by Erin Gough
When I am finished, I put the essays in the box and walk back to the east corridor.
I peek through the open doorway into the classroom. Miss Fowler’s next class is in progress. Her students are facing the front with their backs to the door. Like before, I wait for Miss Fowler to turn to write something on the whiteboard. Then I replace the box.
When I get back to the empty common room, I check that no one is watching before indulging in a tiny fist pump. The whole thing has taken a total of twenty minutes.
Six days later, I overhear a conversation between Liz Newcomb and two of Miss Fowler’s students, Inez Jurich and Daphne Chee. They are sitting on the couches in the common room, their legs up on the coffee table. This is a habit I find deeply unhygienic and would generally say something about, only I don’t want to draw attention to my eavesdropping.
“So this morning Miss Fowler hands me back my essay, and I look at it and I’m like, this is so not my essay. It’s got my student number on it but it’s totally not mine,” says Daphne.
“And I’m next to Daphne,” says Inez, leaning toward Liz, “and it’s the same for me! I wrote on traditional class distinctions in Emma, and the essay in front of me is on, I don’t know, Mr. Knightley and understandings of manhood or something.”
“That’s crazy,” says Liz. She is wearing her Tawney Shield uniform. Most people change out of their sports gear after lunchtime practice, but given the tennis captain badge emblazoned on the front of Liz’s outfit, there are no prizes for guessing why she never does.
“Next thing we know,” says Daphne, “everyone is calling out their essay topics and passing essays back and forth, and Miss Fowler is stalking around the room with no idea what’s going on. And then Beth Tupman comes over to me because Miss Fowler’s handed my essay back to her and hers back to me.”
Liz rolls her eyes, and Inez grins. They seem to be implying they don’t particularly like Beth, which is strange. Beth is one of the most popular girls in our year.
“So I get my essay back from Beth,” says Daphne, “and it’s got her student number on the front, but it’s my essay. And I look through it and there are all these complimentary comments in the margins, like ‘Bravo, Beth!’ and ‘Beautifully expressed, Beth!’ and ‘I love you like a daughter, Beth!’ Okay, I made up that last one, but you get the picture. Anyway, I turn to the back page, and Miss Fowler’s given the essay—my essay—eighty-five! I, like, never get eighty-five.”
Liz whistles.
“And it’s the same with me,” says Inez excitedly. “I get my essay back from Eileen Sarmiento, who Miss Fowler is totally in love with because she’s always regurgitating whatever comes out of Miss Fowler’s mouth, and I have an eighty, which is at least twenty marks more than I’ve had for an essay all year.”
“Wowsers,” says Liz.
“And then there’s a kind of wailing sound at the other end of the room where Beth is standing, and it turns out she got a seventy for her essay—the one that had my student number on it—which is actually a pretty good mark for me,” Daphne says confidentially, “but for someone like Beth, who is used to high distinctions, it’s like now she just wants to, you know, kill somebody.”
“So who do you think did it?” Liz asks. “Who swapped the essays?”
Inez and Daphne look at each other.
“Oh, we know who did it,” says Inez.
“You do?” Liz says.
“Uh-huh. Her initials are on the back of all the cover sheets.”
“It was Amelia Westlake,” says Daphne.
I resist another fist pump.
Liz smiles. “I’m starting to really like that girl.”
The following day at the lockers I find Beth telling Millie the same story.
“It’s a complete outrage! Eighty, okay. But seventy? I mean Binkie could get that mark, and he’s a labradoodle. And dead.”
“Have you heard about this, Harriet?” Millie asks.
I nod. I have no intention of lying to my friends. Not directly, anyway. “Inez and Daphne were talking about it yesterday.”
“Isn’t it appalling?” says Millie. “This could affect people’s university entrance scores! It could mean the difference between getting into their first choice of degree or their second.”
This is a horrifying thought. Just last week when we filled out the form, I put medicine down first and, on a whim, a bachelor of arts second. All I can say by way of explanation is that I am confident I’ll get the marks I need for medicine, so my second option hardly seems relevant.
Millie looks at her watch and panic contorts her face. “Is it ten to two already? Coach Hadley will tear strips off me.”
“He’s back?” I ask, trying to conceal my shock.
Millie nods. “Since Tuesday. We spent half the lesson looking at his photos from Seoul. They had an Olympic reunion thing there. His wife and kids got to go, too. It sounded amazing.”
I stand very still. I can hardly believe what I am hearing. There I was, imagining Coach Hadley was having some quiet time to reflect upon the thoughtlessness of his actions—alone in a room, perhaps, a dark room without any natural light—when in fact he has been living it up with his whole family in the sunshine overseas!
“World to Harriet,” says Beth, waving a hand in front of my face.
“Sorry, were you saying something?”
“I was asking whether you’ve had a chance to talk to Arthur yet about You Know Who.” She plays an imaginary keyboard with her fingers.
I am so distracted by the news about Coach that it takes me a second to work out what she is talking about. “James? Oh! No. Sorry, I forgot.”
This isn’t strictly true. It has occurred to me numerous times to ask Arthur about James and whether he might be available for an invitation to the formal from Beth, but something always stops me. “I’ll ask tonight,” I promise.
I open my locker, still thinking about Coach Hadley. So, he was never suspended. Quite the opposite, it appears.
“Seventy percent. It’s unbelievable,” I hear Beth mutter.
If he wasn’t suspended, has Rosemead addressed the cartoon’s concerns in any way at all?
I put a hand on my chest. Breathe, Harriet. Principal Croon is doubtless conducting an investigation behind the scenes. Innocent until proven guilty—isn’t that the rule?
“The problem is teachers like Miss Fowler have so much power,” Millie remarks. “It’s like being in a concentration camp or something.”
“Exactly,” Beth says.
An idea occurs to me, something that—unlike our cartoon, apparently—is bound to result in an immediate response from the school. I draw my head out of my locker. “Why don’t you get your parents to complain about what happened with your marks?”
At this suggestion, Millie grows enthusiastic. “You should definitely do that. Or get your dad to write an article in his paper about it. Or I’ll tell my dad to mention it in parliament.”
Beth nods, thinking it through. “I should, shouldn’t I? I can’t just let this go. I’m one of Rosemead’s top students!”
The two of them begin an intense discussion.
I gather my books.
chapter 13
WILL
You know how in crime shows the police pin up all the information they’ve collected about a murder victim and draw lines to connect them to possible suspects? On Thursday morning that’s what Nat’s whiteboard looks like, except the name that all the lines run from is not some murder victim’s. It’s Amelia Westlake.
“Everything I’ve heard suggests Fowler had no idea about the essay swap until it was too late,” says Nat, pacing in front of the whiteboard. “Which means whoever Amelia Westlake is got her hands on the essays before Fowler marked them. But how?”
I haven’t seen her this worked up since the Messenger’s printing company raised its rates. “Maybe they broke into her office,” I suggest.
Nat shakes her head. “Possible, but unlikely. She always
keeps it locked.”
Duncan comes in with a mug of coffee for Nat. She takes a sip. “Needs more milk.” She hands it back. “Know what I was thinking?”
Duncan wrestles with the broken door latch and goes out again.
“What?”
“You know how whenever Fowler collects essays she gets us all to put them in a box by the door?”
“Yes.”
“And how on Thursdays she’s in that classroom with back-to-back classes the whole morning?”
I click my fingers as if something just occurred to me. “You think someone waited until class finished and then took off with the box?”
Nat nods. “Then swapped the essays, and replaced the box, all while she was in the room.”
“Which means it probably happened in fourth period, when you and I were in legal studies,” I say. “That was the only time between when the students handed in the essays and lunch, when Fowler would have collected the box.”
“Exactly.” Nat purses her mouth to indicate her high level of regard for my reasoning. “So anyone we can account for in fourth period I can cross off the list of potential suspects. And I’m pretty comfortable narrowing the focus to year-twelve students, given the whole thing was targeted at a year-twelve class. If we narrow it to Anglo students, we cut down the possibilities again.”
“What makes you think Amelia Westlake is Anglo?” I say, surprised.
“It’s obvious,” says Nat. “Someone wanted to come up with a generic name that wouldn’t be picked as fake. For Anglos, an Anglo name will always be what they consider generic.”
I realize she’s right. I never thought of using anything but. I doubt Harriet did, either.
“Unless…” Nat looks thoughtful. “Our year group is what? Seventy percent white? Seventy-five?”
“Around that. Why?”
“I’m just thinking. If it was me behind this hoax, I’d want to maximize the number of suspects.” Nat nods to herself. “We need to keep the search broad.”
I breathe a silent sigh of relief.
“Then again…”
Nat certainly knows how to keep me on my toes. “What is it?” I ask.
“Think about it,” she says. “Fowler’s marking practices are shocking, but you know what’s worse about Rosemead’s English Department than Fowler’s marking practices, in my opinion?”
She doesn’t wait for me to guess. “Its perverse obsession with the narrow and elitist Western literary canon,” she says.
“I could be wrong, but didn’t Amelia Westlake have a cartoon about that already?” I say, making an effort to sound uncertain.
Nat shakes her head. “The cartoon was about the underrepresentation of women writers on the syllabus,” she says. “But that’s only part of the problem. Would it hurt them to include some Walker or Adichie on our reading lists? Or, God forbid, some indigenous or Asian literature? Why didn’t Amelia Westlake target Rosemead for its lack of cultural diversity? Ask Daphne, say, or Zara or Prisha, and they’ll tell you how outrageous it is.” She bites her lip. “No. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Amelia Westlake is white.”
Damn her flawless logic.
“Names and identities—it’s an interesting question, isn’t it?” Nat muses. “I might even explore it in my sign-off this week.”
By “sign-off” Nat means her editorial. Magazines usually print editorials at the front, and newspapers usually have them somewhere in the middle. Nat likes to print hers on the very back page of the Messenger—that way, she can end with a pithy conclusion that will stick in people’s minds. “Think global, eat local,” for example. Or, “Let’s kill off live exports.”
Nat jots down a few notes. She drops her pen. Her fingers flit across my back. “God, investigative journalism is such a turn-on,” she says, a hand on my waist. I lean into her, but she stops and pulls back. “Actually, before we do this, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Okay.”
“Croon called me up to her office yesterday.”
My stomach squeezes. “The cartoons?”
“Yep.”
“I guess it was inevitable,” I say carefully. “What did she say?”
Nat holds up her thumb and index finger so there’s barely a gap between them. “That I am this close to losing my editing job for publishing a series of pseudonymous contributions. That unless I help her work out who was behind them, she’ll take me off the paper.” She grits her teeth. “And that she thinks it was you.”
I focus on projecting a calmness I don’t feel. “She told me the same thing. What did you say?”
“That I had no idea who Amelia Westlake was. And that if you were behind it, I’d know.” She looks at me steadily. “I wasn’t lying, was I, Will?”
“Of course not!” The false anger comes surprisingly easily. “She’s looking for an excuse to get rid of me. Last time I saw her she basically threatened me with expulsion because my marks weren’t up to scratch.”
“I can’t believe that woman,” Nat growls. “Then again, maybe I can. That’s exactly the kind of trick she’d pull. I’m sorry, Will.” She looks embarrassed. “Of course you’d tell me if you were Amelia Westlake. Anyway, we were in legal studies together when the last prank happened. But you understand I needed to check. A lot is riding on this for me.”
“Of course.”
I breathe in. Croon is going to take Nat off the Messenger if she doesn’t help her find Amelia Westlake. Knowing this, how can I keep our secret from Nat any longer? We’ve been such good friends for ages and now we’re…
Actually, the truth is that I’m not exactly sure what we are to each other right now. I haven’t told anyone about our kissing in the newsroom, and I don’t think Nat has, either.
I’m definitely into girls. That’s not the issue. I know that Nat is, too, as well as boys. Even so, I’m not sure how I feel about kissing her. Not that the precise nature of our relationship is relevant to the problem at hand. One thing is certain: Keeping Amelia Westlake a secret from Nat is unfair to her and could put her in the firing line with Croon.
I breathe out.
Then again, I can’t admit anything yet. At least, not until I’ve discussed it with Harriet. I owe Harriet that much after promising I wouldn’t say a word.
If only there was a way to confess to Nat and keep Harriet out of it. But how would I explain the essay swap happening at the same time I was in legal studies?
Even if I could work out a way not to implicate Harriet, confessing to Nat would mean the end of Amelia Westlake. Nat would make me promise to cease and desist. I know she would. She’d consider any further activity a further risk of exposure, and once Croon knew I was involved, she’d find a way to bring Nat down with me.
Thinking this through makes me realize that I’m not ready to give up on Amelia. Harriet and I are just getting started, and I know how invested Harriet is in this project. Even though my loyalty should be with Nat, the thought of disappointing Harriet kind of kills me. I don’t know why. Honestly? Harriet could benefit from some exposure to disappointment. But it’s a strong enough feeling to keep me quiet.
“Were you going to say something?” Nat asks.
“Oh. Just that I heard Hadley’s back,” I improvise. “Liz Newcomb mentioned it in math. Apparently he was on some Olympic reunion trip with his wife and kids.”
“Barf,” Nat says. She looks thoughtful. “You know what really gets me? That Croon’s so keen on finding out who drew that cartoon but not whether there’s any truth behind the cartoon’s claim. What she should really be doing is interviewing students about Hadley’s behavior.”
I agree, and reel off my usual list of gripes about the fascist state of Rosemead. Then Nat repeats her usual list, adding a few extras, so I come up with a couple of new ones to even the score.
“Now. Where were we?” She leans in to kiss me and I freeze.
Nat looks at me sideways. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. I just…”
“What is it?” Nat takes a step back. “Will, are you into this?” she asks. Her voice has changed.
“Of course!” I lean in again but she backs away.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” she says. “I’d be fine about it. Really.”
“But this is great,” I say, mustering my enthusiasm.
Nat tilts her head. “Are you sure?”
I look at her. “Are you sure?” I ask.
She hesitates. “Of course,” she says at last.
I wish I knew if she really was, but her face is a mask.
Is it my guilt about Amelia Westlake that’s getting in the way of this thing between us? Or maybe the problem is the newsroom. It’s where we always hook up, and it stinks of moldy sandwiches and dust. Not exactly the sexiest of venues. “Perhaps we should try doing this off campus some time?” I suggest on a whim.
Nat shrugs, smiling. “We could try that.”
“Then I’ll call you,” I say in my most seductive voice, wiggling my eyebrows.
She cracks up and gives me a friendly shove. “Get out of here, Everhart.”
chapter 14
HARRIET
At assembly on Tuesday I sit with Beth and Millie, as usual. In our prefect spots in the front row, Beth fills us in on the latest news about Miss Fowler.
“Making a complaint was a great idea, Harriet,” she says. “When I texted Richard what happened”—Richard is her father—“he was so riled he marched up to the school on the spot.” Her eyes are gleaming. “He demanded a meeting with Principal Croon, but apparently she was at some interschool principal love-fest, so he was stuck with Deputy Davids. Anyway, the Dep hauled Miss Fowler in while he was there and quizzed her about the whole thing.”
