Caution warned: Sometimes it’s best not to know. But the cursor relentlessly blinked at me with his name in the search bar.
I’m not sure why or how he entered my mind that night. Maybe it was instinct, roused by deep, restless memories clawing their way to the surface. Or maybe it was fate, intent on showing me what had become of the man who still haunted me.

Before caution could overcome curiosity, I pressed enter. 

When the screen refreshed, the headlines became an earthquake, and time folded in on itself. Past and present. I’m seventeen and twenty-six. Every memory resurfaced in that single moment, and each version of me that decade was staring at the same phone, reading the same headlines, and reckoning with what they meant.

–

I was seventeen the first time I saw him— really saw him.

In the spring of my junior year, the auditorium felt like home that night. As the thespian club’s president, I carried and loved the responsibility of hosting opening night. I moved through the theater with purpose— guiding parents to seats, settling the audience, calming anxious actors backstage.

Then the principal walked in with someone. He approached me, shook my hand, and announced, “Here she is! Our theatre club’s president— and only a junior, right?” 

“Yes, sir,” I said, cheeks warming. Traditionally, the presidency belonged to seniors— it came with prestige and scholarship money— but no senior wanted the responsibility that year. I did. I worked hard all year to prove to others, and myself, that they didn’t make a mistake by breaking high school norms.

“That means she’ll be your president too,” the principal said, turning to the man beside him. “This is Mr. Dendy. He’ll be the theatre teacher next year. I expect you two will do great things together.”

When I shifted my attention to Mr. Dendy, he wasn’t looking at my face. His eyes were fixed on my chest and lingering there. Something tightened low in my stomach. At seventeen, you don’t know how to articulate a moment like that. All you know is that suddenly your body feels too visible, your skin too thin, and the world feels tilted.

I smiled anyway and kept talking. Because that’s what a seventeen-year-old is taught to do— fold yourself into politeness. But that first encounter echoed in my mind through the rest of the night, wove itself into the summer, and still reverberates now, at twenty-nine. I wish the principal had noticed. I wish I’d had the clarity, or courage, to name what was happening. Maybe it could have ended before it began.

When senior year began, I tried to move past it. I told myself I had imagined the moment in the theater. I told myself to give him the benefit of the doubt. People change. First impressions are misleading.

And yet, with him, the discomfort never faded. I felt him watching me the way someone studies a problem they’re determined to solve. He began challenging small decisions I made as president in front of the club’s leadership team.

“Do you really think we should order blue shirts again? Red or black works best for the theater,” he said.

The girls around him sat straighter, smirking at his suggestion. I answered, “We usually order navy because it’s the color of the International Thespian Society.”

He shrugged. “It’s our club, though. We should do what we want.”

The room went still. Then a girl beside him spoke up: “We should do what we want. I say we buy red this year.” His smile widened.

As Dendy gained favor with students and parents, his interruptions became regular— each one sharper than the last. He challenged nearly every point I made in rooms full of students with a tone that suggested he enjoyed the discomfort it caused. 

The worst part about Dendy was that his harm was always quiet. Never one definitive act. Just consistent paper-thin wounds others dismissed with, “Maybe he’s right,” or “I don’t see the big deal.” Eventually, their words made me question my own sanity, but my gut kept insisting the tilt wasn’t in the world–it was in him. Yet even in my early twenties when memories of him would surface, I still couldn’t articulate what he’d done. The pain was death by a thousand cuts to me, but each memory alone was so subtle I feared getting laughed at… again. “You lost sleep over this?! It’s nothing!” Quiet harm does that–it makes you doubt yourself rather than the person who caused it. 

 Only two months into senior year, and I couldn’t take the tension anymore. I stopped lingering after school, stopped offering opinions in rehearsals, stopped walking through the theatre wing even if it meant being late to class. 

He noticed my distance the way hunters notice the tremble in their prey. When I stepped back, he stepped in harder. During a rehearsal, he was explaining his casting choices. When he reached me, he paused and said, “Shelia is a mother. And well… it had to be you since you’re heavier.” 

It wasn’t my first time being called fat. The wound felt familiar— heart dropping, stomach going cold, mind scrambling to hide the hurt. But this time the shock burned hotter. No authority figure had ever mentioned my weight, and never in front of my friends. But no one said anything. Rehearsal simply continued.

On the drive home, I asked my friend if she’d heard it too, wondering if maybe I imagined it. “Yes,” she said. “But he wasn’t calling you fat. He just meant the character is a mom, so she needs more weight.”

Immediately, I wished I hadn’t asked. Her dismissal made it worse.

His subtle remarks shifted into small power plays. He’d email me to cancel or rearrange meetings I’d planned. When I asked him to start telling me in person, since I rarely checked my email, he started relaying messages through students who’d tell me in the hallway.

As a senior, I used my free period to assist the school secretary. One afternoon, an underclassman rushed in with a late slip. She spotted me and said, “They were talking hard about you in Dendy’s class yesterday!”

I asked what she meant. “I didn’t hear everything,” she said, “but some girls were near his desk, and he was saying you’re unorganized and unhelpful as president. And he just kept bringin’ you up, even when they were talkin’ about other things.”

I drove home in tears and finally told my parents how he’d been making me feel, and they scheduled a meeting with the school’s administration immediately.

The meeting happened late in the fall. I remember the blinds slicing the afternoon light into stripes across the carpet and how tightly I clasped my hands to keep them from shaking. I had practiced what I would say several times at home because I knew it would be hard to do with all the school principals, head teachers and Dendy in the room. Despite the churns in my stomach and rising panic in my chest, I was able to list everything that had happened. 

The head principal turned to Dendy and asked if he understood my concerns; Dendy said he hadn’t meant to cause distress and should have never discussed me with students; he just wished the club could “hang out.”

I looked to the principal, waiting for concern to cross his face, but he didn’t flinch. None of them did. So I said, “You want to hang out with kids?”

The room snapped. The principal shushed me, and Dendy sat up straighter, sliding a stack of printed pages across the table. “You are the president,” he said, “but I am the teacher. You cross boundaries unacceptable for a teenager.” He flipped through the papers. “Your social media posts about all this are wildly inappropriate…”

I stopped hearing him. What I saw were my private posts and text messages— screenshotted. Someone I trusted had taken them and given them to him. Maybe one friend. Maybe many. The violation found the softest part of me and pressed hard. I couldn’t stop the tears.

I tried to defend myself, but couldn’t steady the words enough to speak them. How does an eighteen-year-old explain private posts meant for friends to adults who shouldn’t have been looking for them in the first place?

The adults in the room deferred to him.

He was skilled— insightful, controlled, precise. I was young–earnest, raw, vocal. And this is the cutting blow of quiet harm–it whispers. It keeps its voice low so that when victims yell for help, they’re the ones the world questions.

Winter arrived and found me sick at home. I checked my email expecting scholarship updates; instead, I found a message from Dendy: a flat, cold declaration that my presidency had been taken away— “decided and voted upon by your peers.”

Losing the presidency wasn’t about a title. It was scholarships. It was identity. 

My world stopped at his email. My throat tightened; I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t move. I just stared at the sentence announcing that the thing I’d poured myself into was gone. Even the air felt thinner. 

For him, it was a Tuesday.

My parents fought back. I kept the presidency, and they demanded an adult be present anytime I had to work with him. He hated it. Looking back, he needed me out of the way so he could shake the eyes off him.

So the ‘win’ wasn’t a victory. Every step I took was watched, baited, measured. He waited for me— an eighteen-year-old girl— to slip. Every move became an impossible choice: tiptoe on eggshells or bleed on glass. The theater, once my refuge, became a cell he patrolled with a smile.

The kids saw it, too. Their silence gutted me. At the time, I thought it meant I wasn’t worth defending. Now I realize they were watching what happened to students he disliked. High schoolers cling to safety like driftwood. Of course they chose him.

By midwinter, I was completely alone.

But isolation brought clarity. I started noticing details I had brushed aside— the way his hands lingered on students’ shoulders, his hovering and watchfulness. Once you start seeing the monster in someone, you spot their marks everywhere. His behavior wasn’t just unprofessional; my gut insisted it veered towards something darker.

To me, he was a gathering storm. So I began reporting anything that felt off— comments, gestures, moments that made my skin prickle. 

But to everyone else, the weather was not worth checking.

“He’s new; give him grace.” 

“Maybe you misunderstood.” 

“He’s always been nice to me.”

It took me years to understand: monsters don’t hide in shadows. They hide in trust. He had charmed adults and befriended the powerful. My warnings looked like smudges on his shrine.

So I learned to swallow my suspicions. And he learned no one would stop him.

On the last day of high school, the halls buzzed with the excitement of endings— yearbook signatures, glitter from senior pranks, sentimental speeches. But I moved through it all with something else coiled inside me: rage.

I’d heard the rumor he spread that morning. A board had been stolen from the theater, and he wouldn’t release the spring musical CDs until it was returned. He told everyone exactly who to blame: me. It was absurd; I hadn’t been near the theater in weeks. Ruining my senior year wasn’t enough, he wanted my last day too.

I marched straight to his room. Students were packing props, laughing softly. And there he was, smiling as he shuffled papers, at peace in the room he’d made me fear— a place that had once been my home. I felt the months of humiliation, isolation, gaslighting and endless, quiet battles all crash into one another.

I didn’t yell or cry. I leaned across the desk, pointed my finger inches from his face, and said, with a steadiness I didn’t know I possessed, “One day, you will be fired. And I will be the reason.”

His expression didn’t change much, but something flickered behind his eyes— surprise, maybe. Or fear. 

I left before he could speak. My hands began shaking, but my spine felt straighter than it had in months.

In my car, the tears came hard. Through the gasping breaths and blurred vision, I made a vow: I wouldn’t stop until he was gone. I wouldn’t let another kid feel what I had felt all year.

And somehow, I knew my prophecy would come true. 

College was supposed to be a fresh start, but I drifted through freshman year distant and exhausted between classes and long work shifts. I spent my nights alone, scrolling through social media, only to find my hometown praising him— trophies, smiling photos, post after post celebrating his success. The world seemed to be lifting him up while caving in on me. I was lonely, uncertain and unhappy. 

Until it finally happened. Late one night, I saw a photo a former classmate posted on Snapchat— students on a field trip, beer bottles scattered across the table, and Dendy in the center of it all holding a whiskey glass. It was the smallest infraction compared to everything he had done and everything I suspected him of, but small was enough. Small was finally, undeniably, provable. I took a screenshot and sent it to the principal. 

Dendy was forced to resign the next day.

About a month after his resignation, an opportunity emerged for me to spend my sophomore year abroad in France, and I accepted without hesitation.

Studying in France gave me space I desperately needed. I could walk through markets or sit in cafés without the fear of running into someone who knew him. But one night in Paris, his name flooded my feed again— he had been asked to leave a school performance, and he posted a long rant on Facebook painting himself as the victim. People rallied around him instantly, promising to defend and help him seek justice. In a comment, he wrote that a local journalist for The Dispatch would be giving him an opportunity to ‘share his side of things.’

A cold dread settled in. In an instant, I could see it: him reclaiming the story, slipping back into his position, free to harm more kids all because the world believed his facade again.

I had to act. I found the journalist’s email address and wrote to him: Please be open-minded; there’s more to the story than he’s telling. That was all I could stand to write. Years of being told I was overdramatic and wrong had carved their scars. I couldn’t take it again.

A few days later, my mom sent me the article link with no context. My body went cold— I thought I’d been too late, that his praises were probably racing across America.

My pulse sped as I opened it. His name was there in the headline, but this time the tone was different. The journalist questioned him— his inconsistencies, his behavior, the red flags. He wrote enough that I felt, for the first time, understood by someone other than my family. The article wasn’t bold or sensational. Dendy’s talent had finally come back around; it was quiet truth. What I’d seen at seventeen had finally been spoken by someone with authority. The message between the lines was clear: This man is dangerous.

The reaction was immediate. Praise stopped. Posts vanished. Support evaporated. And for the first time in years, the weight beneath my chest eased.

On one of my last days in Paris, he crossed my mind, and a surge of anger and hurt crashed through me. So, I wandered through the Jardin du Luxembourg. Brown autumn leaves still clung to the paths even though winter had already settled over Paris; the garden held onto its seasons the way I held onto what I should have released long ago. 

I walked to quiet my thoughts, but the tears came faster than I could stop them. Eventually, I sank onto a patch of grass, the cold seeping through my coat, and I let everything surface— pain, anger, and worst of all, regret. I realized how much of my life I had surrendered to his ghost. Two and a half years of letting his words or memory hover in moments he had no right to touch. 

So I made myself a promise.

He would not take one more minute. Maybe I couldn’t stop him from drifting into my thoughts, but I could choose to let the thought pass rather than take root.

And for the first time, that felt possible.

Spring semester in Cannes felt like sunlight after a long winter— warm, unexpected, almost unreal. Being there felt like reclaiming something I’d lost years before. I tutored kids in English for extra money and was surprised by how naturally teaching came to me.

When I returned to America to complete my degree, I switched my major to education. I found a steadiness I hadn’t expected when I began intern teaching— firm when needed, gentle when it mattered, protective of the kids who hovered at the edges. I knew their silences, their flinches, their perfectionism. I saw pieces of myself in all of them. And part of me wanted to become the adult I needed at eighteen.

Six years had passed since The Dispatch article. 

Life has a way of unfolding in directions we never expect. I ended up getting a job to teach at one of the top international schools in France— just outside Cannes, the city that pieced me back together. I built a life abroad which was happy and whole.

It was almost nine years to the day since I first met him in that auditorium. I was twenty-six, in Cannes, lying awake one spring night when he slipped back into my mind. People don’t just disappear— where had he gone? The promise I’d made in the garden flickered, urging me to leave the past buried. But curiosity fought back, whispering that one search wouldn’t hurt.

I typed his name and hesitated. Every instinct told me to close the tab, but something else— timing, fate— nudged me forward.

So I pressed enter.

I read the article slowly, the words thick and metallic in my mouth: he’d taught for six more years, across four schools, three cities, and two states— encountering who knows how many children.

And then, in 2023– the arrest.

The sentencing would come the following year: 33 years for child sexual exploitation charges. 

I read it again, stopping at the line that stated it all began eight years earlier, in my hometown. For a moment, something warm flickered in my chest: vindication. Proof I hadn’t been crazy, dramatic or wrong. 

But my rightness came with a price. Being right meant others had been dangerously wrong for nearly a decade. Every year he went unchecked was a year someone else inherited his harm. My truth wasn’t a victory; it was a timeline measured in children and silence.

Anger rose next— at the ones who should have questioned him but didn’t, smiled instead of truly listening, passed the problem along to keep their own hands clean.

I closed the article and sat still, as if movement might disturb the fragile balance of emotions inside me.

Relief.

Grief.

Rage.

Validation.

None of them winning. All of them loud. Like the moment after a siren stops, but before your ears stop ringing.

I sat in that tangle, caught between the girl I had been and the woman I had become, holding a heavier truth: justice doesn’t feel like an exhale. It feels like a light switched on after you’ve already learned to live in the dark.

Now I’m here— twenty-nine. I catch myself wondering who I might have become if I’d never met him. I grew up thinking monsters were obvious— fire-breathing, sharp-toothed. But the real danger was the man who smiled, blended in, and charmed. The real villains were the ones who kept believing him.

I think of all the small moments that once felt too subtle to be ‘wrong.’ Yet they were wrong. Not arrest-worthy, maybe not even fire-worthy— but more than enough for suspicion, pause, and for someone to say, that is not normal. A journalist spent maybe an hour with him and saw what an entire community refused to see. All it took was someone willing to look clearly. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever fully make peace with that chapter of my life. But I’m learning to give voice to the girl who never had the power to stop him. And maybe that’s what healing looks like— not forgetting him or forgiving the silence surrounding him, but learning how to live in a world where monsters are ordinary and smiling, and choosing, every day, not to grow blind to them. And there is hope in that— not because the world is safer, but because monsters survive in silence, and I finally recognize my voice as power, not noise.