Point of No Return

by Paul McCusker

  “Thy will be done,” Karen whispered, and meant it. At some point in the night, as she wrote her speech, she felt her heart release the future. Whatever happened was God’s business. It always was, she knew, but now she felt it deep in her heart.

  Lucy had spent the night writing and rewriting her editorial for the paper. It was harder than she expected. In one version, she told the whole story about the file and Mr. Laker’s misdeeds. She threw it away, though. Without proof, it was like bad gossip and would demean the good she’d hoped to do Karen. She wrote six versions before she settled on the one she liked the most. She was desperate to get it right for reasons even Karen didn’t know.

  “Are you coming to the meeting?” Karen asked.

  “Only one reporter from the Owl is allowed to go to the student council,” Lucy reminded her.

  “That’s silly. Whose idea was that?”

  “Yours,” Lucy chuckled. “It was the first rule you got passed when you became president.”

  “Oh,” Karen giggled. “Well, I’m still the president and I say you can come in.”

  They both thought how nice it was to see the other smile. It felt like a long time since they had.

  “I’ll be there after I turn in my editorial to Mrs. Stegner,” Lucy promised.

  With a last hug for encouragement, the two girls went their separate ways: Karen to the library for the student council meeting and Lucy to the Odyssey Owl’s office. Only God knew where they would go from there.

  Mrs. Stegner hadn’t arrived at the Owl yet, so Lucy took out her editorial and set it on the table. She then took out another sheet of paper, looked it over one last time, then placed it next to the editorial.

  It was her resignation.

  As Lucy had asked herself again and again what Jesus would do with the Owl, she decided that He wouldn’t go along with the hairsplitting between “truth” and “facts,” between sarcastic reporting and honest news. Mrs. Stegner was a good teacher and had been more than fair to her, but Lucy felt it was wrong to teach kids that reporting was merely presenting facts without truth. Where was hope? Where was the belief that journalism could help lift people up, rather than constantly drag them into the mud? The questions made Lucy feel tired, mostly because the answers weren’t easy to figure out.

  Maybe one day Lucy could start her own newspaper—one in which she would try to make telling the truth fairly and positively her highest priority.

  She was about to leave, when she suddenly decided that Mr. Felegy should see her editorial and resignation. Snatching them back up, Lucy went over to the storage closet to make copies. She turned the copier on and had to wait for a couple of minutes while it warmed up. It was only a couple of days ago, she thought, that we were here making copies of Mr. Laker’s file.

  “What did we do with those copies?” she asked herself, pressing the side of her head as if it might jog her memory.

  Lucy placed the first page of her editorial on the glass, lowered the lid, and pushed the copy button. It hummed at her as the light flashed under the lid. A copy of page one slid out of the side and settled into the rack. She was about to put page two down when suddenly the machine stopped and a red symbol flashed.

  “Out of paper,” she muttered. Turning to the metal shelves behind her, she looked for packages of the right kind of paper for the copier. She knew from experience that to put the wrong kind in would jam it up. “There it is,” she said and reached up for the half-opened ream. She caught the flap on the end and pulled the package toward her. It slid off the shelf and into her hands. A few pages dropped to the floor. She hated it when the kids were too lazy to close the half-opened wrappers holding the paper. They always lost a few sheets to the floor or under the cabinet.

  Not this time, she thought and bent down to retrieve the fallen pages.

  Lucy’s hand was poised in midair, her fingers just about to touch one of the sheets, when she suddenly cried out.

  “The meeting will now come to order,” Sarah Hogan announced, fulfilling one of her duties as the “clerk” to the student council after she’d called roll. Everyone was present and accounted for.

  Karen sat in her usual chair at the front desk in the library. To her left was Brad O’Connor, the vice president. To her right was Olivia Bennett, the treasurer. Karen couldn’t help but notice that neither one of them would look her in the eye.

  Along the wall next to the main library door sat Mr. Felegy and Mr. Laker. Mr. Felegy watched her with a sad expression on his face. Mr. Laker’s expression was cold and stony.

  Not far from Mr. Laker, Mike sat with his notepad in hand. He didn’t want to miss a word for the Owl.

  No one in the room betrayed that they knew what Karen was about to do, but they all knew. Karen was sure of it. There was something about the stillness—the lack of the usual jokes from the usual kids— that told her they were waiting.

  Karen decided to surprise them by going through their usual procedure. She stood up and asked, “Any old business?”

  No one spoke.

  “No old business? How about new business?”

  Heather raised her hand. “Yeah. I want to hear you explain what happened to $347 of our money.”

  Karen felt wounded. She expected someone to attack, but not Heather, not someone who was supposed to be a good friend.

  Is this how Jesus felt when Judas kissed him? she wondered.

  “We’re checking into it,” Karen said calmly. Why did she feel such a profound peace in the midst of this emotional hurricane?

  “Who’s checking into it?” Heather challenged her.

  “I’ll be working with Mr. Felegy to—”

  “But aren’t you responsible for the missing money?” Don Kramer asked from the other side of the room. “You’re the president. You were the one who took the money out, right? Isn’t that what the sheet says?” He held up the financial statement.

  Karen felt flustered. Did everyone get a copy of the statement?

  Olivia Bennett waved at Don Kramer. “As treasurer, let me say—”

  “We don’t care what you have to say, Olivia,” Heather snapped. “We want to hear what Karen has to say. We want an explanation. Rumors are flying all over the school that she stole the money.”

  Some of the rest of the council joined in, calling out for Karen to explain what was going on.

  Karen held up her arms to quiet them down. “Look, it’s confusing right now. The statement looks like there’s money missing, but we’re not sure there is.”

  “It says what it says,” Heather pointed out. “How could the statement be wrong?”

  Karen was stuck. She didn’t want to mention Mr. Laker. It was pointless without any proof.

  “What are you going to do about this?” Carol Cofield asked. “It looks pretty bad when the president of our council is accused of swiping—”

  “I didn’t swipe anything!” Karen shouted. “Who’s spreading these rumors? Who passed out those statements? Why am I being accused without the benefit of the doubt? Something looks fishy, but it’s not what you think.”

  “Then what is it?” Don called out.

  Karen shook her head. “I can’t say.”

  Someone booed her. She didn’t look to see who. She didn’t care. Someone else yelled “cover-up” then booed as well. Then it seemed she was in front of a chorus of “boos” and “cover-up!”

  Do it now, she thought. Resign before you start crying.

  “All right, calm down. Listen to me.” The council calmed down. Karen stared at the top of the table, her eyes and face burning. Her wellrehearsed words stumbled forward. “Since I can’t offer a good reason for the confusion about—”

  “Confusion!” someone called out indignantly.

  Brad O’Connor hit the table with his hand. “Let her talk, for crying out loud!”

  The room fell silent.

  Karen looked at Brad out of the corner of her eye. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Go ahead,” he s
aid back to her.

  “Since I can’t offer a good reason for the confusion about that mysterious statement, and you guys obviously want to believe the worst about me—even though I’ve never done anything to betray your trust— I want to offer my res—” That was as far as she got. The tears filled her eyes and got caught in her throat. She struggled to continue. “I want to offer my resignation, effective immediately.”

  She glanced up at the council through misty eyes, only to realize that they weren’t listening to her. They were all facing the door. Karen hadn’t heard the door open, nor did she see Lucy enter with a handful of papers.

  Everyone else saw it, though. It was like watching a silent movie. Lucy ran in, saw Mr. Felegy sitting next to the door, and frantically pushed the pages into his face. Most of them didn’t know what it meant. They had no idea why Mr. Laker suddenly went pale and nearly fell out of his chair.

  The only thing any of them knew for sure—and could agree about when they gossiped for the rest of the day—was that Mr. Felegy stood up and dismissed them.

  “This meeting has to be postponed,” he announced. “Lucy, Karen, I’d like to see you in my office right away. You, too, Mr. Laker.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “THEY’RE FRAUDS,” Mr. Laker said with a red face. He paced around Mr. Felegy’s office impatiently, pausing only to scowl at Karen and Lucy.

  Mr. Felegy looked over the bids for the report cards, the letter with its incriminating “P.S.,” and, of greater interest to him, the copy of the check for $2,000. “They look pretty genuine to me, Art. Where would these girls get the technology to put together forgeries?”

  Mr. Laker grunted. “Kids can do everything with computers these days.”

  Karen and Lucy watched the proceedings silently. They both knew there was little for them to say. The evidence had to speak for itself.

  “Are you telling me you’ve never received any money from Ballistic Printing?” Mr. Felegy asked.

  “Well,” Mr. Laker stammered, “what do you mean by ‘received’?”

  “Good grief, Art!” Mr. Felegy cried out. “Do you realize what this means? What about your retirement? Your pension!”

  Mr. Laker abruptly turned to Karen and Lucy. “Get out!”

  The girls looked to Mr. Felegy.

  “Thank you both for…er, all your help. I’ll call you when I need you again,” he said.

  The girls stepped out of the office and into the main office area. Mr. Laker slammed the door behind them. Maybe they imagined it, but the muffled shouts on the other side of the door had the sound of justice being done.

  Mrs. Stewart looked at them warily.

  Suddenly the door opened again and Mr. Felegy said, “Mrs. Stewart, will you please get the district office on the phone?”

  Mrs. Stewart’s eyes bulged. “Anyone in particular?”

  “Superintendent Murphy,” said Mr. Felegy as he closed the door. Then he opened it again and added, “You’d better get someone from the legal department, too.” He closed the door.

  “This must be serious,” Mrs. Stewart said excitedly as she picked up the phone.

  Karen and Lucy looked soberly at each other.

  “It’s serious, all right,” Lucy said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WHIT DROPPED THE NEWSPAPER onto the counter. “Well, what do you know about that?” he said.

  It wasn’t the Odyssey Owl, but the Odyssey Times he’d been reading. It chronicled the forced resignation of Mr. Art Laker and the school district’s investigation of his business practices as a school administrator over the past few years. The article also hinted at further investigations by the district attorney’s office into Ballistic Printing and the many questionable “gifts” they had paid out to influential decision-makers in Connellsville’s and Odyssey’s governments.

  “You two really were in the middle of it, weren’t you?” Matt said to Lucy and Karen.

  “Yeah! You turned out to be the opener of a big can of worms,” Jack said with a laugh.

  “Please, Jack, I’m eating,” Karen said as she scooped in a mouthful of ice cream.

  Lucy smiled. “You should’ve seen Mr. Laker’s face when I walked in with those copies.”

  “I’ll bet he nearly had a heart attack,” Oscar said. He jammed a straw in his mouth and slurped his milk shake.

  “Now I understand why you were so hesitant to talk to me about it,” Whit said to Karen. “But where does that leave you?”

  Karen swallowed her ice cream, then explained, “I’m still president of the student council. Mr. Felegy said that he believes Mr. Laker juggled the numbers in our account to make it look like I’d taken the money.”

  “Mr. Laker was in a panic,” Lucy said. “He was ready to do anything to keep Karen from being believed.”

  Whit nodded sympathetically. “He was so close to retirement. To be caught now jeopardizes his pension, his future, everything. It’s sad, really.”

  “I’ll feel bad for him later,” Karen said. “Right now I’m too relieved to think about how he feels.”

  “What would Jesus do?” Whit asked.

  “Forgive him, pray for him,” Karen replied while she scraped the last of the ice cream out of the bowl.

  “Will you?”

  Karen replied while she licked the spoon. “Yeah. Probably. I made a promise, remember?”

  “What about you, Lucy?”

  “I resigned as the editor of the Owl,” Lucy said. “But Mrs. Stegner wouldn’t accept it. She said she needs me there.”

  “That’s not all she said,” Karen interjected. “She said that the school needed someone with Lucy’s ‘personal integrity’ in charge of the newspaper. She’s even going to let Lucy keep experimenting to make it more positive.”

  “To try to do what Jesus would do,” Lucy said cheerfully.

  “What about you boys? Do you have any new insights after all you’ve been through?”

  The three of them looked at each other and shrugged.

  “Typical,” Lucy laughed.

  “I’m gonna be honest,” Jack said. “Following Jesus is tough. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, in fact. I don’t know if I can do it. But I’ll try.”

  “Me, too,” Oscar said.

  “All for one and one for all,” Matt joined in. “I don’t remember what verse that is.”

  Whit smiled and said, “Three Musketeers, I think.”

  “What are you going to do when Joe catches up with you?” Lucy asked them.

  Jack grinned and said, “Turn the other cheek.”

  Matt began to laugh. “Joe’s going to think we’re crazy. First, Oscar won’t talk to him, then he saves him from getting dunked in the creek. And if he tries to get revenge on us, we won’t fight back! It’ll drive him up the wall!”

  The three boys laughed, as only boys can about fighting. Karen and Lucy thought they were terribly immature.

  “So it’s a happy ending all the way around,” Matt concluded.

  Whit shook a finger at him. “Not a happy ending. This is just the beginning. We have a lot more challenges ahead of us.”

  “See ya, Oscar!” Matt called out.

  Oscar turned to wave at Matt and Jack, then walked on up the street to his house.

  “Shortcut?” Jack asked, hooking a thumb to the woods.

  Matt nodded. “Yeah.”

  They strolled down the path into the late afternoon shadows of the trees.

  “It feels like snow,” Jack said.

  Matt agreed. “It sure does. I’m going to have to dig my sled out of the garage. I think my dad’s been using it to store paint cans on.”

  “I hate it when they do that,” Jack said.

  The sudden rustling of leaves and crackling of branches all around didn’t give Matt or Jack time to react. Before they knew it, they were surrounded by Joe Devlin and his gang.

  “It’s payback time,” Joe said.

  “What would Jesus do?” Matt asked Jack.
r />   As if to say, “Come and get it,” Jack spread his arms. “Turn the other cheek,” Jack said.

  Joe and his gang closed in on the two boys. But any enjoyment they might have had with their revenge was robbed by the maddening way Jack and Matt kept laughing.

  Whit and Tom sat quietly at the counter of Whit’s End later that night. Whit was about to lock the front door, but he enjoyed the silence of the building so much that he didn’t want to move.

  “It’s nice when it’s quiet like this,” Whit said as he sipped his coffee.

  “Yep,” was Tom’s only reply.

  Whit glanced down at the newspaper again, then casually flipped the pages over. It didn’t appear as if he was looking for anything special, but it turned out that he was. “Here it is,” Whit said and spun the paper on the counter so Tom could see.

  It was an obituary for Raymond Clark. Christine had provided the newspaper with an older photograph of the man. He looked healthy and robust in the posed family portrait. Whit figured it was taken several years before, in happier times.

  “Well, that’s something,” Tom said as he pointed to a line in the obituary.

  “What?” Whit asked and peered over to look.

  “It says here that he was an employee of Ballistic Printing until they laid him off a few months ago.” Tom clicked his tongue. “Amazing.”

  Whit thought about it for a few minutes. “What are we supposed to think about that?” he wondered aloud. “Ballistic Printing fired Raymond Clark, so he came to Odyssey where he died. Because of him, we made promises to do what Jesus would do, which is why Karen decided to expose Mr. Laker rather than hide the truth—the truth about the very company that had fired Raymond Clark in the first place.”

  “It boggles the mind,” Tom said. “Coincidence, you reckon?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. Just God,” Whit said with a smile.

  PAUL MCCUSKER is a Peabody Award-winning writer and director. His works include the multiple award-winning audio dramatizations of The Chronicles of Narnia, Amazing Grace, and The Screwtape Letters.