The Wave

by Todd Strasser

  Laurie stopped and saw Brad coming toward her. “Oh, hi, Laurie, I didn’t recognize you from behind,” he said. Then he did The Wave salute.

  Laurie just stood there without moving.

  Brad frowned. “Come on, Laurie, just give me the salute and you can go up.”

  “What are you talking about, Brad?”

  “You know, The Wave salute.”

  “You mean I can’t go up into the stands unless I give The Wave salute?” Laurie asked.

  Brad looked around sheepishly. “Well, that’s what they decided, Laurie.”

  “Who are they?” Laurie asked.

  “The Wave, Laurie, you know.”

  “Brad, I thought you were The Wave. You’re in Mr. Ross’s class,” Laurie said.

  Brad shrugged. “I know. Look, what’s the big deal. Just give me the salute and you can go up.”

  Laurie looked up at the crowded stands. “You mean everyone in the stands gave you the salute?”

  “Well, yeah. In this part of the stands.”

  “Well, I want to go up and I don’t want to give The Wave salute,” Laurie said angrily.

  “But you can’t,” Brad replied.

  “Who says I can’t?” Laurie asked loudly. Several students near them looked in their direction.

  Brad blushed. “Look, Laurie,” he said in a low voice. “Just do the stupid salute already.”

  But Laurie was adamant. “No, this is ridiculous. Even you know it’s ridiculous.”

  Brad squirmed slightly. Then he looked around again and said, “Okay, don’t salute, just go ahead. I don’t think anyone’s looking.”

  But all at once Laurie didn’t want to join the people in the stands. She had no intention of sneaking anywhere to join The Wave. This whole thing had just gone insane. Even some of The Wave members like Brad knew it was insane. “Brad,” she said. “Why are you doing this if you know it’s stupid? Why are you a part of it?”

  “Look, Laurie, I can’t talk about it now,” Brad said. “The game’s starting, I’m supposed to let people into the stands. I got too much to do.”

  “Are you afraid?” Laurie asked. “Are you afraid of what the other Wave members will do if you don’t go along with them?”

  Brad’s mouth opened, but for a few seconds no sounds came out. “I’m not afraid of anyone, Laurie,” he said finally. “And you better shut your mouth. You know, a lot of people noticed that you weren’t at The Wave rally yesterday.”

  “So? So what?” Laurie demanded.

  “I’m not saying anything, I’m just telling you,” Brad said.

  Laurie was aghast. She wanted to know what he was trying to say, but there was a big play on the field. Brad turned away, and her words were lost in the roar of the crowd.

  Sunday afternoon Laurie and some of the staff of The Grapevine turned the Saunders’ living room into a newsroom as they put together a special edition of the paper devoted almost entirely to The Wave. Several members of the newspaper were not there, and when Laurie asked those present why, they seemed reluctant to answer at first. Then Carl said, “I have a feeling a few of our comrades would prefer not to incur the wrath of The Wave.”

  Laurie looked around the room at the other staffers, who were nodding in agreement with Carl’s assessment.

  “Sniveling, spineless amoebas,” Alex shouted, jumping to his feet and raising his fist above his head. “I pledge to fight The Wave until the end. Give me liberty, or give me acne!”

  He looked around at the puzzled faces. “Well,” he explained, “I figured acne was worse than death.”

  “Sit down, Alex,” someone said.

  Alex sat and the group returned to the job of putting together the newspaper. But Laurie could sense that they were all acutely aware of the absent members.

  The special edition on The Wave would include the story by the anonymous junior, and a report Carl had done on the sophomore who’d been beaten up.

  It turned out that the boy had not been hurt badly, only roughed up by a couple of hoods. There was even some uncertainty over whether it was over The Wave, or whether The Wave was just an excuse the hoods had used to start a fight. However, one of the hoods had called the boy a dirty Jew. The boy’s parents told Carl they were keeping him out of school and planned to visit Principal Owens personally Monday morning.

  There were other interviews with worried parents and concerned teachers. But the most critical article was an editorial Laurie had spent most of Saturday writing. It condemned The Wave as a dangerous and mindless movement that suppressed freedom of speech and thought and ran against everything the country was founded on. She pointed out that The Wave had already begun to do more harm than good (even with The Wave, the Gordon High Gladiators had lost to Clarkstown 42 to 6) and warned that unless it was stopped it would do much worse.

  Carl and Alex said they’d take the paper to the printer first thing the next morning. The paper would be out by lunchtime.

  CHAPTER 14

  There was one thing Laurie had to do before the paper came out. Monday morning she had to find Amy and explain to her about the story. She still hoped that as soon as Amy read it, she would see The Wave for what it was and change her mind about it. Laurie wanted to warn her in advance so she could get out of The Wave in case there was trouble.

  She found Amy in the school library and gave her a copy of the editorial to read. As Amy read, her mouth began to open wider and wider. Finally she looked up at Laurie. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I’m publishing it in the paper,” Laurie said.

  “But you can’t say these things about The Wave,” Amy said.

  “Why not?” Laurie asked. “They’re true. Amy, The Wave has become an obsession with everyone. No one is thinking for themselves anymore.”

  “Oh, come on, Laurie,” Amy said. “You’re just upset. You’re letting your fight with David get to you.”

  Laurie shook her head. “Amy, I’m serious. The Wave is hurting people. And everyone’s going along with it like a flock of sheep. I can’t believe that after reading this you’d still be part of it. Don’t you see what The Wave is? It’s everybody forgetting who they are. It’s like Night of the Living Dead or something. Why do you want to be part of it?”

  “Because it means that nobody is better than anyone else for once,” Amy said. “Because ever since we became friends all I’ve ever done is try to compete with you and keep up with you. But now I don’t feel like I have to have a boyfriend on the football team like you. And if I don’t want to, I don’t have to get the same grades you get, Laurie. For the first time in three years I feel like I don’t have to keep up with Laurie Saunders and people will still like me.”

  Laurie felt chills run down her arms. “I, I, uh, always knew you felt that way,” she stammered. “I always wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “Don’t you know that half the parents in school say to their kids, ‘Why can’t you be like Laurie Saunders’?” Amy asked. “Come on, Laurie, the only reason you’re against The Wave is because it means you’re not a princess anymore.”

  Laurie was stunned. Even her best friend, someone as smart as Amy, was turning against her because of The Wave. It made her angry. “Well, I’m publishing this,” she said.

  Amy only looked up at her and said, “Don’t, Laurie.”

  But Laurie shook her head. “I already have,” she said. “And I know what I have to do.”

  Suddenly it was as if she was a stranger. Amy looked at her watch. “I gotta go,” she said, and walked away, leaving Laurie standing alone in the library.

  Copies of The Grapevine had never been scooped up faster than they were that day. The school was abuzz with the news. Very few kids had heard about the sophomore who was beaten up, and of course no one had heard the story by the anonymous junior before. But as soon as those stories appeared in the paper, other stories began to circulate. Stories of threats and abuse directed at kids who, for one reason or another, had resisted The Wav
e.

  There were other rumors going around too, that teachers and parents had been to Principal Owens’s office all morning complaining, and that the school counselors had begun interviewing students. There was an air of unease in the halls and classrooms.

  In the faculty lounge, Ben Ross put down his copy of The Grapevine and rubbed his temples with his fingers. Suddenly he’d gotten a terrible headache. Something had gone wrong and somewhere in his mind Ross suspected that he was to blame for it. The roughing up of this boy was terrible, unbelievable. How could he justify an experiment that had such effects?

  He was also surprised to find himself disturbed by the football team’s embarrassing defeat by Clarkstown. It seemed odd to him that although he didn’t care the least about high school athletics, this defeat would bother him so. Was it because of The Wave? During the last week he had begun to believe that if the football team fared well it would be a strong argument for the success of The Wave.

  But since when did he want The Wave to succeed? The success or failure of The Wave was not the point of the experiment. He was supposed to be interested in what his students learned from The Wave, not in The Wave itself.

  There was a medicine chest in the faculty lounge, stocked with just about every brand of aspirin and nonaspirin headache remedy that had ever been invented. A friend of his had once remarked that while doctors as a group suffered from the highest incidence of suicide, teachers had to have the highest incidence of headaches. Ben shook three tablets from a bottle and headed for the door to get some water.

  But just as he reached the faculty room door, Ben stopped. Outside in the hall he could hear voices—Norm Schiller’s and another male voice he didn’t recognize. Someone must have stopped Norm just as he was going into the faculty lounge and now he stood outside the door talking. Ben listened from inside.

  “No, it wasn’t worth a damn,” Schiller was saying. “Sure it got them psyched up, made ’em think they could win. But out on the field they couldn’t execute. All the waves in the world don’t mean a thing next to a well-executed quarterback option. There’s no substitute for learning the damn game.”

  “Ross really has these kids brainwashed if you ask me,” the unidentified man said. “I don’t know what the hell he thinks he’s up to, but I don’t like it. And none of the other teachers I’ve talked to do either. Where does he get the right?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Schiller said.

  The faculty room door began to open and Ben quickly backed away, pushing through a door into the small faculty bathroom that adjoined the lounge. His heart was pounding rapidly and his head hurt even more. He swallowed the three aspirins and avoided looking at himself in the mirror. Was he afraid of who he might see? A high school history teacher who had accidentally slipped into the role of a dictator?

  David Collins still couldn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense to him why everyone hadn’t joined The Wave in the first place. Then there never would have been these hassles. They all could have functioned as equals, as teammates. People were laughing and saying that The Wave didn’t help the football team at all on Saturday, but what did they expect? The Wave wasn’t a miracle drug. The team had known about The Wave for exactly five days before the game. What had changed was the team spirit and the team attitude.

  David stood outside on the school lawn with Robert Billings and a bunch of other kids from Mr. Ross’s class looking at The Grapevine. Laurie’s story made him feel a little sick. He hadn’t heard anything about anyone threatening or hurting anyone and for all he knew, she and her staff had made it all up. An unsigned letter and a story about a sophomore he’d never heard of. Okay, he was unhappy that Laurie refused to be part of The Wave. But why couldn’t she and the people like her just leave The Wave alone? Why did they have to attack it?

  Robert, beside him, was getting really upset over Laurie’s story. “These are all lies,” he said angrily. “She can’t be allowed to say these things.”

  “It’s not that important,” David told him. “Nobody cares what Laurie’s writing or what she has to say.”

  “Are you kidding?” Robert said. “Anyone who reads this is going to get the completely wrong idea about The Wave.”

  “I told her not to publish it,” Amy said.

  “Hey, relax,” David said. “There’s no law that says people have to believe in what we’re trying to do. But if we can keep making The Wave work, they’ll see. They’ll see all the good things it can do.”

  “Yeah, but if we don’t watch out,” Eric said, “these people are going to ruin it for the rest of us. Have you heard the rumors going around today? I heard there are parents and teachers and all kinds of people in Principal Owens’s office complaining. Can you believe that? At this rate no one will get a chance to see what The Wave can do.”

  “Laurie Saunders is a threat,” Robert stated bluntly. “She must be stopped.”

  David didn’t like the sinister tone in Robert’s voice. “Hey, wait—” he began to protest.

  But Brian cut him off. “Don’t worry, Robert, David and I can take care of Laurie, right, Dave?”

  “Uh …” David suddenly felt Brian’s hand on his shoulder slowly guiding him away from the rest of the group. Robert was nodding in approval.

  “Look, man,” Brian whispered. “If anyone can get Laurie to stop, you can.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like Robert’s attitude,” David hissed back. “It’s like we must wipe out anyone who resists us. That’s the exact opposite of how we should approach this.”

  “Dave, listen. Robert is just a little overenthusiastic sometimes. But you have to admit he has a point. If Laurie keeps writing stuff like this, The Wave won’t have a chance. Just tell her to cool it, Dave. She’ll listen to you.”

  “I don’t know, Brian.”

  “Look, we’ll wait for her after school tonight. Then you can go talk to her, okay?”

  David nodded reluctantly. “I guess.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Christy Ross was in a hurry to get home after choir that afternoon. Ben had disappeared from school halfway through the day, and she had a feeling she knew why. When she got home she found her husband hunched over a book on Nazi youth. “What happened to you today?” she asked.

  Without looking up from his book, Ben answered irritably, “I left early. I, uh, wasn’t feeling well. But I need to be alone now, Chris. I have to be prepared for tomorrow.”

  “But honey, I need to talk to you,” Christy implored.

  “Can’t it wait?” Ben snapped. “I’ve got to finish this before class tomorrow.”

  “No,” Christy insisted. “That’s what I have to talk to you about. This Wave thing. Have you any idea what’s going on at school, Ben? I mean, let’s not even dwell on the fact that half my class has been skipping just to go to yours. Do you realize that this Wave of yours is disrupting the entire school? At least three teachers stopped me in the hall today to ask what the hell you’re up to. And they’re complaining to the principal too.”

  “I know, I know. And that’s because they just don’t understand what I’m trying to do,” Ben answered.

  “Are you serious, Ben?” his wife asked. “Did you know that the school counselors have begun questioning students in your class?” his wife asked. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Because frankly, no one else in school thinks you do.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Ben replied. “I know what they’re saying about me. That I’m crazy with power … that I’m on an ego trip.”

  “Have you thought that they may be right?” Christy asked. “I mean, think of your original goals. Are they still the same ones you have now?”

  Ben ran his hands through his hair. He already had enough problems with The Wave. “Christy, I thought you were on my side.” But inside, he knew that she was right.

  “I am on your side, Ben,” his wife answered. “But I’ve seen you these last few days and it’s like I don’t even know you. You’ve become s
o involved in playing this role at school that you’re starting to slip into it at home. I’ve seen you go overboard like this before, Ben. Now you’ve got to turn it off, honey.”

  “I know. It must look to you like I’ve gone too far. But I can’t stop now.” He shook his head wearily. “Not yet.”

  “Then when?” Christy asked angrily. “After you or some of these kids do something you’ll all regret?”

  “Do you think I’m not aware of that?” Ben asked. “Do you think it doesn’t worry me? But I created this experiment, and they went along. If I stop now they’ll all be left hanging. They’d be confused, and they wouldn’t have learned anything.”

  “Well, let them be confused,” Christy said.

  Ben suddenly jumped to his feet in frustrated anger. “No, I won’t do that. I can’t do that!” he shouted at his wife. “I’m their teacher. I was responsible for getting them into this. I admit that maybe I did let this go too long. But they’ve come too far to just drop it now. I have to push them until they get the point. I might be teaching these kids the most important lesson of their lives!”

  Christy was not impressed. “Well, I just hope Principal Owens agrees with you, Ben,” she told him. “Because he caught me as I was leaving today and said he’d been looking for you all day. He wants to see you first thing tomorrow morning.”

  The Grapevine staff stayed late after school that day to celebrate their victory. The issue on The Wave had been so successful that it was almost impossible to find an extra copy anywhere. Not only that, but teachers and administrators and even some students had been stopping them all day and thanking them for revealing “the other side” of The Wave. Already they had heard stories that some students were resigning from The Wave.

  The staff had realized that a single issue of the paper was not enough to stop a movement that had gained as much momentum as The Wave had that past week. But at least they had struck it a serious blow. Carl said he doubted there would be any more incidents of threats against non-Wave members—or any more beatings.

  As usual, Laurie was the last one to leave the publications office. One thing about The Grapevine staff—they were great partiers, but when it came time to clean up somehow they all disappeared. It had come as a shock to Laurie earlier that year when she realized what having the top position on the paper, editor-in-chief, really meant: having to do every little stupid job no one else wanted to do. And tonight that meant cleaning up after the rest of the staff went home.