Alice in Charge

  I woke Thursday with a headache. Dad drove me to school. When I got to the newsroom, Phil and Sam were back from the printer’s and were already dividing the newspapers into bundles. I took off my jacket to help. We left one copy on Miss Ames’s desk, then set off in different directions to leave papers at each school exit, the auditorium, the office—anywhere they were visible and students could pick them up.

  We met Miss Ames as we were making the rounds. “Right on time!” she said when she saw us. “How did things go yesterday?”

  “No problem,” said Phil. “Alice did the wrap-up, and the papers were waiting at the printer’s.”

  “Wonderful,” Miss Ames said. “Did you leave some for the office?”

  I nodded.

  Phil and I went down to ground level and left newspapers at both entrances to the gym and at the science labs. When we went back up to the first floor, the halls were already filling with students, and the noise and laughter grew louder as we reached the top of the stairs. Most of the papers by the auditorium had already been taken, so we left another pile. We were in the east corridor, about halfway to the band room, when we heard the click of heels on the floor behind us.

  “Alice?” Miss Ames called. “Phil?”

  We turned and I felt my throat constrict.

  Her face was stiff. No, furious. There was a tremor in her voice, she was so angry. “Who okayed that story about Student Jury?” she demanded.

  “Student Jury?” Phil hadn’t even read it yet.

  “I … did,” I said.

  She stared at me with a look I’d never seen before. “What … in … the … world … were … you … thinking?” she demanded.

  Phil stared at me, nonplussed.

  My mouth was suddenly so dry that my tongue stuck to my teeth. “I thought … I was supposed to report everything that happened. I didn’t … use names.”

  “You reported a matter that wasn’t even supposed to be handled by Student Jury! I just talked to Betty Free, and she had no idea you were going to write that up.”

  Phil was scrambling to open one of the papers and find it.

  Miss Ames waited coldly as he scanned the paragraph. He blinked and read it again. “Ouch!” he said, and gave me a sympathetic but pained look. “That’s … uh … Granger’s classroom, isn’t it?”

  “We’re waiting for Mr. Beck to come in. He’s meeting this morning with Amy Sheldon’s father.” She turned on me. “This was so totally uncalled for, Alice. So completely unnecessary.”

  I tried to defend myself. “Miss Ames, I didn’t use Granger’s name.”

  “You used the room number, Alice.”

  “But … it could have been someone else—a student even.”

  “The inference is there, regardless.”

  The bell for first period rang, and the halls began to empty.

  “Should we go back and try to pick up all the papers we left around?” Phil asked.

  Miss Ames shook her head. “Too late for that.” She stopped and looked at me again. “Alice, I am so, so disappointed in you.”

  18

  CHANGE

  I would rather have been slapped than to hear those words from our adviser.

  I’d worked so hard for The Edge, moving up from roving reporter to features editor over the last four years. I so loved my job. And now … I remembered the sayings we had posted around the journalism room—Jefferson’s statement that if he were asked to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”; Emerson’s comment that it’s not what lies behind us or ahead of us that counts as much as what lies within us; and the saying, “When in doubt, leave it out.” I had been so full of doubt when I typed up that story that it was practically bleeding all over the keyboard. Somehow I’d known I was going too far, and yet …

  Miss Ames walked away, and Phil turned to me. “Jeez, tell me what happened!” he said.

  I told him how Amy had been waiting for me in the library and had seen Dennis Granger there with the jury. How she had come into the room and announced that he had molested her.

  “Oh, man!” said Phil. “And you think it really happened?”

  “I’m sure of it,” I told him, and explained what I’d seen when I found Amy crying in Granger’s classroom.

  As the morning went on, though, I began to feel even more defensive. It had happened. Since when did I have to get permission from the office to report facts? Maybe this was something the students should find out about. Maybe this was a case where the faculty would try to protect one of their own. Maybe Jefferson would have said that if he had to choose between the faculty or The Edge, he’d choose our newspaper! I felt a little better.

  I was called to the office around noon, and two policemen were there. Mr. Beck told me that Amy had given her side of the story to her parents and to the officers; would I now tell them what, if anything, I had observed of the incident? I repeated exactly what I had seen and what Amy had told me, as accurately as I could.

  “And neither of you reported it to anyone on Tuesday?” one of the officers asked.

  “I begged her to go to Mr. Beck or to tell her parents, and I’d made up my mind that if she didn’t do it by today, I would. She agreed to wait for me in the library yesterday so we could go to the office together. Then … she saw Mr. Granger in the conference room—he was subbing for the chemistry teacher on Student Jury—and decided to report it there, I guess.”

  “You didn’t expect that? You hadn’t suggested it?”

  “No!” I said emphatically. “She surprised us all. I didn’t even know Mr. Granger would be there.”

  An officer was taking notes as I talked. “And you’ve reported inappropriate behavior toward yourself by Dennis Granger?”

  “Yes,” I said, and described again what had happened at the drinking fountain.

  “You didn’t report it then?”

  “No. Things had happened before sort of like that—I wasn’t sure. The way he brushes up against girls. That kind of thing.”

  “Thank you, Alice,” Mr. Beck said when the questions were over. “You’ve been very helpful. This has been difficult, I know, but I do hope you’ll keep this conversation confidential. It’s unfortunate that other members of the Student Jury heard the charge and that it was mentioned in The Edge, but I assure you that we will follow through on this. You do understand that we want to make sure of our facts before we put a teacher’s job and reputation in jeopardy? I trust we can count on your maturity as a senior not to discuss it further with anyone until the matter’s resolved.”

  “Yes,” I told him. “You can.”

  Kids did ask about it, of course, and everyone speculated, rightly, that it was probably Dennis Granger who did it. When asked, I simply said that I didn’t know the outcome and that it would probably be in the county paper at some point. What was obvious was that Mr. Granger didn’t come to school on Friday or the following week, either.

  What I was most afraid of, since there were no witnesses to the act itself, was that Sleazebag would somehow convince the authorities that none of this had happened, that Amy was good at inventing stories, and so forth. That I, as her friend, had got caught up in the drama too.

  But in the days that followed, Amy seemed more sure of herself, more confident. When kids gave her knowing, mocking smiles as they passed in the hallway, she interpreted them as a show of support, even though they weren’t supposed to know that she was involved.

  “You know what?” Amy told me. “Mom and Dad believe me one hundred and fifty percent. And some other people, too.”

  “You have more friends than you think,” I told her.

  “Do you remember when Jill accused Mr. Everett of coming on to her?” Pamela asked me at lunch as we sat on the floor outside the cafeteria, the seniors’ favorite spot for lunch when the weather’s bad and we have to eat inside.

  “That was so scary,” said Liz. “Everybody’s f
avorite teacher, and we didn’t know whether he’d be back or not.”

  “If Dennis Granger never comes back, I don’t think anyone would miss him,” said Pamela.

  They looked at me, but they knew by now that I could tell them nothing.

  Miss Ames was tight-lipped and all-business around me. She didn’t fire me and she didn’t mention the matter again. But you could tell there was a pall over the newsroom, that Phil and I had lost some of her respect and confidence—me, for writing up the incident in the first place, and Phil, for not reading the final proof. Whether Granger was found guilty or innocent, I had overstepped the boundary of good journalism.

  “Oh, it’ll blow over,” Phil said comfortingly. “I wish you’d have run it by me, though, before it went to press. I called you, remember, and you didn’t even mention it.”

  “Would you have worded it differently?” I asked. “If I hadn’t included the room number, everyone would have asked.”

  “Maybe this is hindsight, but I think I would have told you not to include any of it. Like Miss Ames said, it wasn’t a case for Student Jury. It was irrelevant.”

  He was right. The point was that I was furious with Dennis Granger and had included that room number wanting to hurt him.

  A promise was a promise, though, and I didn’t even tell Dad or Sylvia about it. Sylvia might accidentally mention it at her school, and it would travel like lightning. I’d wait till it all came out in the newspapers. More difficult yet, I didn’t tell Patrick.

  When he called, he seemed surprised I was home. “After I punched in your number, I told myself you’d still be at school, wrapping up the paper, or working for your dad, you’ve been so busy lately. How’s it going?”

  “Just a weary week. All sorts of hassles at the newspaper and the usual rush at the store,” I told him. “What’s happening at the Hog Butcher for the World?” (Taking my cue from Carl Sandburg.)

  “Haven’t butchered any hogs lately,” Patrick said. “It’s too cold here even for hogs.”

  “That cold already?” I asked.

  “This is Chicago. You walk along the lake, you almost get blown over. I hate to think what it will be like in February.”

  “All I can think about is how wonderful it was in July,” I told him. “The beach was beautiful.”

  “Yeah, well, now there are whitecaps on the water.”

  “I wish I was there to keep you warm,” I told him.

  “That would help,” said Patrick.

  He asked if there was anything new. I told him Jill and Justin broke up, and he was as surprised as the rest of us.

  “Any idea why?”

  “His mom, Jill says. It’s a ‘your mom or me’ kind of thing.”

  “I guess if you’re still sleeping at home and eating home cooking, you’ve got to choose Mom,” Patrick said. And then, “This is going to sound like an awkward transition, Alice, but I’ve got some bad news. Well, sort of, I guess.”

  I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Something about his mother? Something about breaking up?

  “I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you earlier….”

  “Patrick, what is it?” I said, almost angrily, I was so anxious. I didn’t need any more problems in my life.

  “Mom and Dad have decided to move to Wisconsin to be close to his brother. They found a house when we were there at Thanksgiving.”

  My brain just couldn’t seem to compute this. I knew Patrick had an uncle. Knew that Mr. and Mrs. Long often vacationed at his home in Wisconsin. If Patrick was going to college out of state anyway, did it really matter that—?

  His home! His home would be in Wisconsin. He wouldn’t be coming back here.

  “W … when?” I asked in such a small, pitiable voice that I didn’t recognize it as mine.

  “Over Christmas. They want me to help sort through stuff when I come home for the holidays. The movers come on December twenty-eighth.”

  I was crying into the telephone. I felt the tears on my fingers.

  “Alice?” Patrick said gently.

  “Oh, Patrick!” I wept.

  “I know,” he said. “I felt the same way when they told me. But … I’m in college now. I wouldn’t be home a lot anyway, and Dad’s not as strong as he used to be. I can understand he’d want to be near family.”

  “And … and your mom?”

  “She says she’d be happy wherever Dad wants to go.”

  We talked some more—the reasons, the details—but most of it slid by me. All I could think about was Patrick’s empty house. Of Patrick going to Wisconsin now on spring and summer breaks.

  “I … won’t ever see you!” I cried.

  I could tell he was smiling when he answered, “Well, you could always invite me to your prom.”

  “Of course! You know you’re invited!”

  “Well, I’ll see you then. And I’ll be back for Christmas in just a few weeks. We’ll squeeze in every spare moment.”

  We each lingered over our conversation until we were tired out.

  “Good night, Alice,” he said.

  “Good night, Patrick.” I slowly pressed END on my cell phone and lay facedown on my bed. I felt as though the world were whirling on ahead of me and I’d been left far behind.

  In the locker room after gym the next day, I told my friends.

  “The Longs are moving to Wisconsin,” I said.

  All chatter stopped.

  “What?” said Pamela. “When?”

  “A few days after Christmas. Patrick’s coming home to help them pack. Mr. Long wants to be near his brother.”

  “Oh, Alice!” said Liz, sitting down with a shoe in one hand.

  “And Patrick’s going with them?” Pamela asked.

  “Duh!” said Gwen.

  “I mean, he’s at the University of Chicago and—” Even Pamela realized how dumb her question seemed. “Yeah. Where would he stay if he came back here on spring break?” Then she brightened mischievously. “You’ve got a big house now, Alice. What about Lester’s old room?”

  “Don’t even think it,” I said. “Dad would be patrolling the hall all night.”

  “He wasn’t so strict with Les, from what I heard—all the girlfriends,” said Pamela. “How many dozen were there?”

  “Not in our house, there weren’t. Well, with a few exceptions,” I told them.

  Liz looked about as sad as I felt. “If he comes home at Christmas to help them pack … and they move … you may never see Patrick again!”

  “Liz!” the others chorused together, giving her signals with their eyebrows.

  “Where there’s love, there’s a way,” Pamela declared, and slowly the conversation drifted to Jill and Justin, how long they’d been battling his parents in order to stay together—Jill had, anyway. What reassurance was there in that? I wondered. Look how that turned out!

  19

  CONFERENCE

  Toward the end of that week, almost everyone in school knew what had happened in room 208. The names leaked out from the other jury members, a substitute was hired in Dennis Granger’s place, and when someone actually walked up to Amy in the hall and asked, “Was it you?” Amy answered, “I only said he could kiss me.”

  A letter went out to parents that the administration had zero tolerance for this—that an adult, and especially an adult in a position of authority, is always the person responsible.

  But if there were any doubts about Amy’s side of the story, they disappeared when a second girl came forward to report that Mr. Granger had groped her in a hallway after a late-afternoon band rehearsal, and in checking out her story, it was discovered that part of it had been caught on a security camera a month ago.

  Amy became a sort of cult heroine. Even kids who joked about her social awkwardness were recounting her story, heard secondhand, of course, of how she had simply walked into the Student Jury room and announced that a teacher had molested her—in front of the very teacher. Her candidness, her ingenuousness, became her virtue. Kids high-
fived her in the hallways. Told her she was brave, which she was. Honest, which she was. “Way to go, Amy!” they said to her with a smile, and she thrived on all the attention.

  “You know what?” she said to me. “Mom and Dad were going to put me in another school, but I said no, I’m a roving reporter, and they said I could stay. Isn’t that good, Alice?”

  “It’s terrific,” I told her.

  “And now that another girl had almost the same thing happen to her, it’s not just a crazy story by a crazy person, is it?”

  “Definitely not, and you were never crazy, Amy,” I said.

  I had thought that with a second girl coming forward with her story, and a police investigation begun, I would be exonerated somehow. I had been raked over the coals for including it in my write-up; Phil had been reprimanded for not reading my final copy; and Miss Ames was in the hot seat with Mr. Beck for allowing The Edge to go to press without her okay on everything in it. Didn’t Granger’s suspension prove I’d been right to do it? Shouldn’t I be, like, congratulated for breaking the story?

  Miss Ames called a conference of the four editors of the paper—Phil, Sam, Tim, and me. “We need to think about what happened last week,” she said. “We need to clear the air, go over our policies, and make sure we’re all on the same page. I think it might help if we begin where it started and explore exactly what Alice was thinking when she did the write-up. I’m not talking blame here. Let’s just try to examine this critically and see where we could have made a different choice.” She stopped and turned toward me, waiting.

  What more could I say? “Well,” I began, “one of my jobs, since I’m a member of the Student Jury, is to write up what goes on at each session, without using names. I guess I thought that’s what I was doing.”

  “Okay. Fair enough. Let’s start there.” Miss Ames turned toward the others. “If some parent had arrived for a parent-teacher conference during your session and said they thought they were supposed to meet in the room you were using and one of you directed them to the office, would you have felt it necessary to include that in your write-up?”