The kid definitely fits Jagger’s idea of an outlaw. He’s got the tats, the earrings, the unwashed hair. He tells me he’ll go on camera but won’t say his name. I shrug. His choice.
Anonymous starts to talk as soon as I give the cue. “I didn’t see the toilet bowl. But I don’t know what all this crap’s about. Who gives a shit?”
The bell rings. Anonymous takes off.
I laugh. “Happy, Jags? We can use it if I cut the last line.”
“Do we have to? It was very poetic. Toilet, crap, shit. Mrs. O’Leary would love the use of extended metaphor.” Jagger hands me the camera, the headphones, the mic. “You don’t mind bringing the equipment back, do you? I have class on the first floor and I gotta finish the homework.”
And he’s gone. Leaving me alone, holding everything myself.
* * *
After school, the Media Center is quiet. I set up at one of the computers to start editing.
Carleton walks over. “Faculty meeting today, Val.”
I groan. “Can I stay? Please. We want to add the new segment for Friday’s show. I haven’t begun to cut it.”
He sighs. “Okay. But don’t go broadcasting that I’ve left you alone. I’ll be back to lock up at four-thirty if Wilkins can keep to the schedule. Do. Not. Leave. Someone’s got to stay with the equipment.”
No problem. Jagger and I shot a ton, so paring it down to four minutes will be a challenge.
I play the first several minutes of raw footage. Hit Stop. Rewind. Click through frame by frame. Something bothers me. It’s not just the obsessiveness of the image. The precise fold of the flag. The way it’s looped exactly equidistant from either end of the porcelain tank. It isn’t the positioning of the toilet, either, placed in such a way that it can’t be seen from the main hall. Or the pail—wait! That’s it. Inside.
I stare at the overhead shot Omar took at the last minute. The entire pail can be seen resting in the bowl. Inside, across the bottom rim, tiny letters look like decoration. Then again, it might be a message. A secret note. Maybe a signature…
I blow up the frame as large as I can. Can’t make out anything except s o r. There’s not a first name I can think of with those letters. Last names, sure. Mr. Sorren, the history teacher. One of the outlaws I recognized at the side of the school. Craig Sorestsky.
But s o r doesn’t have to be a name. It could be part of a word. Sore…sorrow…sorry. Hmmm. They’re sorry. You’ll be sorry.
Something in my gut—reporter’s instinct?—tells me that’s correct. Someone’s going to be sorry.
“What are you doing here?”
I jump at the sound. A Team’s Hailey Manussian stands behind me. Her perfectly round face, completely surrounded by dark wavy hair, looks irritated.
“You scared the crap out of me,” I tell her.
“Door’s not locked. Where’s Carleton?” She glances around the room suspiciously, as if Mr. C. and I are having a secret rendezvous behind the anchor desk.
“Faculty meeting.”
“He let you stay?”
I shrug the obvious answer. “He’ll be here by four-thirty. Come back then if you want to talk to him.”
She glances past my shoulder. “What’s on your screen?”
I click it closed. “Something I’m working on.”
Hailey gives me a stony stare. “You think you’re so clever, ValGal. Best friend’s on your team, so producer vote goes your way. Got the hot guy, too, because Carleton thinks you’re the only girl in class who knows how to do stuff. I know everything you know—and more.”
She stomps off. Hailey hasn’t liked me ever since I screwed up a science lab in seventh grade—getting us both a shitty grade—but you’d think she’d be over it by now. That rant was on the vicious side. Even Bethany doesn’t hate me that much. At least, I don’t think she does.
I return to editing, but my mind’s all over the place. As soon as Carleton enters, I head for the office. Mrs. Kresky gets Mr. Orel on the walkie-talkie. The custodian’s mopping the language hallway.
“Mr. Orel. Remember the toilet and pail on the third floor? Were you the person who took it away?”
Not a rhythmic beat of mop swishing is missed. “One of the younger janitors carried it down.”
“Where’d he put it?”
“Trash bin. Pickup was this morning.”
“The pail, too?”
My disappointment must show because Mr. Orel stops cleaning. “Yes. But don’t fret. The flag’s fine. Ever since the incident, I take it down as soon as school ends. Come tomorrow morning, it’ll be flying high.”
“That’s great,” I tell him. What I’m thinking is: Some reporter. Why didn’t I notice the letters on the pail before today?
Power and Liberty are like Heat and Moisture; where they are well mixed, everything prospers.
First Marquess of Halifax
MP LOG
So it was cool. We did the first two pranks. Just as I thought, everybody talked about them for days. People wondered who has the balls to do what we did.
In the third-floor hallway, I overheard someone say they wished they’d thought of this. But even if they had, they wouldn’t follow through. The truth is, no one’s ever done anything like what we’re doing for two reasons. One: deep down, people are afraid. They think they’ll get their asses kicked or their mothers will yell at them when they find out what they’ve done or they’ll get sent to the office. And two: you have to be smart to pull off stuff like this without getting caught. It’s brains, not muscle, that are important. You can always find the muscle you need, but you can’t make yourself more intelligent. That’s a fact.
Most times even the people who think they know you don’t, because they only see what’s on the outside. The outside’s a flimsy cover that no one takes the time to lift so they can see what’s really underneath.
Now people are saying they want to be MP—whatever MP is. It’s hard not to laugh out loud because no one has ever wanted to be me before. It isn’t only that I’ve become hard-core. It’s that I know something no one else does—exactly what MP stands for. No one else can understand because not one single person saw the message I left. If they had, they’d realize:
MP is power. The kind of power that sneaks up on people, smacks them in the face and makes them regret their sorry existence.
6
At last, people pay attention to Campus News. I know this because it’s Bethany who says something at the dinner table.
The twins shoot peas at each other, using the engineering principle of spoon-as-lever. Dad is busy pointing out how advanced this is to an extremely annoyed mom when my sister clears her throat.
“Val was on TV.”
The conversation-slash-argument stops. Bethany rarely initiates a dinner topic. She can barely manage a mumbled yeah or nah when asked a question.
“Excuse me,” Mom says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear—”
“Val was on TV at school,” my sister repeats.
There’s a moment of silence as the parents try to figure out what Bethany’s complaining about. She rarely speaks my name without whining about something I’ve done—or not done.
“Campus News,” I remind them. “I’m a producer. I told you guys….”
“Right,” Dad says, except I’m pretty certain he has no idea what I’m talking about.
James sets his milk at the edge of the table. “Was it fun to see her, Bethie?”
“Don’t call me that,” she snaps. “It’s knee. Beth-a-knee. I’ve told you a million times—”
“He’s only six,” Mom soothes, at the same time moving his glass inland to avoid catastrophe. “James, her name is Bethany.”
“Nobody calls you Jimmy,” my sister points out.
“They could. I wouldn’t care.”
“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” Jesse chants, accompanying himself with his favorite percussive instrument: fork-pounding-on-plate.
Dad holds up his hand. “We get the point, Jesse. What was Val talking about, Bethany?”
In any other household, the question would be directed to me because, well, I was the one on the screen. But here? Bethany speaks and the world stops spinning. It’s like trying to get druggies to talk about where they score. You don’t dare stop ’em once they start.
“Last week someone took the flag from the front of the school and replaced it with a bunch of underwear—”
Jesse shrieks. Bethany shoots him a superior glare. He clams up.
“This week someone put a toilet in the third-floor hallway,” she continues.
“A potty?” James shouts. “Did anyone pee in it?”
Despite Bethany’s frown, he and Jesse laugh. My sister gets all huffy and refuses to say another word.
I jump in. “Sorry to disappoint, little dudes, but not a single person used it for, um, personal activities. There was a beach pail in the bowl.” For whatever reason, that seems even funnier. The boys’ whooping becomes contagious. Laughter circles the table.
“Okay, girls, don’t keep us in suspense,” Dad says, “Who’s the culprit?”
Bethany shrugs. “No one knows.”
For the first, and maybe last time in the history of the universe, I agree with her. “So far, nobody’s taking responsibility. But it makes watching Campus News interesting, right, Bethany?”
My sister stabs a French fry, deaf once more. Too bad. The truce was kind of nice while it lasted.
* * *
Neither interesting, nor nice, is how Marci sees any of it. Especially when body parts show up. Not flesh and blood body parts, though from a distance, that’s what it seems. Up close, it’s obvious they’re plastic. A department store mannequin pulled apart. An arm dangling high above the third-floor staircase railing; in a second-floor bathroom, a bald head and neck hang from a noose. An upside-down leg with a red high-heeled shoe, sticks out from a trash can at the side of the school.
Every part has the same message:
THIS COULD BE YOU.
MP.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marci gulps.
“Just that someone watches too many horror shows. Jeez, look at the crowd.” The crush of people surrounding the leg is three deep.
“Who cares about a crowd?” She tugs my arm. “Let’s go.”
“Not yet.”
I push forward to check out the leg. No tiny letters that I can see. Being this close to a cut-up body, though, even if it’s plastic, makes me feel weird. Like some kind of perv. Or maybe it’s the flash of intuition that tells me Marci’s right: MP’s not all fun and games. Underwear and kiddie pails and secret writing meant to seem cool. He might be something else. Something darker. Someone evil. Goose bumps erupt all over my arms.
When I hit the Media Center, Raul, Henry and Omar are already there, looking three shades of gloomy.
“What’s up?”
Omar tugs an earring. “Read the board. A Team’s doing an MP story.”
“What? That’s ours!”
“It’s not on our list,” Raul points out.
“How was I supposed to know he’d get all serial killer today?” A glance at the A Team table tells me this was Hailey’s doing. She can barely contain a superior smile. “I’ll take care of it!”
I make a beeline for Carleton, quietly taking attendance. “A Team cannot have the MP story. It’s ours.”
Scott Jenkins scoots over. That doesn’t surprise me. Passive-aggressive Hailey sent him to do her dirty work.
“We listed it like we’re supposed to. Mr. Carleton approved it,” he tells me.
Even though I’m furious, I keep my voice reasonable. Thanks to Bethany and Jagger, I’ve had lots of practice. “Guess you didn’t realize we were doing follow-ups, Mr. C.”
“No one knew,” Scott says. “It’s not on the board.”
“We haven’t finished planning the next broadcast. That’s what today’s for.”
The teacher holds up a pudgy hand. “Don’t fight—”
I refuse to let Hailey get away with this. If I lose, my team will never forgive me. “Mr. Carleton. On TV, the same reporter follows a story no matter how long it takes. They don’t hand it over to whoever feels like working it that week.”
“Puh-lease.” Scott laughs. “This is high school….”
He continues to argue. I catch Mr. C.’s eye. With what I hope is a subtle tilt, I glance at the Emmy Award shelf. Mr. Carleton’s name is nowhere to be found. It’s the last media teacher, R. Rosenfeld, who’s listed as adviser.
When Scott pauses to take a breath, I jump back in. “Mr. Carleton’s trying to run a professional operation. So we can move on to good media programs in college, get jobs, win awards…”
“Val!” Mr. Carleton admonishes.
Oops. Might have hit the award thing a little too hard.
“But Ms. Gaines is correct.” Behind us, the room is silent. “A story should be followed by the originating reporter. Val, I didn’t realize you were continuing to investigate. If it messes up your broadcast, A Team, I’ll allow three pieces this week. No grade penalty.”
Scott slumps over to Hailey. If looks could kill, he’d be heading straight for death row. I feel for him, but I’m glad it’s not me who lost the argument.
Mr. Carleton lowers his voice. “Don’t let me down, Val.”
“I won’t!”
The team piles into the director’s booth.
“Way to get back what’s ours, sista!” Omar hoots.
Henry and I fist-bump. Raul gives a short nod. Over in the corner, Jagger yawns. If I expected props from Voorham, I’m a fool. His short attention span hasn’t increased by much in a year. Screw him.
“Let’s get organized. Jagger and I stay on the story since I just made a big deal about it. But we need help.”
“I’ll anchor,” Raul suggests. “Frees me up to do whatever’s needed.”
“Right on. I have all the footage shot and half-edited on the College Application story we didn’t air last time. If someone wants to finish that, it’s an easy second segment.”
Marci speaks up. “I’ll do it. MP creeps me out.”
Omar grins. “All mannequins are creepy. But naked ones are waaay better.”
I roll my eyes. “The rest of us split into groups. Omar and Raul. Henry, me and Jagger.”
“You don’t need three people,” Henry says. “I’ll help Marci.”
“That’s sweet,” she tells him, “but we’ve got a week.”
For a moment, he looks disappointed. Immediately, though, Henry cheers up. “We need more stories. I’ll stay here and think of a couple easy ones. Marci can help me shoot next week.”
“Fine. Whatever. Got to get going,” Raul urges.
The team piles into the main room, ignoring the resentful looks Scott and the rest of his team send our way. I head for the equipment cabinet. “Marci, sign it out for us?”
“Aye-ay
e, ValGal.” She salutes.
Expertly, I flip a case onto a table and pull the camera. “Jags and I shoot the yard. Raul, you and Omar get the inside stuff.”
* * *
Outside, at least, the plastic leg is untouched. Jagger and I set up in front of the trash can.
“You’re awfully quiet,” I tell him.
Jagger shrugs. “What’s there to say? Either you were going to get the story back—or not.”
“Don’t you think we should follow up? You’re the one who wanted it in the first place.”
He plugs the headphone into the camera. “All I said was that it would be a good story. Especially since Campus News is usually so lame—”
“Thanks a lot.” I whip the mic cord out of the way. “Why are you even in the class if that’s what you think? You could have taken Mechanical Drawing or the Fine Art of Cooking Crap or whatever that class is called.”
Jagger gestures to the trash can. “Ready?”
“No. Me and Campus News might be lame, but you’re…awful. A terrible person. You hang out with me all summer. Then the night of Sonya’s party, I’m stuck babysitting the twins, so I say, ‘Doesn’t mean you can’t go.’ Every other boyfriend in the universe would tell me, ‘I’ll keep you company.’ Not you. When I finally show up, you and Dawn Chevananda are tonguing like crazy.” All the hurt bottled up inside gushes out. “You never said a word. Ever. Don’t you think I’m owed an apology? An explanation.”
A curtain lifts and his Tortured Soul look appears. Last year, whenever that happened, it made me want to hold him tight, tell him it would be okay, whatever it is.
“What’s wrong?” I would whisper.
“Nothing,” he’d always say.
So I’d let it go, thinking I was crazy. Or believing that my hugs—and kisses—would banish whatever problem he was having. Until I found out I wasn’t enough at all.
“This is not the time to get into it, Val.” Footsteps sound behind us. Immediately, Jagger’s expression changes. Frustrated, he points to the leg. “Start talking or the bell will ring before we get a single shot off. Then you’ll really be pissed.”
Circle of Silence Page 5
