Searching for signs of guilt, but people like that, they don’t feel guilty, right?
They think they’re on the side of the angels.
They think they’re justified.
“I’m not worried, but a lot of students are worried that it looks suspicious.” Tanner Perkins was fair and freckled, with an affection for novelty bow ties. “They’re worried that that it might be suspicious.” It was ten days until Halloween. Today’s tie pattern was vampire bats.
Tanner normally would’ve never deigned to ride the bus to school, but his folks had busted him for smoking weed, taken away his key fob and phone, and told him he had no choice.
“What’s suspicious?” I asked. “Who’s worried? The Student Council?”
“No, no,” he assured me. “There’s been no reason for Stu-Co to discuss the cast of the musical. Why would we? I’m talking about people at school in general.”
It was midweek. In the back row of the yellow bus, seated right behind him, I’d taken my reporting efforts up a notch. “What do you think?”
“Let’s consider the facts, shall we?” Tanner’s arm was casually draped over the back of the green vinyl bench. “This is East Hannesburg, right? It’s a mostly white school. Not an all-white school but a mostly white school. All of a sudden, the new Theater teacher decides to parade minorities across the stage and — boom! — three of them land major roles. On their own merit? Three of them? A lot of people are asking, what’re the odds?”
Tanner clearly loved being interviewed. He’d spelled his name for me twice to make sure I’d get it right. We hit a pothole — hard — and I asked, “Is that a problem? And if so, why?”
“It’s what you call ‘a possible indicator,’ ” he replied. “You know what an indicator is?”
After checking to make sure my phone app was recording, I said, “I know what an indicator is. I’m sure Hive readers do, too.”
“Did you know that soon — I’m not sure when but really soon — America is going to be a minority-majority country? White people are going to be outnumbered. That’s scary.”
Outside the pristine bus, a blur of subdivisions gave way to a blur of strip malls. Inside the bus, most of the kids were dozing and Tanner had insinuation down to art. “Scary why?”
He straightened his vampire-bat bow tie. “No comment.”
Of the fourteen houses on my cul-de-sac, only three were home to EHHS students. Most of the families had younger kids. The Marino sisters, from the end of the street, went to a Catholic high school in Lawrence. Julia Fuller, who lived catty-corner from us, was a junior.
The Fullers’ home design was a mirror image of ours with the exact same neutral paint scheme. The most remarkable thing about them was that they all wore braces on their teeth. Even the parents. (Maybe they got a family discount?)
Julia’s were lavender. Her eight-year-old brother Landon’s were blue.
After dinner on Thursday, she was running down the middle of the street, teaching Landon to fly his manta-ray-shaped kite. I watched them for a while from my front porch and then wandered over once he seemed to have gotten the hang of it.
A big sister, a little brother. Like Hughie and me.
Leaning against her freestanding mailbox, Julia replied, “Oh, no, my family? We’re not like those awful PART people.”
She gestured to her kid brother, sailing the manta ray clear of the treetops.
“Last summer, Hughie stuck up for Landon at the neighborhood park when one of the bigger boys wouldn’t let him play Frisbee golf. We’ve already promised to take Landon to the school musical. Hughie’s his hero.”
It was challenging to hold up my phone to record and jot notes at the same time. “Your whole family’s buying tickets?”
That was good news. According to Emily, early sales had been sluggish.
“Not my dad, he’s . . . not an artsy kind of guy. He’s more of a sports guy.”
We only had a few more moments of sunlight. Two middle-school girls playing basketball in a driveway down the street had just called it quits.
Julia hollered to Landon to reel in the kite.
I said, “Well, sports are ever popular.”
“Right, if Hughie was on Football, my dad would be sure to cheer him on. He says that on the field, the only color that matters is Honeybee orange.”
She paused. “But can I tell you something? Not for the newspaper. Something personal?”
I understood why people wanted to go off the record so often, but it was frustrating having to leave out the juicy quotes. I tapped Stop on my phone. “What is it?”
“Landon!” Julia called again. “Now!” In a quieter voice, she said, “We were all talking about the musical at dinner one night. I mentioned that Chelsea was going to play Dorothy, and, out of nowhere, my parents both said it was ‘fine and dandy’ to watch Black people performing onstage or playing sports, but they weren’t looking for another Black president anytime soon.”
I remembered Mama saying a neighbor could be behind the notes we’d received.
Julia yelled for Landon to hurry. “I’ve heard them make certain comments, talking to older people in my family, but I never thought . . . I didn’t realize.”
I wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. It wasn’t up to me to forgive her, and it wasn’t Julia who was in the wrong. I kept it simple, from one big sis to another.
“You’re not your parents,” I said.
Homecoming weekend came and went, and I barely registered that Cam had been crowned king. Every day, Joey and I texted, talked, touched. My skin melted beneath his kisses.
The party pic of him and his ex-girlfriend vanished from his locker.
By Halloween, we were officially a couple. He came over to my house to help me hand out treats. When I answered the front door, Joey said, “Happy Día de los Muertos!”
A major occasion in Texas, but in the Kansas suburbs?
I hugged him. “Spanish class?”
“My mother’s a Hallmarker,” Joey reminded me. “I have a heightened awareness of all things holiday.”
A Hallmark-level awareness, I thought.
He went on, “Speaking of which, I brought what you asked for and left it in the back seat of my Jeep like you said, but —”
“Shhh!” I fiercely whispered. “They’re still here.”
Mama and Daddy descended the curved staircase dressed as Galadriel and Gandalf.
That night Daddy’s dentistry partner was throwing a party in Olathe.
I exclaimed, “You two look magical!”
“Who are you supposed to be?” Joey asked, teasing.
“Who am I supposed to be?” Daddy exclaimed. “Pumpkin, I thought your new boyfriend was perfect. Now I’m not sure we should leave you here alone with him.”
“We’re leaving.” Mama tugged his draping sleeve. “Here we go!”
“I shut the puppies in the master bath with a pee pad,” Daddy said as he was dragged out. “Goodies for the trick-or-treaters are on the kitchen island.”
“Good-bye!” Mama called. “Have fun, kids!”
The front door closed. They were off. Hughie had already left in an astronaut costume to join his thespian friends. But first he’d given my covert plan his personal blessing.
“The coast is clear!” I grabbed Joey’s shirt and pulled him closer. “What’d you bring?”
“Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Kit Kat bars, and Fun Size Butterfinger bars in a plain brown paper bag, just like you asked. But didn’t your dad just say —?”
“Follow me.” I let go, led Joey into the kitchen, and held open the bag of “goodies” Daddy had left. Dental floss, travel-size toothpaste, and sugar-free gum.
“I’m the daughter of a dentist. My whole life, every year on Halloween, we’ve been the most boring house in the neighborhood.” I raised my fist, defying fate. “It ends tonight!”
“Hmm.” Joey grabbed two handfuls of Daddy’s “treats” and dropped them into the plastic
punch bowl on the counter. “We’ll have to give away all this, too, or he’ll get suspicious.”
It was almost sunset. Back in the foyer, Joey made a show of peeking out the window first before running for the candy.
He was so freaking cute. I felt guilty about not telling him about the mean-spirited notes. But I had to adhere to the affected families’ wishes, including my parents’ wishes.
Joey was like Karishma — he really took journalism to heart. If he knew everything that had been going on, he’d have felt honor-bound to report on it for the Hive.
Meanwhile, I started plugging in the lights and audio. Because Outdoor Holiday Decorations was one comprehensive category in the homeowners’ association bylaws, the few “Halloween is the devil’s playground” residents had to suck it or they’d lose Christmas and Easter, too.
Daddy had gone all out. Translucent spider-shaped LEDs dangled from tree branches. Creaks, moans, screams, and ominous thunder wafted from hidden speakers. Five candlelit jack-o’-lanterns lined the front porch. Scarecrows kicked back in the Adirondack chairs, and construction-paper crows had been taped to our large picture window.
The banner hanging over our front door read BOO!
On the sly, my father had taken advantage of his very public decorating effort to install a security camera without the neighbors noticing. Whenever anyone paused at the mailbox or approached the front door, we’d have a video record of it.
“You don’t mind staying in tonight?” I asked, licking peanutty chocolate off my fingertips as Joey and I moved into the great room. We’d tried to order tickets for Dungeon of the Damned in Lawrence, but they were sold out and my parents had vetoed our driving “all that way” to a haunted house in Kansas City on such a hard-partying holiday.
“We don’t need to go into the world for scary fun.” Joey relaxed into the cowhide sofa. “All the scary fun is already here.”
He tossed a mini peanut-butter cup into his mouth. “Speaking of scary, though, have your parents gotten any e-mails about Ms. Wilson?”
I reached for the TV remote to start The Cabin in the Woods. “What kind of e-mails?”
“E-mails from PART saying our Journalism teacher is ‘contaminating’ us with ‘bleeding-heart nonsense’?” He explained that his mother had mentioned in passing having received a half dozen of them, all of which she’d deleted.
“They’ve got nothing on Mom,” Joey said. “We just moved here. She’s too busy rebuilding her own life to mess with them. But I guess our interview with Mrs. Ney didn’t satisfy PART. They still think the Hive is biased.”
No surprise there. “And they’re blaming Ms. Wilson,” I concluded.
If anything, she went out of her way not to talk politics in class, even though it was obviously killing her at times not to.
She did have a lot to say about freedom of the press. But that was Amendment One of the U.S. Constitution, and she was a Journalism teacher.
“I’ve been asking around,” Joey said. “PART also contacted Nick’s parents. Alexis’s. As it turns out, they’re just fine with ‘bleeding-heart nonsense.’ Alexis’s dad also said he didn’t need a bunch of ‘loudmouthed busybodies’ telling him how to raise his kid. Nothing went out to Emily’s folks, though, or Daniel’s or Karishma’s.”
“PART has already tried to shut down Emily and Daniel in other ways,” I said, letting Joey pull me onto his lap. “Or at least they’re trying with Daniel.”
If our managing editor had decided between going out for Wrestling or sticking with the Hive next semester, he hadn’t mentioned it.
“With her pro-musical editorial, Karishma’s their Public Enemy Number One.”
“They weren’t able to break her last year,” Joey reminded me. “If anything, she’s come back tougher than ever. I’m guessing it’s a hit-or-miss effort. To the extent that they have a coherent strategy, they’re probably trying to identify easier targets.”
Come to think of it, I did remember Mama replying to an e-mail from Mrs. Ney early in the school year. I said, “I’m pretty sure my parents have been off that mailing list for a while.”
“I tried to talk to Ms. Wilson,” Joey put in. “But she said to let her worry about it.”
He kissed my earlobe, and as if on cue, the doorbell rang. The puppies kicked off their bark-a-thon. Pint-size sugar hunters waited impatiently on the front step.
The most spooktacular night of the year had officially begun.
“Duty calls,” Joey said as we rose from the cowhide cushions.
The doorbell rang, again and again, for hours.
“Trick or treat!” sang out miniature superheroes, Jedi, ladybugs, zombies, fairies, vampires, princesses, vampire princesses, pirates, the Statue of Liberty, Waldo, a nurse, a soldier, an angel, a werewolf, two ghosts, three black cats, a Cowardly Lion, and a bunch of grapes (purple balloons, floppy green hat).
Between trick-or-treaters, Joey and I stole deep kisses beneath the crystal-drum chandelier in the foyer. “Next year we’ll dress up,” he mumbled. “We’ll go as bowling champs.”
Next year, my mind echoed. During college?
KU was my first choice. K-State was his. It wasn’t impossible that we could stay together, especially if he liked me as much as I liked him.
Mostly moms and a few dads walked their kids to the door or waited for them in the driveway. Some filmed with their phones. Those carrying costumed babies (a pumpkin, a snail, a tiger, a strawberry) showed them off at the door. Maybe a half dozen (Frankenstein and his bride, a 1920s flapper and gangster, a firefighter, and Big Bird) wore costumes themselves.
Sprinting into the foyer with a Butterfinger refill bag, I spotted the new arrivals.
Plastic blue bling set off her fringed dress and braids.
A blue feather on a headband topped his fringed shirt and pants. He carried a pumpkin-shaped plastic bowl by a handle in one hand, a fake spear with a rubber blade in the other.
Three years old? Four?
They hollered, “Trick or treat!”
At the end of the driveway, their Pocahottie mommy chatted up the neighbors.
Meanwhile, another little girl — a kindergartener? — in a Princess Jasmine costume scampered up the front walk with a firefighter and a Tyrannosaurus rex.
Suddenly exhausted, I sought rejuvenating refuge in the sweet combination of sugary treats and Joey’s kisses. We deserved a holiday, too.
Before school on Monday, I wrapped myself in a Pendleton blanket and climbed onto our sloped wood-shingle roof to drink in the dense red, bronze, canary-yellow, and tangerine — the autumn leaves more varied, vibrant, glorious in the Midwest than in the blink of a Texas autumn.
A playoff game was scheduled for that first full November weekend, and in the driveway next door, the neighbor’s minivan was perpetually decked out in spirit signs and orange streamers. You had to admire their enthusiasm. Their kids weren’t even in high school yet.
From his open bedroom window, my brother asked, “Want some company?”
The blanket’s design is called Shared Spirits. A graduation gift to Daddy when he’d finished dental school. Holding it open in invitation, I asked, “How’s it going with the musical?”
I’d told my family about the new anonymous note that had been slipped into my locker, but we had an unspoken agreement not to dwell, not to let PART win its mind game.
Hughie cautiously climbed out to sit with me. “We’re going off book this week.”
Opening night was less than three weeks away.
“I’ve been wondering,” I began. “Before auditions, do you think Mrs. Q had specific actors in mind for some of the Oz roles?”
Hughie settled in, pulling one side of the blanket around him. “I’d say Dorothy for sure,” he replied. “Mrs. Q wanted Chelsea for Dorothy from the start. But I’m not sure race had anything to do with it. Chelsea is, by far, the most talented actor-singer in the school.”
That would help push back against the haters, but it was
n’t fair. Chelsea shouldn’t have had to be so undeniably the hands-down best thespian. Just the best for the role of Dorothy.
“Do you think Mama has time to cook?” Hughie asked. “The boosters are supposed to start bringing in dinners to rehearsals.”
Mama had tons of reading for school. At home, we’d mostly been living large on Crock-Pot cuisine, microwaved chili from the freezer, and takeout roasted chickens from the grocery store. Daddy ruled over the stove a few days a week — a rotation of tacos, box mac and cheese, tuna-salad sandwiches, SOS (hamburger gravy over torn toast), and mulligan stew.
“Tonight I’ll make up a big batch of veggie pasta salad,” I said.
(That, scrambled eggs, and Rice-A-Roni are all I can really cook.)
My brother’s shoulder rested against mine.
“Vca fvckes,” Hughie said. “I love Kansas.”
After midnight, I was awakened by my brother’s knock on my bedroom door.
Bilbo and Frodo scampered in, tumbling over each other.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, pushing up against my tufted headboard.
I clicked on my bedside lamp, and Hughie handed me a clipped stack of paper. Mostly printed web pages, though the top sheet looked like homework.
My gaze fell to the strike-through and the comment that read Cut. “Hughie?”
He pulled out my desk chair and sat backward on it, folding his arms and resting his head. “Mrs. Q had asked me to do a short write-up on the musical for the program. Everyone has to take on some production stuff. I thought I got off easy.”
I squinted at the crossed-out lines. After the first paragraph, the one about the series of Oz children’s books that had started it all, Hughie had written:
L. Frank Baum is remembered as someone who created a magical world with very different characters coming together as friends. But he was like the Wizard. His public image doesn’t match the reality of who he was. Baum was a terrible man who hated American Indians and wanted us all killed.
“After rehearsal, Mrs. Q said I was ‘off tone, off focus,’ ” Hughie mumbled. “She said Baum was ‘a man of his time,’ nobody cares anymore, and I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Hearts Unbroken Page 11