Students speak out!
Speak truth to power!
Freedom isn’t free!
They seem flimsy and pathetic now.
The Cheer Squad has its own signs, stiff and perfect-looking, which are propped against the gym wall. One has tipped over; I can make out a few of the stenciled words.
Oh God. Unbelievable.
Jacinda didn’t want to help me, isn’t ready to be friends again. Fine, I get it. But this?
The tipped-over poster has my name on it! Evensong, you— I can’t see the other words. A replay of the lightning struck against me, no doubt. Which one? Hypocrite? School-wrecker? Or worse.
Backing into the hall, I close the door and sink to the floor. My puny signs slump down next to me. I can’t bear to go in.
Deep breath.
I’ll just wait out here. For now. The hall clock says 2:13. I’ll go in at 2:15. Two more minutes. Two minutes before I confront the entire student body. And faculty, including Dr. Folger. Two minutes until I lead myself to my own slaughter.
One minute thirty seconds.
Breathe.
The big hand ticks to 2:14. One more minute.
The doors rattle from the noise of the crowd, the brewing storm.
I’ll go straight to the microphone in the middle of the gym. I’ll say what I have to say. I’ll start a speakout.
Applause erupts, echoing into the empty hall. Rhythmic shouting from the Cheer Squad, a stampede of foot stomping in the bleachers. I put my head in my hands. Dr. Folger was right. I must have been crazy to think that a pep rally was good timing. They’re going to chew me up and spit me out.
No. I won’t be cowed. It’s the hard thing to do, but it’s the right thing to do. I will be strong.
This girl is different.
Breathe.
Twenty-five seconds.
The storm swells.
2:15.
It’s now or never.
I gather up my signs but they slide out of my hands like they’re scared of their fate. I shuffle them together and bump them along into the gym.
The screaming batters my eardrums. In the bleachers, students are shouting, standing, leaning into each other, pumping fists. Teachers and staff are seated in the first rows, clapping along with the Cheer Squad and jazz band. Ms. Gliss is standing in a far corner. Near her, a man in a suit is scowling importantly. Is he an observer from the school board? Ms. Gliss tucks her hair behind her ear and follows the cheerleaders with her eyes. She looks pleased. Jacinda and the rest of the Cheer Squad sweep down the sidelines, wiggling their fingers and yelling at the crowd to Show your spirit!
My pulse pounds. Sweat stipples my forehead. Forget yoga breathing; the best I can manage at this point is to pull in enough air to stay alive. I put my signs aside—I can barely walk as it is.
As I make my way to the middle of the gym, people start to notice. Little by little, decibel by decibel, the noise dwindles.
A cord snakes to the microphone at center court, set up for the girl who warbled The Star-Spangled Banner.
I walk. The crowd quiets. I’m at the half-court line.
Is the microphone on? I give it a tap; it lets off a piercing shriek. Students clamp their hands to their ears. A groan ripples through the bleachers.
I clear my throat. “Let’s—let’s thank the Cheer Squad for such a fantastic pep rally!”
A moment of absolute silence, followed by a faint smattering of applause.
So furious you can almost see steam coming out of her ears, Ms. Gliss is stomping toward me. Until someone catches her by the elbow. It’s Dr. Folger, standing near the man I assume is from the school board. Dr. Folger whispers something to her, and her eyes go wide. She steps back.
A screeching wolf whistle emanates from high in the bleachers. Jacinda grimaces. Sexism against Cheer Squad, like she’d said. In a nanosecond, she regains her composure with a smile and a high kick. She keeps looking at me, but her glare doesn’t seem as hateful as it was in Global View. Wishful thinking? Stress-induced hallucinations?
Where is Rajas? I don’t see him. Maybe he ditched the rally. He’s not the pep type. My heart contracts.
Deep breath. “You’re probably wondering why I’m out here. There’s been a lot of—”
—Shut the hell up!
—Get off the mic!
“I just want to—” The microphone squawks feedback again.
Jacinda turns to her squad. Index fingers pointed at the ceiling, she cocks her thumbs like pistols. A signal. The cheerleaders run to fetch their signs, marching back single file. Marcie is behind Jacinda. They hold their posters close to their bodies, words facing in.
So. It’s sabotage. She knows my plan because I asked her for help. Rookie mistake on my part. She’s about to stone me in front of hundreds of people.
I lean into the microphone again. Not looking at Jacinda, not looking at Dr. Folger, not looking for Rajas. I close my eyes and speak. “They say that sunlight is—”
—Go back home, homeschooler!
“I wish I could.” I laugh, a frail cackle that the mic broadcasts. The sound of public humiliation.
Yoga breath. Be strong. “I thought if I—”
—Freak!
Squaring my shoulders, I say, “James Garfield said, ‘The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.’”
The Cheer Squad lines up behind me. When will they show their posters? As soon as everyone sees the Evensong one—whatever it says—my public stoning will commence.
I talk fast. “I just…I think it’s important to speak out. We should all do it. But we have to be responsible. I made some mistakes, and I apologize to anyone I might have hurt—”
Jacinda gives four sharp claps. “Cheer Squad! Ready? Okay!”
“Truth is important,” I press on. “But I’m starting to think that what’s even more important is kindness.”
Jacinda hollers, “Five, six, seven, eight!”
I have to hurry. “And I think we should have an open mic, for a speak-out!”
“Go!” The Cheer Squad flips the posters and lifts them high.
The crowd surges.
I’m toast.
32
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.
—FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ABOLITIONIST AND AUTHOR, 1818–1895
I step back from the microphone. I have to get out of here. I’m done. I tried.
They won. I got creamed.
I start walking.
To the side, someone hops down from the bleachers. Running his hand through his coal black hair, he jogs toward me. Rajas.
More public humiliation? No thanks. I walk faster.
“Evie! Wait!” Jacinda’s voice. It’s too loud. Amplified.
She’s talking into the mic.
Rajas catches up to me and grabs my wrist.
I snap it away. “Back off!”
Jacinda’s voice: “A speak-out is such a great idea.”
The bleachers start to quiet. But it’s a warmer quiet for Jacinda, without the steely edge of hate.
“I have a quote to share too?” Jacinda says. “It’s from this guy Felix Frankfurter. Talk about a seriously tragic name!”
Eager to complete my stoning, and enamored with Jacinda, the whole school laughs.
I get to the doors. Rajas is right behind me.
Jacinda continues, “Frankfurter said, ‘Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.’” A pause. “Evie! Come back.”
I turn around; I can’t help it. Jacinda’s hands become pistols again. As one, the Cheer Squad turns to face me, holding their posters overhead.
There is a low murmur, and a bit of applause.
The posters, they are…not what I thought.
Free speech for all!
Speak out!
Speak truth to power!
Jacinda is running toward us,
holding the poster with my name: Evensong—you are fearless!
Confused, not daring to hope, I look at Rajas.
He smiles his crooked grin. “If you’d stop and listen for a second, I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Jacinda says, “I’m so sorry, Evie!”
My whole body liquefies with relief, with cautious hope.
“I couldn’t say anything to you when Ms. Gliss showed up. But my squad and I talked about it. Because I knew…we could see that you were right, a speak-out was a super good idea.” She fingers her spiky bangs. “I’m still kind of a mess about the whole thing with, you know—” Jacinda’s shoulders twitch, as if it’s an enormous effort not to sink into Brookner quicksand. “Anyways, guess what! I saw you and Ms. Gliss yesterday coming out of the boy’s locker room! I, like, totally overheard everything! I cannot believe that she’s the one who’s been leaving the fricking door unlocked!”
“You—you were there?” There was a witness. Justice prevails!
She’s nodding. “Yes! And I went to Dr. Folger and told him what she did!”
Which explains the look on Ms. Gliss’s face when Dr. Folger spoke to her just now.
“I’m sorry, Evie. I’m a serious mish-mosh about the relationship and,” Jacinda winces, shakes her head, “I can’t believe I posted lightning against you. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but—”
“You’re already forgiven,” I say. “I’ve made a ton of mistakes too. And I miss you so much.”
Her eyes go wide, all dark eyelashes and shimmery makeup. “Really?”
“Really.”
She hugs me. Everyone is watching us. “You need to get back.” I twirl Jacinda around to face the noisy throngs. “Your public awaits.”
“Do you forgive Raj too?” She turns back to Rajas and me. “Raj told me he did the—you know. The Brookner lightning. And I mean, I’m mad? But also I’m just trying to deal with it all…”
Maybe I was too harsh with Rajas. Then again, maybe I wasn’t. He went behind my back, fed me to Jacinda, hid me from view, is already seeing someone else, and hasn’t even tried to apologize for any of it. And yet. I thirst for him. “I don’t know.”
Rajas walks away.
So that settles it. “See?” I tell Jacinda. “He won’t even fight for me.”
“He misses you.” Tilting her head, “Don’t you want him back?”
I want to scream YES! I feel like my heart’s been ripped out! But he is putting more distance between us, walking away, taking his crooked smile with him, his warm lips, his mind, his love. I squash my feelings down. “Like you said,” I tell Jacinda, “if he truly loved me, he wouldn’t have kept me hidden in the shop room.”
Jacinda cringes. “That was so evil of me.”
“Yeah. It was. But it’s true. I mean, he has to be willing to take a stand about being together. Or anything else, for that matter.”
A hush comes over the crowd.
Rajas is changing direction.
He’s heading to the microphone.
Keeping his eyes on me, he stoops to speak into the mic. “I don’t have a quote.”
Go, Rajas! A girl’s voice. Followed by a hoot of approval from someone else.
“Yeah. Thanks.” His face is getting blotchy. “Just want to say, I think it’s a good thing, to speak out. Speak your mind, even if the truth turns around to bite you in the butt.” He pauses to accommodate laughter. “It takes courage. My girlfriend, Eve”—he points to me—“taught me that.”
Oh my God.
Did he just do that? Anti-label Rajas publicly stated he has a girlfriend?
And that it’s me?
“At least, she used to be my girlfriend,” he says. “But I was an idiot and messed things up. And I never apologized. So, here goes.” He gives a nervous smile. “I’m sorry, Eve. I was an ass.”
“Ohmigod!” Jacinda pushes me toward the mic. “What are you waiting for! Go get him!”
People start clapping, and it goes rhythmic, a cadence building into a crescendo. They are waiting for me to do something.
“But I thought—isn’t he seeing that girl Rosemary?”
“What? Rosemary?” Jacinda makes a face. “No!”
“But she was talking to him. They were planning to meet after school.”
“Duh! Probably because of Raj’s apprenticeship thingy. Her dad will be his boss next year.”
“But…that’s it?” I light up inside. I’m electric, radioactive.
“You aren’t going to leave the poor guy standing there all alone!” Jacinda is still pushing me.
Until she doesn’t have to push me anymore. Rajas is waiting for me with his beautiful crooked smile.
The crowd starts whooping, laughing, cheering.
Jacinda screams, claps, and runs up and down the gym. The rest of the Cheer Squad joins her.
My heart is like a magnet, my feet are on autopilot, until I’m here at center court and Rajas’s eyes are dark as a new moon midnight and they’re getting closer and now we’re kissing. The crowd thunders, roars, but all I can think about is lightning—the real kind—and all I can hear is the echo of Rajas’s words: My girlfriend, Eve, taught me that.
33
Whatever you do may seem insignificant but it is most important that you do it.
—MAHATMA GANDHI, SPIRITUAL AND POLITICAL LEADER, 1869–1948
SUGGESTIONS MADE AT THE
IMPROMPTU STUDENT SPEAK-OUT
AT THE HOMECOMING PEP RALLY
Notes taken to edit…some we can put in a new weekly newspaper column, “Students Speak.” It will highlight and look into the good ideas that come from students at monthly lunch speakouts. The speak-outs will be co-facilitated by Dr. Folger, Kelly Lupito (student council president), and Evie Morningdew. The “Students Speak” column will be co-authored by Stiv Wagner (myself, Editor in Chief of the Purple Tornado News) and Evie Morningdew.
(Note: I started taking notes a few minutes into the speakout, so I missed some of the first suggestions.)
* Teachers buy students lunch every Friday.
* Coke machines in the cafeteria.
* Boys should be cheerleaders for girls’ sports.
* Open the unused courtyard (between the library and Home and Career Skills classrooms) for students to use in free periods.
* Once a month students teach the classes.
* Get exercise equipment like treadmills and elliptical trainers in the gym so we can use those instead of being gym class heroes. Because it’s still physical fitness.
* Math club should get as much funding as the football team.
* Upgrade the bathrooms and keep them clean.
* Give Mr. Heck a raise because he does the most work in the school.
* Teachers favor athletes and cheerleaders and that’s not fair.
* Make a school flower and vegetable garden, especially a rooftop garden.
* Make the school carbon neutral.
* Certain teachers cross the line with their girl students and those teachers should not just be placed on administrative leave, they should be fired.
* [Name of student] is an a**hole.
* [Name of teacher] is a b*tch.
[Note: At this point Dr. Folger stepped in and asked students not to name names but to keep their comments limited to ideas for improving the school or he would turn the mic off.]
* Kids should be allowed to bring water bottles to class and eat snacks throughout the day.
* There should be school hoodies you can buy even if you’re not an athlete.
* Make the school buses run on natural gas or hybrid.
* People who take dance classes should get credit as a sport and you should be able to get gym class exemptions if you do sports.
* Paint murals on the lockers.
* Change the school colors and mascot because they’re stupid.
* Start an Ultimate Frisbee team.
* Vote for favorite teachers and they get a raise.
>
* The school should lend out iPads.
* More parking for students.
* We should be able to go off campus for lunch—especially upperclassmen.
* Lunch is disgusting. We need better options.
* Homecoming and dances are lame. We need better stuff.
* We should be able to bring our pets to school.
* School shouldn’t take attendance anymore.
* Start a worm-farm compost in the cafeteria for lunch scraps.
* We should get smartboards for the classrooms.
* Let us do internships as a school credit elective.
* There should be a student representative on the school board.
* Stop looking down on kids who aren’t planning on going straight to college.
* Let us choose one class a year that we can pass/fail instead of letter grades.
* Kids who love to cook and menu-plan should have a shot at working in the cafeteria.
* We should fly the flag of the whole earth, along with the U.S. flag, on the school flagpole.
33
There is no reason to think a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change the world; indeed, that’s the only thing that ever has.
—MARGARET MEAD, CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGIST, 1901–1978
Finally, slowly, the last students trickle out of the gym. The whole space seems to breathe a sigh of relief.
When the dismissal bell rang, Dr. Folger had to interrupt the student at the mic—a popular junior named Jeremy—to insist that everyone leave so they didn’t miss their buses. The speak-out was still going strong, ideas flying, all sorts of students with all kinds of amazing ideas, along with the occasional turd in the punch bowl, as Rich would say. At the end, Dr. Folger vowed that, from now on, students could hold monthly speakouts during lunch.
The promise was greeted with stomping feet and a roar of approval.
Now, twenty minutes after dismissal, only the Cheer Squad remains. Their sneakers squeak as they reattach streamers and decorations for the homecoming festivities later this weekend.
I called Martha. She’s taxiing from Walmart, and she’s bringing provisions. Hopefully not stolen ones.
This Girl Is Different Page 20