by Doug Wilhelm
She nodded sadly. “Yes. I mean, he does all right. But it’s pretty all-American.” She lifted up a corner of the bread, peered at the flap of turkey.
“No merienda,” Elliot said.
She smiled. “You remembered.”
“Sure.”
We sat. We chewed.
“Who do you think did this?” Elliot said. “I mean, there must be a lot of people who don’t like Bethany DeMere. But who really hates her? And who would be nasty enough to try something like this?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Catalina said.
“Well, obviously somebody really wanted to get her in trouble. That’s why they gave us an anonymous disk—that’s why the story didn’t come in on KidNet, like all the others. This way we couldn’t find out who it came from. Even if we’d tried we couldn’t have found out.” He looked at me. “Right?”
I stared at the table.
“But now we have to figure it out—somehow,” Elliot said. “I mean, if we can find out who really did this, maybe it won’t be so totally bad for us.” He looked at me again. “Right?”
“I did it,” I said.
His eyes bugged. “What?”
“I mean, it’s my fault. It’s totally my fault. It’s my stupid, stupid fault.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She knew I would believe it, because she knew I’d read that essay. She knew I wanted to get her. And she knew I’m a stupid moron who has to screw everything up.”
With my fork I speared a Tater Tot. I lifted it, and looked at it. “This,” I said, “is smarter than me.”
“Wait a minute,” Elliot said. “You think Bethany did this? To herself?”
“She didn’t do it to herself. She did it to us.”
Elliot squinched up his face and stared at his tray. Then he shook his head.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Well, I do. It was perfect. She makes it up, okay? She writes it and puts it on a disk, which she tapes to Catalina’s locker. We know she knows about anonymous notes, and we know she knows which is Catalina’s locker. We know she’s evil, and she’s not stupid. Her dad said she’s always on the honor roll.”
Elliot leaned forward on his elbows. “And she knows you’ll believe the story, because it mentions the exact words of an essay that she knows you saw. Huh. Yeah. She knows we’ll use the story, because …”
“Because she knows we hate her. And because she knows I’m stupid. I’m a loser. And I’m a moron.”
“Uh … well.”
“I don’t hate her,” Catalina said.
“No, no, you’re both wonderful. It’s me.”
Elliot looked at Catalina. She peered sideways at me.
“So when the story does come out,” Elliot says, “she goes to her dad.”
“Who she knows is a lawyer.”
He nods. “And she’s unbelievably upset. Traumatized.”
“Oh, totally.”
“And of course she wails that her future is destroyed, unless …”
“Unless we are destroyed,” Catalina said.
“And that’s it,” I said, pointing with the fork. “That’s it. Checkmate. Two moves and we’re done.”
Catalina picked the Tater Tot off my fork. She bit off a tiny piece; her face pinched up. “Eew. You eat these things?”
Elliot speared two of his Tots, slid them with his teeth off his fork, and chewed. “They made me what I am today,” he said. “These and Milk Duds.”
I stood up. They looked up. Elliot said, “What?”
“I’m going back to Mrs. Capelli. I’m going to tell her it was all me.”
“No, you’re not. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I am an idiot, all right?” It came out loud, and they looked startled.
“You’re not an idiot,” Elliot said softly. “It was our mistake. We were all there. We all decided to use that story.”
“You were off in the ozone,” I said to Elliot. I pointed at Catalina: “And you didn’t want to do it. It was me. No one else could be so … stupid.”
My eyes watered up. I was still standing there.
Catalina put her hand on my arm.
“Please don’t,” she said. “Okay?”
I shook my head. “Do you realize how mad at us people are going to be? Do you realize what a disaster this is? I got KidNet taken away from the whole school. We’re not just nobodies again—when people find out we’re the reason this happened, they are going to HATE us!”
I said that really loud, and suddenly the whole cafeteria fell silent and everyone turned toward our corner as I said, “And it’s my fault because I am a TOTAL MORON!”
Silence. Everyone was looking at me. Then everyone started to laugh.
I turned away. The rattling laughter swelled up behind me like a wave. I wouldn’t look at anyone … I stalked stiff-legged out of there as fast as I could.
I was rushing down the hall. I was rushing to get away, not knowing where I could go that no one could find me … and I ran into Mr. Dallas. Oh, god. He came out the door of the System Server room, spotted me, and came rushing up. He was agitated.
“Hey, Russell,” he said. “Hey, you look about as upset as I feel. Listen, I’m glad to see you. I really am. I wanted to talk to one of you guys.”
I looked around. There wasn’t any escape. He was a teacher.
“How about coming in here for just a second?” he said. “I’d like to talk to you. For just a second.”
In his tiny room, he dumped himself backward into a rolling chair. I stood there against the erector-set wall.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “This is supposed to be how you learn—by trying things, making mistakes and then dealing with them. Making things better. I mean, for god’s sake.” He folded his arms.
“I wonder if there’s some way that we—well, I was thinking you guys—could somehow show people how important this system really is.”
He shook his head again. “I know that sounds impossible. I mean, the system’s shutting down. I know it is. When Janet Capelli makes a decision … let’s just say she’s not into changing her mind. But if there were some way to really demonstrate what this has meant to all these kids.”
There was a heartbroken desperation in his eyes. I realized how much I had really done.
I just looked at him. I started to go.
“No,” he said. “I realize it’s not a practical idea. It’s not an idea at all. That’s the problem: I don’t have an idea.” He looked up. “Well, thanks, Russell. Thanks for talking this over with me.”
I went out. And coming up the hall were Elliot and Catalina. They saw me and started walking toward me quickly. Elliot held up his hands.
“Hey, listen,” he said, “we’re sorry. We didn’t laugh. We’re sorry.”
Mr. Dallas came out. “Mr. D,” Elliot said, surprised.
“I was just talking with Russell about whether there was some way we could do something,” Mr. D said, “to show how important KidNet really is to these kids. I mean, maybe all three of you could think about it. Do you think?”
“Well—” Elliot started to say.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
Elliot said, “We just want to—”
“Just leave me out of it,” I said. “Don’t be stupid, all right? Try not to be so stupid.”
I don’t know what I meant. As usual, it was an idiotic, moronic, totally pointless thing to say.
I turned to walk away.
“Well, okay,” Elliot said behind me. “If that’s what you want, if that’s how you’re going to act. Then okay.”
Nobody said anything more. I thought, That’s it? Just like that? It’s over?
I started walking fast.
I spent the rest of that day in a daze. I didn’t think about anything, I just did what I had to do and didn’t look at anybody, and I got out of there as soon as I could.
I walked up Chamber Street to
the railroad tracks. I walked up onto the tracks and then out along them till I was way out of town. Finally I got off the tracks. I walked down a path, down a steep bank through ghostly white birch trees. I stumbled across a bumpy, tall-grass field to where the river was. I sat down by the water.
I just sat there. I was mad at everybody: at Bethany for being evil, her dad for being a tool, Mrs. Capelli for being authoritarian, Mr. Dallas for being a ditz, Elliot and Catalina for being hopeless, Burke and Blanchette for being mean, Richie for not seeing me today and beating the crap out of me, my mom for having to work all the time so she couldn’t find me today and save me. My dad for dying, for god’s sake. My dad for dying.
Finally, all that stuff drained away. It sort of washed down the river, I think. And I sat there knowing it all didn’t matter, because it was really just me. It was just me. That’s all. It was hopeless. I was hopeless.
I sat there for a long time. Then, it’s funny, but I started hearing the river. The actual river. It has all these voices. They’re interesting. There’s a kind of whispering, and somebody else trying to say something, say something, and a louder voice talking over that—and then you realize it’s all kinds of voices, all these different voices talking. It’s really just a river … but it was interesting, and kind of funny, too. It cooled me down.
It was getting dark. I was hungry. I decided to go home.
That night I told my mom about the tape recorder. “It was all broken,” I said. “Totally.”
“That’s okay. It was old. I never used it. The important thing is that you’re all right.”
I nodded. I didn’t tell her anything else.
THE NATURAL ORDER
When I came in the next morning I saw a note taped to my locker door. I had a quick jolt of hope that it was from Elliot or Catalina. But when I unfolded it, I recognized the handwriting.
Hi there, Smart Boy—
Guess you got outsmarted, huh?
Under that someone else had written:
Yeah—welcome back to loserland. You messed with the wrong people!
signed, your friends (NOT)
I stuffed it in my pocket and went to homeroom, the last place on earth I wanted to be.
The short letter we had written the day before had been photocopied and put at everyone’s place on the black lab tables. Nothing was said about it. Nothing. People just read the words Mrs. Capelli had told us we had to say:
Dear Fellow Students,
A story that was published on SchoolStream a few days ago, by us, was not true. This story said that a student had asked someone else to write some of her work. There was no truth to this story at all.
We are sorry for this mistake. It was a very serious mistake, and we apologize for making it.
Sincerely,
Catalina Aarons
Elliot Gekewicz
Russell Trainor
Kids read it and put it down and looked at each other. People whispered. Then most of them folded the paper up and put it in their notebooks. Or they just left it there.
Next to me, Chris Kuppel leaned over and whispered, “What happened?”
I shrugged.
“Well?” he said. “What?”
I didn’t say anything. The black tabletop looked almost like reptile skin. Like it had scales. Then with a click and a quick whine, the PA system came on.
“Good morning, boys and girls,” Mrs. Capelli said, like she always did. She read the morning announcements. Then she said, “Also today, boys and girls, we have a special announcement. Mr. Dallas would like to tell you about it. So I’m going to turn the microphone over to him.”
There was a shuffling sound, then a man cleared his voice. “Ah … thank you. Yes. Good morning. This is—ahm, well, this is not actually an announcement I would like to tell you about at all. But it’s my responsibility to tell you.”
We could hear him take a deep breath.
“Owing to some … controversial use of the SchoolStream system, I am sorry to say that as of two weeks from today, student use of the network will be restricted to the Library level of access. This will affect all students. This change—well, I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “This change will be permanent.”
There was a thunk as he shut off the microphone. In a few seconds there was a click and Mrs. Capelli came back on. She led us through the Pledge of Allegiance. But in our class the kids barely mumbled along. They were just staring at each other.
“Are they serious?” Big Chris whispered to me. There was a windstorm of whispering now, all over the room. A lot of people were turning to look at me, then turning away.
Chris held up our letter. He said, “These things are connected, aren’t they?” I nodded.
“Well, geez, Russell, what happened?”
I pulled the note from my locker out of my pocket. I unfolded it and pushed it over to him.
He read it. He squinted at it.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
I shrugged. “We got set up.”
He looked at me, then back at the note. “By who?”
I shrugged again.
Chris started studying the note, peering really closely at it. He kept looking at it. Finally he handed it back. I put it away. Chris sat back and crossed his arms. He looked really bothered.
“Man,” he finally said. He shook his head. “That is just … man”.
“I’d like to start today with a current-events discussion,” Ms. Hogeboom said in social studies, coming around to perch on the front of her desk.
She looked around the room. “Just the other day, some of you were suggesting that if Anne Frank had had access to the Internet—if the world had been networked in those days, the way it is now—then maybe somehow she would have eluded her fate. I know you weren’t sure about that, but it was definitely an interesting idea. Especially because you’ve had your own network in school this year.”
There was shuffling and murmuring. There were a lot of frowns.
“Okay? People? Now, we all heard the announcement this morning. I can tell you it was as unexpected to me as I think it was to you. But I guess you’re going to go to a restricted-access setup. I wonder what you think about that.”
“We think it sucks,” said Jake Messner loudly.
“Uh … Jake?”
“It’s supposed to be a network for learning, and they’re shutting out the students,” he said. “What’s that about?”
“Well … I can understand how you could see it that way,” she said.
“It’s not the administration’s fault,” Leah Sternberg piped up. “We had a meeting of the Student Council this morning.”
“So whose fault is it?” Jake said.
“I think that’s pretty clear.”
“Not to me. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
Leah sat up straight, hands folded on her desk. “A few students were abusing the system,” she said. “There were stories of violence and … abuse against students being spread on the network. At least one of them was definitely untrue. We all know about that.” She looked around for backup. I remembered how just a few days ago, Leah Sternberg was telling us how The Revealer was doing so much good for our school.
“A few students ruined it for everyone else,” she said.
Bethany was sitting up front. She slightly, just slightly, rippled her hair.
“Well … I’m not looking to rub salt into anyone’s wounds,” Ms. Hogeboom said. “Maybe we shouldn’t …”
“What if things aren’t always the way they seem?”
Ms. Hogeboom looked puzzled. “Chris? What do you mean?”
Big Chris sat back. He rubbed his chin, and looked around.
“There are a couple of people in this class who know what I mean,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Bethany?”
Bethany looked straight ahead.
Chris said, “You know … I think maybe Burke would know, too. You know what I mean, Burke?”
Burke Brown shot a fast
, dark look at Big Chris. Chris nodded. “I saw something you wrote, man. I know your handwriting.” Chris smiled. He said, “I wonder what I might mean by that?”
I saw Burke sneak a look at Bethany. Then he saw me and glared back.
Ms. Hogeboom said, “Could we … could we please talk in terms that the whole class can follow?” She looked at Chris, at Burke, at Bethany. “Is this relevant to our discussion?”
Burke said, “No, ’cause it doesn’t make any sense. Especially because some people don’t know who their friends are. Or used to be.”
There was a lot of murmuring.
“All right,” Ms. Hogeboom said. “Why don’t we …”
“I don’t know what any of that’s about,” said Allison Kukovna, “but I think this is a total tragedy for the whole school. I don’t understand why one mistake should ruin it for everybody.”
Elliot was looking down at his desk. Catalina’s face had turned back to the mask. Neither of them looked at me.
“Well, that’s life,” said Jon Blanchette, and he grinned.
“Yeah,” said a voice in the back. It was Turner.
“They’ve got us where they want us,” he said. “That sure is life.”
“Could this be the last comment before we move on?” Ms. Hogeboom said. “Turner, do you have a point to make?”
Turner shrugged. “This fake-story thing was an excuse to shut us off. Period. They never wanted us linked up to each other in the first place.”
People were looking at him with baffled expressions.
“Oh sure, they’d like us to stay plugged in—by ourselves,” Turner said. “But they don’t want you talking to each other. They don’t want you telling your stories. Oh sure, it’s fine if it’s on television. But not the real stories.”
“Well, this is interesting,” Ms. Hogeboom said.
“We’re teenagers now, okay?” Turner said. “From now on they don’t want to hear from us. You watch. If we do regular teenager things, and get in regular teenager trouble now and then, they’ll worry about us. They love to do that. And they’ll complain about us, of course. But if we start telling people the truth, if we say things they don’t want people to hear, they will do everything they can to shut us up. They’ll shut us out. They’ll take us off the network.”