The Ones

by Daniel Sweren-Becker

  Ms. Bixley finally came out, carrying a folder. She stood in front of the Ones, smiling wider than usual.

  “An interesting week, to say the least,” she started. “As you know, we here at the school are committed to making sure all of our students are safe. And frankly, that’s become a little more challenging. We are getting a lot of calls, a lot of complaints since the List came out. Threats, really. Some of them are anonymous; some of them are from parents. I’ll be honest with you: Many people don’t like the idea of you still being allowed in school.”

  James couldn’t believe this. Fine, he could believe there were people looking for any and all ways to lash out at Ones, but he couldn’t believe that prohibiting them from attending school was actually something being considered.

  “Surely you understand we don’t want to create an atmosphere of violence here on campus,” Ms. Bixley continued. “And although I can see their point, I don’t think barring you from school is the answer, either. So I’ve devised a way to ease tensions a little bit.”

  Ms. Bixley opened her folder and started handing sheets of paper to each student.

  “The goal is to show everyone that those of you on the List are not getting any special advantage, and to help you demonstrate some humility, some appreciation for being tolerated here. If you all look down at your new schedules, you’ll see we’ve replaced your lunch period with a community-service class. I’m sure that participating in this new class will send a powerful message to the whole town: No student has special privileges here. It’s an opportunity to extend an olive branch to the rest of the school. And in doing so, we can hopefully avoid some of the ugly incidents that are happening elsewhere.”

  James and the rest of the Ones looked at Ms. Bixley in shock.

  “So please report to Mr. Roland in the maintenance office at noon. And make sure to wear your ID cards so we know everyone is attending. Thanks, folks.” And with that, Ms. Bixley smiled one last time and walked back into her office.

  * * *

  Mr. Roland was more commonly known as Tommy the Janitor. His patchy beard and angry mumbling identified him as the number one potential ax murderer in the West. How he still had a job at the school was beyond James’s comprehension. Janitorial tenure was an odd and scary thing.

  The “maintenance office” was actually a shed behind the gymnasium. When James and the rest of the Ones showed up at noon, Tommy was waiting for them, spitting tobacco juice into a soda bottle. They entered the cramped, dusty building, and Tommy began to clap his hands mockingly.

  “Look at these special volunteers,” he said with a sneer. “Boy, am I glad you kids offered to help.”

  Tommy paced in front of them, eyeing each One with naked disdain, and then he stopped in front of Laura. James saw her hands start to shake ever so slightly. Laura was an easy target, and James disliked the superior air with which she carried herself, but he did have a little sympathy at the moment. Students made U-turns in hallways to avoid Tommy, so having him stare at you from six inches away was a legit reason to freak out.

  “Perfect. What a perfect way to start our community service,” Tommy said to Laura. “Is that gum you are chewing?”

  Laura immediately stopped chewing her gum. “Oh. It was.”

  “I thought it was against the rules to chew gum in school,” Tommy said.

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You didn’t mean to put gum in your mouth?”

  “I didn’t mean to break a rule. I’m sorry.”

  “Give it to me.” Tommy stuck his hand right under Laura’s mouth.

  Laura shook her head uncomfortably. She looked around at the rest of the Ones. James wished he could do something, but he was also kind of enjoying this.

  “Give it to me!” Tommy shouted.

  “It’s gone.”

  Tommy gave her a twisted smile, backed off, and started pacing again. “If only the rest of you animals were as considerate as…”

  “Laura.”

  “As Laura. But no, you’re not. Where does everyone else get rid of their gum?” Tommy paused for a second. “ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” he roared.

  James and the others staggered back from the outburst. Tommy was jumping around erratically now, working himself into a froth.

  “Today we are going to fix that problem. We are going to find all the gum, scrape all the gum, and get rid of all the gum! Does that sound like a good plan?”

  A few of the Ones nodded, trying to be agreeable. Tommy went to a drawer and then came back and handed rusty scraping tools to each student.

  “Your first assignment in community-service class is to start in the lunch yard. Good Lord, do you kids love some gum after lunch. Now go. Find each piece and make it disappear.” Tommy grabbed his bottle of tobacco juice and stormed out of the maintenance shed in a huff.

  * * *

  Wednesday it was the gum. They crawled around on their hands and knees scraping the hard black spots off the walkways. The rest of the school watched in uncomfortable awe.

  Marco, of course, couldn’t resist walking over and spitting a wad of gum right next to James. “Amber Reed says thanks,” he said, sneering. James didn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

  Cody, on the other hand, upon seeing James and some of her other friends forced into this absurd act, joined them in solidarity. She got right down next to the Ones and started scraping away.

  This obviously drove Ms. Bixley crazy, because she rushed over and stood above Cody with a scowl. “What are you doing?”

  Cody barely looked up. “Community service.”

  A few other students who were also sympathetic to the Ones walked over and began cleaning the floor, too. Cody and James shared a smile, delighted at this growing act of disobedience.

  “Stop it!” Ms. Bixley yelled, scurrying among the kneeling students. “You are not part of this class!”

  James and Cody and everyone else kept working. It was the most enjoyable manual labor they had ever done.

  On Thursday it was beautification of the school entrance. A row of dead bushes had to be dug up and replaced with new ones. But the Ones’ schedule had changed again. They no longer had community service during lunch, when all the other students were free. Now they had been pulled out of a regular class period, and there was no one around to join them. Ms. Bixley watched them with glee as they exerted themselves on the messy lawn.

  On Friday it was the floor of the kitchen. The work was made even more miserable because Congress had officially passed the Equality Act that morning. The Ones heard the news as they mopped and bleached and polished a decade’s worth of spills and mold. James simultaneously cursed the government and swore off eating school food ever again.

  By this point, some of the Ones had told their parents what was going on. The adults found it hard to believe, of course, but today Laura’s father came by to see for himself. When he saw the Ones cleaning the kitchen floor, he stormed off to Bixley’s office. A few minutes later he came back in a rage.

  “Let’s go,” he said, walking over to Laura and plowing his shoulder through Tommy the Janitor. “You’re done with this piece-of-shit school.”

  The other students watched uncomfortably as Laura rushed out with her father. James never saw her in school again, which summed up their options pretty neatly: Put up with this hour-long indignity or hide yourself away.

  After school, with their hellish week coming to an end, the Ones gathered and decided they couldn’t take it anymore. If Ms. Bixley had set out to humiliate them, she had succeeded. But she had also united them. United them in anger toward her and in their determination to fight back. Even James, who for months had been preaching the logic of keeping their heads down, had come around.

  Although their frustration level was universal, they couldn’t agree on what to do next. The obvious answer was to simply refuse to participate in this community-service charade, but Ms. Bixley had assured them that this was very much a class and that their acade
mic records would be ruined if they tried such a stunt. And even though other students had tried to join them at first, Cody was the only one who kept trying, sneaking out of class when she could. By the third day, the novelty had worn off and most of the students barely noticed them anymore. Peering out a window and seeing the Ones doing grunt work around the school? Yeah, that just made sense now. The fact that people were starting to consider this the new normal was chilling.

  The Ones couldn’t settle on a plan, though, and James grew frustrated.

  Against his better judgment, he brought it up to Cody when he caught up with her a little later. Cody thought out loud, summarizing what she assumed they wanted to accomplish.

  “You want to shove it in Ms. Bixley’s face. You want to get rid of the community-service requirement. And you want to make a point that Ones need to be treated equally.”

  James nodded.

  “Here’s the thing,” Cody continued. “The rest of the students, aside from the Bench Mob, agree with all of that. It’s just Bixley and her army of bitter teachers who are making this happen.”

  “So what do we do? It’s not like we run the school. We can’t just snap our fingers and change these crazy new policies.”

  Cody, deep in thought, suddenly opened her eyes wide, and James could practically see the lightbulb above her head. She turned to him with a mischievous smile that was already making him nervous. But what choice did he have other than to turn to Cody? His school was trying to dehumanize him, and his family had admitted that his existence was a mistake. It was an ironic label for the son who was never allowed to mess up. If that was how everyone felt about him, then James was ready to stop living up to that impossible standard.

  He prodded Cody to go on. “Whatever you’re thinking, just say it.”

  “Maybe it’s time we kill two birds with one stone,” she said, her excitement obvious. “You want to protest Bixley’s new rules for the Ones. I need to prove myself to Kai and the Weathermen.”

  James knew there was no stopping whatever came out of her mouth next, and he steeled himself to hop on board.

  Cody’s eyes were gleaming. “Let’s take over the school.”

  CHAPTER 9

  CODY AND JAMES spent all of Saturday hashing out a plan. With enough confederates, they could easily take over the administration building, blockade the doors, and then communicate their demands. Cody loved that their act of defiance would echo the student protests of the 1960s, the era that gave birth to the original Weather Underground. She and James agreed that no one was to get hurt. James was adamant on this point, and Cody recognized that they would need to keep the moral high ground to achieve any measure of success.

  “Are you sure I can’t just toss Ms. Bixley off the roof?” she asked wistfully.

  “Cody,” James growled a light warning. “No weapons and no tossing principals or teachers around. Promise?”

  “Fine, fine.”

  They packed a duffel bag with everything a person might need to take over a high school, or at least what they thought they might need. Energy bars, some emergency gallons of water, and a few treats—marshmallows, brownie brittle, and pistachio nuts. Headlamps to navigate in the darkness. Ski goggles and bandannas. A change of clothes. A toolbox and first-aid kit. A laptop with a cellular Internet antenna. A bullhorn. A toothbrush.

  And that crucial accessory everyone couldn’t live without: cell-phone chargers.

  They spent Sunday rallying the troops. James reached out to his fellow Ones and close friends. Cody got in touch with her crew from the cross-country team, some other science geeks, and anyone else she knew to be sympathetic to the Ones’ cause. They all agreed to help, especially after Cody made the whole thing sound like equal parts party and protest.

  When she left James’s house that evening, she couldn’t believe they were actually doing this. Her dream of fighting for justice with the boy she loved was finally coming true. Not exactly under the circumstances she had imagined, but Cody was still thrilled that James had come around. It seemed that the fancy-pants debate captain just needed to get his hands dirty to get a change of perspective.

  As James walked Cody out of his house, he stopped suddenly and tugged on her hand. She turned around in surprise.

  “You were right,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “We can’t sit around and do nothing.”

  Cody nodded, appreciating the gesture.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you outside the church last week. I still don’t agree with all that revolution stuff, but you’ve been right all along: If we don’t stand up for ourselves, who will?”

  Cody smiled and took his hands in hers. “I will.”

  James smiled back. “You know what I mean. And besides, you’re still as perfect and dislikable as the rest of us,” he said, gesturing to her. “Seriously, look at you—who turns out like this without any help? Those lips, those legs, that face … it’s ridiculous!”

  Cody tried to smack him, but James caught her and pulled her close. They kissed good-night, parted, and wouldn’t see each other again until noon the next day in the school office. They were ready to make some trouble.

  * * *

  Two minutes after noon, they crashed through the doors of the main office, and the first thing they did was go for the telephones. Cody hopped over Margie’s elevated desk and yanked the large phone unit out of the wall.

  “Excuse me…” Margie said as she reflexively rolled her chair into the safety of a corner.

  Cody was already past her, past the faculty mailboxes, where Mr. Oberlee and Mr. Alvarez were sorting their mail. Past the guidance counselor’s office, which she glanced into and saw James ripping out a phone. Cody smashed through an office door and came face-to-face with Ms. Bixley.

  Ms. Bixley was standing at her desk, poking furiously at her phone as she held the receiver to her ear. Cody raced across the room.

  “This is Leila Bixley from Shasta High School. We are—”

  Cody smashed her fist down on the phone, ending the call. She took the whole unit, pulled the receiver away from Ms. Bixley, walked over to the window, and tossed everything outside.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Taking over your school. Now, get out of my way.”

  Cody went to a shelf behind Ms. Bixley’s desk. She opened her purse, found her cell phone, and tossed it out the window, as well.

  “You stupid little brat. You are making the biggest mistake of your life.”

  Cody calmly walked over to her. She duplicated the same sinister smile Ms. Bixley had flashed to her last week.

  “It’s all right to be scared about what’s happening. You should be.”

  Cody broke into a smile of joy and made her way back out to the administration area. Students had already shut the nearest staircase doors that led outside, and they were moving desks in front of them. The phones had all been disconnected. James walked around collecting any spare cell phones from the adults. Margie looked like she was in shock. Ms. Bixley remained in her office. Mr. Oberlee and Mr. Alvarez were still pinned against their mailboxes. Gregory stood in front of them, preventing anyone from leaving.

  Cody and several other students went back into the hallway and made their way quickly to the library. She pulled the fire alarm on the way, and by the time they entered, a handful of students and librarians were rushing down the stairs to leave. When it was totally clear, they barricaded the doors to the main staircase so there was no other way in or out. They had fully locked down their own little section of campus: the two-story administration building, the covered walkway to the library, and the main floor of the library. Their home base was now secure.

  Back in the office area, James had confined the four adults in the cramped quarters of the guidance counselor’s office. Cody got back there just in time to see him shut the door. She put a hand on his shoulder and nodded.

  “Phase one of the plan … all good so far,” Cody s
aid.

  Then she went over to Margie’s desk and grabbed the public-address microphone. Cody clicked it on and heard the buzzing come through over the speakers. She was about to address the entire school.

  “Attention, everyone. This is Cody Bell. I am proud to inform you that a group of students has taken over the school.”

  James and some of the others moved over to the windows, where they watched everyone outside come to a standstill as they listened to the announcement.

  Cody continued. “We have done this to ensure the rights and safety of our fellow students, especially those who have been singled out for persecution. We believe in the true definition of equality, and we will not leave until the current school leaders are replaced by an administration that also agrees to ensure it. We have not hurt anyone, and we will not hurt anyone. This is a peaceful protest. We ask that all who support us in this cause come to the library immediately. Everyone else can go home. School is dismissed.”

  Cody clicked off the microphone and relished in this power for a moment. It reminded her of hearing Kai’s speech back at the church. She wasn’t just sitting on her hands—she was taking action and inspiring others to do the same. When she joined everyone else at the window, she saw students pouring out of classes, gathering in front of the administration building, and looking up at the second floor. Her heart soared.

  “What do we do now?” James asked.

  Victor spoke up. “They want to see us. To believe this is real.”

  James turned to Cody. “Go ahead, give them a wave or something.”

  Cody stepped up to the window and opened it. But instead of sticking her head outside, she turned back to James. “No. It has to be one of you.”

  Cody moved aside for James to get near the window. He hesitated for a moment and then leaned his torso outside and raised a single finger to the sky. The students below him went nuts.