Crusader

  When Mr. Herman got on, he sat right next to me. He said, "I just spoke to our mutual friend Mrs. Knight. She informed me that Channel 57 picks students to be interns. Would Roberta Ritter be interested in learning the news business?"

  I nearly shouted, "Yes!" Then I immediately thought of work and asked, "But I have a job."

  "Yes, of course you do. What is it again?"

  "I work at Arcane, in the West End Mall."

  "And that is why you are hesitating to accept an internship that could set you on your path in life? Because you work in a mall?"

  I added weakly, "It's my family's business." I felt awful. I started babbling, "But I can do it, Mr. Herman. My uncle Frank is very good about changing the schedule around. My dad, too. And my cousins won't mind."

  "Good heavens! Is this some sort of family sweatshop?"

  I repeated, "It's our family business."

  Mr. Herman muttered, "I see," and pulled out some papers to grade.

  I didn't say anything else as we drove in the blazing sun, down Everglades Boulevard, to Fiftieth Street. Then I blurted out, "I'm sorry, Mr. Herman. I know there are a lot of other kids who would be better. I don't look like a newsperson. I don't act like a newsperson. I'd better say no."

  Mr. Herman continued to look at his papers. But then he sighed deeply and said, "I am racking my brain, trying to think of who you remind me of. Perhaps Jane Eyre. Or Little Orphan Annie. Or that poor-yet-plucky little girl who Shirley Temple played in that movie where her father gets amnesia." He turned and looked right at me. "Understand, Roberta, the very reason I see potential in you is that you are not an attractive airhead whose involvement with a news story begins and ends with reading the TelePrompTer. No. I believe the internship belongs to you."

  I nodded vigorously. "Thank you, Mr. Herman. Thank you. So I'll be working with Mrs. Knight again?"

  "Yes, I'm afraid so."

  "Afraid so? Isn't that a good thing?"

  "Mrs. Knight is not my favorite person. In fact, she may not even be a person."

  The bus driver pulled up in front of the Channel 57 studios, a low white building that looked like it had been built with Legos. "Did you two have a fight?"

  "Professionals such as Mrs. Knight and I do not have fights."

  "So what happened?"

  "What happened? Let me see. I had already been here on the job, the job that she recruited me for, for two weeks, before I learned that you never actually put out a newspaper because you did not possess any paper. I had to learn that absurd fact from a student, of all things. That one who looks like a witch."

  "Betty?"

  "Is that her name?"

  Mr. Herman and I got off the bus first and started toward the Lego building. A darkly tinted glass door opened, and we saw Mrs. Knight. She looked very different. She was about thirty pounds lighter, and she had short, frosted hair.

  Mr. Herman spoke up immediately, in a friendly voice, "You look so thin, darling."

  She gave him a huge smile. "Why, so do you."

  "That's just my hair."

  Mrs. Knight held the door, smiling, while about twenty of us piled into the lobby. Then she stood with her back to the door and announced, "I am so excited to see all you students from Memorial High School down here. It's like a homecoming for me. And a family reunion." Mrs. Knight went on like that. I looked around and calculated that she only knew about four of us from last year.

  We walked farther into the building and encountered two people standing next to some very expensive-looking equipment. One was a nerdy guy with a red tie and a white shirt. The tie was loosened and the shirtsleeves were rolled up, like he was working very hard. Next to him was a pretty teenage girl with white-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Mrs. Knight said, "I'd like to start the tour with Bill and Lori. We like to call Bill, Oscar the Grouch."

  Bill did not seem to like that.

  She asked him, "Bill, can you tell these students from Memorial a little about this first piece of equipment?"

  Bill didn't actually look at us, but he did say, "This piece is called a remote soundboard. We just got it in. We take it with us for remote shows."

  Mrs. Knight explained, "Meaning shows not shot here in the studio."

  Bill added, "This board cost nearly a hundred thousand dollars, so please do not touch it."

  Mrs. Knight said, "Next to the remote soundboard is another interesting piece of equipment. It's called a video dubbing board." Mrs. Knight picked up a camera that was attached by wire to the board. She aimed it at a couple of the football guys and said, "I need a volunteer to say his name and school."

  Surprisingly, Hawg's hand went up. His big face filled the monitor as he said into the camera, "I'm Hawg. My school is the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Home of the Razorback Hawgs."

  Mrs. Knight loved that. She turned the camera toward me. "Okay, Roberta. Now you."

  I didn't want to do it. I looked away from the camera and mumbled, "I'm Roberta Ritter, from Memorial High School."

  Mrs. Knight yelled, "Good!" even though it wasn't. Then she said, "We'll come back to this area later to see what Lori can do with the videotape we just shot."

  Mrs. Knight opened another door and gestured to the football guys to start filing through. She called over to me, "Roberta, you might want to stay here and talk to Lori about the internship."

  I said, "That'd be okay, but I want to see the studio."

  She smiled brightly, "Oh, you will. You'll see a lot of it." When the last journalism class member filed through, she hooked her arm through Mr. Herman's and said, "Come on, you'll be my escort. We need to talk."

  Mr. Herman looked over his shoulder at me as if he were about to say something, but then he disappeared quietly down the corridor with her.

  I was left looking at Lori. She looked like a cheerleader. She spoke intelligently, though. She asked me, "You're Roberta?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Tell me something about yourself, Roberta."

  "I want to be a reporter. A journalist. Maybe even a muckraking journalist."

  I don't think Lori knew what that meant. She said, "I see," then added, "I want to be a TV newscaster, maybe do the weather."

  "Uh-huh. So what do you do now?"

  "For now, I'm an intern."

  "Yeah? I might be an intern, too. But it will be in the news department."

  Lori looked puzzled. She told me, "There's only one intern job that I know about, and this is it." She pointed to the video dubbing board. "Mrs. Knight said I'm to show you how this works. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Lori picked up the video camera, like Mrs. Knight had done. "You shoot people with the video camera. Their faces and voices are recorded here, on Tape A. Then you use this keypad to copy Tape A onto Tape B."

  Lori then pointed to a small monitor set inside the board. "Now, here's the fun part. You run the video from Tape A on the monitor and stop it when somebody is about to speak. Then you run the audio from Tape B and stop it when you find a funny match. Like this." Lori rewound Tape A until Hawg's face appeared. Then she ran Tape B until we heard my voice. She punched some numbers on the keypad, and the monitor played Hawg's face while my voice said, "I'm Roberta Ritter from Memorial High School." I had to laugh. Lori laughed, too, even though she'd probably done this a hundred times.

  Suddenly that Bill guy appeared. He scowled at Lori and said, "This isn't a toy. It's an expensive piece of equipment."

  "Mrs. Knight said to train Roberta to use it. She's the next intern."

  "Are you training or playing?"

  Lori seemed to fear him. "Training."

  "Then do it, please." Bill continued on through the door.

  Lori said, "Bill really freaks out when kids get near the equipment. Whenever you have a tour, you have to watch the kids carefully and make sure nobody touches anything."

  My classmates returned quickly. They didn't look at all interested, but Mrs. Knight was still perky. She gathered them ar
ound the video dubbing board. She told them, "You always hear that seeing is believing. Well, remember those statements you saw before? Let's look at them now. And listen to them."

  Mrs. Knight nodded at Lori, who hit a button. Everybody watched and listened as my voice came out of Hawg's mouth. A couple of the football guys laughed. The rest of the class didn't seem to get it. Mrs. Knight said, "Seeing is not always believing, is it?"

  Then Mrs. Knight led us to the third and final console. It was basically a computer with two screens. She said, "We have one last piece of equipment to show you today. One last treat. How many of you were born here in South Florida?"

  About half the class grudgingly raised their hands, although I bet most of the rest had been born here, too. Mrs. Knight continued, "If you were, or even if you weren't, you will find this fascinating. We call this the video vault. We have a database of newscasts from the past twenty years. Each of you can instantly access the evening news for the day you were born simply by typing in your birthday on the keyboard. The broadcast will come up on the screen, with sound and video."

  Mrs. Knight pushed some buttons on the keyboard to boot it up. "We have to limit everybody to two minutes, so you can use the arrows on the keyboard to fast-forward to a section you like, such as sports. Or even the weather. You know? What was the weather like on the day that you were born?"

  Hawg again volunteered to go first. He announced, "I wasn't born in Florida, but I was born in November, and I bet the Hawgs was in the sports news."

  Lori showed him how to access his birthday, saying, "Type it in here. Okay, here we go, sixteen years into the past." They quickly located the newscast and fast-forwarded to the sports. I didn't hear anything about the University of Arkansas. Hawg growled, "What kinda sports news is that?" Everybody soon had the idea, so Lori wasn't needed. Two kids at a time stepped up, punched in their birthdays, and watched part of a newscast.

  I hung back, standing near Mr. Herman. Mrs. Knight, who had mysteriously disappeared for a while, returned just as mysteriously and said to him, "You're all set," which he seemed to understand.

  After about twenty minutes, I saw that no one else was waiting to use the video vault. No one was hanging around it, either, so I stepped up and typed in a date. But the date was not my birthday. Instead, I typed in October 31. And it was not sixteen years into the past. It was seven.

  The broadcast came on immediately. The news anchors had dated hairstyles and clothes. The opening graphics looked dated, too.

  I listened to the lead story. It was about the weather. The anchorman said, "Our lead story this evening: Thunderstorms threaten Halloween revelers." I fast-forwarded through footage of lightning and heavy rain. I stopped when I saw a picture. It was my mom's picture. She was the second story. The man read off the TelePrompTer: "Thunderstorms were deadly for a local businesswoman tonight. Police say she was stabbed to death; that a large amount of cash was stolen from the Family Arcade near Ocean Boulevard; and that the storm provided cover for her killer to get away. We have live coverage at the site."

  The screen filled with the image of the Family Arcade, exactly as it used to be. The Arcade came back to me in a flood of memory. I took in every detail of the facade as the camera zoomed forward. Yellow police tape blocked the sidewalk in front of the store. The camera panned downward and focused on a stain on the sidewalk, a long, dark smear. A voice said, "This is where store owner Mary Ann Ritter's life ended early this evening. She is the latest victim along a block that has seen more than its share of violence this year."

  I couldn't focus on any more of the words as the camera remained, relentlessly, on that stain. Finally it cut back to the studio, where the anchor said, "Police are hoping for help from a store surveillance camera, or from a passerby, or from someone who might know the killer, to help crack this case. If you have any information about tonight's grisly murder-robbery, please call the Sheriff's Department Crimeline."

  The newscast moved on to a lightning strike, so I logged off and rejoined the class.

  I vaguely remember Mrs. Knight saying good-bye to all of us, and climbing back onto the bus. I had hoped to be alone for a while, but Mr. Herman again sat with me.

  I tried hard to focus on what he was saying. It was something like this: "Mrs. Knight should be renamed; she should be Mrs. Queen, shouldn't she? She's the queen of the phonies. Her exalted TV journalism job turns out to be on a tabloid trash show."

  I couldn't think of a thing to say. I couldn't even move. He added, "Now she wants to make it up to me about your phony newspaper class that never puts out a newspaper. She informed me that the news department is looking for an acid-tongued commentator. She has arranged an audition for yours truly."

  Mr. Herman finally picked up on my state of mind. He asked, "Roberta, are you all right?"

  I managed to say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Herman. I have something that I need to think about."

  "Of course." He let me ride in silence the rest of the way.

  I got off the field-trip bus just in time to catch my regular bus. Then I went home and did something I had not done in years. Probably in seven years. I cried. I sat on the couch in the living room, clutching a pillow, and cried for about thirty minutes. They say that's supposed to make you feel better, but it didn't work for me. I felt sick inside, like I had eaten poisoned food.

  It was time for me to start walking to the mall, but I couldn't. I could barely move. I didn't know what to do. Dad sometimes calls Uncle Frank and lies to him, saying he is too sick to go in. I figured I could try that, too.

  I called him and, I must admit, I really sounded sick. "Uncle Frank, it's Roberta. I'm not feeling well."

  "You don't sound well, Roberta."

  I lied to him easily. "I think I had better take the night off."

  "Absolutely. Do you need us to come over? To bring you anything? Do you need to go to the doctor?"

  "No. No. Nothing like that. I'm just really worn-out and feeling under the weather. Dad can take care of me if I get worse."

  "He's there?"

  "Yes."

  "I thought I just saw him up by the office."

  "He's been in and out, taking care of me."

  "Okay. Take as much time as you need."

  "Okay." I was about to hang up when Karl picked up the phone at the front. He said, "You sick, cuz?"

  "Yeah."

  "Kristin is, too."

  "Oh yeah?"

  There was a long pause, like Karl had forgotten I was there. But then he said, "Hey, some guy from Antioch keeps calling for my dad, but my dad said he's not here. What do I do?"

  "Act like you're crazy."

  "Okay."

  Karl hung up, and I just sat there, unmoving. I sat for hours, trying to get back to this morning, to the time before I had seen that stain. The phone rang at 8:30. It rang again at 8:35, and again at 8:40. I finally picked it up and heard Mrs. Weiss's voice say, "I asked your uncle where you were. He said you were sick."

  "Yes, Mrs. Weiss. But I'm feeling better now."

  "You should stay with me tonight. You can't be by yourself if you're sick."

  "My dad is here."

  "Oh? Is that right?"

  "Yes."

  "Put him on."

  "I—I didn't mean right now. He will be here."

  "Pack an overnight bag. I'll come pick you up after I close."

  "I don't know, Mrs. Weiss—"

  "Roberta, I don't want you alone when you're sick. You need to be over here."

  I didn't know what else to say, so I said, "Okay."

  "I'll be there at about nine-fifteen."

  "No. No, don't come here. I want to walk. I need to walk."

  "Nobody needs to walk. Not down here. It's too dangerous."

  "But I really need the air."

  "Fine, then, walk. Pack a bag and start walking now, though, before it gets any later."

  "I will." Mrs. Weiss hung up, and I set about gathering what I needed for tonight and tomorrow. I put it a
ll into a plastic supermarket bag and started off. I walked west down Everglades Boulevard into the last light of the day. Night had fallen before I even remembered the video vault. It had slipped clean out of my mind, the way Mrs. Knight had slipped out of the studio lobby today, without me noticing. And, like Mrs. Knight, it suddenly returned. I continued to walk quickly, with a purpose, but the image was back in my mind. It would not be denied. The image of a discolored sidewalk in the rain sickened me all over again.

  I stopped at the Route 27 intersection, standing still, with my head drooping down. I listened to the dangerous whir of the traffic just two feet away. It was a terrifying chaotic sound. I sensed when the light changed, and I started to cross. Then I sensed movement, a menacing white blur to my left. A white station wagon turned onto Route 27, and I was right in its path. I stopped and looked at it, waiting for it to hit me. The woman behind the wheel reacted frantically, slamming on the brakes, her headlights stopping just inches from my knees. The woman threw both hands outward, bugged her eyes at me, and screamed out the window, "What's wrong with you? Are you crazy?"

  I met her stare and held it, then I screamed back, "You have no idea what's wrong with me!" The woman rolled her window up and looked away. I continued across the highway.

  Most people do not walk to Century Towers, they drive. Pedestrians have to walk up to the guard booth, tell the guard their name, and say who they're visiting. The guard on duty tonight was an old guy with a name tag that said GEORGE.

  I stood outside the open window of the guardhouse until George finally acknowledged me. "Are you here to visit somebody?"

  "Mrs. Weiss, in three-oh-three."

  "Who?"

  I repeated, "Mrs. Weiss, in three-oh-three," and he buzzed up to Mrs. Weiss's. I added, "Tell her it's Roberta."

  "Who?" he snapped at me again, like I wasn't speaking loud enough to suit him. I thought, He would never talk like that to a grown-up. I repeated, "Roberta."

  "Roberta what?"

  I heard Mrs. Weiss's voice shriek at him through the speaker, "Your job is to tell me that it's Roberta, you lunkhead. If I want to know more about her name, I will instruct you to ask. Let her up this instant."