Marcia looked over at Mr. R, who looked at me, all serious. “I don’t think anyone in this class would encourage a classmate to drink anything that wasn’t appropriate, am I right about that, Mr. Crockett, uh … Dr. Dan?”
“Yes sir,” I said, “there isn’t anything in Ten Plus that will cause any problems for anyone … and heck, that extra ten years thing is a pretty good deal.” I grinned and most of the people in the class laughed.
All three of my test pilots drank the stuff — Ben and Marcia in one gulp, Gail kind of sipping hers.
“That concludes my demonstration, class, except for the testimony of these three individuals, your classmates, who will report back to us in fifteen minutes with what I predict will be quite amazing findings. Thank you.”
The class applauded, including Mr. R. I wasn’t sure but I thought I’d seen him give a little nod in my direction. Of course I had no idea what my three guinea pigs were going to say. But I figured if the stuff tasted okay and didn’t actually make any of them feel bad, I just might get some decent reports. I mean, all there was in Ten Plus was Blast Off, which was the latest (and strongest) cola-flavoured energy drink, a couple of dissolved baby Aspirins, and some squares of melted milk chocolate. I knew it tasted good and I was counting on having that little shot of energy maybe get me at least one “Holy crap, Dr. Dan, the stuff really works.” And if it didn’t, so what — it was supposed to be a hoax, wasn’t it?
But what happened in the next fifteen minutes of the class kind of blew Ten Plus right out of the water, In fact, nobody, not even Mr. R, bothered to ask Marcia or Ben or Gail how they were feeling after the next presentation … the one that Patti Bailer gave.
Three
I thought Patti looked especially hot that day. Without trying. She was wearing this burnt orange up-to-the-neck sweater that did a better job of getting me excited about her … uh … upper torso … than the all-cleavage tops that some of the girls wore some of the time. And Jen wore all the time.
Not a lot of makeup. And Patti’s jeans were just the right tightness. Thing is, Patti was someone you could take home to the parents, but the guys at school would totally notice at the same time.
As I watched her move things around at the front of the room to get ready for her presentation I kept thinking how glad I was that no one had ratted to her about Diana and me. Every day that went by I figured I was a little safer. And every day that went by convinced me more and more that Patti was the one I wanted to be with and that the night with Diana had been totally stupid.
I knew that wasn’t what I was supposed to be thinking about at that exact moment but I couldn’t help it. This was the girl I was going out with and she looked hot.
Patti set her laptop on a front row desk, clicked it on, and turned to face us. She didn’t take a deep breath. She looked nervous but not terrified. One thing I’d learned about Patti Bailer: She was a confident person. She’d been shy at first but it wasn’t a scared-shy. Patti just didn’t talk if she didn’t have something to say. Like during those first few phone calls. I liked that about her. Actually, she could have run classes on talking (and not talking) for The Six. Especially Hennie and Jen. I figured their mouths started working at about the same time their eyes opened every morning.
Maybe it was partly because my own presentation was out of the way or maybe it was because it was this particular girl who was about to present, but I had a feeling this was going to be a very cool few minutes.
“We’ve heard about pictures in this class,” she started, “and we’ve been told they can be used to convey misinformation — and they can. For example … ”
Patti moved her mouse and clicked it twice. On the screen was the picture Mr. R showed us of him standing in front of the bus, looking like he was about to be hit. Patti clicked again and this time the same picture appeared, except there was a cute little dog standing next to Mr. R. Now it looked like both of them were about to be shmucked by the bus.
Click. Whoa. The third photo in the sequence very clearly showed Mr. R kicking the dog into the path of the bus while standing safely out of the way himself. After a few seconds of surprised silence everybody laughed at pretty well the same time and the whole class gave Patti a nice round of applause. It had been a pretty cool trick and it was funny. I glanced over at Mr. R. He was smiling, but he wasn’t applauding. And he didn’t look like he was having quite as much fun as the rest of us.
Up at the front, Patti defintely wasn’t smiling. Actually, she looked school teacher-ish. “Now we all know that Mr. Retzlaff was making a point — he wasn’t really trying to convince us that he’d been run over by a bus, any more than I was trying to prove that he actually kicked a dog in front of that same bus. The wonders of Photoshop, right, Mr. Retzlaff?”
A lot of us looked over at Mr. R. He gave a little smile and nod in Patti’s direction.
Patti smiled back at him then looked at the class. “Mr. Retzlaff (I noticed she never called him Mr. R) has told us that there have been times in our history when a certain group of people have furthered their own agenda by using misinformation — by convincing the rest of the world, through words or pictures or both — that they have been persecuted and victimized in order to pursue their goal of world domination. I agree that would be bad. In fact, if any group of people or even an individual, say a leader of some group, takes advantage of other people’s trust to mislead or misrepresent — to present something as truth that really isn’t — that to me is one of the greatest abuses of a position of authority and trust that can happen. But it actually, unfortunately, happens a lot. So let’s look at some famous examples of people who have done that …”
Patti returned to her computer and spoke over her shoulder as she tapped keys. A picture of a young guy — maybe thirty-something, pretty good looking, former high school basketball-star look to him. Patti hit another key and the picture changed. This one was of a fire — this huge walled-in area of some kind with buildings in behind and smoke pouring out of just about the whole place.
“Waco, Texas, 1993. A man named David Koresh. He was the leader of a cult group called the Branch Davidians that walled themselves into their compound and held off the authorities for several weeks. The stand-off ended with many of Koresh’s followers dying in this fire when the authorities went in to get them.”
Another click. Older guy in a sweater and ball cap that had UCLA printed on it. The picture changed. This was of an abandoned place, you couldn’t really tell where. No, not abandoned. Patti changed the image and zeroed in on one area — where a couple of guys and were manoeuvring what looked like a body bag. Next to the bag there seemed to be two more bodies. One looked like a kid — a little black kid.
“Jonestown, Guyana, 1978. James Jones convinced his followers to commit mass suicide by taking poison, but reports afterward said that some people were shot. It was thought that those who wouldn’t take the poison were shot by James Jones’ guards. These people died, just like the ones in Waco, Texas, because they were willing to believe totally and unquestioningly in the teachings of a trusted leader.”
Patti changed the picture. This one was hard to make out. It was a truck with something on the back, although it was pretty hard to tell what. “And then there’s that rather famous modern-day hoax — the one that led to a war in Iraq that took thousands of lives and is still taking them today; a war that was started because the American president and the British prime minister were able to convince their countrys’ citizens that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. It wasn’t, but that little fact didn’t stop all this …”
Patti clicked the computer keys a few times in rapid succession and horrible pictures came on the screen in a sort of collage. The pictures were changing so fast I couldn’t really keep up with what I was seeing. But it didn’t really matter. They were pictures all of us had seen on TV and in the newspapers. Blood-spattered bodies, burning cars, markets, restaurants, shops — all blown apart. Some of the pictur
es showed horribly dead and dying people, some of them soldiers or police, although it was hard to tell which.
I noticed something just then. Patti had had some music playing during her slide show, very softly up until now. The music had been getting louder for the last couple of minutes but now, suddenly, it stopped. On the screen was one picture — a little kid with blood all over his face. It was one of those black-and-white shots — like the ones Mr. R had shown before. Same time period, same part of the world — that’s what it looked like. I guessed he was a Jewish kid, but I wasn’t sure. Somehow this one image had a greater impact than all the ones of peoples’ bodies piled in ditches. I don’t know why that was.
Then the picture changed again and we were back to an ordinary looking guy — suit, tie, glasses, tan, nice smile. Patti had been looking at the screen, but now she turned to look at us again.
And suddenly Mr. R was at the front of the classroom, standing next to Patti and closing the lid on her laptop. “I’m afraid we’re getting into some political areas that really don’t qualify as hoaxes. This is all very interesting but we’ll have to bring this to a conclusion. Thank you, Patti.” Mr. R’s voice sounded different — flat, harder, kind of like parents sound when they’re making the “I just found your weed stash” announcement. The only other time I’d ever heard him sound like that was when I’d lost in the wrestling regionals.
“I have one more sequence to show the class.” Patti didn’t look like she was about to give in easily.
“I’m sure you do, but we’ll have to wrap it up now for the reason I just stated. And as I said at the outset, there is a time limit and you’ve exceeded that limit. So thank you, Patti. How about a nice hand for all of our presenters today.”
Patti hadn’t moved. There was a small amount of applause.
Mr. R was nodding. “I’m going to let you guys go a few minutes early today. Unit exam next day — open notebook. Then it’s on to the Cold War. Thanks everyone,” He smiled the big smile at us.
There were a few things about that day I didn’t get, at least not right away. When I asked Patti after class who the guy in the last picture was, she wouldn’t tell me. And the thing about the time limit. When Mr. R went up to stop Patti’s presentation, I looked down at my watch because I wanted to make sure I’d still have time to check in with my three Ten Plus testers. She was under the five-minute limit for sure.
And what was the deal with dismissing the class early? It kind of killed my big finale. I guess it didn’t matter though. When we got our marks after all the presentations were done, I got an A.
So did Patti.
Four
I had a lot on my mind, which is probably why that first time I saw the old lady they called Numbers didn’t seem like any big deal. I was with The Six — we were in town and I was leaning against the Biscayne listening to Hennie tell this joke about some guy trying to join the Mile High Club in a single-seater airplane.
He barely got the punch line out when T-Ho was suddenly standing tall and looking serious. “There she is.”
The laughing stopped and we all looked around.
Jen said, “There who is?”
Which I thought was a good question. I didn’t see anybody but an old woman shuffling across the street with a couple of grocery bags in her arms. I didn’t figure she was anybody who would get T-Ho all mega-focused.
I was wrong. “Numbers is what they call her.” He didn’t take his eyes off the woman as he spoke. “She’s nasty and there’s a lot of people who think somebody should do something about her.”
I looked again at the old lady. Nasty? Mostly she looked like she’d have barely made it over the curb when she finally got across the street.
I looked at T-Ho to see if he was putting us on. He wasn’t. His eyes still hadn’t left the woman as she navigated the street, looking like she was going to drop the grocery bags any second. I figured that, since T-Ho had lived in Parkerville forever, he must have seen the old lady before. I wondered if he always got this intense whenever she was around. Because right at that moment, T-Ho was real intense. No, that’s not right. Intense isn’t enough. The look on T-Ho’s face as he stared at the woman was pure anger … maybe even hate. I noticed Rebel was also paying big-time attention to the old lady, though he didn’t seem to be as pissed off as T-Ho.
And that was it. Eventually the woman disappeared into the drug store on the other side of the street and Hennie — I think he was mad that his joke got sort of cut off — launched into another one.
I kind of forgot the incident not long after that, mostly because I didn’t know who Numbers was and I wasn’t really interested in some old lady who didn’t amount to a whole lot in my life, even if she was “nasty.”
And like I said, I had some things on my mind. That was about the time things were getting sort of interesting between Patti and me — interesting and crappy. She knew about Diana and me — actually she’d known about it almost right after it happened. But she hadn’t said anything. We even went out a couple of times. I noticed she seemed kind of serious but I thought that was just Patti being Patti; she was usually pretty serious.
She hadn’t seemed mad or anything, although I noticed the physical stuff had pretty much cooled off. Then one night — as I was trying to get my head around a physics problem that reminded me how much better the world would be if nobody had ever invented physics — the phone rang. It was Patti.
“I was hoping maybe you could meet me in the park,” was what she said.
It was cold outside, maybe a couple of degrees above zero, but even if it had been minus thirty, I’d have slammed my physics book shut and been out the door before Patti could hang up the phone. Which is about the way it happened.
I got to the park first — it was about a block from the school — and walked around until Patti got there. For some reason, I was really nervous — first-date nervous.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.”
Then nothing. It was like those first few phone calls. And this time I hadn’t written down any conversation topics.
Even though it was cold we sat on a park bench, both of us shivering. I tried to pretend I wasn’t that cold but I don’t really think it was working. My teeth were chattering and I kept stamping my feet on the ground to keep them from turning to blocks of ice.
I wasn’t sure why Patti had wanted to have a conversation that could result in major freaking frostbite, but she leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the mouth and right away I didn’t give a damn about the cold.
“It was my fault you didn’t get to finish your hoax presentation,” she told me. “Retzlaff wanted to end mine and he couldn’t do that without losing the end of yours too. I’m totally sorry.”
“No worries,” I grinned at her. “We both got an A so it doesn’t really matter.”
“Actually it does,” Patti shook her head. “It matters a lot.”
I wasn’t sure why but I didn’t want her to think I was like major dull, so I just nodded my head. “I still don’t get what happened — why Mr. R cut you off that day.”
This time she told me. “The guy in that last picture?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s a Holocaust denier. Famous for it, actually. He’s a doctor and was even elected to office in Saskatchewan. Twice. Wrote a couple of books about how the Holocaust didn’t really happen — how it’s all a big conspiracy … yeah, pretty famous guy.”
“And you think Mr. R shut you down because you put that guy’s picture up there?”
Patti shook her head. “No, he shut me down because he was afraid of what I was going to say about the guy.”
I couldn’t see that. I couldn’t see Mr. R being afraid of something like that. But I nodded again.
Then we talked about Mr. Saarkahn — Patti had gone to the funeral a couple of days before. “There were a lot of people — a lot of kids from school.”
I was still thinking about whether I should be explaining why I
hadn’t gone to the funeral when she said, “I guess we won’t be going out anymore, Andy.”
The way she said it, it sounded like maybe her parents didn’t like me or something. But, of course, that wasn’t it.
“I wanted to see if I’d be okay with what you did, but I guess I’m not.”
“What did I do?” A stupid thing to say, I know, but she kind of caught me by surprise and I guess I was hoping that by some miracle she was talking about something else. Something like I’d forgotten to phone her when I said I would or I’d accidentally insulted her sister — one of those things you can apologize all over the place for and maybe she gets over it. But it wasn’t any of those things.
“Diana told me about it the day after the party.” Patti’s face got kind of puckered and scrinchy, but I could see she didn’t want to cry. “You don’t have to say anything. In fact, I’d rather that you didn’t. I thought maybe I could deal with it. But I can’t get it out of my head.”
She handed me my math book, which would have been hilarious if it wasn’t part of me losing Patti. Most guys get their ring back or some very cool item that meant a lot to both people. All Patti had of mine was my math textbook. And now as she was ending it with me she remembered to give it back. Totally thorough and thoughtful right to the end.
Then she got up and walked off. And I realized that I’d said exactly four words — what did I do — as my girlfriend was breaking up with me.
Girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.
Damn.
As I thought about it later — that’s all I thought about — I figured it out. Diana McNair, who had still hated my guts, definitely got the last laugh. The ultimate revenge. But what girl does that? What girl goes to bed with you so she can wreck your relationship with somebody else? Okay, maybe in movies.
Numbers Page 10
