The Year of the Gadfly

by Jennifer Miller

  Remembering that Hazel’s moods could swing wildly, I tried not to worry about this dig. “I thought about presenting myself as an only child,” I said. “I mean, that’s what the West is for, right? Reinventing yourself. But any time I was put on the spot, I just couldn’t do it.”

  Hazel sped past a gabled house whose lawn looked pristine even at the onslaught of winter. I couldn’t tell if she was still listening or not.

  “Isn’t it ridiculously rich out here?” I said, trying to deflect her criticism elsewhere. Hazel didn’t answer.

  We visited a gallery showing Lorna Greenburg’s latest artwork. The show featured silver tool-like sculptures resembling the torture implements of a sadistic dentist.

  “You could do some damage with those,” I said, looking at the sharp, flashing objects.

  “Like mother, like daughter,” Hazel murmured. I asked what she meant and she looked at me like she’d just surfaced from a trance. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  We walked out of the gallery. “Let’s do something for old times’ sake, Jonah. Something childish.” Her cheeks were pink with cold and her hair fell in curls from beneath a bright blue snow hat. Her teeth matched the snow.

  “You’re gorgeous,” I said, but Hazel feigned annoyance and shook her head.

  We bought Chanukah memorabilia at a drugstore and then went to a boutique that sold expensive Christmas tchotchkes. Hazel chatted up the cat-hair-covered saleswoman as I infiltrated the Santa Claus figurines and gilded ornaments with dreidels, gelt, and Stars of David confetti. Under the cover of a six-foot synthetic Christmas tree, I strung up a HAPPY CHANUKAH banner. I snapped some photographs and then took Hazel by the hand. “Shabbat Shalom!” she called to the quizzical clerk as I pulled her out the door, the two of us giggling like kids.

  On the way back to Nye, I told Hazel about my students: the snobby ones, the wickedly smart ones, and, of course, Iris. I was surprised to learn that Iris had found her way to the Historical Society on assignment for the Oracle.

  “Sounds like she has a crush on you,” Hazel said after I explained Iris’s interest in the Academic League and the way she was always spying on me in class.

  I protested, but Hazel was adamant. “Girls get carried away, Jonah. Especially girls as lonely as Iris. You need to watch yourself.”

  I wouldn’t have described Iris as lonely—a loner, maybe. “Girls are perplexing,” I said. “They’re like an alien species.”

  “How so?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The insanely complicated sociopolitical organizations they build. The weird substances they excrete, the bizarre protuberances.”

  “You’re going to talk about substances and protuberances in the context of women?”

  We pulled into the center of town, and I was trying to garner the courage to ask Hazel home with me. The bright blue color was draining from the sky, a stretch of gray encroaching like a storm front. I wanted to wrap both of us up in a large blanket, but Hazel leaned over and kissed my cheek. It was time to say goodbye.

  “I’ll call you,” I said. “You promised me a PBR.”

  “Dammit,” Hazel moaned, with mock disappointment. “I guess I did.”

  Iris

  November 2012

  THANKSGIVING MORNING I packed myself a bagged lunch, put on my snow boots, and told my mom I was going to Hazel’s house. “Why not invite your friend Hazel over here?” she asked. And I thought, Not a chance.

  People were taking advantage of the unusually warm weather. I passed husbands stringing up Christmas lights and kids building snowmen. At a park called Potter’s Hill, I stopped to watch the little kids in puffy coats riding their silver saucers and plastic sleds. They’d come shooting down the hill, scarves flying, and crash-land in the snowbanks. For a few minutes they wouldn’t move, just lie on their backs, playing dead. Then all of a sudden they were up again, magically resurrected, and climbing the hill with these dutiful, earnest expressions, their sleds trailing behind them like security blankets.

  I walked toward the hill, found a patch of snow just off the sledding tracks, and lay down. Above me the sky was milky blue; the snow under me felt like a firm mattress. Dalia would have liked this place. Back in Boston, she and I used to lie on our backs—on the grass or the snow—and watch the clouds overhead. Sometimes we’d lie there for an hour or more thinking our own thoughts. Could she see me now? Did any part of her remain in the universe? It would have been nice to think of her and Murrow together somewhere, but I knew that wasn’t possible.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the kids shrieking and playing. I wondered if Potter’s Hill was actually a potter’s field, where people used to bury their unidentified dead. If so, were all these kids sledding over a bunch of bones? At this very moment, somebody could be decomposing just a couple of feet beneath me. Mr. Kaplan told us that with all the dead skin cells and falling leaves, the world is dying as much as it’s living, even though we only like to consider the living parts. He said to train our minds to see past façades—to let our eyes penetrate. Sometimes he’s so clueless. A teacher shouldn’t use the word “penetrate” with freshmen. Ever.

  Still, I considered his advice a lot after Prisom’s Party kidnapped me. I had awakened in the Oracle archives curled on the floor. My head felt stuffed with cotton balls, and my wrists were still sore. I’d missed three periods. I had never skipped a class before, and my small act of defiance thrilled me. Had I dreamed about the kidnapping, the pigs, Thelonius Rex? But then I felt something around my neck: a silver flash drive hanging from a piece of string. I pulled my laptop out of my briefcase and inserted the drive. It was named “Chestnut_Tree,” and inside were documents titled A and B. Document A contained a short note.

  Our email: W3AR3WATCH1NG@gmail.com

  Your email: littleflower1998@gmail.com. Password: Murrow.

  Use these addresses to submit your intel or contact us on gchat. You are NOT to share this information with anyone, and you MUST be discreet. Contact us only when you are alone and NEVER during class.

  Did they think I was stupid? I was sure I’d seen as many spy movies as they had. I opened document B.

  Your assignment, should you choose to join us, is to figure out Mr. Kaplan’s secret. To start, do a thorough search of the Oracle archives and see what you can find. You’ll want 1998 through 2002. We hope you’ll choose the path of Charles Prisom. Sincerely, Prisom’s Party.

  Just hours before, I’d known nothing about Prisom’s Party. But suddenly I was on the inside. Suddenly I had the chance to be part of something spectacular. But then I thought about my aching wrists, and the sound of Syme’s centipede voice, and the flash mob and the assignment I’d been given to uncover Mr. Kaplan’s secret. WWEMD? But Murrow didn’t answer. He seemed less accessible to me in the Trench, as if the place had shoddy ghost reception.

  I stood up from the archive floor. My head ached, but soon an idea began to rise up, as though from a deep pool. It floated toward the light, breaking the surface and sparkling before me. I would investigate Mr. Kaplan for Prisom’s Party, and if my doubts about them were unfounded, I would serve them loyally. But if I discovered they were using me for some evil end, I would expose them. And this time, I wouldn’t bother with Katie Milford. This was a story for the Nye County News—at the very least.

  I sat for a minute in the archive room, waiting for this decision to settle, to see how it felt. It wasn’t long before a lot of murky seaweed began clotting up my brilliant plan. Murrow once said that a journalist can’t make good news out of bad practice. Well, lying to the Party seemed like pretty bad practice, and blackmailing Mr. Kaplan definitely seemed wrong. On the other hand, didn’t investigative journalists lie all the time? And didn’t Charles Prisom instruct the Party to take all necessary means to protect itself? Weren’t the ideals of Prisom’s Party more important than the career of one individual? I wasn’t sure I knew the answer to any of these questions. But I also knew ther
e was only one way for this fearless reporter to go, and that was forward.

  With trembling fingers, I logged into the gmail account and sent a message to W3AR3WATCH1NG. The near-immediate reply—Hello, Iris—made my fingers quiver above the keyboard. When can I visit you again? I wrote. If I was going to investigate them, I needed to know where they were hiding. We will give you access in exchange for information, the response said. I was trying to decide what to write when another message came in: Good luck, Iris. And I knew—at least I hoped—Winston was on the other end.

  I pulled out the newspapers from Mr. Kaplan’s high school years. There were a number of articles by a Justin Kaplan. Was this Mr. Kaplan’s brother? And then a familiar adrenaline rush swept through me. A Justin had written the inscription in Lily’s book.

  I started into the papers from Mr. Kaplan’s sophomore year. Among the general school news, I found a bulletin reporting a horrific vandalism of the school lockers—students depicted in disgusting acts of violence and sex—and the fallout of expulsions and hospitalizations that resulted from it.

  SUSPECT EVADES EXPULSION, BUT SUSPICION REMAINS

  by Laurence LeSueur

  NYE—The students responsible for Thanksgiving’s locker vandalism remain a mystery, but the school’s primary suspect, sophomore Jonah Kaplan, has been removed from the Community Council’s most-wanted list.

  The Community Council had used Kaplan’s reputation as a cruel provocateur and his frequent disciplinary run-ins with Headmaster Morgan to build the case that he was the locker vandal.

  Kaplan denied any involvement in the vandalism and was exonerated after his parents testified that he’d spent the entirety of Thanksgiving break under their supervision.

  A poll conducted by students found that 93.3% of the student body does not believe this alibi. Over 60% of students believe he is responsible for the attempted suicide of an upperclassman.

  “Even if he isn’t directly responsible,” one member of the Community Council said, “it is people like him who bastardize Prisom’s legacy and the sacred ideals of this school.”

  When asked to comment on the situation, Headmaster Morgan said, “We are doing the best we can to bring the vandals to justice.”

  But for many, the headmaster’s best may not be good enough.

  As I read this article and the others in the series—all of them so forthright and critical—my anger at the Oracle’s current editorial staff exploded. I’d done my best to write with a lucid, vibrant prose style, but Katie Milford always edited my stories to oblivion. In my last assigned piece (a review of the new TV drama Xcess High), she’d actually added clichés to my copy! Even worse, she was guilty of censorship, what Murrow called “a denial of every human institution we now defend.” I pitied the reporter who came searching for clues in my stories ten years from now.

  In any case, the article from 1999 only added credence to the Party’s belief that Mr. Kaplan was hiding something. “We can deny our heritage and our history,” Murrow said, “but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.” If Mr. Kaplan was trying to deny a secret from his past, he’d be held accountable eventually. Murrow continued, “There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.” Like it or not, I was now a citizen of this republic—this school—and as such, I was responsible for how the events of the past affected our present and future. I was desperate to believe that Mr. Kaplan hadn’t bullied a kid into attempting suicide. But as Mr. Kaplan himself told us on the first day of school, belief wasn’t good enough. Only Truth mattered. Please, Murrow, I thought, let Mr. Kaplan’s secret be unimportant. Let his transgressions be inconsequential.

  From Potter’s Hill, it was another twenty minutes to the Historical Society. When I arrived, I stood at the door for a long time waiting for Hazel to answer. Since the kidnapping, I had called the Historical Society’s phone number and left multiple messages but hadn’t heard back. I was starting to worry. Hazel lived all alone, and if she’d gotten into trouble, who would help her? I pressed the doorbell over and over and was just deciding that I would break one of the windows if necessary when she opened the door.

  She looked awful. She was dressed in an oversize flannel shirt and jeans, and her hair resembled a knotted ball of chestnut yarn.

  “I’m sorry . . .” I stammered.

  Hazel didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with these lusterless eyes the color of a mildewed pool. Her freckles looked like splattered mud.

  “I was worried. You didn’t call me back and . . . Are you okay?”

  Hazel nodded, though the motion seemed to require tremendous effort.

  “Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?”

  “I was sleeping, but come on in and I’ll put the kettle on.”

  “Are you sure?” I lingered on the porch. “I can come back another day.”

  “You trekked all the way here, didn’t you?” There was a bite in her voice. I suddenly remembered that I didn’t know Hazel at all. She opened the door wider and waited for me to enter before shuffling to her studio without turning on any of the lights. Her room was mustier-smelling than the last time. She pulled aside the curtains over the sink and turned on a couple of lamps. I leaned against the kitchen counter as Hazel filled the kettle.

  “I took your advice,” I said, thrusting some enthusiasm into my voice. “I went back into the Trench.”

  Hazel turned to face me, her thousands of freckles like eyes inspecting my face. It was only a trick of the light but disconcerting nonetheless.

  I recounted the secret conversation in the Trench between Mr. Kaplan and Headmaster Pasternak. As I spoke, Hazel grew less cranky, and I was about to launch into the demon and the kidnapping when the kettle burst like a warning siren. I stopped talking.

  “Are you all right, Iris?” Hazel asked, pouring me a cup of tea. I nodded and took a sip. The tea tasted like minty roses. “It’s an herbal infusion from Nepal,” she said. “It calms the body and loosens truths from the heart.” I gave her a blank look. “Toxins build up in the body, which is why so many cultures believe in purifying sweats. But we’re all filled with emotionally toxic thoughts and memories—the things we don’t like to speak about. This tea helps shake those thoughts loose.”

  “Like a truth serum?”

  Hazel frowned. “Of course not. Now drink up.”

  My head was telling me to keep mum about Prisom’s Party. It was too soon to reveal that part of my investigation to Hazel or anyone else. But my heart was ordering me to confess everything. I decided to compromise. The Oracle articles about Mr. Kaplan were in the public domain, so why not share them with Hazel? I handed her the Xeroxes I’d made and watched her carefully as she read.

  “I remember all of that,” she said when she was finished reading. “And in fact, I have a few other documents that might interest you.” Hazel told me to wait and disappeared from the studio. She must have been upstairs, because I could hear the ceiling creak overhead. I thought I heard her muttering to herself, though it might have been the wind rattling the windows.

  Within five minutes she had returned and begun spreading five-by-seven-inch photographs on the coffee table. The locker vandalism blazed to life in all its horrible detail.

  “I took these shots before the school ripped down the images,” she said. “Just look at the detailing . . .”

  She seemed awed by the pictures, like she was an art critic appraising a brilliant body of work. It seemed strange that Hazel had these pictures in her possession after so many years, not to mention after all the traveling she’d done. But my overwhelming response to the display was disgust.

  “Iris?” Hazel looked at me suddenly. “How did you come across the locker vandalism in the first place?”

  “I was researching my Charles Prisom story.” My face flushed with the lie, but I pressed on. “You mentioned that you knew Mr. Kaplan. Do you think he could have been the locker vandal?”

  “Well, as I told you last time, Mr. K
aplan was a difficult person to understand. He was always troubled, and you never quite knew what he was capable of, so I guess—”

  “I don’t want him to be guilty,” I burst out, and then, embarrassed by my lack of professionalism, I added, “I mean, I’d like to exonerate him.”

  “A virtuous instinct,” Hazel said, and rose to reheat the kettle.

  A virtuous instinct but a faulty one, Murrow whispered in my ear.

  What do you mean? I thought back, watching Hazel across the room. And P.S., this isn’t a good time for a chat. It occurred to me that I hadn’t asked Murrow a question. Was he so deeply embedded in my subconscious that he was now giving unsolicited advice?

  You’re following Mr. Kaplan as a reporter, he continued, not as a friend. Friends can afford to have their biases, but reporters—well, I don’t need to talk to you about the importance of objectivity.

  But you said I was lucky to have Mr. Kaplan as a mentor.

  That was before you started investigating him.

  I considered this, feeling that I’d made some fundamental miscalculation, but before I could send any more thoughts Murrow’s way, Hazel returned. She eyed me strangely, like she sensed something was off, and asked again if I was all right. I nodded and described my faux immersion story about the Academic League. She advised me to address the vandalism more directly. “Get out that reporter’s notebook of yours and let’s create a strategic plan to determine his innocence. What do we need to know about the vandalism?”

  I chewed my pen cap. “Whether there were any witnesses or evidence.”

  “Yes, but it’s been a decade since the event. The trail is probably cold.”