“By the time I got there, you were all full up,” I explain. “I figured I’d just get in the way.”
That’s when I notice that, in addition to his brown bag lunch, he’s carrying a folder with Hebrew writing on it.
“So, I’ve started working on my bar mitzvah stuff,” he tells me.
Well, duh—he spends every spare minute chanting away, trying to copy the prayers Rabbi Gold keeps sending him. He’s at it in homeroom, the cafeteria, even while paper-chaining. The rabbi texts him audio clips, and Link follows along on papers with the Hebrew blessings spelled out phonetically. “And … ?” I prompt.
“It’s harder than I thought. Because it’s a whole other language and all that.”
“Nobody’s making you do it,” I remind him.
He looks stubborn. “I’m making myself do it. It’s important to me. And since you’ve already been mitzvahed—or whatever they call it—”
I fold my arms in front of me. “They call it becoming a bat mitzvah. It isn’t something that happens to you, like getting struck by lightning.”
“Anyway,” he persists. “I figured you could help me out.”
“A bar or bat mitzvah is the happiest day in a Jewish kid’s life,” I tell him. “You know why that is?”
“Well, it says on the internet that you get a lot of presents, but that doesn’t really apply to me.”
“It’s not the presents. It’s the fact that it’s over. Done. And you don’t have to do it ever again. So I can’t help you, because the minute I finished my own, I deliberately erased every trace of it from my brain.”
He doesn’t smile. A Jewish kid would smile, but Link isn’t your average Jewish kid.
“The problem is I’ve got no one else to ask,” he says. “All my Jewish relatives—I mean, the ones I would have had—”
Never got a chance to be born, I finish in my head. The Holocaust took care of that. I feel lower than snail slime.
“I’m just kidding.” I sigh. “I’ll help you any way I can.”
I wish the six hundred Link Rowley worshippers in this school could see their Big Man on Campus practically groveling with gratitude.
So I get my lunch and sit down at a secluded cafeteria table with the most popular boy in the seventh grade. For Hebrew lessons. Every girl in the big room stares in envy. If they only knew. Pamela and Sophie glare at me from their spot opposite Jordie and Pouncey, their eyes shooting sparks.
I wasn’t lying about blocking my Hebrew education from memory, but it’s amazing how fast it comes back. The prayers aren’t quite songs, but there is kind of a chanting melody to them. I try to help Link with the tune, and he struggles to get the hang of it.
I have to say I’m a little bit impressed at how hard he’s working. Part of me always believed that this whole bar mitzvah thing was kind of a goof for him. He has that reputation. The school halls echo with tales of his hilarious pranks, pulled off with the faithful Jordie and Pouncey at his side—the snowball-filled-with-peanut-butter caper; the salt-in-the-teachers’-room-coffee affair; the lard-in-the-parade-route incident. It’s reached the level of legend around here. But Link seems to be 100 percent serious about learning his part for December 4. No matter how bad he does, he buries his face in his papers, cranks up Rabbi Gold on his phone, and gives it another try.
As we work, I notice that kids are getting up and rushing to the cafeteria windows. I peer outside, where a crowd is forming on the front walk. My heart sinks. Another swastika. It was only a matter of time before somebody stuck one right on the front of the school, where it’s impossible to hide it.
I look again. The spectators are gathered around a short, youngish man who is walking from his car, which is parked in the no parking zone where the buses pick up and drop off. He looks kind of familiar, but I can’t quite place him. Whoever he is, he seems to be a big draw. Kids are swarming all around him, coming from every door in the school. There are even a few teachers out there, trying—unsuccessfully—to herd their students back inside.
Link is oblivious to this, still buried in his bar mitzvah.
I tap him on the shoulder. “Do you recognize that guy out front? The one pulling the tripod out of his car?”
His brow furrows for a moment, then his eyes widen. “Is that ReelTok?”
“No way!” But it occurs to me that I’ve never seen the real Adam Tok—just the letterbox view from the top of the eyebrows to the bottom of the lower lip. I squint to squeeze his face into the tiny frame I’m used to on YouTube. The unibrow seals the deal. “You’re right!”
“But what’s ReelTok doing here?” Link asks in amazement.
I know the answer to that. “He’s here for our swastikas! He’s been making a big deal out of it for a couple of weeks now. I’ll bet he came to get a story for his YouTube channel. Look—he’s setting up a camera!”
“It’s my fault,” Link admits. “I showed my dad ReelTok screaming about Chokecherry, and now the chamber of commerce is threatening to sue him. Let’s get out there.”
We run through the cafeteria doors and join the throng around the famous vlogger. Besides the claustrophobic rectangle of face he shows the online world, Adam Tok is compact and squat, with curly black hair and stick-out ears. He’s casually dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and, for some reason, authentic leather cowboy boots with gigantic heels that boost him up to merely short.
He’s speaking into his camera when we get there. “It took a four-hour plane ride and three hours of driving on mountain roads, but here I am in God’s country, Anytown, USA. I haven’t seen any swastikas yet, but have faith, TokNation. Chokecherry won’t let us down.” He pauses the recording and surveys the crowd. “Is there a Caroline McNutt here?”
“That’s me!” Caroline pushes her way to the front. “Mr. Tok, on behalf of the student council—”
He cuts her off. “Show me this paper chain you’ve been posting on Instagram.”
“Oh, sure,” Caroline enthuses. “We’re working on it in the gym—”
Mr. Brademas storms across the lawn and confronts the vlogger. “You have no right to photograph my students. You can’t use those pictures without permission, and believe me, you won’t get it.”
ReelTok holds out his hand. “I’m Adam Tok—”
The principal’s face flames red. “I know exactly who you are, Mr. Tok, and you’re not welcome to come here and exploit our problems. This is the real world, not YouTube. You need a permit to film on school property. And if that’s your vehicle, I regret to inform you it’s illegally parked.”
Halfway through this speech, the blogger turns on his camera and swivels it toward Mr. Brademas. “Here’s Nicholas Brademas, principal of Swastika Middle School, trespassing on freedom of the press,” he narrates.
“Students,” Mr. Brademas addresses us. “Get inside the school. Immediately.”
A few kids start to straggle back to the building, but most of us just stand there, fascinated. The principal may be in charge, but ReelTok is a celebrity.
A police car is coming up the street followed by a tow truck marked CHOKECHERRY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS. Mr. Brademas hurries to the curb to confer with the officer.
The blogger is about to get his car towed, and maybe even be arrested, but it doesn’t seem to bother him much. I guess when your job is to get attention on the internet, all publicity is good publicity.
“Come on,” Link tells me. “Let’s go do some more work on my bar mitzvah.”
“Bar mitzvah?” ReelTok pulls a notebook from his pocket. “My research shows only one Jewish student at this school, and it’s a girl.”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Link explains.
The blogger beams at him. “I like long stories.”
There’s a loud clunk as the tow truck operator hooks a chain to ReelTok’s rental car.
The blogger pulls his camera off the tripod and makes sure to get the whole thing on video.
“That’s what I love about small to
wns,” he narrates. “Everyone’s so friendly.”
From the YouTube channel of Adam Tok
Interview with Lincoln Rowley
REELTOK: Rowley … Rowley. Any relation to George Rowley from the Chokecherry Chamber of Commerce? He’s planning to sue me, you know.
LINK: Yeah, sorry about that. He’s my dad.
REELTOK: Don’t apologize. I love being sued. It gets me headlines. I love headlines. Headlines mean followers, and followers mean ka-ching, ka-ching.
LINK: He gets really touchy about anything that makes the town look bad.
REELTOK: Like an army of screwballs in sheets burning crosses.
LINK: That was a long time ago. Some people say it never happened.
REELTOK: I’d think you’d have a stronger opinion on that, considering you’re Chokecherry’s newest Jewish citizen.
LINK: Yeah, should I tell the audience about my grandmother and the Holocaust?
REELTOK: TokNation is more than just an audience. They’re TokNation because they see through the idiotic phony blabbery of a world that’s ninety-eight percent baloney. I already told your grandmother’s story in my last video. So, Lincoln—
LINK: People call me Link.
REELTOK: Like the links in your famous paper chain! Not for nothing, but my video about the paper chain got quite a response from TokNation. But why don’t you tell us a little about this pretend bar mitzvah you’ve been planning?
LINK: It’s not pretend. It’s with a real rabbi in a real temple in Shadbush Crossing. My friend Dana has been helping me learn my part. She’s Jewish too.
REELTOK: I’ve got big news, Link. I’ve already talked to Rabbi Gold, and ReelTok will be live-streaming your bar mitzvah to TokNation and the entire world on December fourth! What do you have to say to that?
LINK: Wow, awesome. Kind of scary, though. If I mess up, millions of people are going to know.
REELTOK: Only the ones who speak Hebrew.
LINK: I guess. Still, I was nervous already. But this will be like being on TV.
REELTOK: Piece of cake for a kid with guts like yours. After all, you picked a pretty scary time to be Jewish in Chokecherry, Colorado, with so many swastikas popping up at your school. And even after all these weeks, nobody knows who’s doing it. Does that make you want to reconsider your decision?
LINK: Not really. You don’t pick who you are. You just are.
I deserve this.
Ever since I was four, when I tried to organize my fellow preschoolers into going on strike for better cookies at snack time, I’ve had the same problem. Apathy. Nobody cares. Sure, they’ll go to a dance or a party. But they won’t lift a finger to organize one. And if that means it never happens, that’s just fine with them too.
I’ve been in student government since the first grade. Getting anybody to join a club, or volunteer for a committee, or do anything at all is like having your teeth pulled out one at a time by needle-nose pliers.
Until now.
The paper chain project is a student government dream come true. Picture all the student participation I haven’t been able to drum up over the years cashing in at the same time—with interest.
You should see the gym. No, scratch that. You can’t see the gym—not much of it anyway. It’s a paper chain jungle. Michael says we’re up over sixty thousand links, and lengths of chain hang everywhere, doubled, tripled, and quadrupled up. When the volunteers come, it’s wall-to-wall people.
I watch the whole thing in motion—everybody busy; hundreds of kids banding together, working side by side to accomplish a single, worthwhile goal. Sometimes I’m so overcome with gratitude that I have to remind myself: This is my reward for all those years of begging and pleading, trying to whip up enthusiasm and getting nowhere.
I guess it’s a shame that it took swastikas to inspire the kids of Chokecherry to get up off their butts. But the end result is more than worth it. For the first time in my life, I’m proud of my school. A bad thing happened to us—is still happening to us. And we turned it into the ultimate good thing, times a million.
Not only that, but we’re getting kind of famous. Now that he’s here in town, ReelTok is vlogging about our school full-time. A lot of the local big shots—like Mr. Brademas, Mayor Radisson, and Mr. Rowley—aren’t too thrilled about it. It doesn’t reflect well on Chokecherry that somebody has been putting swastikas all over the school and we can’t catch who’s doing it.
The adults hate ReelTok so much that they won’t even let him onto school grounds. But Mr. Tok is pretty sharp. On his show yesterday, he said, “I’ve been thrown out of the White House by the Secret Service. I’ve been banned from Buckingham Palace by the beefeaters. Taylor Swift sicced her dog on me. The commander at West Point threatened me with a flamethrower. What do I care that some small-town principal doesn’t want me in his school? LOL.”
So he sets himself up in the little park across the street. He knows exactly how close to the campus he’s legally allowed to be, and he’s three inches past that, so the police can’t touch him. He’s got a giant beach umbrella and a folding chair with a cup holder that always has a Big Gulp from 7-Eleven, who lets him use their bathroom. And there’s usually a lineup of kids who can’t wait to be interviewed.
“Students,” Mr. Brademas tells us on the morning announcements, “I urge you all to stay away from the individual known as ReelTok. He’s only interested in sensationalizing the problems we’ve been having in order to attract viewers to his vlog. He’s presenting our school and our town in the worst possible light. The last thing any of us should be doing is helping him accomplish that.”
That day, the lineup in front of ReelTok’s tripod is twice as long. Who can resist the chance to be on one of the most popular channels on YouTube?
The principal’s right that ReelTok is pretty harsh in his videos about the swastikas. In his opinion, we’re either racist or stupid—stupid because our police can’t find one lousy kid, racist because maybe they’re not really looking. And the blogger never misses a chance to remind everybody that Chokecherry was once a hotbed of KKK activity. He mentions the Night of a Thousand Flames in every posting.
My mother thinks the problem with ReelTok is he’s too negative. “If he’s so interested in our town, he should be telling the world about the good things that are going on here. Like our annual mac-and-cheese-eating contest. That raised a lot of money for charity. Or the dinosaur dig in the mountains. The university says it might turn out to be one of the biggest finds in history. Why does everything have to be about swastikas?”
I don’t even try to explain it to Mom. Swastikas are news. And swastika news means paper chain news. Mr. Tok hasn’t actually seen the paper chain, since he’s banned from school property. But I texted him some pictures, and I’m glad I did. He used them in a few videos, and you wouldn’t believe the response. On ReelTok’s website, there are already more comments about our paper chain than any other topic. People love it. Sure, there are a few cranks who think the idea is stupid, or that we ripped it off from the paper clip school in Tennessee. Some say the whole thing is a waste of time, because we’ll never reach six million. But the vast majority are pro–paper chain. They say it’s the perfect response to the swastikas in our school. A lot of the messages come from middle school kids all over the country, encouraging us to keep working and never give up. Which is what we’re going to do. This is the kind of activity student government was born to do.
So when I hear my name on the PA system being called to the principal’s office, I’m psyched. It’s been nothing but good news ever since this project started. I know for a fact that Chokecherry Middle School has never seen this level of participation for an extracurricular activity. Even Mr. Brademas has to admit that the negative of the swastikas has been turned around by the positive of the paper chain. I figure at minimum I’m about to get a pat on the back. Who knows, for an achievement like this, I might even be elevated from seventh-grade president to president of everybody.
I can’t help grinning at the thought of Daniel Faraz’s face when he gets that news.
So I’m a little confused by the look of sympathy on the secretary’s face when she shows me into Mr. Brademas’s office. Michael is already there, sitting very small in a chair, looking devastated. The principal is gray-faced and grim. What’s going on? We’ve got the hottest middle school activity in the country right now, and everybody’s acting like this is a funeral!
I perch at the end of the empty chair, and Mr. Brademas gets right to the point. “I can’t commend you enough for what you’ve accomplished with the paper chain project. To reach sixty thousand links is impressive enough. To manage it so quickly is astounding. It makes it all the more difficult to have to bring it to a close.”
“A close?” My heart practically busts through my rib cage. “You mean stop? Why? We’re kicking butt—I mean, it’s going so well—”
“Too well,” the principal says. “In fact, we’ve run out of construction paper.”
“Can’t we borrow some from the other schools?” Even as I’m asking the question, I see Michael shaking his head sadly.
“We already have,” the principal informs me. “We’ve used every scrap of construction paper in the whole district. And there’s no money in the budget to purchase more.”
“We can fundraise!” I squeak. “We’ll sell raffle tickets! And scented candles! And chocolate bars! I’ll sell my bike! I’ll do anything! Please don’t cancel the paper chain!”
“Sorry, Caroline. It’s already done.”
And just like that, it’s over—the greatest student government project in the history of school. Believe me, I don’t let it go that easily. I offer to go door-to-door for donations and pass the hat around the cafeteria. I beg and whine and even cry a little. What’s so hard about raising money? The principal’s gold cuff links alone would bring in hundreds! But he’s a mule, and eventually, I’m so upset that I don’t know what I’m saying anyway.
Out in the hall, Michael tries to cheer me up. “It was pretty cool while it lasted. We’ve got a lot to be proud of.”
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