Sure enough, when I make my way to the library after last period, the chairs are filled and there are even a few standees at the back. It isn’t the vast mob scene I’d been hoping for, but there must be forty kids, maybe fifty. I get a little teary-eyed at the sight of them. This is what school government is about—students uniting to take on a tough problem that affects all of us. Okay, I understand that most of them only came because of the rumors I started about Link. The important thing is they’re here, so I’ve got them.
Only … I scan the room … where is Link? I see Dana sitting next to Michael and Andrew. Tabitha came. So did Sophie, who’s with Jordie, Pamela, and Clayton Pouncey. They’re standing next to the door, probably so they can make their escape if the meeting isn’t exciting enough. Come to think of it, a lot of the attendees are peering expectantly into the hall. If Link doesn’t show, I have a feeling I’m going to be alone again. I consider asking Mr. Brademas to lock the library doors from the outside, but that might violate the fire code. Bummer.
Daniel Faraz, the eighth-grade president, leans over to me. “What’s the deal, Caroline? You said Link’s going to be here.”
I’m panicking now. “I never told you that.”
“Well, no. But you told Tabitha, who told Jeffrey, and he snapchatted Lucas, who told me.”
I’m sweating big-time. I have no answer. But at that moment, Link strolls in, the school hero, fashionably late. There’s an audible sigh of relief in the room, most of it from me.
Mr. Brademas quiets everybody down and signals Daniel to start the meeting. Technically, he’s top banana as president of the eighth grade, even though he only ran for office to impress Suzy Kraft, who dumped him anyway, the day after the election.
We start off with this whole debate about whether or not the minibus that takes the mathletes to the big tournament in Denver has Wi-Fi or not. I feel like my head is going to explode. Somebody is drawing symbols of racial hatred all over the school, and we’re talking about Wi-Fi? I can see kids’ eyes glazing over; Sophie and her crew are inching toward the door. Oh no! I’m going to lose this crowd I worked so hard to gather.
I leap to my feet. “I move that the Wi-Fi question should be brought up at the next meeting. Anybody opposed? No? Motion passed!”
Everybody claps. I wasn’t expecting it, but I’ll take it. Daniel sits down, looking like he’s accomplished something.
Finally, it’s my turn. I had a long speech planned, but at the last second, I junk it. Nobody loves political theater more than me. But something really awful has been going on, and the best approach is just to be honest.
“Let’s talk about the swastikas. Yeah, I know everybody’s against them, but they keep coming.” I turn to the principal. “And, no offense, Mr. Brademas, but tolerance education isn’t working, and we can’t do it forever anyway. We have to try something new.”
I look out over the crowd. No one is leaving now. Kids seem interested and serious. Heads are nodding in agreement, and at least a dozen hands go up. I call on people to have their say—and it isn’t just Dana and Michael and Andrew, and the other minority students who have the most reason to feel threatened.
“You hear about this kind of thing happening in other places, but I never thought it would come to Chokecherry.”
“It makes everyone in our town look like idiots.”
“My parents are thinking about moving out of the county.”
“I hate coming to school in the morning. You never know what you’re going to find on what wall.”
“ReelTok is telling the whole internet we’re Nazis!”
A few kids think we’re overreacting. Why should we change our lives because of one bad apple? For all we know, the person behind this isn’t even a true racist, just a joker with a sick sense of humor. It isn’t our job to stop this; we should wait for the police to catch the perpetrator.
I don’t agree with everybody, but there are no jerks. All the opinions are thoughtful and sincere. I feel a surge of energy. This is democracy!
Mr. Brademas looks at his watch. “You all bring up excellent points. What we need now are suggestions—a plan of action. Where do we go from here?”
Democracy gets really quiet really fast. Even I can’t think of anything to say. You can talk about a problem all day long. But coming up with a solution? That’s a lot harder.
Dana speaks up. “Most of us aren’t bad people inside, but obviously there’s at least one. I wish it was different, but there’s nothing we can do.”
Coming from a girl everyone knows is Jewish, the words land hard.
“That’s not good enough.”
All eyes turn to Link. He’s the reason most of them are even here, but this is the first time he’s opened his mouth.
“It’s easy for you to say,” Link tells Dana. “Your folks will dig up a few more dinosaur bones and you’ll be gone. The rest of us have to live here. You see how bad it gets. First it’s swastikas, and soon everybody’s talking about the seventies and burning crosses and the KKK. The paper clips school in Tennessee is right near where the Klan got its start, and they didn’t just let it go. They did something about it.”
“You think we should collect paper clips too?” Jordie asks.
“During World War II, the people of Norway wore paper clips on their clothes as a protest against the Nazis,” Mr. Brademas puts in. “But in Whitwell, the point wasn’t so much the paper clips as the number. Who can even imagine six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust? The collection was to give the students a picture of six million of anything. Each paper clip corresponded to a life exterminated for nothing, and the enormity of the collection represented the vastness of the crime against humanity.”
“The paper clip idea was great,” I offer. “But we shouldn’t have to copy another school. Why can’t we come up with our own collection—something that represents our town?”
“How about chokecherries?” Daniel suggests. “Every bush in the foothills is full of them.”
Mr. Brademas steps in. “I love the symbolism, Daniel, but it isn’t practical. Paper clips don’t rot; berries do.”
“Ever eat those things?” Pouncey puts in. “It’s like a stress test for your plumbing.”
An animated babble rises from the crowd. Everybody has a story to tell about the dangers of eating too many chokecherries. They aren’t poison, but I can’t remember ever having such miserable cramps. Let’s just say that if all you do is choke on them, you’re getting off easy.
“Focus, people!” I exclaim in an effort to get the group back on topic. “If we put our minds together, we can come up with the perfect thing. First, it can’t be something that goes bad. Second, we need to be able to get six million of it, so it can’t be too big or heavy or expensive. And third, it has to show whoever’s doing the swastikas that we’re all connected as a school community, and one evil person can’t break us apart.”
“A chain!” Michael, who’s head of the art club, stands up, his face alight with excitement. “A paper chain—with six million links!”
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, I know it’s right. A paper chain! Interlocking loops of multicolored construction paper—six million of them for the six million Jewish lives snuffed out during the Holocaust. But it’s also a picture of unity, the interconnecting links like a long line of people standing arm in arm against intolerance and hate.
I’m not the only one who loves the idea. The crowd starts buzzing about it. It’s just so possible. We’ve all been making paper chains since we were in kindergarten!
“Now wait just a minute.” Mr. Brademas holds up a hand. “Let’s consider the logistics. Paper clips come in boxes of hundreds or more. A paper chain has to be made one link at a time. Cut the paper, form the loop, glue it closed. Six million is an awfully big number.”
“That’s why this is so perfect!” Michael exclaims. “We’d be doing something, not just buying something. It’s an even better way to experience how huge six m
illion is.”
“And it wouldn’t be just us,” I add. “The whole school would be helping.”
“We only have a little over six hundred students,” the principal reasons. “Even with everybody participating, that would mean each and every one of us would have to be responsible for ten thousand links of chain. It’s not realistic to think we could accomplish it.”
That dumps a bucket of water on the campfire, and the buzz in the room dies down a little.
It’s Link, of all people, who comes to the rescue. “Maybe that’s the whole point. Six million isn’t supposed to be easy. Can every kid in school make ten thousand links for a paper chain? I don’t know. But by trying, we’re going to understand just how many people were killed during the Holocaust … like my grandmother’s whole family.”
Mr. Brademas sits forward in amazement. “Like your grandmother’s—Surely you’re not implying—Would you explain that, please, Lincoln?”
At lunch, when Link said he was Jewish, I figured he was just being dramatic about how anti-swastika he was. But the story he tells us has all our jaws hanging open. Link’s grandmother is a Holocaust survivor! Even though it happened so many years ago and so far away, our school has a direct connection to the Holocaust! If that’s not a sign that the paper chain project is the way to go, I don’t know what is.
All eyes are on Mr. Brademas. The principal is sweating now. If he shuts this idea down after what we’ve just heard, he’s a cockroach doing the backstroke in the iced tea pitcher. Maybe I tricked most of the kids into coming by dropping Link’s name, but he’s turned out to be the star of the meeting.
When Mr. Brademas finally speaks, his words are slow and deliberate, like he’s choosing them very carefully. “So long as everybody understands that we’re probably not going to make it anywhere near one million, much less six, then I think it’s a worthy response to the person or persons who have been defacing our building.”
He probably has more to say, but everybody bursts into applause and cheers, drowning him out. At least a dozen people swarm around Link, battering him with backslaps and high fives. That’s a little annoying, since it was Michael’s idea, not his. Why do the popular people always get even more popular? But I have no complaints, because this was the best student council meeting I’ve ever had. To see a whole group of kids so excited about a school activity that they howl with joy when we get the go-ahead is a dream come true.
I get so wrapped up in the moment that I holler, “Three cheers for student government!”
It wrecks the mood. I get a lot of weird looks as people file out of the library. Even Mr. Brademas is shaking his head.
I don’t care. The paper chain project is on, and that’s the main thing.
Watching soccer practice brings me a pang that’s part longing, part regret, and part resentment. How can they have the team without me? Stupid, I know. Nobody’s going to cancel the season because of one kid, no matter how good he is. But it hurts to see Jordie on the field in my striker spot, doing passing drills with Erick Federov, the eighth grader who’s our captain.
I feel yet another flash of anger toward Dad. It’s his fault I’m on the sidelines. I have a brief vision of the semi sliding across the intersection into that pole, the showers of sparks from the damaged transformer. I wish I could say it was worth it, but it wasn’t. I’m always doing stuff like that because of how funny it’ll be, and it never is. You think I’d learn. The more hilarious the prank, the angrier it makes everybody, including me.
Anyway, if there ever was a sports season to miss, this is the one. I’m studying for my bar mitzvah and the paper chain is supposed to start tomorrow. So maybe this is for the best.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” comes a voice from over my shoulder.
Pouncey is flat on his back across the third row of bleachers, a half-open eye on me.
“Just because I’m off the team doesn’t mean I can’t come to support Jordie,” I tell him.
He sits up. “Yeah, but shouldn’t you be moaning and groaning in some foreign language?”
I laugh. “It only sounds like moaning and groaning. It’s really saying stuff. Rabbi Gold is teaching me what it means. That’s important, because I have to write a speech about it.”
He’s horrified. “A speech? Man, what else do have to do? Stick flaming bamboo under your fingernails?”
“I’m also learning a lot about the history of Judaism,” I admit.
“I used to know this kid named Link Rowley,” Pouncey informs me. “You would have liked him. If anybody asked him to do extra school, or sing in Hebrew, or make a speech, he would have laughed in their faces. And the last thing he ever would have thought of would be to get his whole school working on a paper chain.”
“Hey, you can’t pin the paper chain on me,” I retort. “It wasn’t even my idea.” That was Michael.
On the field, a whistle ends soccer practice, and Jordie heads toward us. From the track, Pamela and Sophie jog over.
“The rabbi’s here,” Pouncey announces with a thumb in my direction.
I feel my face flaming red. “Give me a break, you guys.”
Sophie gives me a probing look. “What’s the deal with you and Dana Levinson? Is she your girlfriend now?”
“Of course she’s not my girlfriend! I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“You eat lunch with her every day,” Pamela persists.
“So I can ask her questions,” I try to explain. “She had a bat mitzvah—that’s the girl version. This whole thing is so new to me. I need help.”
“So why do it at all?” Jordie says. “Stick with us. You don’t need help with what we do.”
“We’re basic,” Pouncey puts in proudly.
“It’s still me,” I say stubbornly. “This thing with my grandmother hit me really hard.”
“She isn’t Jewish either,” Jordie argues.
“Oh yeah?” I challenge. “If her parents hadn’t hidden her with the nuns and the Nazis had gotten hold of her, do you think they would have considered her not Jewish? Even me—okay, I wasn’t alive back then, but if I had been, what would have happened to a guy with my relatives? That Holocaust unit—that could have been me.”
They’re quiet for a long moment. Finally, Jordie says, “Dude.” It’s only one syllable, but it speaks paragraphs.
“That’s why I feel like I have to try this,” I tell them.
“Being Jewish,” Sophie finishes, still skeptical.
“Let’s just start with the bar mitzvah. I’ll figure out the rest of it as it comes up. For all I know, I’ll wake up on December fifth and it’ll be totally out of my system.”
“Just in time for Christmas,” Jordie observes optimistically.
“You’re not trying to double-dip, are you?” Pouncey asks suspiciously. “Like, you rake in the Hanukkah presents and then switch back on Christmas Eve.”
“It isn’t about presents,” I insist. “I don’t know what it’s about. But I need to find out.”
“Then we’re with you all the way,” Pamela assures me, and Jordie and Sophie chime in their agreement.
“Are you guys with me all the way?” Pouncey demands. “I’m starting my own religion and the Festival of Eating Sacred Pizza is coming up—your treat.”
It breaks the mood. Everybody laughs. Leave it to Pouncey to cap off the conversation with something nuts.
But I can’t help thinking back to Pamela when she told me how supported I am. The look on her face seemed to say she thought this was idiotic and she didn’t support it one bit.
For all I know, none of them do.
Me and my big mouth.
I’m the one who’s always complaining about everybody using the art club as a free poster-making service. And what do I do? Sign us up for six million paper chain links.
Okay, Mr. Brademas only gave us the green light because he’s positive we’re not going to get anywhere near that number. Even if we had the time and the ability, we’d run
out of construction paper long before we got close. There probably isn’t that much construction paper in all of Colorado. Six million links might as well be infinity links.
And when we don’t make it, who is everybody going to blame?
Me and my big mouth.
Actually, I think Mr. Brademas would have said no if it wasn’t for the story about Link’s grandmother. That blew everybody’s mind, including the principal’s. A whole family wiped out except for one little baby. No wonder Link wants to have a bar mitzvah. I don’t know how I’d react, but I think I’d want to find a way to connect to the heritage I never knew I had—especially when fresh swastikas are popping up all around me every day. The latest is on the ice cream freezer in the cafeteria. Everyone was more upset at not getting ice cream than they were about finding another you-know-what. Maybe we’re the wrong school to take on a six-million-link paper chain. Or maybe that proves we need the paper chain project more than anybody.
So far, nobody has the faintest idea who the swastika guy—or swastika girl—might be. The police have been hanging around the school a lot, interviewing kids and keeping their eyes open. Maybe their plan is to keep the pressure on until the guilty party breaks down and confesses. I’m not holding my breath. To paint one swastika on a wall, all you have to be is a jerk. But anybody rotten enough to do fourteen of them, and to keep on doing it even though the whole town is freaking out over them? That person isn’t going to lose their nerve just because there are a few cops around.
To be honest, I don’t have a lot of faith in Sheriff Ocasek’s investigation. For starters, I’m still a prime suspect, because I’m the only person who was ever caught alone with one of the swastikas.
“It’s not just that,” the sheriff tells me. “You’re the head of the art club, right? You’ve got the key to that supply closet. Lots of paint in there—including spray paint.”
“But—but—but—but—” Swastika Guy might be great at holding up under pressure; I’m pure mush. “Why would I do anything like that?”
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