Alice in Charge

  If he remembered me, he gave no sign of it. He took one book from a high shelf and sat down with it for a few minutes to search its pages. I was still standing at the shelves when he got up again to put it back.

  I glanced up as he stretched to slip the book onto the highest shelf, and as the cuff of his jacket pulled back slightly on his arm, I saw a barbed-wire tattoo forming a bracelet around his wrist. And just below the bracelet, a dark double eight tattoo.

  Curtis picked up his bag from the floor, slung it over his shoulder, and left the library.

  Was it possible?

  I sank down in the same chair where he had been sitting and waited for my breathing to slow. Of course! He came to a few GSA meetings because he was scoping us out, wanting to see how many came, who the “homos” were. And the “Safety” Council? Disbanded because they wanted to practice martial arts. And hadn’t I remembered Curtis and some other guys at the Homecoming Dance, watching from the sidelines when the girls were laughing it up, teaching Daniel some steps? As for the Snow Ball, no one had to attend to know that I was Daniel’s date for the evening, not after Sam put up that photo in the showcase. My mind kept leapfrogging over what I knew for sure and what I only conjectured.

  I stood up and scanned the high shelf for the book Curtis had been reading, hoping I could easily spot it. It rested at an angle against the one next to it, and by standing on tiptoe, using another book as a tool, I was able to edge it forward and catch it when it fell: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

  * * *

  When Phil left the library, I followed him into the hall and breathlessly told him about the bride and groom ornament, my suspicions about Curtis.

  “Alice, I think it’s time to do something,” he said.

  “What? Tell Beck?”

  “I don’t know, but you ought to report it. He could at least get security to keep an eye on the guy. And maybe on you.”

  “We have sixteen hundred students, Phil, and three security guards.”

  “Well, what do you propose? You’re leading with your chin again, this time by keeping this to yourself.”

  “I’m telling you about it, aren’t I?” I leaned against the wall and stared down the long row of lockers. “It’s just … what if I’m wrong? I mean, I talked to the guy when he first showed up at GSA. He was friendly enough. I’ve seen him around, and he didn’t seem violent or anything. Maybe he was tattooed by the gang. Maybe he was reading that book to try to find out what makes racists tick. Maybe he’s scared to talk to me. I don’t know….”

  The bell rang.

  “Look, I’ve got to get to class,” Phil said. “You busy after school?”

  “Not right away. I’m going to work for my dad at six … or whenever I get there.”

  “You know that doughnut shop in the little strip mall across from the Giant? Can you meet me there after school to talk about this? I’ve got to return a form to the band room, but I’ll be there around three,” Phil said.

  I said that I would, and made my way to gym. I found myself looking at arms, necks, even the legs of the girls in their gym shorts, looking for double eight tattoos. The fact that there might be girls in the group made it all the scarier somehow. Maybe they were just groupies. Girls who would do anything to get chummy with the guys. Or maybe they were true believers, who knew?

  We volleyed the ball back and forth over the net, dipping and dodging to keep it in the air. No double eights on the court that I could see.

  Daniel was at the drinking fountain after I’d showered and left the gym. He said the water was too cold. He always held it in his cheeks for a second or two before swallowing.

  “You’re like a camel,” I told him. “All that water.”

  “Why do they put it in machines that ice it?” he wondered. “It does not even have taste when it’s that cold. My teeth hurt from your water.”

  “Maybe we ought to buy you a canteen,” I joked.

  He walked with me to the next corridor. “When the weather gets very, very cold here—when the snows come—does the cold kill?”

  “Only if you’re out in the snow and get lost or something. If you can’t take shelter and you’re not dressed for it. We won’t let it happen to you, Daniel,” I promised. “By the way, is everything all right? No more notes or stuff in your locker?”

  “No,” he said. “People are kind to me. If they do not speak or smile, that’s all right. There are very many people in this school. It is like a city. Not everyone speaks or smiles at you in a city.”

  * * *

  I had nothing to do at school after the last bell rang at two thirty, but I remembered there was a dollar store over near the doughnut shop. I could use some notebook paper and eyeliner.

  There was no sidewalk leading out from the east side of the school, and though the rain and sleet had stopped, the wind whipped at the scarf around my neck. I decided to take a shortcut and started across the football field. My feet made crunching sounds as I stepped on frozen grass.

  Buses were pulling away from the front entrance, heading out in the other direction. I could hear cars starting up in the student parking lot, everyone leaving at the same time, the noise getting dimmer the farther I walked.

  Off in the distance traffic whizzed by the strip mall. The football field was empty except for a couple of guys sitting on the second row of the bleachers, smoking, hoods turned up on their jackets. The shriek of a crow flying overhead brought answering heckles from the woods off to one side.

  I wished I’d worn gloves, and I alternated hands, one keeping my scarf from blowing away, the other warming in my jacket pocket.

  One of the boys noticed me and lowered his cigarette—forbidden on campus.

  Don’t worry, I thought, I’m not about to report you, and I plowed on, bucking the wind. Was that doughnut shop where I thought it would be, or was I thinking of another strip mall? I wondered. Phil had said it was across from the Giant, but wasn’t there an Exxon station on that corner?

  The second guy stood up. He was looking in my direction, but I couldn’t see his face. For ten or fifteen seconds he seemed to be watching me approach, then he stepped over the bleacher in front of him and started forward. The other followed. They walked steadily in my direction, their pace deliberate, shoulders hunched. Too late, I recognized the face of Curtis Butler.

  Fight or flight? I could feel the pounding inside my chest, the throbbing in my temples. Every nerve came alive, every muscle tensed. My legs, cold as they were, trembled slightly and my mouth was as dry as chalk.

  There was no one else here. No road with steady traffic. No sidewalk with passing students. I could never outrun both of them, even if I turned and headed back. I was probably everything the racists were against: I supported gay rights, mingled with lesbians, dated a black guy….

  I remembered some of the things I’d read about—stories of what some white supremacists would do to “make an example of” someone. A storm trooper kicking a Hispanic woman in the face, a gay beaten to death, a homeless alcoholic stomped with steel-toed boots … all in a crazed expression of “keeping America pure.”

  As they neared, in a desperate effort to deflect them, I heard my own voice call out, “Hey, Curtis! I’ve been looking for you.” My chest hurt with the pounding of my heart.

  He slowed, paused, then stopped as I came up to him.

  “Yeah?” he said coldly, hands in his pockets. “What about?”

  I struggled to keep my voice from shaking. “I’d like to ask a favor.”

  The large boy beside him glanced at Curtis, then back at me. The hood had slipped partly down his head, and I could see that he had blond hair, a somewhat bent nose, deep-set gray eyes.

  Curtis’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of favor?”

  “Thought you might do an article for us about your group.”

  There was an edgy silence. Curtis picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue, then spit. “What group you talking about?”

  “The doubl
e eight, or whatever you call yourselves. I know there’s a lot you want to say, so I’m offering you a front-page spot instead of the notes and stuff you’ve been leaving around.”

  Curtis shifted his weight to his other foot and studied me, eyes staring unblinking into mine. “Why you talking to me about this?”

  I shrugged to hide the shivering. “Who should I be talking to?” He didn’t answer.

  “This the girl who goes for black guys?” asked his friend.

  Curtis ignored him. “Who put you up to this?” he asked me.

  “No one. C’mon, I get original ideas once in a while.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “Only that other kids can respond, and we’ll print their replies in the next issue, pro or con. But that shouldn’t bother you. This is your chance. And you’ve got to sign your real name. No more ‘Bob White.’ That’s better than trashing armbands and leaving a noose on my locker door.”

  “I didn’t put that there,” Curtis said quickly.

  “You said you didn’t care!” protested his friend.

  “Shut up,” said Curtis. He fished in his pocket for another cigarette and lit it. “I say whatever I want, I’d get kicked out.”

  “Not if you can write it without name-calling. You heard what Beck said: Every student has a right to free expression. You do believe in freedom, don’t you?”

  “For the people who founded the U.S. of A., yeah,” said Curtis. “Not the ones who came after.”

  I decided not to argue the point here on a windy field with no help in sight. “So you’ll do it? Write an article?”

  Curtis shrugged and turned sideways, looking off into the distance.

  “It would be short,” I said. “About two hundred and fifty words. But you can say a lot in two hundred fifty words. Deadline noon tomorrow?”

  “Front-page article? Just as I write it?”

  “If you keep it clean.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Curtis.

  They walked on past me, and I continued toward the strip mall, perspiration trickling down my back, a desperate urge to pee. Any moment I expected to feel an arm around my neck from behind. But I didn’t.

  When I reached the doughnut shop, Phil was already there at one of the small tables.

  “Alice!” he said when he saw me. “What’s the matter?”

  I was breathing hard and went immediately to the restroom. When I came back, I collapsed in the chair across from him. “I think my heart stopped temporarily. Actually, I’ve been scared half out of my mind.” I was still breathing jerkily.

  “What? What happened?”

  “I just ran into Curtis Butler and one of his buddies on the football field. I was stupidly taking a shortcut. They were smoking on the bleachers and came toward me.”

  “Jeez, Alice! You were alone?”

  I nodded. “I couldn’t think of what to do, so I told Curtis I wanted him to write an article for The Edge.”

  Phil squinted in disbelief. “You … what?”

  “It was fight or flight,” I said. “I couldn’t take on both of them.”

  Phil just sat there staring at me. Then, “What’s he going to say? You trying to get us both booted off the staff?”

  “I don’t know. I told him this was his chance. To express himself, I mean.”

  “Alice, what exactly did you promise him?”

  I took a deep breath. “Front page. Next issue. Two hundred and fifty words. But he has to use his real name and write it without racial slurs. I told him we’d publish the responses in the following issue.”

  Gradually, as Phil’s stare became less fixed, I saw his shoulders begin to relax, his face to soften. Finally he said, “You know, it just might be the best idea you’ve ever had.”

  I don’t know where I got the courage to face Curtis Butler as I did. Maybe from Amy’s example.

  When I told Miss Ames all that had happened and how I’d come to request the front-page article from Curtis, she smiled and shook her head in disbelief. “You just can’t help saving the world, can you, Alice?”

  “It was me I was trying to save,” I told her. “It was all I could think of to do.”

  “Well, we don’t know where this will lead. But we hadn’t figured out until now who was behind all this, so you may have opened the door for some real dialogue here. Better than nooses hanging from lockers,” she said.

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  21

  WRAP-UP

  Our next-to-the-last issue before Christmas vacation:

  The staff of The Edge thinks it might be important to present a minority view from time to time and has therefore asked for a short essay from a junior student which follows below. It goes without saying that the beliefs presented here are neither those of the administration nor of the newspaper staff, but because there seems to be an undercurrent of anger in this school, we feel it might be helpful to get these views out in the open. Your responses will be published in our “Sound Off” column next week.

  —Alice McKinley, Features Editor

  STANDING UP FOR THE WHITE RACE

  by Curtis Butler

  A lot of you may not agree with me, but I’m trying to save a dying race. The USA was created as a homeland for people of European descent and not as a melting pot or refuge for non-Europeans, because what we’re becoming is a third world ghetto.

  White people in their very own country get a raw deal. Africans come here and are treated like some kind of royalty—scholarships and free housing and food, and all they have to do is show up at school and dances. Mexicans sneak into the U.S. of A. and get the jobs that decent white Americans should have, and everybody knows that Jews get all the money, one way or another. Just look at the names of investment firms and you’ll see they’re all Jewish.

  If our nation keeps this up, mixing together and even marrying, we are all going to end up the same color and not believing in God and probably not even having children because we’ll all be homosexual.

  I personally don’t believe in violence because that only hurts our cause. I, and others like me, believe that white teenagers should band together—free of drugs, homosexuality, and race mixing, not believing the Zionist-controlled TV and radio. Our goal is to promote racial awareness and pride, and it’s about time we started taking care of ourselves.

  Note from the Faculty Adviser: If these, and opposing, views can be discussed without name-calling and slurs, if we can express emotion without violence, we can show the community that this is a school in the truest sense, where even ideas that are repugnant to many can be discussed as to their cause and resolution. It is the hope of the newspaper staff that prejudice—in the act of being examined and questioned—can be healed.

  —Shirley Ames

  The day the paper came out, we felt as though we may have planted a time bomb in it. I’d had to edit Curtis’s article, of course. I’d changed Mexicanos to Mexicans, and mud-colored to the same color.

  Nobody knew what would happen, though. Miss Ames had alerted Mr. Beck and Mr. Gephardt, and we noticed there was an extra security man on duty that Thursday, just strolling around the halls. We didn’t expect a rock through the window of the newsroom or anything, because it wasn’t considered “cool” to get emotional, but those of us on the newspaper—and Miss Ames in particular—wondered if we’d done the right thing; if we’d started something we couldn’t control.

  Because of the noose threat, Phil and Tim and Sam made sure that one of them walked me to and from classes each day if I wasn’t in a group. I noticed that Curtis went around school flanked by two buddies—one of them the guy I’d met out on the football field. There was a wary macho air about them, as though expecting trouble. But Mr. Gephardt was everywhere, talking with everyone, and surprisingly, the day went off without incident.

  A lot of kids hadn’t read the article yet, of course, and of those who had, a lot looked upon it with ridicule. There were a few jeers, some condescending remarks, but
so much was going on with Christmas coming up and semester finals to take that most of the kids probably dismissed it and moved on.

  There was a lot going on in my life too besides school—Lester’s graduation, for one. Why the U of Maryland thinks the weekend before Christmas is a good time to hold a graduation escapes me, but there we were in the Comcast Center—Dad, Sylvia, and me (and several ex-girlfriends of Lester’s), cheering him on. I was coming down with a cold, but I would be at Lester’s graduation if I had to crawl there on my hands and knees. I stuffed my bag with Kleenex and throat lozenges and waited for his turn on the stage.

  We didn’t know what Les would be able to do with a master’s degree in philosophy, but it pleased me to see the pleasure and relief on his face when the dean read his name and shook his hand in congratulations.

  “Way to go, Les!” I yelled amid the general applause, and Les grinned in my direction and waved.

  “Les,” Sylvia told him afterward, “I’m only your stand-in mom, but I’m as proud of you as a person can possibly be.”

  Dad hugged him, and Les hugged back. “It was a long road, but you made it,” Dad said. “I knew you would.”

  “Then you’re psychic, Dad, because I wasn’t always sure,” Les said.

  We took him out to dinner at his favorite steak house, and I tried to think what the day would be like if Mom were here—what she’d say. She was tall, Les always told me. Strawberry blond hair, lots of it. She sang. She liked to laugh. To swim. To camp out and hike.