“The One That Damned Me,” first published in July 2020, is about a man wrongly accused of a crime. It is reprinted below without the magazine’s follow-up questions.

The One That Damned Me

by DL Shirey

Sent u email about Jesmyn.
Please read.
S

The text from the Ex was short and sweet, like Susan used to be. The message nearly sobered me up. I was suddenly warmer, caused by the friction of memories rushing back from five years ago. The flip phone in my hand felt twice as hot, so I dropped it in the sand as if scalded. I stared at the message until the screen blanked black. Like my life after Jesmyn.

I don’t know how Susan found me. I go by Neil Daniels now. Anyone who remembers the Old Me was in Olathe, Kansas. My neighbors changed my name before I did, a convenient transposing of letters from Nate Draper to Date Raper.

Even in Jesmyn’s version of the story no intercourse occurred. But according to Kansas law, sexual misconduct with a minor, any act at all, is charged as statutory rape. And that awful nickname followed me through hearings and firings, trial dates and death threats. Even after my innocence was established, in the eyes of Olathe, I was never not guilty. By the end it was easier to change my name. To change the circumstance I would have had to see it coming.

Jesmyn always got by. Smart girl, a solid B-average, without even trying. That was the trouble, nothing was ever hard for her, except maybe her upbringing. She was always delivered to me for counseling after one mishap or another. She never asked for my advice, but I gave it anyway; standard language from the Counselor’s Handbook: concentrate on school, up your GPA, get involved in extracurriculars, volunteer in the community. She wasn’t interested in my opinion about what good colleges required. She wanted to go, all right, but the only two requisites I ever heard her mention were ‘is it far away?’ and ‘do rich boys go there?’

I knew her family enough to recognize a low-rent life on the wrong end of town. I asked Jesmyn how they were going to afford a scholarship if it didn’t pay a full ride? She didn’t answer. Jesmyn had this way of crooking one eyebrow, as if to say the rumors were true: the same way she got her new clothes or would get the car she wanted. Daddies were easy to find, even at 17.

#

I live cheap in Baja. My old teaching certificate gets me jobs: ESL for those looking to do business north of the border; a seasonal cruise ship gig teaching Spanish phrases to fat touristas who want to barter at the shops in port; tutoring local high-schoolers who aspire to college in the States. Some things never change.

My ex-wife used to say I gave too much time to everybody else’s kids and none to my own. Her sarcasm was code for disappointment that we never had children. For Susan, there was no affording a family without her high-paying job. She said she would have gladly resigned her paycheck to have babies, if there was more than my teacher’s salary coming in. Not like I didn’t try. I got my Masters at night and pushed for promotion to school counselor, with an eye on vice principal. But a family for us didn’t happen. While my career rose like a low hill-climb on a treadmill, hers spiked the mountaintops. My wife set all thoughts of motherhood on the back burner after her promotion, just as the rumblings about Jesmyn and me heated up. When the whispers grew louder, Susan was staying late in Kansas City to work. And when the accusations surfaced, Susan didn’t come home at all. She never believed my pleas of innocence, not when she saw the infidelity with her own eyes. Our family of two ended then and there.

Now, about the other two: Jesmyn and Melissa called themselves unidentical twins and were inseparable, even before high school. From the back, Melissa looked like a guy. She was skinny-straight from shoulder to hips, blunt haircut, baggy jeans and t-shirts. Jesmyn was all curves, clothes too tight to pack them all in, and chestnut hair billowing down her back. They’d walk hip to hip, each with one hand shoved in the other’s back pocket, their tanned arms forming an X. And they laughed exactly the same: over-the-top, with the first ha extending long and shrill, sputtering away to a cackle. You could hear it all over school, like the mating calls of birds; first one would start and the other would rise up in tandem. In public, they were never apart. In private, word had it that they teamed-up on boys. I imagined the crook in Jesmyn’s eyebrow when asked if it was true.

They were certainly together that day in the girls’ locker room when caught snorting coke. Coach Mercanti’s camera phone snapped proof: Jesmyn face down next to a sink, Melissa with her head tossed back, a rolled-up dollar between her fingers. Coach sent me the picture after she delivered Jesmyn to my office. It’s one of two pictures I’ve kept from 2009. As self-torture, I guess, I also kept the one that damned me.

#

WiFi is spotty here in Rosarito. I fancy myself a better class of beach bum when I sit beneath a palapa with a laptop next to my shotglass and bottle. A computer and cell phone are needed to exist on the margins. Little else. I can count down the past few years in diminishing returns and abandoned possessions: a storage locker left behind, a car donated to charity, my old name replaced. Nate Draper still exists online in links to old news headlines and a deserted Facebook page. One of the last things I did before leaving the States was to get his legal docs digitized and stored in the cloud. But there’s never been a need to download the divorce decree or birth certificate or social security card. Neil Daniels has a driver’s license, passport and Gmail. It’s all I need to get by.

Right now I’m too lazy and too drunk to make an effort to find a better wireless spot. A warm summer shower drips off the dead fronds that roof this picnic table. The storm is stalled out at sea. It roils the waves, but there’s only an edge of clouds above this beach, enough to rain. Enough to keep me working the bottle and retrying the Internet connection from here. No matter how many times I check, the signal is too weak. When I drink like this, all I want to do is access Flickr and look at photos from my old life; to remember Nate before Jesmyn, when happy times meant vacations with Susan, weekends with friends, potlucks at work, and dogs playing fetch. I always get caught up in relived memories and forget to stop scrolling, only to see the two pictures that end Nate’s archive.

Ironic that the photo of Jesmyn and Melissa snorting coke never found its way to Facebook. Coach Mercanti sent it to the school counselors when she delivered the girls for discipline. They were put in separate offices, Melissa in Ms. Slater’s and Jesmyn in mine. Television cop shows did it all the time, divide up the suspects to see if their stories jibed. Unlike TV, our offices had tall glass windows between them. All Jesmyn and Melissa did was make faces at one another and laugh like birds. Things only got serious when I lowered the blinds between the offices and shut my door.

Ms. Slater later testified to what transpired in her office. When the blinds came down, she said, it was like a circuit broke between the two girls. Melissa suddenly found herself alone, not able to make eye contact with her friend. No matter what questions were asked, Melissa did not answer, would only look sideways at the blinded window with panic in her eyes. Perhaps it was the drugs, Ms. Slater said, but something fed Melissa’s agitation. When asked what was wrong, Melissa demanded to know what Jesmyn was doing alone with Mr. Draper and why wasn’t anyone checking on them. Melissa’s anxiety became a restless fidget, then she urgently rifled through her purse to retrieve her phone. To call the police, Ms. Slater said.

Ms. Slater was confused about what happened next. She saw the girl poke 911 on the phone, but reflecting on it later, had second thoughts whether the phone was on or not. Ms. Slater’s main concern at the time was to avoid the added complexity of police involvement, so she tried to grab the phone from Melissa. A brief tug-of-war ended in Ms. Slater losing her balance and Melissa screeching, I’m leaving now, as she bolted from the office.

I heard the ruckus next door and figured Melissa was being as obstinate as Jesmyn was distracted. Rather than listening to me, Jesmyn seemed more interested in the noises behind the window blinds. When she heard Melissa’s exiting words, Jesmyn stood up. I thought she was going to leave, instead she came around my desk. As I swiveled to face her, Jesmyn dropped to her knees.

Melissa shouted Hey! an instant before she pushed open my office door. In reflex I looked up into a flash from her camera. I contend my expression was the surprise from Melissa’s sudden entry, everyone else saw open-mouthed exaltation. Jesmyn had thrown her face into my lap just before the camera clicked.

#

When the rain stopped, chicas exited the beach bars and walked the sand, open for business. I call them Foreign Exchange Students, exchanging their bodies for foreigners’ money. It’s sad that it’s a good way to make a living in Rosarito, even sadder that there are always more customers than young women.

I’d be lying if I said the chicas got tired of me turning them down and I never went. Every so often I’d succumb to a long day’s lazy heat and the fog of tequila, especially when a new face appeared without the dead eyes of those more experienced. I’d go with her, not to forget my past, but to cement it into my brain, using muscle memory to bring back my old life. I’d close my eyes to the fine brown skin beneath me, trying to resurrect those carefree days and reimagine the woman I wanted most.

But today I’d not need the chicas. Susan’s text had taken my mind back to Kansas.

After the storm cleared, the sun harshed the sand in retribution for morning rain. With the heat came the WiFi signal and an enthusiasm that cleared the effects of drink from my head. It had been so long since I’d heard from Susan and I’d hoped for a long email catching me up on her life, filled with words of nostalgia or regret. Yet she wrote only three words, you were right, typed above a pair of links.

The first link sent me to The New York Times and the announced engagement between a Dartmouth College undergrad and a young heir to a tobacco fortune. In an accompanying photo, the man was seated, his shoulders draped by Jesmyn, posed in radiance. She hadn’t changed. The only difference I could see was the look in her eyes; the unabashed fire that I remembered had been replaced by a contented twinkle from the photographer’s studio light.

Dartmouth News, the second link, broke the story of a scandal with an unnamed coed and a married professor. He was forced to resign in shame. It was a hauntingly familiar account without an accompanying photo, yet I could still see the crook of Jesmyn’s raised eyebrow. The same look she gave me after her testimony to the Olathe School Board. That was the last time I saw her, just before I went in to tell my version of the incident. My word against allegations in a photograph.

A full year went by between the school board hearing and the trial date. My career, my marriage and a meager bank account didn’t survive the interval. Pariah is the fancy term to describe what my standing had become in the community; as if my neighbors needed reminding, the upcoming trial reentered the headlines. Then, two days before the court date, Melissa recanted her story, admitting to the “joke” they played on Mr. Draper. Whatever denouement befell the other players, I don’t know. Done in Olathe, I couldn’t leave Kansas fast enough.

I pulled the flip phone from my pocket, set it on the picnic table without opening it. I wanted to talk to Susan, ask her why she waited so long to contact me in the aftermath of Jesmyn’s lies. The longer I thought about it, the more I wanted a drink. The tequila sloshed from the bottle, overfilling the shot glass and pooled on the scarred weathered table top.

Instead of cracking the phone I commanded the computer to find Flickr. I started with the image that ended Nate Draper’s life, one well-lived by the documentary evidence of all the photos above it. That man is a stranger now, in both circumstance and appearance. His dark hair is gone, the cultivated stubble-trimmed beard has become a dry patch of weeds. That pale man, once fully fed, is now crisp-skinned and thin, with squint lines caused by Mexican sun and the effort it takes to look back on the past.

I scroll the pictures on Flickr from bottom to top, viewing another man’s life in reverse: his promotion from teacher to counselor, playing fetch with Jasper in a park, summer booze cruise with Susan. As the photos fade back in time, the man’s face blurs, but Susan’s doesn’t. It grows less careworn, happier, unwrinkled by events not yet transpired, when a future with a loving husband was all she could see. This is the face in my fantasies, the one that makes me feel young, that moves me to find a brown-skinned girl and inhabit Nate Draper’s world once more. If only for a short time.

I scan the beach, squinting at the brightness of sand. There are no chicas in sight. The pound of surf is interrupted by a chirp from my flip phone. Another text from Susan:

Second thoughts. Don’t read email.
Some things r better left 2 the past.
S

END