Linked

by Gordon Korman

  In a strangely kind voice, the principal says, “Please don’t make this any more unpleasant than it already has to be.”

  When Pam doesn’t answer, he nods to Mr. Kennedy. The custodian takes a large metal clipper from his tool belt and prepares to cut the lock.

  “Stop!” I blurt. And when they turn to me, it all comes pouring out. Even though she hates me now, I have to protect her if I can. “You don’t have to open the locker. I’m the swastika guy, not Pam.”

  Pam’s eyes widen in surprise and something like relief.

  Mr. Brademas frowns. “You just explained to me that you were at an orthodontist appointment.”

  “I lied,” I say readily. “And I forged a fake late slip.”

  The principal doesn’t reply. Instead he nods to his custodian. The lock comes away with a snap and the door swings wide.

  Mr. Brademas reaches inside and pulls out a small paint can and a two-inch brush, bristles still wet.

  The color on the label reads: Lilac/Purple.

  The rumors start around lunchtime.

  I already sense that the level of buzzing energy in the cafeteria is higher than usual, but I first hear the news when Andrew approaches me in the food line.

  “They caught him.”

  “Caught who?” I ask.

  “The swastika guy! Brademas busted him this morning. Didn’t you see the cop cars outside?”

  I don’t know why I’m so shocked. When the first few swastikas were appearing, I definitely expected the culprit to be found out at some point. But when that didn’t happen, I suppose I sort of got used to them and figured they’d go on forever. Like our vandal was some kind of swastika supervillain who was too smart and wily ever to be tripped up.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  He shrugs, rattling the plastic cutlery on his tray. “Nobody knows. But they can’t keep it a secret forever.”

  At our table, all the talk is about the identity of the mysterious racist/vandal/jerk.

  “It’s Christopher Solis,” Caroline says positively. “It has to be. I just saw him ten minutes ago. They’ve got him in in-school suspension.”

  “That kid lives in in-school suspension,” Michael counters. “I doubt he’s spent two hours out of it all year. Besides, it can’t be him. The cops took away whoever did it.”

  I’ve been staying out of the blame game so far, but as I set down my tray opposite Michael, a thought occurs to me. “How about Erick Federov? He said some weird things to me a few days ago. And not weird-strange. Weird-awful.”

  Andrew shakes his head. “Uh-uh. The eighth-grade jocks were at the high school all morning, working out with the JV soccer team.”

  “Are we a hundred percent positive it wasn’t an adult?” Michael asks.

  “It’s not Mr. Kennedy,” I assure him. “Get that idea out of your head. He’s eating lunch on the bench out front, so he’s definitely not under arrest.”

  Caroline looks worried. “Now that the swastikas are over, I sure hope people don’t lose interest in the paper chain.”

  Michael rolls his eyes. “Don’t I wish. At this point, I’m getting black lung disease from inhaling too many construction paper molecules.”

  At that moment, Pouncey steps out of the food line, juggling a heavily laden tray. An audible groan goes up in the cafeteria. A lot of kids probably had him pegged as suspect number one for the swastikas. Seeing him in school instead of in custody means it’s time to go back to the drawing board. He crosses the lunchroom and sits down with Link and Jordie.

  “Another theory down the drain,” Michael comments. “And I heard Jordie got dragged to the principal’s office this morning, but that must have been about something else.”

  I can’t help noticing that Link’s bar mitzvah folder is closed, and he, Jordie, and Pouncey are having an intense conversation. Not even the popular kids are immune to today’s swastika gossip. In a small town like Chokecherry, it’s just too juicy.

  I get my first whiff of the answer in science. Eli is whining to the teacher that his lab partner stood him up, so he’s missing half the prep work for the experiment. Who’s his lab partner? Pamela Bynes.

  That confuses me, because Pamela always worked with Jordie. But of course that had to change when those two broke up. I glance over at Jordie. He looks stricken, his face paper white.

  “Pamela Bynes isn’t in school,” I whisper to Michael in the hall after class. “She was helping with the paper chain this morning, but now she’s gone.”

  He nods. “I heard. Everybody’s talking about it. And the lock is missing from her locker.”

  As the day goes on, the name Pamela bubbles out of every conversation, spoken quietly, but so often that it’s a growing echo in the school. There’s no announcement from the office, and several times I overhear teachers saying things like “I can’t give out that kind of information about a student,” and “I’m sorry, that’s confidential,” and even “Mind your own business, please.”

  It just makes the rumors louder and wilder, and always with Pamela at the center. She’s the prime suspect, the only suspect.

  Pamela? Really? I wouldn’t have guessed her in a million years. Not that she’s my best friend or anything like that. She’s part of Link’s crowd. I always think of her and Sophie as practically twins. A little shallow and self-centered, maybe. But this?

  If Pamela is a white supremacist, she’s done a pretty good job hiding it. She’s never said anything out of line to me, and I haven’t heard of anyone like Michael or Andrew having a problem with her. Stranger still, she was one of the very first volunteers to work on the paper chain. That’s our way of fighting against the swastikas. Why would she join that effort if she’s on the other side? The more I think about it, the less sense it makes.

  I have a giddy flashback to the very first paper-chaining day in the art room. Pamela and Jordie had a fight, and she ran out. Immediately after that, a new swastika was discovered. And she was working at the warehouse when the swastikas appeared there. If Pamela really is the culprit, the evidence was right in front of us, and nobody twigged to it.

  My head is spinning with the effort of trying to connect the dots on this. I’m not the only one. Every class change, the babble of speculation in the halls gets a little bit louder, and the teachers look a little bit more desperate.

  After school, the volunteer turnout for paper-chaining is the smallest it’s been since the beginning of the project. Pamela is all anyone can talk about. Can this popular girl most of them have known since kindergarten be the dreaded swastika guy?

  I’m dying to know, but there’s nobody to ask. The other kids are going on pure rumor, same as me. I’m on my way to pick up Ryan when it comes to me: Who always knows more about Chokecherry’s swastika problems than anybody in town?

  When I open the YouTube app on my phone, it takes me straight to Adam Tok’s channel. I’m not a fan—I think the guy is an obnoxious loudmouth. But it’s hard to resist when that mouth is speaking about your own school.

  The top video is titled “FINALLY!!!” And when I tap it, the famous unibrow is crammed into the frame of my phone screen. “Cheerleader!” he barks. “Athlete! All-American girl!” The blogger’s face is replaced by a montage of pictures of Pamela, beginning with her as a pigtailed preschooler and ending with a photo of the Chokecherry Middle School cheer squad, her face circled in red. “A small-town sweetheart with a deep, dark secret called racism.”

  So it’s true. I never realized how much I was hoping against it. It would have been better if it had turned out to be a stranger—a sixth or eighth grader I didn’t see in homeroom every day. I know Pamela and she knows me. Somehow that makes everything more personal.

  “The mystery of the swastikas has been solved, TokNation!” ReelTok rants on. “Pamela Ann Bynes, a seventh grader at Chokecherry Middle School, is the architect of all that vandalism and all that hate. Students are shocked. Teachers are dismayed. A community reels in disbelief. ‘How could this h
appen in our tiny perfect town?’ The answer: Maybe your tiny town was never as perfect as you thought it was …”

  “Dana, wait!” Link is jogging toward me. “I can’t make it today. Something came up.”

  “Something sure did,” I agree, brandishing my phone. “Did you know about any of this?”

  He shakes his head. “Neither did Jordie, and he was closer to her than anybody.”

  ReelTok is still raving. “Chokecherry may deny its scandalous past, but you can’t paint over rot. It’s still there, TokNation, and it will always come out.” The screen shows an old black-and-white photograph of a Klansman in full regalia, his hood cradled in his right arm, gazing proudly into the camera. “Meet Elvin Roy Bynes, great-uncle to Pamela, and head of the Shadbush County chapter of the KKK. He died in 2014, but wouldn’t he be proud to see little Pamela following in his footsteps?”

  Link whistles. “I knew about Pouncey’s grandfather, but this is the first I’m hearing about Pamela’s family. I mean, she always said the newspapers made up the Night of a Thousand Flames, but—”

  I cut him off. “That’s horrible! Denying the past is the surest way to make sure it happens again! It did happen again, sort of. What do you think all those swastikas mean? And she’s the one who drew them!”

  He regards me closely. “Are you okay?”

  I shake my head. “It’s just different when it turns out to be someone you know.”

  He looks uncomfortable. “Yeah, I hear you. See you tomorrow.”

  As I watch Link jog off, I spy a crowd gathering in the park across from the middle school. ReelTok’s park—a large group of kids lining up to be interviewed. I can imagine what they’re going to say: I knew it all along! There was always something rotten about Pamela Bynes! She stole my spot on the track team! She beat me out on the cheerleading squad! She broke Jordie’s heart! She took the last Twinkie after I called dibs! Of course she did the swastikas!

  I’m furious at Pamela. What she did was awful, unforgivable. But in a strange way, I feel bad for her too. Her name is mud not just around here, but thanks to ReelTok, all over the world. Kids are lining up to denounce her. She’s probably going to be expelled from school. She’s in trouble with the law, and might even end up in juvie. And for what? How could what she did possibly be so important to her?

  I want to scream at her. In anger, yeah, but also to ask: What were you thinking? Was it worth it to mess up your whole life for the sake of a few dozen lines scrawled on walls and lockers and garbage dumpsters? Is it really that important to make people like me and Michael and Andrew and, yeah, Link uncomfortable? Do you think your late great-uncle is celebrating you somewhere?

  What Pamela did was hateful, but what’s even harder to take is how pointless it was. There’s no question that she did damage to the town by exposing raw nerves and bringing up the sins of Chokecherry’s past. But that’s balanced out by the good things that came in reaction to the swastikas—like the paper chain and Link learning the truth about his heritage. Mostly, the damage she did was to herself.

  What a waste.

  ReelTok is still ranting through the speaker of my phone, outlining the history of Elvin Roy Bynes and the Shadbush County chapter of the Klan. The vlogger may be a jerk, but you can’t say anything about his reporting skills. Pamela has barely been arrested, yet he already has her entire family history cued up and all set to go. I turn it off when the elementary school comes into view. No need for Ryan to hear this. Obviously, he knows about the swastikas, but he doesn’t really grasp what they mean. To him, they’re mostly the spark that inspired our paper chain—and isn’t it great?

  How did ReelTok do all that research on Pamela while sitting in a park? Oh, sure, he has a laptop with him, but that doesn’t explain everything. He has pictures. Details nobody else found. He’s posted—I check—six videos in the past hour and a half! Not even the most celebrated journalist of all time could accomplish all that. Unless—

  What if he already knew that Pamela was guilty? And instead of telling anyone, he did his research in advance and waited for her to get caught. And there he was, locked and loaded, ready to splash the story all over YouTube the minute the truth came out.

  Of course! What other explanation could there be? We thought it was plain old cussedness that kept him in that park, day after day, rain or shine. But he wasn’t just doing it to be stubborn and thumb his nose at the town. He was spying on the school. And he must have seen Pamela where she had no business being and put two and two together.

  He knew all along! He could have put a stop to this misery weeks ago, but instead he chose not to. Why?

  To attract more followers to his YouTube channel.

  I always knew ReelTok was sleazy, but this is a whole new level of sleaze. He came to town acting like our mouthpiece, here to tell our story to the world. And he did. Thanks to his global audience, thousands of paper chains are arriving at school every day. For sure, we never could have reached nearly three million links without the publicity he gave us.

  But for a guy who claims to be helping Chokecherry, he seems to hate the place. He never misses a chance to call us small-minded hicks and he’s always reminding his TokNation about the town’s racist history, hinting that those days aren’t as far in the past as we’d like everybody to believe.

  He’s manipulating us. And we’re letting him.

  That brings up a bigger question: If he already knew about Pamela, what else does he know?

  From the YouTube channel of Adam Tok

  Interview with Jordie Duros

  REELTOK: The word is that you and Pamela Bynes are going out. Is it true?

  JORDIE: It’s complicated.

  REELTOK: TokNation loves complicated. Tell us about it.

  JORDIE: We’ve always had a kind of on-again, off-again thing. Right now, it’s off again.

  REELTOK: Did you break up with Pamela because she turned out to be behind the swastikas?

  JORDIE: Actually, she broke up with me. And it happened before anybody found out about—you know. There’s this new Marvel movie—it’s a long story. Do you really need to hear about my personal life?

  REELTOK: And before the breakup, you had no idea that your girlfriend was painting swastikas all over the school?

  JORDIE: Of course not! Pam’s not like that!

  REELTOK: But now we know she is like that.

  JORDIE: I—I guess we do.

  REELTOK: And how does that make you feel?

  JORDIE: How do you think it makes me feel? This is someone I’ve been close to my whole life. Now there’s this, like, dark side to her I had no clue even existed. And every time we broke up, we always got back together. But this time—I don’t know.

  REELTOK: Have you spoken with her since she was arrested?

  JORDIE: Her folks won’t let her talk to anyone. It’s all so messed up. Anyway, at least the swastika thing is over.

  REELTOK: Well, it’s not really over, is it?

  JORDIE: What do you mean? Pam’s kicked out of school. She’s under house arrest. Word is her family’s thinking about moving out of Chokecherry. You think she’s going to do more swastikas now?

  REELTOK: You mean you haven’t heard?

  JORDIE: Heard what?

  REELTOK: Pamela admits to all the swastikas except one—the first one. She claims the original swastika in the atrium of the school was someone else’s work. She’s a copycat, not the original.

  JORDIE: Why would you believe her, knowing what she did?

  REELTOK: Why would she lie about that one when she’s confessing to all the others? It’s not like she’d be in less trouble for twenty-six swastikas than twenty-seven. She even kept track of the number. But I’ve seen the police report. TokNation has members in all sorts of places. She’s absolutely adamant that the first one, the one in the atrium, was put there by somebody else.

  JORDIE: But that means—

  REELTOK: You’ve caught one white supremacist, but there’s another one st
ill out there. This mystery is far from over.

  I’m standing atop the scaffolding at the abandoned silo at the Beaverton farm, feeding an endless chain of paper links through the intake window. If you want to know what eight hundred thousand links look like, picture a forty-foot silo attached to a small barn. When the first chains went in, we figured we’d never fill it up. Scratch that. It’s multicolored paper to the roof.

  “Stop the lift!” I call down to Pouncey, who’s working the hand crank that keeps bucket after bucket of chain rising up the rounded side of the silo and spilling in through the opening.

  He doesn’t hear me over the screeching of the rusted mechanism. All around him, kids stagger under massive armloads of chain, waiting to be loaded. It’ll never fit inside the silo. We’ll have to take it to the Vardis’ basement, our next designated storage space.

  “Stop!” I shout a little louder. “We’re all full up here!”

  Pouncey keeps on cranking. At the top, I’m stuffing as hard as I can, while yelling, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  Link glances briefly up at me, before returning his attention to his bar mitzvah folder.

  A low rumbling comes from beneath me, and the whole silo begins to vibrate. At the base of the structure, thrusters fire, throwing Pouncey, Link, and the others clear of the barn.

  “What’s happening?” I bellow at the top of my lungs.

  As the silo begins to rise with a fearsome roar, I hang on to the scaffolding for dear life. Eight hundred thousand paper links have turned the overstuffed structure into a rocket. I flatten myself to the wooden platform as the fiery engines fly past me and pray I won’t be vaporized.

  On the ground, kids are gazing up, pointing and cheering, as the silo heads out of the atmosphere.

  “Look!” Caroline shrieks joyfully. “We’re going to have student government on the moon!”

  I struggle to my feet and watch as the rocket grows smaller and smaller and finally winks out of sight in the stratosphere. All I can think of is eight hundred thousand links lost.