Alice in Charge

  I thought that over. “No.”

  “Wasn’t Amy coming in to report something that should have gone to the principal the same thing?”

  “Well, not exactly. She was reporting an offense that happened in our school, and as far as she was concerned, the jury deals with offenses,” I said.

  “Even though Betty Free immediately told her that the matter should go to the principal?”

  I didn’t answer, but Sam took my point of view. “Alice might have had the feeling that even if the complaint went to the office, there would be a cover-up.”

  “That’s a pretty negative way to look at our school.” Miss Ames seemed surprised. “Why would you think it might be covered up?”

  We were all quiet for a few moments, and Miss Ames let us take our time. Finally I said, “I don’t think the administration’s been moving very fast on some of the stuff that’s been happening with Bob White and Company, whoever they are—the white supremacy stuff.”

  Miss Ames didn’t answer, just listened. “Okay,” she said finally. “Point taken. But let me ask this: In the write-ups you’ve done about other people who were brought before the jury, did you include their locker numbers? Their homerooms?”

  I could tell where this was going. “No,” I said.

  “Yet you reported the room number where the incident took place, and most people know that this is the room Dennis Granger uses.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Alice, looking at this with absolute honesty, did you have any hesitation at all in reporting the story the way you did?”

  I wanted, of course, to deny it. But as the others waited, I remembered my nervousness as I’d hesitated over the DELETE key. Remembered the pounding of my heart when I’d pressed SEND.

  “Yes,” I said. “Not about reporting what happened, exactly, but about including the room number.”

  “Yet you put it in. Why?”

  “Because I … I was just so mad at Granger. Amy was so vulnerable. And she was so humiliated, as though she were the one at fault.”

  “But why didn’t you run it by me first?” Phil asked. “You could have called.”

  “You were at the doctor’s.”

  “You’ve got my cell number.”

  “Or you could have called me,” said Miss Ames.

  “Phil said you were at a conference.”

  “I was home by then, but if not, you could have left a message.”

  “We’re supposed to have the final copy at the printer’s no later than five, so they can start running it before the day crew leaves,” I said weakly, knowing full well that once in a while we don’t make the deadline, but the printer usually still has our copies ready by noon the next day.

  “You could have at least told me when I called you that night to check that the paper was all put to bed, Alice. You said everything was okay,” Phil said.

  Miss Ames leaned her arms on the table, her shoulders hunched. She looked tired. Even the scarf at her neck looked droopy. “The final responsibility for this paper rests with me because I’m faculty adviser,” she said, “and I allowed the paper to go to press without my final okay, just as Phil did. I’m guilty as well. I trusted that Phil would do it for me, Phil trusted Alice, and Alice dropped the ball. This is a chance for all of us to look more seriously at our own responsibilities here at the paper.”

  “But … but doesn’t the fact that the security camera caught Dennis Granger with that second girl … I mean, if anything, shouldn’t the administration be grateful to The Edge that we smoked him out? If Amy hadn’t reported him, and if I hadn’t written about it—” I halted for a moment. “Isn’t the responsibility of a newspaper to follow through on reports and rumors and see if there’s a story behind them? Isn’t that what reporters are supposed to do?”

  “Yeah, but what if it turned out that Amy made the whole thing up?” put in Tim, playing devil’s advocate now. “At the time you wrote it, you had every reason to suspect Granger did it. But a guy’s still innocent until he’s been proven guilty.”

  “So looking back,” Miss Ames said, winding it up, “would you say that we were biased in our reporting? That deep down, we assumed Dennis Granger was guilty even before we’d got the full story? Before the other girl came forward with an accusation?”

  “I think we could assume that. But now that he’s confessed …,” said Phil.

  “So the end justifies the means?” asked Sam.

  We thought about that, too.

  “I guess that’s what it sounds like,” I said. Then, turning to the others, “I want to apologize to the staff. I know that the rest of you are taking the blame along with me. And I know that I felt—even at the time—I was going too far. And I didn’t call anyone because I didn’t want anyone to overrule me. I was afraid that if I didn’t out him, Granger would get off scot-free, that the administration would believe him, not Amy. But … if that had happened … then we’d have to decide what to do next. It wasn’t my job to predict.”

  I would have liked Miss Ames better if we could have just ended the meeting there, but she got sort of sappy and had us all link arms around the conference table while she told us that even great newspapers make mistakes, but we were still a team, a good one, that we’d move on, and she knew we’d produce articles and reports that we could be proud of for the rest of the school year.

  I decided I should probably stick with counseling, not journalism, when I got to college.

  It’s amazing, with all that was going on, I even remembered the Snow Ball. But when I awoke on Friday, with the newspaper stuff behind me, I threw my whole psyche into the evening ahead, and Sylvia came home early to do my hair. We piled it high on my head, with some fake green daisies with black centers. Sylvia had let out the side seams in the dress as far as they’d go and told me if I was still uncomfortable in it, she’d put in another zipper. But I’d lost a couple pounds in my worry over Amy, so the dress was still tight, but okay.

  And so I went to the Snow Ball.

  Not all the guys wore tuxes; a lot of them were in suits and ties, and Daniel wore his brother’s sport coat, with sleeves that reached his knuckles. But there he stood when I opened the door, and handed me a bouquet he’d picked up at the Giant. He was embarrassed because he’d found out too late the flowers were supposed to be in a corsage. I told him I’d appreciate them even more because they’d last longer this way, and he grinned.

  Keeno and Liz were waiting out in the SUV with Pamela and Louie, and we went to pick up Gwen and Austin.

  Daniel wasn’t quite as spontaneous and extroverted as he’d been at the Homecoming Dance—awed, I guess, by all the formality, as well as by the large snowflakes that hung from a starry sky in the school gym. Astonished at the fake snowdrifts heaped along the walls and the rotating sparkles, like snowflakes themselves, that a strobe light cast on the dance floor.

  “In America,” he said as we danced the two-step, “there is real snow on the outside and imagination snow on the inside. It is amazing.”

  I laughed at his pleasure in the light dusting of snow we’d had the evening before. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” I told him. “Wait until there’s enough to make a snowball. That’s when it really gets interesting.”

  The big surprise of the evening was that Jill and Justin were together again, and when they made their grand entrance, they were the center of attention for the rest of the evening. They danced so close together, we felt the dance patrol would be after them to break it up—Jill’s leg entwined around Justin’s, he with one knee between her thighs. Pamela guessed that maybe the breakup itself had been a hoax, but Jill looked ravishing in a white dress with a low back—a very low back—and I had to smile when I sensed that Daniel was afraid to let his eyes linger at all in that direction.

  “I do not know how to tell my brothers back in Africa how it is in the United States of America,” he said when we gathered at the refreshment table. “Everything is so different here, they would not even
imagine it. ‘No, it cannot be,’ they would say. Snowflakes from a light in the ceiling? What are snowflakes? What are corsages? What are the things you eat from boxes—the cereal? So many things from boxes. All are very strange to me. And salads!” he went on, getting warmed up. “In Sudan we cook our vegetables. We do not eat them raw like goats. ‘Here they eat grass!’ I will tell my brothers!”

  We laughed.

  “You’ve got to put that in your next story for The Edge,” I told him.

  “But what about us?” Liz asked him. “I’ve never seen a live camel. I’ve never seen a date tree. It works both ways.”

  “And I don’t know a foreign language,” I said. “I can’t speak both English and Dinka.”

  Daniel grinned. “So we should trade for a year—your school with a refugee camp. I am sometimes feeling bad that I am here in America and my friends are still in a camp.”

  All the girls in our group managed to dance with Daniel during the evening, and toward the end he loosened up a little and tried some of the fast numbers first with me, then Pamela.

  Just like at proms, a lot of girls came in groups by themselves, and some of the guys did the same, mixing or not as the evening wore on and things grew less formal. Girls took their shoes off and danced in bare feet, and the guys shed their jackets.

  The eight of us left the dance an hour early and went to a Mexican restaurant for a midnight supper. Daniel loved the spicy food, and we all chipped in on the bill.

  “What’s the story with Jill and Justin?” Liz asked. “Anyone know anything?”

  “I talked to Jill in the ladies’ room and asked if the breakup had been just a trial separation,” Pamela told us. “She said a trial, maybe, but that they’d started talking about getting back together sometime over Thanksgiving weekend, and now they’re even closer than before.”

  “Maybe Justin inherits some of his grandfather’s money when he’s eighteen and they’re going to elope,” said Gwen.

  “Maybe he’ll leave home and move in with Jill and her parents,” said Liz.

  “Who’s Jill? Who’s Justin?” asked Louie.

  “A couple who’s been going together since Adam and Eve,” Pamela answered. “We’re taking bets on how it’s all going to come out.”

  When Daniel walked me to the porch after Keeno dropped me off, the others undoubtedly watching from the car, he very courteously shook my hand and thanked me for accepting his invitation to the dance.

  “I had a wonderful time. Thanks for inviting me,” I said.

  He asked again how long the flowers he had given me would keep.

  “For several days, I’m sure of it,” I said.

  “If they begin to wilt … if you do not want them any longer then,” he said uncertainly, “I will give them to my mother.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll keep them till Monday, and then I’ll give them back and she’ll have a chance to enjoy them too.”

  Daniel beamed at his own cleverness.

  * * *

  Patrick called me on Sunday to see how the dance had gone.

  “It was fun,” I told him. “A bunch of us traded dresses.”

  “And … Daniel?”

  “He didn’t wear a dress.”

  Patrick laughed. “He put the moves on you?”

  “A perfect gentleman from the beginning of the evening to the end. Oh, Patrick, I can’t bear the thought of you moving.”

  “Then let’s don’t think about it, Alice. Let’s think about my coming home at Christmas.”

  “I spend ninety percent of my time thinking about that already,” I told him.

  Sam had taken some good photos at the dance, and he printed out a half dozen to display in the showcase outside the auditorium on Monday. There were Jill and Justin, glued together, eyes closed; Keeno and Liz, their feet blurred in a fast dance; Daniel and me, dancing demurely, smiling at each other; Phil and his date; a couple of freshmen….

  Little crowds stopped at the showcase throughout the day, wondering which shots would appear in the next issue of the paper and how many more had been taken.

  I helped out at the Melody Inn that evening. Now that the Snow Ball was over and I was on friendly terms with Miss Ames again, I discovered that the rock in the pit of my stomach still hadn’t gone away. Each time I thought of Patrick moving to Wisconsin, my mind went into overdrive, thinking up all the reasons I could give him for this not to happen.

  His parents had been living in Silver Spring for … seven … eight years? Didn’t they have a lot of friends here they’d leave behind? Didn’t they belong to a church? Did they really want to experience Midwest winters while we usually had mild winters here in Maryland? And what about tornadoes?

  What about their house? I’ll bet they wouldn’t be able to sell their house in this market! How could they buy another in Wisconsin if they couldn’t sell this one? And how could they ever pack in time?

  A woman was standing at the counter with three CDs she wanted to buy and I hadn’t even noticed. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly, taking her credit card. “Too much on my mind.”

  “It’s that time of year,” she said generously. “Have a good Christmas.”

  Kay’s boyfriend came to pick her up when we closed at nine.

  “Where are you spending Christmas? Will your parents still be away?” I asked her.

  She put one arm around the red-haired guy, who reminded me of Patrick. “Kenny’s parents invited me over,” she said.

  “Lucky!” I told her.

  Les called just as I was going to bed that night, to say that he had tickets to his graduation for all three of us.

  Yikes! I thought. I’d forgotten all about it. Maybe one of the most important days in Lester’s life, and it was getting lost in all the tribulations of my own.

  “We’ll be there, Les,” I said. “How many people are graduating?”

  “Two thousand seven hundred and fourteen,” he said.

  I sank down on my bed and tried to figure out how long it would take twenty-seven hundred people to cross a stage, one at a time, and listen to a graduation speech to boot.

  “I can’t wait,” I said.

  “Hey, I’ll have to sit through yours, too,” said Les.

  I got to school early Tuesday to turn in a paper that was already overdue—the teacher had said she’d accept it if I got it in her box by seven o’clock. I made it, glad to check one more thing off my to-do list, and turned down the hallway to my locker.

  My eye caught something dangling from the handle. As I got closer, I saw that it was a little ceramic bride and groom, the kind that appear on top of a wedding cake. The groom’s face had been smeared with black ink, and the couple had been suspended from the locker handle by a thin piece of brown string, braided into a miniature noose. The loop was bound tightly around the neck of the bride.

  20

  CONFRONTATION

  I was afraid to even touch them. Terrified, I looked around to see if anyone was watching, anyone who might have done this, but the corridor was empty. A girl and a guy appeared at the far end of the hall, their arms around each other. They paused to kiss. No one else was near.

  Saliva gathered at the back of my throat, but I didn’t swallow. I got the message, all right—the photo in the showcase from the Snow Ball. I stared at the figures of the bride and groom. If anyone was watching, I didn’t want to appear scared.

  I jerked hard at the string, but it didn’t break. I reached inside my bag and took out my nail file, then sawed away at the cord and jerked it again. This time the string broke. The couple fell to the floor, chipping a piece off the groom’s foot. Picking the pieces up, I dropped them into my bag and walked quickly to the library just to have a place to go, my breath coming fast. I wanted to be near people. I didn’t know what to do with the bride and groom or whom to tell. Was this just a joke or a threat? I wondered if I should have touched them. Perhaps there were fingerprints. I sat at a table and pretended I was doing homework.
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  Don’t act afraid, I told myself. Treat it as a silly prank. But another voice said, Tell security. Yeah, right. I had already stirred up one hornet’s nest. There would be another “word from the principal” over the sound system. Perhaps another letter from the editor in our paper. Just like Amy’s incident with Dennis Granger, the story would be all over school, and the one thing I didn’t want anyone to think was that I was afraid, even though I was shaking.

  Who was doing this? How could I go day after day wondering if I was passing that person in the hall, sitting beside that person in class? Waiting in line in the cafeteria in front of the person who had put a symbolic rope around my neck? How many people were in on it? Maybe a lot more than I thought.

  It was cold, with an icy rain that pinged against the windows during morning classes. Nobody wants to go Christmas shopping in this, I thought, recalling that Dad had checked the forecast at breakfast that morning, wanting cold days to remind people it was December already; clear days, to draw them outdoors; and a little dusting of snow, perfect for putting them in a Christmasy mood. Instead, the ping of sleet played only a single tune: Stay home.

  Maybe I was thinking about Christmas right then because I knew Patrick would be helping his parents pack up for their move when he came home. Maybe I was thinking about Patrick because if he hadn’t graduated a year early—if he were still in school—he’d protect me. I could show him the wedding cake decoration at the bottom of my bag, and he’d drive me to and from school each day, wait for me at the end of last period, be with me in the halls….

  By mid-afternoon the sleet had stopped and the ceramic bride and groom were still in my bag. I tried to focus on some long-neglected schoolwork. I spent all of my free period back in the library researching the Marshall Plan after World War II. I’d found some material on the Internet, but the teacher also assigned one of two books to read about it, and I was scanning the history section to see if either book was in.

  Daniel was hunched over a stack of books in a study kiosk near the back. Phil was there too, at one of the computers, and several other people were hard at work. The library had a new policy regarding noise and conversation. You could meet friends and chat before or after school, but it had adopted Amtrak’s “Quiet Car” policy during school hours. Most of the time I appreciated this, but when I noticed Curtis Butler searching for a book a few feet away from me, I wished I could have a conversation with him. Just sit in the soft chairs near the back and ask why he didn’t come to GSA meetings anymore. What happened to the Safety Council? Who, if anyone, was threatening him here on campus?