnitude yet. Even Tuck’s peeping at the girls and his messing around with Martha Johnson did not compare to this one. Joe’s mind drifted to his position on better teacher-selection processes-more standards-ethics-but he could not speak for a few minutes.
“Ain’t you hearing what I said! That jerk banged my girl, Janie, and I want something done about it now!”
“Jane, can you tell me exactly what happened?”
Excerpt from The Hex of Hemlock