Read Online The Inseparables by Stuart Nadler - Free Book Online Page B

regrettable string of people like Charlie Perlmutter, people who were readily willing to say that they loved you, or at least steal a picture of your nude body and deliver it to every inbox they could find.
    When they were finally alone, her mother grabbed hold of her so tightly that Lydia let out a small gasp.
    “Are you all right?” her mother said.
    Lydia took a breath. “You just squeezed me hard, is all.”
    “That’s not what I meant, Lydia.”
    Lydia looked up. “I don’t know what to say. No. Clearly, I’m not fucking okay.”
    Her mother held her at arm’s length, as if inspecting her for visible wounds.
    “Did you send it?” her mother asked her.
    “No,” Lydia managed.
    “People here seem fairly sure that you sent it.”
    “Because Charlie said I did. And because there’s a picture of me floating around. So obviously they’d believe him over me,” she said. “And do you really think I’d do that?”
    “I didn’t think you’d take a picture of yourself like that in the first place.”
    “Wait,” Lydia said. “They showed you?”
    Her mother let go of Lydia. “No, of course they didn’t show us. They’re not criminals.”
    She let out a long breath. She had assumed everyone had seen it. Her mother, realizing this, hugged her to her chest and held on, as if Lydia were about to fall off the edge of a building.
    “Everyone’s very worried about this,” her mother said. “I’m worried about this.”
    “If they’re so worried, why are they suspending me? Like I’m the one who did something wrong. Someone did something to me. This is fucked. Everyone’s seen it. Every person here.”
    “Relax,” her mother said. “Breathe.”
    “Impossible,” Lydia said.
    In her ear, her mother whispered, “And who the hell is this Charlie person? You never said anything about him.”
    Lydia closed her eyes. “He’s nobody,” she said.
    “Your father will probably want to kill him,” her mother said. “I want to kill him.”
    “Where is Dad?”
    “He’s downstairs. Fighting with the dean. Or one of the deans. There’s too many deans at this weird school.”
    “Fighting?”
    “He’s a lawyer. He fights.” Her mother reached out and put her hand in Lydia’s hand. “He’s good at fighting.”
    “Fighting about what?”
    “I don’t know. He started yelling. I got up and left. It’s a reflex of mine at this point.”
    The headmistress came out into the hall, holding both the pink and the black folders. She was Gerta Schiller from Berlin, a supposed expert in educational theory. A celebrated author on the biological tendencies for risk-taking in the teenage brain. Readily armed with statistics about adolescent dopamine levels. So far Lydia had had exactly one interaction with Schiller prior to this, and it was about her grandmother’s novel. Did she know about it? Had she read it? Did she have an opinion on the fact that some Hartwell parents were trying to ban it? Had she been deluded, because of this book, with any outmoded ideas about sex and smut and vice and the human female body? All were questions that seemed at the moment to be especially prescient.
    “I want to go home,” Lydia said. “I don’t want to go in there.”
    Her mother nodded. “I’ll go see what I can do.”
    “Instead of listening to why she should suspend me, maybe you should show her this.” She held up her phone. “Look. Show her what people are writing. Look at the pictures people are sending me.”
    Her mother took the phone and allowed herself the first few messages in Lydia’s inbox. Lydia stood, watching. Her mother’s finger touched the screen gingerly, and then, with every comment or attached picture, her expression fell. Outside, the sky dimmed. Through a small window Lydia could see the roads leading in and out of campus, and far off, beyond that, the thrilling gray snake of the freeway, which signaled escape and freedom and anonymity.
    She heard her mother, beside her, suck for air, out