Authors: Rachel Vail
I SAT IN the cold Board of Ed room, waiting. Mom had to drop me off early because she had a meeting at six with a grad student about his dissertation. Mr. Lazarus offered to bring me after he picked up Kevin from basketball but I said no thanks, I’d rather go early. It was hard enough being around Kevin when I couldn’t avoid it.
I didn’t ask Tess to come. I was spending a little less time with her. I was spending less time with everyone, really. I was just doing my work and trying to think and say as little as possible. In the girls’ room between classes, I overheard Tess explaining to Darlene that sometimes I get like this and just needed to have some space.
They didn’t realize I was in the next stall, so I stayed very still, wondering what mean things they might say about me. I was afraid to breathe or even pull up my pants. Tess started singing:
Personal space, personal space
. She taught Darlene the song and told her how cute my half brother is. “Almost as cute as her stepbrother,” Darlene added, and Tess laughed her wicked laugh. Then they left. Nothing mean at all; they didn’t know I could hear, and all Tess had done was support me.
The better a friend she was to me, the worse I felt.
At about a quarter to seven, people started filing into the boardroom. The only one I really recognized was Mrs. Buckley, the superintendent’s wife, who sat down right next to me and said, “Hello, Tess!”
I managed not to cry.
At seven on the dot, Mrs. Buckley’s husband, the superintendent, banged his gavel and called the meeting to order. He made a motion to dispense with the reading of the minutes, which somebody seconded. I have very clear notes on all this, which is how I can remember. I had rested in the afternoon so I wouldn’t commit a repeat performance of last month’s snooze fest, which is lucky because I noticed Mrs. Buckley sliding her eyes over to sneak a look at what I was writing. Wouldn’t surprise me if ol’ Mrs. Buckley took a little help from a pal now and then when she was a sly student herself.
Some woman named Pellodi or Pelloti was giving a presentation on tax revenue and distribution when there was a commotion at the back of the room. I was relieved at first because my eyelids were feeling ominously heavy. But then I saw who it was, and got sort of a bad feeling in my stomach.
It was a bunch of kids from the high school, mostly stoners who hang out on the Bridge. One was the guy who had looked jeeringly at me and Kevin that night at the ice cream place. The only other person I recognized specifically was George.
“Hi,” he said, with a big goofy smile, as he passed by me, following the crowd.
“Hi,” I mumbled back.
“What is this?” Mrs. Buckley muttered.
“No idea,” I whispered back.
She and I sank into our seats as the crowd shuffled in and found seats in the empty first two rows. The board members looked a little worried, and Mr. Buckley banged his gavel to quiet everyone down.
“Mrs. Pellosi,” he said, “please continue.”
So she did, and the gang down front sat there quietly, listening. They sat through all the various items on the Board of Ed agenda, which I have, honestly, very few notes on because I was totally distracted. What were they doing here? What was going to happen? I could see the people up on the dais darting their eyes to them, repeatedly. Finally it happened.
Mr. Buckley banged his gavel and said, “Well, then, if there’s no new business, I will entertain a motion to adjourn this—”
The scruffy guy from the ice cream store stood up, hands in the pockets of his absurdly loose jeans. “I have new business to raise,” he said.
Mr. Buckley peered down at him. “What is your name, young man?”
“Uh, Tony,” he said. His friends chuckled. I wrote down
Tony?
“Well, uh–Tony,” Mr. Buckley said. “If you would like to address the Board, please remove your hat first.”
Tony touched the visor of his dingy black baseball cap. Everybody waited. He lowered his empty hand. “Uh, no.”
“Well, then . . .” Mr. Buckley banged his gavel.
“I got something to say,” said Tony, louder. “I protest the banning of the anarchy and Frisbee clubs at the high school.”
“This meeting is adjourned.”
Bang, bang.
“No,” said Tony. “You have to listen. I am a student . . .”
“I don’t have to listen to students,” Mr. Buckley said.
Bang
went his gavel. “Ladies and gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned.”
The high school students started yelling at the board members, some of whom were simply ignoring them and putting on their coats, but one of whom yelled back that they should learn some respect.
I was trying to take everything down. Mrs. Buckley leaned against my arm and whispered, “You have to deal with those rude teenagers every day, you poor thing?”
Then she got up and I guess found Mr. Buckley at the back. I had my head down over my pad. I wanted to make sure my notes were complete. This was my first big scoop. This was real news. The head of the Board of Ed had said, and I had the quote, “I don’t have to listen to students.”
I wanted to present both sides, all sides, of the story. I noted what everybody was wearing, exactly what Tony said, and exactly what Mr. Buckley said. This was going to be controversial, for sure. I had to have everything right. I understood for the first time what Mr. McKinley meant, about the free press being the most important part of a free society.
And in that room, I was the press.
It was a lot of responsibility, and a lot of power.
When I looked up, the room was almost clear, though I am pretty sure I saw George at the back, peeking in. He was gone by the time I got there, though. I rushed out to wait for Mom in the cold, but I didn’t care. I sat down on the curb to write my first draft. My heart was pounding from the rush of it.
It felt almost like those moments when I fell in love with Kevin, only possibly even more exciting.
When Mom finally showed up, I got into the back seat so I could keep writing. I worked on the story until after midnight, writing and rewriting it, then got up at six to type it on my computer and edit it, making sure every word was right and necessary. I printed it out three separate times, after minor changes in each, but still I was at the bus stop ten minutes early, pacing in circles, clutching the article safe in a plastic folder.
I have never worked as hard on anything in my life, never been as excited about an assignment. I was breaking news. My legs were shaking as the bus bounced through town. Kevin didn’t get on at his stop. I didn’t care. All I could think about was this article. What a relief to be obsessed with something real, something important! It was great, it was perfect, it was the best thing I had ever written. I couldn’t wait to submit it.
I RAN OFF the bus and straight to the newspaper office before school started, without even finding Penelope first. I didn’t want her to take my story, make some superficial revisions, and coast to Harvard on it. It was mine. I was scooping her after all. Ha!
Mr. McKinley was sitting there eating a doughnut, sipping steaming black coffee from a stained cardboard cup, reading the
New York Times
. When I opened the door, he bellowed, “Charles, my cub reporter. What have you got?”
“A scoop,” I said, feeling a little silly but not fully.
“Oh, yeah?” He extended his beefy hand. “Let’s see.”
I handed it to him and stood there awkwardly beside him while he read my carefully typed page. Not an error on it, I was confident. I chewed on my lip.
Finally he lowered the page and nodded. “Not bad,” he said.
I felt myself flush.
“There’s a ninety-nine-year-old woman, used to be a librarian here in Winston years ago. Maybe you could do a feature on her. Penelope will give you the information.”
“Okay,” I said. “But what do you think about this, the article? How is it?”
“It’s, well, you’re improving. Good. I’ll have Penelope edit it down.”
I swallowed. “Why? Which . . . which parts do you think are—down to what?”
“Time and place.”
“But what about the . . . the quotes? What they said? What Mr. Buckley said to Tony?”
“Oh,” Mr. McKinley said. “We can’t run that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, you didn’t get Tony’s last name. You can’t run it without that.”
“I’ll get it,” I promised. I tried to take a deep breath. “I’ll get it. Anything else?”
“We can’t run it, Charlie,” he said.
“At all?”
He shook his head.
I felt my hands tighten into fists. “Why not?”
“We can’t run the risk of misquoting a member of the Board of Ed.”
“It’s not a misquote.” I kept my voice quiet and firm, in tight control. “I have it in my notes. I took it down as it happened, exactly as it happened!”
“Charlie, Charlie,” Mr. McKinley said, standing up, his hugeness dwarfing me. “Do you know where this newspaper gets its funding?”
“No,” I said, and then remembered. “The Board of Ed.”
He shrugged. “Interview the old librarian. Don’t be late to homeroom.”
The bell rang. I didn’t care. “What about the most important thing in a free society?”
“School is not a free society.”
I punched the table. “You’ve got to be kidding me! This is news. This is the truth! You have to publish it! You have to! Or . . .”
He took a bite of his doughnut. A few crumbs fell from his lips. “Or what?”
“Or I will have to quit the paper,” I threatened. I felt tears come to my eyes, as if newspaper had been the center of my universe.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re late to homeroom.”
“And I will tell people. I will tell everybody, the whole school, what happened, and that you were too scared to publish it.”
He glanced up at the clock, then took a swig of the coffee.
“And I’ll tell the whole staff of the newspaper. We’ll all walk out.”
The second bell rang. Mr. McKinley sat back down and started reading his newspaper again. I stormed out of there and let the door slam behind me.
I was so mad I almost crashed into Kevin on my way down the hall.
“Hi, Chuck,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “You won’t believe what just happened. I wrote this article, this thing that . . .” I realized simultaneously that I had left the article I had written in the newspaper room with McKinley, and that Kevin had called me Chuck again. And, in fact, had actually talked to me for the first time since Vermont. I stood there with my mouth hanging open in front of him, unsure of what to do.
“I missed the bus,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “So—the thing is? I wrote this really good article, for the paper, about what happened at the Board of Ed meeting and McKinley won’t . . .”
Kevin knelt down and unzipped his backpack. “Are we late?” He looked up at me out of the corner of his eye. I could tell he was remembering the last time we got busted for tardiness. He gave me that smirk of his. It knocked the wind out of me.
“Kevin . . .”
“Phew. Here it is,” he said, grabbing a folder out of his bag. He stood up and hurried away from me.
“You’re the one who . . .” I yelled after him. He rounded a corner and was gone, but that didn’t stop me from yelling, “Hey! I am taking a stand for honesty, here! Hello?”
The bell to end homeroom rang and the halls were instantly flooded with the chaos of kids. Tess found me right away.
“Where were you?” She grabbed my arm and started pulling me toward English.
“Newspaper. You won’t believe what happened.” In a rush I told her what had happened as we walked toward English together. She looped her arm through mine, which made me feel very supported, especially in contrast to how Kevin had responded.
“Ew, those scruffy drug addicts who hang out on the Bridge?” she asked, when I looped back to what had actually gone on at the Board of Ed meeting.
“Yeah,” I said as we got into English. “But that’s not the point. Can you believe McKinley won’t print it?”
“Well, if the Board of Ed is his wallet, you have to be realistic.”
Ms. Lendzion told us to find our seats and quiet down.
“Realistic?” I couldn’t believe her. “How about what’s right?”
“Oh, please, Miss Crusader for the Truth,” Tess whispered, her head close to mine. “So join chorus instead. Newspaper is boring anyway. You said so yourself.”
“Girls!” Ms. Lendzion yelled. “Eyes front, mouths closed, please.”
I shut up, but I couldn’t pay attention at all in English class. When the bell rang I was still fuming. And my best friend’s Miss Crusader comment had not helped at all.
I TRACKED DOWN Penelope and told her what had happened. She didn’t sigh, which I took as a good sign; she nodded and listened, let me tell the whole story. “I left my copy of it in the newspaper room,” I said. “Maybe you could get it for me, but if he already destroyed the evidence, I have it on my computer. I was thinking we should all quit.”
“Quit?”
“In protest,” I explained. “The whole staff of the newspaper.”
“I have to get into college,” Penelope said.
“What about freedom of the press? What about morality?”
“I can’t think about morality until March.”
Lunch was already halfway over. I decided to track down everybody else I could find. If a big enough group of us walked off the newspaper, McKinley would have to listen—even if it wasn’t everybody. Union now!
By the end of the day I did not have a large coalition. I had, so far, counting myself, one person willing to quit.
“You okay?” Jennifer asked me at our lockers at the end of the day.
“No,” I said. “Would you quit newspaper with me?”
“Sure,” she said. “Unless I have to join it first.”
I slammed my locker shut. “Yeah, well.”
“Is this about Kevin?”
“No!” I said, and ran out to the bus. For once it was NOT about Kevin. Jennifer of all people—she’s the one who is supposed to NOT think everything is about boys! I really needed a walk but I had no time for the woods. I had a new idea—I would write a speech, present my case to everybody in a way that made it absolutely indisputable that I was right. Luckily Kevin wasn’t on the bus to distract me—not that he could’ve. Bleh for self-involved him.
After ten bad starts and half a bag of Oreos, I decided I needed a break. I called my father. He’s a lawyer. A small-town lawyer, it’s true, with a specialty in real estate, but I guess I wanted some help crafting an argument and also maybe to show him that just because I am a klutz, it doesn’t make me a bum. I had something I believed in, for once. He listened to my whole case, then gave his judgment, “Sounds like you’re on the right side, Charlotte.”
“Really? Thanks, Dad.”
“Though, is this a teacher you’re going to have at some point? You might not want to burn bridges.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“Listen, I’m glad you called,” he said before I could hang up on him. “I want to talk to you about your mother.”
I should never call him. I really should know better. “What?”
“I want you to give her a break, okay?”
“Give her a . . . what are you talking about? You are the one who’s always going on and on about NOT giving people a break. And anyway, about what? A break from what?”
“She’s worried that you feel . . . your mother is moving on with her life, Charlotte, and it’s about time she looked up from her books, right? So buck up. You’re practically an adult now. There’s no excuse for moping around the house.”
“Okay, Dad,” I said. “Thanks, sorry, you’re right, good-bye.”
I couldn’t even work on my speech anymore after that, I was so deflated. When Mom came home I was sprawled on the couch finishing off the last of our ice cream and watching the Lifetime channel.
“What happened?” she asked.
I told her. As she listened, she agreed and got angry, and I revived. “So what are we gonna do about this?” she asked.
“Maybe I could, I don’t know, rally people?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
She made dinner while I wrote my speech. I practiced it on her and she loved it. I designed a flyer while she ate (I couldn’t eat, being both excited and also full of junk), and then we left the dishes in the sink and went straight to her office, where she made a hundred copies of my flyer that said “Censorship in our own Newspaper! Come to a Meeting at the Bridge, at lunch today, to hear the TRUTH!” She even stopped at 7-Eleven to buy me a fresh roll of tape so I could put them up all over school, and also some Twizzlers for the two of us to share. When we got home, she helped me put together the karaoke machine my grandmother in California sent me for Christmas last year, so I could bring it in and use the microphone.
“Mom?” I said, as I collapsed into bed.
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m happy for you, Mom. Joe is great. I really do like him.”
“I knew you would. He likes you a lot, too, Charlie.”
“And you.”
She smiled. “And me.” She kissed me on my forehead. “It’ll all work out, baby. You’ll see.”
I closed my eyes, wondering if she meant my rally or our future, or both.