Grandpa pulls up behind a road grader, and the five of us get out and approach the garage. There are other people there too, just standing and looking. We end up next to a family from Shadbush Crossing who drove a hundred miles to see it.
They’ve got a little kid with them—a boy, maybe four or five years old, his eyes wide with wonder. His whole body is pressed against the window as if he’s trying to make himself a part of the landscape of colored paper loops inside.
“How many do you think are in there?” he asks breathlessly.
“At least half a million,” I tell him. “But that’s barely a tenth of what we’ve got. We’re almost up to five million links now.”
He pulls away to beam at me, and the next thing I know, my quiet, reserved grandmother steps right up to the glass to drink in the paper chain and everything it represents. It might be a trick of the light, but I’m pretty sure I spot a small tear running down her cheek.
I take her hand. “Want to get a closer look?” I whisper.
She regards me questioningly, but follows along. I lead her around the side of the building to the employees’ back entrance. I push the door open, and we pass through a locker room and step out into the main garage—at least as far as we can, because the place is jammed with floor-to-ceiling paper chain. We might as well be underwater. The multicolored loops are right up against our faces and fill in over our heads as we move.
Grandma’s breath quickens, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake bringing her in here. She’s an old lady, and I’m practically drowning her in chain. I make a move to lead her back outside, but she stops me.
She says, “At the convent, we all wondered about our parents and why they’d left us with the Sisters of Sainte Hilaire. The nuns were kind, but they were absolutely tight-lipped about our families. German soldiers searched regularly. Young girls couldn’t be trusted to keep secrets, so the sisters made sure we had none. And when the war was over, nobody looked for parents. It was all we could do to look for food.”
I’m deadly silent. My grandmother has never opened up to me like this before. For all I know, she’s never even said these things to Mom. Grandma may have escaped the horrors of the Holocaust, but she didn’t get off scot-free.
She goes on. “I was seventy-three years old when I finally learned the truth about my parents, my family. I can only imagine their anguish when their one hope for any kind of future was to save the life of their infant daughter. But how could I grieve for them? They didn’t have faces. No names, no voices to remember. Sure, I understood that the way I was raised was not the way my natural parents would have raised me. It was life-changing—yet I was too old to change. I was born Jewish … but it’s not who I am. At my age, it’s too late for me to be anyone else.”
She takes a tremulous breath. “I wasn’t able to mourn my parents, because I couldn’t see them.” She holds up her arms. “Now I know that they’re here, among the links of your wonderful chain. And what you’re doing, this bar mitzvah, is to reclaim my family. Our family. You’ve done something for me that I never could have done for myself. And I love you so much for it.”
She hugs me, and the sudden movement triggers a mini avalanche in the paper loops that fill the building. Chain half buries us, but we barely notice. At that moment, I feel closer to my grandmother than I ever have.
It’s a really emotional moment … until the “shave and a haircut, two bits” horn of Grandpa’s car blares from outside.
“I guess that means we’re taking too long,” I snicker.
“And he’s hungry,” she confirms.
By the time we wrestle our way out of the garage, we’re both smiling.
You can taste the coming winter in the air. It gets colder every week. And winter is really winter where we live.
The kids at Chokecherry Middle School don’t care. We don’t even notice. School spirit keeps you warm no matter what the temperature is.
If I don’t get elected eighth-grade president next year in a landslide, it’ll be a crime against student government. As much as Daniel Faraz may try to take credit for the paper chain, everybody knows the seventh grade took the lead on this one. And who’s in charge of the seventh grade? Caroline McNutt, that’s who. You’re welcome, world.
And it is the whole world now. We’ve been interviewed by media outlets from four different continents (what’s the problem, Australia?). ReelTok is up nearly a million followers ever since he moved to Chokecherry to report on our story. We’ve received donations of supplies and paper chains from all fifty states plus eleven other countries. You think a little cold weather and a few flurries can stop us now? Godzilla couldn’t stop us now!
Shivering in my jacket, I’m supervising a group of kids unloading a cube van with Illinois plates. Most of our donations come packed in cartons. But when we open the van, we find the back jammed with chain. Sophie grabs one end, and we start pulling it out. She’s halfway to the parking lot before I realize that the entire payload is a single endless line of connected paper links. Pretty soon, all my volunteers are stretched back and forth across the front of the school, while the unbroken chain rustles in the cold wind.
Suddenly, Michael explodes out the front door, waving his clipboard and shouting, “What are you doing? I still have to count those!”
“There weren’t any boxes,” I explain. “When we opened up the van, all this was in the back.”
The driver hands me an envelope with the logo of an elementary school in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. I open it, and Michael and I read the letter inside.
Dear Chokecherry Middle School,
We can’t tell you what an inspiration your message of tolerance and remembrance has been to us. Our students have been coming in early every morning for the past three weeks to work on our paper chain to add to yours. Please attach these 1,986 links to your …
Michael draws in a wheeze of ice-cold air that must be painful.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
He pulls out his phone and keys numbers rapidly into the calculator function. Then he wheels and pounds up the steps and back into the school.
“Wait here!” I tell my crew. “And don’t pull too hard on the chain. You don’t want to rip it!” I take off after Michael.
I catch up with him at the library, which is packed with paper-chainers, busily cutting and gluing.
“Stop!” he barks. “Stop working!”
“Michael, what’s going on?” I demand.
Wordlessly, he shoves his phone under my nose. The number on the calculator reads: 6,000,023.
“We did it,” he croaks. “Six million. We hit six million!”
The roar that rises from the assembled paper-chainers very nearly raises the roof. For an instant, glue sticks, scissors, and construction paper are airborne, hanging like a cloud over the library. Then it’s all raining down on us as we embrace one another and dance like maniacs. A bottle of Elmer’s glue bounces off my head as I’m hugging Michael, and it actually hurts. But who cares? All I can think of is that this makes me the greatest seventh-grade president in the history of student government. Those hard times when Chokecherry Middle School couldn’t sell enough raffle tickets to even pay for the prize might as well be a hundred years ago. This is the top. The pinnacle.
One minute we’re all going nuts with pure joy at hitting six million, and then we all get quiet as we remember what that number represents. We’re still cheering inside, but we’re also thinking about six million lives snuffed out by the worst kind of evil the world has ever known. It’s not the same rah-rah celebration, but just the idea of the statement we’ve made fills us with pride. Dana stands with her hands clasped and her head bowed respectfully, and the rest of us take our lead from her.
Mr. Brademas rushes into the library. “What’s all the noise about? What’s going on?” He looks around, bewildered because there isn’t any noise. We’re motionless and solemn.
In answer, Michael shows him the number on his phone calcula
tor.
Our staid, dignified principal blurts, “No way!”
“Yes way!” Pouncey bellows right in his face.
And the party starts up again, led by Mr. Brademas.
I remember that I left a group of kids outside in the cold with the paper chain that put us over the top. By the time I run down to get them, the text messages are flying all around the school and throughout town. As I pass the gym, a volleyball game is interrupted, and the players from both teams give me a round of applause. Kids high-five me in the hall. Even the detention room echoes with shouts of triumph, which grow even louder when Mrs. Lemay lets everyone go early. I get swarmed and thanked by kids who are usually bombarding me with spitballs.
When at last I make it outside, our final strand of chain is frosted with snow, so I make everybody go downstairs and stand near the furnace to thaw it out.
Michael and Dana find me there, sweating in my coat and sniffling a little from the emotion of what we’ve accomplished. It would be emotional for anyone in student government. But it counts double for me, since I’ve never had an accomplishment before—despite my many years of trying. It’s a really big deal.
“We’re going to see ReelTok,” Michael informs me. “Someone should let him know we hit six million.”
“Mostly, we’re going to tell him to leave,” Dana adds pointedly. “If the paper chain project is over, so is his excuse for camping out across the street from our school.”
Camping out isn’t a bad way to describe the vlogger these days. Now that the first bite of winter is here, he’s pitched a tent around his usual spot in the park, and he has a space heater that runs off a small portable generator that sits on the other side of the canvas. You can hear the put-putting halfway across town. It’s so loud that he has to shut it down when he does interviews and records his videos—not that there are as many interviews now that the weather has changed.
Michael tries to knock on one of the tent poles, but there’s no chance he can be heard over the generator. So I poke my head inside the tent flap. “Mr. Tok?”
The vlogger huddles in his parka in front of the space heater. By a strange coincidence—or maybe not—he looks eerily like he does on YouTube, since his voluminous scarf and ski hat cover his face everywhere except the letterbox view from eyes to lower lip.
I always feel weird when I see him, because of the terrible things he’s said about our town. On the other hand, it’s thanks to his vlog and website that news of our paper chain spread so far and wide. So without him, there’s no way my student government career ever could have reached the summit I hit today.
Spying us, ReelTok reaches outside the tent and switches off the generator. “What’s up, kidlets?”
“We’ve got news!” I announce, relishing the big reveal.
“Yeah, yeah,” he yawns. “You made your six million. Congratulations.”
Michael stares at him. “How could you know so fast?”
He waves his phone at us. “TokNation has eyes everywhere.”
I don’t know why I’m surprised. He’s always going on about TokNation like it’s his personal CIA. But come to think of it, this probably just came from one of our classmates posting it on ReelTok.com. Most of the kids were already fans even before the guy moved into the park across the street. The urge to be first to tell Adam Tok would have been irresistible.
Dana speaks up. “So you know. I guess that means you’ll be leaving town soon.”
The vlogger beams at her. “Trying to get rid of me so fast? I thought you were grateful for all the publicity I’ve brought you.”
“We are! We are!” I break in. “We never could have gotten to six million without the attention you brought us.”
“It’s just that, you know,” Dana goes on, “now that the paper chain is over, I just figured—”
“You assume that the paper chain is what brought me here.” ReelTok clucks. “I expected more from the daughter of two PhDs.”
“How do you know who my parents are?” Dana asks sharply.
“When you have seventeen million followers, they tell you an awful lot about an awful lot. You’re Dana Levinson, your parents are here with Wexford-Smythe University, and you’re the only Jewish kid at Chokecherry Middle School.”
“Not true!” Dana snaps.
“Right. Lincoln Rowley. Well played.”
“If it wasn’t for the paper chain, why did you come here?” Michael asks the vlogger.
“I’m glad you asked,” ReelTok replies pleasantly. “The paper chain was my excuse for coming here. But the story was always Chokecherry itself. I live in a big city, and that’s an easy target for haters. Oh, the traffic! Oh, the crime! The rude people! The pollution! The garbage! But I always knew that if you scratch any small town, you find the same and even worse. So when I heard about swastikas in a middle school and a KKK past that nobody will even talk about, much less admit to, I knew Chokecherry was the story I’d been dreaming about.”
I don’t know what to say. I always looked the other way when ReelTok put down our town, because his vlog was so important to the paper chain. I was thinking like the seventh-grade president, and our project needed him. But now I have to wonder what we did to make him hate us so much. I look over at Michael, and he seems pretty confused too.
“Fine,” Dana tells him. “You got your story. We’re all awful. So why don’t you just buzz off?”
“Because my story’s not over yet. I’m just about to post a new interview. Interested in a little preview?”
“No,” Dana says flatly. “Everybody around here has already seen more from your YouTube channel than they need.” She turns to Michael and me. “Come on, guys. We’re out of here.”
Smiling even wider, ReelTok opens his laptop. “Oh, you’re going to want to stick around for this one. It’s definitely worth your time.”
From the YouTube channel of Adam Tok
Interview with Lincoln Rowley
REELTOK: Your bar mitzvah’s only a week away. Getting excited? Nervous, maybe?
LINK: A little bit of both. I Zoomed with Rabbi Gold last night. He says I’m ready.
REELTOK: That’s good. And now that the swastikas are a thing of the past, you must be even more relaxed.
LINK: Relaxed?
REELTOK: You know, a Jewish ceremony with anti-Semitic symbols popping up all over the place. It’s a good thing Pamela Bynes was caught before she could do any more damage.
LINK: I feel bad for her. She’s my friend.
REELTOK: See, I find that confusing. How could a kid who’s just discovered his Jewish heritage be friends with someone who did what she did? Is it because you believe her story about not doing the first swastika? Do you feel that she’s a little less guilty because she didn’t start all this?
LINK: I don’t know.
REELTOK: Really? A Jewish boy like you doesn’t know how you feel about something like that?
LINK: I haven’t known about the Jewish thing for very … I mean, it’s a lot of change really fast.
REELTOK: I want to tell you a little story. When the weather was first starting to cool off, I got arrested for lighting a fire in the park—the local cops aren’t my biggest fans. You know how they caught me? That house across the square—number sixty-two. They have one of those video security doorbells. They saw my fire on the live camera feed and ratted me out to the police.
LINK: So you got the tent and the heater.
REELTOK: You’re missing the point. The minute I found out about that camera, I realized it looks clear across the park … all the way to the school. You know?
LINK: I guess.
REELTOK: Don’t you see? That doorbell camera is like video surveillance on the school. I wasn’t here when the first swastika was painted … but the doorbell was. So it might be interesting to look at the video feed from that day. You know, to see if Pamela is lying about that.
LINK: But wait—those people just let you come into their house and watch their footag
e?
REELTOK: Not necessary. When you’ve got seventeen million followers, it’s never hard to find a competent hacker who’s willing to do you a favor. Anyway, the news is, Pamela is telling the truth. She left practice with the other cheerleaders around five.
LINK: Okay …
REELTOK: I also saw Michael Amorosa bike up and enter the school a little before seven thirty. That’s consistent with when the first swastika was reported found. Between five o’clock and then, only one person entered that building. Would you like to tell me who it was?
LINK: How could I possibly know that?
REELTOK: Because it was you.
The crazy part is, I never thought twice about what I spray-painted at the school. My mind was a couple of hours ahead on the dinosaur poop gag we were about to play on the scientists’ office at the strip mall. That was the one with all the moving parts: Jordie, Pouncey, the girls, not to mention an eighty-pound bag of smelly fertilizer that wasn’t exactly easy to cart around town.
So why did I do it? Why do I do anything? If I knew that, maybe I could stop. I’m not a thinker; I’m a doer. I went from learning about Grandma to bar mitzvah lessons in the blink of an eye. I’m having a bar mitzvah on Saturday … or maybe I’m not. Now that the word is out that I painted the first swastika, I can’t picture myself being super welcome inside any synagogue.
I was ticked off. No question about that. Dad had just yanked me off the soccer team and the lectures were fast and furious, not to mention loud and long. It was George Rowley’s greatest hits, played on an endless loop. I was hearing about my future eighteen times a day. I needed an outlet before my head exploded. I wanted revenge. We had the fertilizer thing planned, but that was too funny. I wanted something unfunny, something that would freak people out.
When I snuck into the school that day, I honestly had no idea what I was going to paint on the atrium wall. Just the fact that I was painting it—that was my statement. This wouldn’t be any goofy gag like I usually do; nothing that could be laughed off or ignored as “kids being kids.” It would be vandalism, plain and ugly, defacement of school property. I could just as easily have painted I’M ANGRY.
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