by Ali Benjamin
Interview: Diego
It’s all fun and games until you sit in a closet in your school principal’s office listening to her talking to a reporter saying stuff you were never meant to hear. Stuff like “Those budget numbers are correct.… No, they’re not sustainable.”
At first, I wasn’t even listening. But then Glebus started saying other things, like, “Laying off teachers wouldn’t solve the problem. We barely have any teachers already… Yes, we did have some high-level donors until this year… I’m sure you know that the town of Mitchell doesn’t have a lot of high-net-worth donors… Yes, I voluntarily reduced my own salary. Yes, I realize that a school faced with closure is news, but I’m asking you to hold the story until we’re certain… This isn’t how I want our families to find out. These are children, after all, this the only school they’ve ever known…”
Somewhere in there I was like, Hold on. Wait. No.
I turned and looked at Fiona then. I wanted to ask, Are you hearing what I’m hearing?
Because what I was hearing couldn’t be real. No way could it be real.
But I saw the look on her face. And I knew that she was hearing it, too. And that meant it was real after all.
I mean, it didn’t take a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist or even a half-sentient robot to understand what was happening. Somebody was trying to close the school. And Glebus was trying to keep us from finding out.
FROM THE DESK OF ALICE GLEBUS, PRINCIPAL THE MITCHELL SCHOOL
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12
To the Mitchell School Community,
This afternoon, I learned that a story will soon appear in local news outlets. The story is about the town of Mitchell’s budget crisis and the undeniable difficulty this crisis poses for our community’s only school.
I’ll be honest: The news is not good. Rising costs and falling tax revenues have placed such a strain on the local budget that the town council may soon vote to cease funding our school altogether.
The situation with which we are faced is not uncommon—either across our state, or across the nation. Nearly 70 percent of all rural schools have had to close their doors since 1930, a total loss of more than 150,000 schools nationwide.
But statistics don’t have human faces. This is our school. This is our community. These are our children.
While there is certainly no money in our town’s budget, it’s not impossible that emergency state funding could be made available, which is a question of political will. Or perhaps some private donations will be offered to help keep our doors open.
Various news outlets may visit the school over the next few days, some with cameras. They’re mostly interested in campus shots, though I have encouraged them to return for our upcoming soccer game against Devlinshire (Go, green!). If you do not want your child filmed, please let me know. That said, I do believe news coverage could help.
We are a tiny community, a tiny school. Perhaps when seen from the outside, it looks like we don’t matter. We who live on the inside know that the opposite is true. We do matter. The one promise I can make to you is that I’ll never, ever lose sight of that.
Your principal,
Alice C. Glebus
Canceled
When you watch a television show, it rarely changes genre mid-season. Comedies stay funny, thrillers stay suspenseful, and dramas stay… well, dramatic. Maybe that’s what’s so jarring about what happens after everyone finds out the school might close. Everything just shifts.
The cast shifts, that’s for sure. Over the next week, there’s no more chanting, no more fighting, no more laughing, no more talk about Paulie. It’s like the Originals packed up the loudest parts of themselves into a suitcase, set the bag down, and forgot about it. If someone were to find it and unzip it, they’d be greeted by cries of Caitlyn likes kickball! and In the name of Paulie Fink! and This challenge stinks!
But I guess no one finds that suitcase, because they stay quiet.
And that’s another thing that changes: Even though the competition is down to the last two contestants, it’s like the Originals don’t even care anymore. They don’t ask about it. When I bring it up with Gabby, suggesting that maybe a really great final challenge would get everyone’s mind off of the school situation, she just shakes her head.
“Not yet,” she says. “I don’t think anyone’s in the mood. Maybe after this whole thing blows over.”
But I’m not so sure it’s going to blow over. Which means the competition’s going to be left hanging, like a show that gets canceled mid-season, just when you were starting to enjoy it.
The story hits the local newspaper on a Saturday. My mom reads it out loud. She asks me if I’m sad, and I guess I am, because I nod without thinking.
“Aw, kiddo,” she says. She kisses me on the top of my head, and then she hugs me. We stay like that for a long time.
When we return to school after the weekend, Glebus makes the rounds to speak with each class. Mostly she spends the time reassuring us that she’s doing everything she can, but that no matter what happens, we’ll be okay.
“But we won’t be the Originals,” says Diego.
Gabby agrees. “It won’t be the same at all.”
I watch Glebus struggle to respond to that, and it hits me: She might be the saddest one of all. I’m not sure I like knowing that. It’s better to believe your principal is a witch than to know she’s a real person with feelings. I guess I thought being in charge was about making rules and making other people go along with them. But maybe it’s also about everyone needing things from you that you don’t know how or maybe aren’t able to give.
Fiona raises her hand. “The news report says this happens to lots of schools. Is it happening to Devlinshire?”
“Of course not,” Yumi says. “Devlinshire’s rich, so they have plenty of tax money for their school.”
I look at Glebus, expecting her to correct Yumi. Because that can’t be right—it doesn’t seem fair for schools to work that way. But Glebus doesn’t disagree with what Yumi said. All she says is, “I have not heard that Devlinshire is at any risk of closing.”
So having money isn’t only about what kind of car you drive, or how big your house is or whatever. It’s about really basic things, like whether you get a school.
Gabby raises her hand. “So can’t we do, like, a fund-raiser? Like, a dinner, or a bake sale, or a car wash or something? Or all of them, as many times as we need?”
“The school needs an awful lot of money, Gabby,” Glebus says. “It’s more than a car wash or bake sale can—”
“Well, what about one of those online fund-raisers? We can send the link to everyone we know, make it go viral. If this were Megastar—”
Yumi interrupts. “Megastar’s not real, Gabby.”
“It’s sort of real,” insists Gabby. “More real than other shows, anyway. That’s the whole point.”
Yumi shakes her head. “It’s real except for the fact that the producers create absurd situations that would never, ever happen in real life. And then directors feed the contestants lines during the filming. And after they film, editors sit around and stitch together tiny clips from thousands of hours, which means that they can tell whatever version of the story they want.”
“I know all that,” Gabby says, “but at least they start with real people, not actors.”
“Real people who audition for the part in the first place,” Diego says quietly. “And then are picked by casting agents.”
Fiona reaches over, places her hand on Gabby’s arm. “It’s fake,” she says quietly. “It’s all really fun to watch, sure, but it’s fake.”
Gabby yanks her hand away. “None of you understand what I’m trying to—”
But before she can finish, Glebus clears her throat and tries to return to the point. “We could certainly try a fund-raiser,” she says. “But you should know that nine out of ten online fund-raisers never meet their goal. You only hear about the successful ones, that’s all. So it’s high
ly unlikely that it would work.”
I expect Gabby to suggest other things, like, I don’t know, writing to celebrities for help, or finding out who won the lottery recently and asking them to pitch in. But instead, she just stares at a spot on her desk, her eyes open like she’s trying not to blink.
Interview: Fiona
FIONA:
That morning, as we headed to the goats, we saw the first of the notes. It was stuck to the Paulie statue, between the rules and the photo of Jadelicious.
I thought maybe Yumi had left a sacrifice. She never did get the chance, since no one was in the mood for an elimination ceremony after that closet-hiding fiasco.
But when I asked her if she’d left something, she just shook her head.
We walked closer. It was the newspaper article, the one that had appeared in the Northland Free Press over the weekend. There was the headline: MITCHELL WEIGHS SCHOOL CLOSING. I already knew the beginning by heart: October 21, MITCHELL, VT. The looming closure of the Mitchell School, an experimental village academy school that opened eight years ago, has sent shock waves through the community of Mitchell, population 826… I could practically recite the whole article now. Budget crisis. Town funding insufficient. Unsustainable. Needs influx of cash. A bunch of boring-sounding words that all add up to one thing: we’re in trouble.
Across the article, someone had scrawled with a big red marker: PLEASE SAVE THIS SCHOOL.
“Who did this?” I asked. And when nobody answered, I shouted it: “WHO DID THIS?”
To this day, I still don’t know.
At recess, there was a second note, this one scribbled on lined paper: MITCHELL MATTERS. By soccer practice, there was a third: THOUGH MITCHELL BE BUT LITTLE, SHE IS FIERCE. There were more notes the next day, too. By Wednesday afternoon, two days before the game, there were so many notes Paulie’s neon shirt looked like it was covered in white ruffles.
All through practice that day, it was like I heard this voice inside me. Fiona, what if you lose? Fiona, what if you lose the school? Fiona, what if you lose the game? Fiona, what are you going to do? Fiona Fiona Fiona Fiona Fiona.
At the end of practice, I marched over to that statue of Paulie. I grabbed a piece of paper and a marker, and I scrawled: HELP.
CAITLYN:
Did you mean help us beat Devlinshire, or help us with the school?
FIONA:
I’m not sure. Maybe both. By that point, the fate of the school and the outcome of the game felt like one and the same.
Interview: Gabby
When my dad was going through his treatment, we kept getting these bills in the mail—bills we knew we’d never be able to pay. At first we hid them from my dad, because my grandma said that he only needed to think about getting better. But after a while, when he didn’t get better, there was no need to hide them anymore.
People did all these things to try to help us. There were bake sales and car washes and community dinners. I probably went to eight separate spaghetti dinners where people paid five dollars to eat pasta off paper plates. The Donut Lady put out a jar where people could stuff their change, and on three different nights, the waitstaff at Big Esther’s Diner donated every penny of their tips. Even some people who had never been all that nice to my dad helped out.
Oh, and the Originals even ran a lemonade stand downtown. They only got $32, but it was still really nice. And one day when I was super sad, Paulie said he’d talk to his royal connections from the Republic of Endrisistan, which of course was so stupid but it just made me laugh so hard when I really needed it.
All of it was so nice. But it wasn’t enough.
If we’d been characters on Megastar, here’s what would have happened: The producers would have filmed us counting our money and looking at bills. And just when the audience was starting to worry, there’d be a knock on the door. We’d open the door and the judges would walk in. They’d tell us that some rich person—some celebrity or talk-show host or something—had heard about our story. And they’d decided to pay off all our bills for us. As the cameras were rolling, they’d hand us one of those posters that looks like a giant check, with such a huge dollar amount that we’d never have to worry again.
I know just how I’d react, too: I’d hold my hands up to my cheeks. I’d gasp. My grandma would cry, and then we’d hug, and the following week, People magazine would write a profile about the whole thing.
My grandma and I started watching Megastar right after the funeral. At first all we wanted was a distraction. But then it became more than that. At the start of the season, all of the contestants are regular people, just like us. I loved knowing that by the end of the season one of their lives would change completely. And if their lives could change like that, ours could, too.
But I don’t know. Maybe Yumi’s right. Maybe that sort of thing only happens on TV.
Bad Omens
The day before the Devlinshire game, Mags pulls an index card that says simply, in Fiona’s handwriting: Recess.
Mags stares at it for a few long moments. The look on her face is the same one she had when she first dreamed up the index-card challenge—like she’s turning something over in her mind. “I’ve got an idea,” she says. “Let’s not talk about the value of recess, of taking a break from work and stress. Let’s immerse ourselves. What do you say we skip class today? Head outside.”
Is she serious? When none of us follow, she turns around. “Well, come on!”
On the way out, Mags tells us every society has wrestled with the idea of what constitutes a good life. “The Greeks had a name for their version of the good life: eudaimonia. The concept incorporates all the things it takes for a person to flourish: joy, hard work, learning, and ethics. Eudaimonia isn’t about short-term happiness. Rather, it’s a way of asking the question When I look back on my life, what will I want to have done?”
We step outside. It’s a bright, brisk day. She wraps her sweater around her and looks at us. “So. Let’s live some eudaimonia right now. Here you are, late October of your seventh-grade year. You’ve been given this unexpected gift of an extra recess. How shall you spend it?”
Thomas flashes me a quick grin, then raises his hand. “I hear that Caitlyn likes kickball,” he offers. I know he’s talking about Zucchini Day and the world’s stupidest chant: Caitlyn likes kickball! I was so mad at them that day.
But as they begin chanting it now, I don’t feel so alone.
We divide into teams, make the Paulie statue home base. My team is first to kick. Diego’s up. “Remember,” he says before taking his place at home plate, “the ball is every Devlinshire kid who ever ticked us off.” Then he slams it into the outfield and makes a clean run to second base.
Gabby reaches first base as Diego takes third.
Yumi’s up next: a good, strong groundball. Fiona, in the outfield, grabs it as Diego moves toward home.
“Oh no you don’t!” shouts Fiona. “In the name of Paulie Fink!” She launches the kickball toward home plate. It misses Diego by a wide margin, flies past home, and lands smack-dab in the middle of the goat pen.
The big goat walks over to the ball and nudges it with his nose, curious. Then he picks it up in his mouth and chomps down. It deflates almost instantly.
“Well,” says Henry, “this doesn’t seem like a great omen.”
While the rest of us are trying to figure out how to spend the rest of our free class period, Yumi asks Mags for a permanent marker. She sits down at the base of the Paulie statue and begins to draw on the wilted kickball.
“I never made my sacrifice,” Yumi says. “I want to make one now.”
When she’s done, she holds it up. She’s drawn a face. One eye is noticeably larger than the other, the nose looks a bit like a snout, and the lopsided smile looks way too much like a banana.
Everyone knows exactly where this kickball head will go.
Since Fiona’s the smallest, Timothy and Thomas lift her up. She slips the kickball face onto the top of the branch. T
he Paulie statue doesn’t look like some weird headless scarecrow anymore. It looks like a lopsided, grinning, patched-together person, draped in pom-pom garlands. All the notes stuck to it make it look like it’s dressed in tatters.
“He looks good,” says Willow.
“He looks great,” Sam agrees.
“What do you think it means when you put a bad omen on a good-luck charm?” Fiona asks.
“I don’t know,” Diego replies. “Something unexpected, probably.”
Fiona nods like she’s thinking hard about that. Then she turns to the rest of us. “We have to beat Devlinshire this year. We just have to. It could be our last chance.”
A Rabbit in the Fort
On the morning of the game, we all show up in green T-shirts. Each of us is wearing a different shade. Henry’s shirt is the color of cooked peas, with a CAMP HIGH PEAKS logo on the front, while Fiona’s is more of a mint; she’s even got a matching blazer over her T-shirt and shorts. Diego’s is the color of a shamrock, and both of the twins are wearing camouflage.
Mine is a deep, dark green, almost black, like a swamp on a cloudy day. It has the name of the hospital where my mom used to work.
“Next time we should pick a single shade of green,” I say to Henry. Even as the words are coming out of my mouth, I wish I could take them back. There probably won’t be a next time.
When Mags comes in, she grabs Paulie’s hat, reaches in, and pulls out an index card. She unfolds it. “Talk about the right card at the right moment,” she says. Then she reads it out loud: “How to be brave when everything changes too fast.”
My card. I wrote it a million years ago, when I was dealing with one sort of change. I was so embarrassed after I turned it in, like I was the only one who would ever ask such a question.