by Doug Wilhelm
Turner White came up and leaned against the table, watching. He was wearing a black turtleneck, and an actual black beret.
“Try the hypothesis first,” Catalina suggested.
“I want to see these reenactments,” Jake said, quickly double-clicking.
Turner smiled as the titles came up:
a. The Bus: Chris & Elliot
b. The Locker: Jon & Elliot
c. The Lunchroom: Chris & Elliot
d. The Playground: Chris, Jon & Elliot
e. In Your Face: Richard
A small crowd of kids were now peering over Jake’s shoulder. “Do The Bus,” someone said. Jake nodded, and clicked.
The video window came up. Turner and Elliot and I had filled the back part of a school bus with a bunch of kids, so that it looked like the whole bus was full. It looked pretty good.
The kids are swaying back and forth like the bus is moving.
Elliot comes up the aisle. Only one seat is open—beside Chris.
Elliot puts his backpack on the floor, and turns to sit.
“You can’t sit here.”
“But it’s the only seat left.”
“It’s saved.”
“For who?”
“For anybody but you,” Big Chris sneers. He slowly stands up. “You got a problem with that, shrimp-o?”
More kids, drawn by the video, joined the cluster around the computer.
“Well, yeah,” Elliot says. “I need to sit somewhere.”
He swings his butt and starts to sit—but Chris lowers his big shoulder and slams Elliot into the seat across the aisle so hard that Elliot goes sprawling over the two kids sitting there.
Chris picks up Elliot’s backpack. He opens the bus window.
“Hey!” Elliot yells. The kids in the seats all laugh. Chris unzips the backpack and empties it out the window. Then he looks back, and grins.
The End
“This,” said Jake, grinning, “is cool.”
“Yo, man, give someone else a chance!”
There was a crowd now, pushing and squeezing up behind his chair.
“There oughta be more than one station for this,” somebody complained. I looked at Elliot, who shrugged.
“I’m next—I helped,” Allison Kukovna said. Jake lifted up so she could slide in and nobody else. She gave him a little nudge. Elliot jabbed me, and I thought, Hmmm.
Allison punched up Research Methods:
To test our hypothesis, we distributed a special survey to every student in Parkland Middle School.
Allison’s recorded voice reads the same words out loud.
“Boring,” said someone in the crowd.
“Yeah—do more scenes,” said someone else.
“Hey,” Allison said, “I’m narrating here.” Jake turned back and glared. The kids shut up.
Our questions were simple:
1. Have you ever been directly involved in a bullying or harassment incident at this school?
2. If “yes,” were you: a. On the giver side?
b. On the receiver side?
3. Have you been involved in more than 5 incidents?
4. More than 10?
5. Did you read The Revealer on SchoolStream?
6. Do you think that bullying and harassment in school have decreased since before The Revealer?
To see the responses and our analysis, click here for Research Report.
Click here to go back to Menu.
“Go to Menu!”
“Yeah!”
Allison nodded, and did. Kids were actually shouting.
“Interviews?”
“Reenactments?”
“I want to see the stories,” someone said.
“Hey, we’ve seen the stories,” said another kid. “They were on KidNet.”
“Not all of them,” Catalina piped up. “We collected lots more.
“How’d you do that?” Leah Sternberg asked, worming through the crowd. “Your access was revoked.”
Elliot smiled at me. “We had help,” he said.
Leah’s forehead wrinkled, as if she was frustrated. Over her head came a big, thick hand, then Big Chris’s head and shoulders. Elliot stood up far enough to slap hands.
“Like I said,” he told Leah.
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“It was completely legal. We had two weeks before everyone else got shut down.”
“I, myself,” said Big Chris, “gained valuable computer networking, as well as acting, experience.” He bowed.
“Would you like a turn?” Allison said to Leah. They did the butt-to-butt seat exchange.
Leah quickly opened Video Interviews.
a. Bethany DeMere and Catalina Aarons
b. Jon Blanchette, Burke Brown, and Elliot Gekewicz
c. Judith Lefkowitz, Guidance Counselor
d. Janet Capelli, Principal
Leah tapped keys. Up swam Mrs. Capelli, sitting on a chair. The crowd behind us groaned. “Not her,” somebody said. Leah sat up straighter, and doubled-clicked.
“Mrs. Capelli,” says the voice of the interviewer (me), “how much of a problem do you think bullying is at our school?”
“I don’t know what you mean by problem,” she says. “Are you suggesting it’s uncontrolled?”
“I’m just asking how often you think it happens.”
She shrugs. “Of course it does happen. It happens at all schools.”
“Well, do you think it happens a lot at this school?”
She shakes her head. “What you might call ‘bullying’ can encompass a wide spectrum of quite typical preadolescent and adolescent behaviors. If two students get into an argument on the soccer field, and one happens to be bigger than the other, is that bullying? If a group of friends decide to exclude one member for a brief time, as so often happens at the middle-school age levels, unfortunately, is that bullying?”
“I think we mean when one person intentionally hurts or humiliates another person,” I say.
“As I’ve said, this tends to occur at all schools—especially middle schools, unfortunately. As an educator, I don’t wish to stereotype any of our students. But when specific incidents do occur, we are aggressive in our response to inappropriate behavior.”
She folds her hands in her lap.
“Well … Mrs. Capelli, what do you think about this project?”
Now she leans forward. Her hands grip the chair.
“While I commend any responsible project for the science fair, I’m much less comfortable with something that seeks to deliberately humiliate certain people. Isn’t that what you call bullying, Mr. Trainor? Mr. White?”
“Deliberately humiliating who, Mrs. Capelli?”
“I believe it’s whom, Mr. Trainor.”
“Okay. Deliberately humiliating whom?”
“Why, these young people whose stories you are featuring. Of course.”
“But they’ve all given permission. We asked every one.
They wanted to tell their stories.”
“I’m very concerned that you are deliberately portraying Parkland School in a very one-sided, negative light,” the principal says quickly. “What if you should win this science fair and go on to the district competition? How will that reflect on Parkland School? That we’re somehow the capital of … cruelty?”
“We’re just being honest. Aren’t we?”
“I think this is just a way of victimizing some people you’d like to get back at,” Mrs. Capelli says, pointing her finger at the camera. “I’m upset about it and it will not convince me to restore student access to SchoolStream, just in case that’s what you’re hoping will happen. I think you’re only proving that students—that some students—can’t be trusted to … to …”
She stops. Collects herself. Suddenly she smiles broadly at the camera.
“Well. I hope this has been a helpful interview.”
“Whoa,” somebody says.
“Go back to the fight scen
es.”
“They’re bullying scenes, fathead.”
“Hey, you call me that again …”
The crowd was growing even bigger and noisier. Everyone was demanding this and that—the scenes, the stories. I didn’t know if anyone was at any of the other exhibits anymore. I couldn’t see beyond our throng.
“What’s on that screen—WrestleMania?” said a booming voice, coming through the crowd.
“Hey, Mr. Dallas,” Elliot said.
“Elliot,” he said, “you’re a hit.”
“Yeah. We need more computers!”
“Well, we only made the one CD, at least for now,” he said. “Who knew you’d draw a crowd like this? What do they want to see?”
“Mostly the videos.”
“So give them a video!”
As the crowd pressed in around us, Elliot went back to the Video Interviews menu and punched up Bethany DeMere and Catalina Aarons. Catalina made a feeble effort to grab the mouse and choose something else, but then she sat back.
Mr. Dallas leaned over to me.
“Any glitches?” he whispered.
“None so far.”
“Great. ‘Cause after school is when the judges come through. With the principal.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and backed away in the crowd. Mr. Dallas hadn’t seen the interview with Mrs. Capelli—I hadn’t had the nerve to show him. Mrs. Capelli hadn’t seen anything. I knew the kids would like our project, though I also hadn’t expected a crowd like this; but I wasn’t at all sure what would happen when a bunch of grownups, including the principal, saw the scenes and interviews, especially this one:
Bethany and Catalina are sitting in chairs. Bethany is styling her hair with her fingers, then she sees the camera is on her. She lowers her head and smiles.
“Bethany,” Catalina says. Bethany ignores her.
“Bethany.”
“What?”
“Why did you make things up about me?”
“What?”
“Why did you make up stories that weren’t true about me, and about my family and where I come from?”
“I never did that,” Bethany says to the camera. “You’re hallucinating.”
“Actually, you did do that. You also made up the story that said you were cheating.”
“What? You’re crazy.”
“Am I?”
Catalina picks up her backpack. She zips open the front pocket and pulls out a note. “You wrote this note to Russell Trainor. You taped it on his locker.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It says, Hi there, Smart Boy—Guess you got outsmarted, huh?”
Catalina says, “That was taped to Russell’s locker before the student body came in and read our letter, saying the story we’d published about your cheating wasn’t true. Whoever wrote this note knew that story was a fake. At that point, no other students—except the ones your father interviewed, who were all your friends—knew anything about the story being fake. At that exact point, only the students who actually planted that story would have known to say we had been outsmarted.”
Bethany smiles at the camera. “That’s ridiculous,” she says. “And anyway, you can’t prove I wrote that note.”
“Here’s another of your notes,” Catalina says. “You wrote this one and dropped it in my locker.”
“Yeah. Right.” But Bethany is trying to peer at the note as Catalina unfolds it.
Catalina reads: Everybody knows why the weird girl had to leave where she came from. Because she was so EASY the boys wouldn’t even look at her in public anymore. She learned it from her mother …
“That one was pretty horrible, Bethany. It wasn’t true at all.”
“I never wrote that! I didn’t write either one of those.” Bethany turns her hurt-looking face to the camera.
“But you did, Bethany. You wrote this one, too.”
Catalina reaches in again, unfolds, and reads: I’m not talking to you ANYMORE. I don’t care WHAT happens.
“You wrote that to Russell in social studies class,” Catalina says. “You wrote it in front of him, and you handed it to him and he kept it. He kept all these notes. They’re all in the same handwriting, Bethany. They’re all yours. You made up the story that you cheated, just so we would publish it and get in trouble.”
Bethany is stunned for just one second. Then she turns to the camera and cocks her head with an innocent expression.
“You know, my father’s an attorney,” she says nicely. “I think you’ve met him, haven’t you?”
Catalina nods. “Yes, I did,” she says. “Actually, we talked to a lawyer, too—a good friend of my dad’s. He said we’ve got solid evidence, and if anybody has a case for slandering someone’s reputation, it would be me. Against you.”
Bethany crosses her arms. She doesn’t say anything.
“I still don’t understand why you’d want to hurt somebody that way,” Catalina says. “But I finally decided if I let you get away with it, you’ll think nobody will ever stand up to you. You’ll think you can control everything. I realized it was worth taking a risk to prove what’s really true. So if you’d like to talk to your dad, we think you should. In fact, here are the notes.”
Catalina hands her the papers. Bethany looks wide-eyed for a second, then grabs them and gives the camera an amazed expression, as if she can’t believe we’re that dumb after all.
“Of course, those are photocopies,” Catalina says. “We kept the originals. We even scanned them. They’re on this CD—in the Gallery of Nasty Notes.”
Bethany stares for a second at the papers in her hand. Then she turns to the camera. She inclines her head with a patient expression.
“Turner,” she says softly, nicely, “I think you should give me the tape now, Turner. Come on, Turner. I’m stronger than you and you know it. Turner … give me the tape.”
Bethany gets up from her chair. The camera backs up.
“Turner, take the tape out and give it to me. Come on.” Bethany’s walking forward; the camera moves jerkily back. “Give me the tape, Turner!”
She rushes for him and the whole image tilts, and then there’s snow and noise. And that’s it.
The crowd around our monitor erupted in a swirl of talk. Jake said in my ear, “What happened? Did she get the tape?”
“It’s a new digital camera—only Turner knows how to work it,” I said. “She grabbed it and shook it a little, then she handed it back and stormed off.”
Jake grinned. “Huh!” Then he frowned. “But aren’t you scared she’ll get her dad to sue you? Didn’t he already say he might?”
I shrugged. “If you were Bethany, would you want your dad to see this? And even if he did see it, would he want a lot more people to know she did this? I mean, we have the evidence.”
“I guess so,” he said. “So what about when the principal sees it?”
“Uh, well …” I felt a familiar prickle of fear. “That part I’m not too sure about.”
REFLECTED GLORY
“Well, that was fun,” I said as the last classes crowded back out the gym doors.
“Yeah,” said Elliot. “The network’s still history, though. You heard what she said.”
“So we can’t do miracles. At least we won’t be outcasts with the kids.”
Elliot smiled. “Not anymore.”
It was quiet in the gym. We could finally take a break. It was two-thirty; school got out at two forty-five, but we had to stay here and wait for the judges to come at three. After that we got to go home for dinner—then we had to be back when the parents came to see the fair at seven.
“I bet Bethany tells her dad there’s nothing interesting at the science fair,” Elliot said.
“Oh, yeah. He wouldn’t want to see any of this stuff.”
Catalina punched Eject on the CD drive and the tray slid out. She lifted the shiny disk by its edges. It was silver-blue as she tilted it, holding it up to the light. Then she slid it back in. Her fingernails were pa
inted with silver sparkles.
“Well, these last four weeks were definitely fun,” Elliot said.
“Yeah.”
“We might even win the science fair,” Catalina said.
Elliot and I both shrugged. After all, that was never really the point.
The judges were a tall woman in a white lab coat with a hospital name tag that said MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIST, a burly guy with a beard and a heavy purple shirt who looked like a mountain man but who they said was a software developer, and a man in a suit who was looking bright-eyed at everything. Mr. Dallas and Ms. Hogeboom were there, too. Mrs. Capelli was fluttering around the man in the suit.
“Children, this is Dr. David Bennett, the chair of our school board,” she said.
We shook the man’s hand and also the others’. Dr. Bennett—I never found out if he was a medical doctor or some kind of scientist—had sandy hair and a roundish, open face, almost like a little kid’s, and a quick, happy smile. When we punched up the main menu, he slid eagerly onto the chair between Catalina and me.
“So let’s see this,” he said. “‘Then Bully Lab,’ in multimedia. Well, isn’t this unusual. Hmm … okay. The hypothesis.” He double-clicked. Allison’s voice came on again:
“Our hypothesis is that bringing bullying and harassment incidents to light among the whole student body in a school will result in these incidents happening less often, and being less severe.”
Dr. Bennett whistled. “Now that’s a hypothesis,” he said. He leaned back. “Grady? Sharon? Any thoughts?”
“I’d love to see the proof,” the lab-coat lady said.
“Click on,” said the mountain man.
Dr. Bennett pulled up Research Methods and read the list of questions. Nodding, looking interested, he brought up Research Report. He clicked on Audio Text.
Catalina’s voice came up, alternating with Allison’s:
“We distributed our survey to all students, and received an eighty-five-percent response,” Catalina says. “This seemed like an incredible response. We think it showed a lot of interest and support for our project.”