Alice in Charge

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  I could tell by Amy’s expression that these were too many instructions, all coming at her at once.

  “Let’s practice,” I said. “Pretend you’re sitting across from me in the cafeteria. What are you going to say?”

  Amy shook her head. “Nobody sits across from me. Not usually.”

  “Okay. Let’s say you came up to me in the hall. What are you going to ask?”

  “How much sleep do you get at night?”

  “That’s it, but first you need to explain why you’re asking. Something like, ‘Hi, I’m a reporter for our school paper, and I’d like to ask you a question.’”

  “But I’m really not.”

  “Not … a reporter?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, for this one week, you are. Let’s try it.”

  Amy took a deep breath and stared at me unblinking. “Hi, I’m a reporter, and I’m going to ask you a question.”

  “Very good, but you need to mention our paper and then ask if you might ask them a question.”

  “That’s too many questions.”

  I felt both my confidence in her and my patience waning. “It’s the polite thing to do, though, because maybe this isn’t a good time for them to be stopped and questioned. Maybe they’re in a hurry. Try it again and mention The Edge.”

  Amy’s eyes drifted to the wall, and her voice sounded like the automated message you get on an answering machine: “Hi, I’m a reporter for The Edge, and … do you care if I ask you a question?”

  “That’s pretty good, Amy.”

  “Now what?”

  “Ask the question.”

  “Oh. Do you sleep at night?”

  “How much sleep do you get at night? And it would probably be better if you said, ‘On average, how much sleep, or how many hours of sleep, do you get at night?’ Can you remember all that?”

  Amy gave a big sigh and bent over her notebook, laboriously writing down the whole sentence, then reading it aloud: “Hi. I’m a reporter for The Edge, and could I ask you a question?”

  “Excellent!” I said.

  “On the average, how much sleep do you get at night?”

  “Well, I guess I average about five and a half hours. Maybe six,” I told her.

  Amy stared at me. “I go to bed at nine thirty. I get eight and a half hours.”

  “No, Amy, you’re supposed to be writing down my answer. You don’t need to tell people how much sleep you get. You’re the one asking the question.”

  She bent over her notebook again. When she had finished, I said, “Wanna try it once more?”

  Another deep breath, and she faced me again: “I’m a reporter for The Edge, and could I ask you a question?”

  I nodded and smiled to let her know we were rehearsing: “I guess so,” I said. “What’s the question?”

  She paused and glanced down at her notebook. “On average, how much sleep do you get at night?”

  “I suppose about five and a half hours. Maybe six.”

  She bent over her notebook and wrote it down. “Okay, thanks,” she said.

  “Don’t walk away yet, Amy,” I said. “Ask my name and what class I’m in.”

  “I already know that,” she said. “You’re a senior.”

  “Reporters always have to double-check. Ask even if you know.”

  “What’s your name and what class are you in?” Amy asked.

  “Alice McKinley, senior,” I said.

  She beamed.

  “Don’t forget to thank them, Amy,” I instructed.

  “Thank you, Alice. I’m a reporter now!” she said delightedly.

  I only wished I felt that confident.

  There was a short assembly on Friday to talk up Spirit Week, the last week of September. Gwen, as a member of the Student Council, brought down the house by coming onstage in a wet suit and flippers. Her left foot kept stepping on her right flipper, almost tripping her, and we screamed with laughter.

  When she took the microphone, Gwen told us she was getting in the mood for Beach Day, the first day of Spirit Week. The other days would be announced in The Edge.

  Then she turned the program over to Mr. Gephardt, who told us what great sports teams we had this year and that they’d be introduced at the pep rally at the end of Spirit Week.

  Then he spent the rest of the time talking about the Student Jury system we were now ready to inaugurate at our school, explaining in detail how certain kinds of misconduct would be handled as usual by him and Mr. Beck, but some students might find themselves facing a jury of their peers. The judgments made by the jury would be respected by the faculty, and the penalties it imposed would be enforced. It was time, he said, for students to participate not only in the victories and celebrations of our school, but in reinforcing the values and conduct in keeping with our reputation and traditions.

  I’ll admit that the main thing I brought away from that assembly was the memory of Gwen in those flippers, but her hair was remarkable too. Her friend Yolanda had given it an elaborate cornrow design in four large triangles, two braids on either side sweeping around her head and joined in back.

  “Seriously,” I asked her later, “how long did it take her to do your hair? It’s amazing.”

  “Six and a half hours,” Gwen confessed. “But I did my history assignment while I was sitting there.”

  I don’t know how Gwen does it. The school year had only begun, and already I was questioning how much I could handle. Saturdays I worked for Dad at the Melody Inn. The only morning I could sleep in was Sunday, and sometimes I wanted to hang out with the high school discussion group at church.

  “I wish I could clone myself,” I said one evening after dinner. “I could take on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and my clone could do Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”

  “I’m glad you’re the one who brought this up, because Sylvia and I have been worried about you,” said Dad. “Sometimes your light’s still on at one in the morning. I hate to see you studying so late.”

  “Ha! I’d like to know what time Gwen turns out her light,” I said. “I don’t do half the stuff she does.”

  “You’ve got to apply to colleges, Al. The only one you’ve visited so far is the University of Chicago.”

  “I’ve got a list,” I said. A mental list, anyway.

  “You do?”

  “You don’t have to worry. Les is taking me around,” I lied.

  Now both Dad and Sylvia looked surprised. “When? Which colleges?” Dad asked.

  You know how in the movies the phone rings at exactly the right moment to further the plot? I’m not kidding, the phone rang right then, and I almost fell out of my chair getting up. I reached for it on the wall. Les usually calls about this time when he calls at all, and yes, right on cue, it was Les. Am I lucky or am I lucky?

  “Hey, Al!” he said. “Dad there?”

  “Yeah. It sure is, Les!” I said brightly. “Let me get the list.”

  “Huh?” said Lester.

  “Are you at the apartment?” I asked.

  “Yes. What’s going on? I just want to ask Dad a question.”

  “I’ll call you right back,” I said, and hung up.

  “It was Les. We’re making plans,” I told Dad and Sylvia, and zipped upstairs for my cell phone.

  I was still breathless when I punched in his number.

  “What the heck?” he said when he answered.

  “Les, you’ve got to help me!” I pleaded. “I need this huge favor. What are you doing the third weekend in October?”

  “Al, I don’t even know what I’m doing this weekend,” he said.

  “Well, that Friday is an in-service day for teachers, so I’ve got the whole weekend to visit colleges.”

  “Now, listen …”

  “It’s making me crazy, and I don’t have enough time—enough brain cells—to do all I’m supposed to be doing. I have to get my applications out, and Dad thinks I should look at some colleges first, and—”

  “W
hat colleges? Why can’t Dad or Sylvia take you?”

  “Les, you know how they are! They’ll ask me to talk to financial advisers and find out the number of books in the libraries and—”

  “So?”

  “How many colleges did you visit, Lester?”

  “I’m not your role model.”

  “Les, just take me around to a couple, okay? I told them we had it all planned.”

  “Alice!”

  “Please! I already know the University of Maryland, and I just want to see a few more.”

  “What colleges are you talking about? Southern California, I suppose?”

  “Of course not. I was thinking about the University of North Carolina—”

  “Chapel Hill? That’s the whole weekend right there!”

  “But we can do it, Les. I looked at a map. After that, William and Mary and George Mason.”

  “William and Mary is in Williamsburg, Al. It’s not just across the Potomac River.”

  “Listen, Les. Do you remember how I traded that fur bikini last Christmas for the granny gown you gave a girlfriend by mistake? Do you remember when Liz and Pamela and I bailed you out of jail?”

  I heard a deep sigh. “Can we do this in two days, Al, and be home by Sunday afternoon so I can watch the Redskins with my buddies?”

  “I promise!” I said gratefully. “We can start out at four in the morning if you want.”

  “But you’ve got to do all the preliminary stuff—set up the appointments, arrange for tours, bring a list of questions. I’m just the driver, understand?”

  “You’re worse than Dad.”

  “I mean it, Al.”

  “Okay. I’ll even help drive.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Promise you’ll put it on your calendar?”

  He sighed again. “It’s on. I’m writing it now in big black letters. Underlined. Exclamation point. Now tell Dad I’ve got a tax question.”

  “Thank you, Les,” I said. “You’re the best!”

  And I rushed downstairs to tell Dad and Sylvia that—like I said—it was all arranged. Sometimes life is just like the movies.

  3

  STUDENT JURY

  I was one of five jury members, all juniors and seniors, who’d been selected by the faculty. My friend, Lori Haynes, a member of the Gay/Straight Alliance, was on it; so was Darien Schweitzer, a guy from the debate team; Kirk Manning, a friend of Patrick’s from band; and Murray Hardesty, the junior class treasurer.

  We’d been through an orientation session with Mr. Gephardt. We weren’t pretending to be lawyers, he’d told us. We weren’t police officers or judges. Our job was to listen to a complaint brought in against a student, get his take on it, and decide on the solution or the penalty. We selected Darien as jury foreman for these sessions that would take place about once or twice a month on Wednesdays after school. One of our teachers, on a rotating basis, would be present each time as faculty adviser.

  Our first “offender of the month,” as Darien put it, was led into the faculty conference room by the school secretary, Betty Free, followed by one of the custodians. We five jurors were seated around the long polished table, notepads and pens in front of us, unsmiling.

  But this didn’t prompt the sophomore coming through the door to adjust his cocky walk or wipe the smirk from his face. I was thinking how hard it is to keep from making first impressions, because the smirk and the careless way he walked made me want to say, Nail him. Case closed.

  Mr. Gephardt and two teachers observed our first session.

  “Would you give the jury your name?” Darien asked him.

  The kid cast him a somewhat disgusted glance and mumbled, “You already got my name.”

  “For the record,” Mrs. Free said, seating herself at the end of the table with her laptop.

  “Kenny Johnson,” the defendant said.

  “You’ve been called before the Student Jury for making a mess—several of them—in the cafeteria, despite warnings from Mr. Garcia to stop,” Darien read.

  “Hey, there were other guys. It wasn’t just me,” said Kenny.

  “Please remain silent until the charge is read,” Mr. Gephardt instructed from the side of the room.

  Kenny shrugged and slowly faced forward again. Darien went on reading the charge: “On two occasions last week and one the week before, you were seen dumping food on the table, throwing food, smearing mustard on someone’s T-shirt …”

  Kenny grinned a little. We didn’t respond.

  “Mr. Garcia, do you want to add anything?” Mr. Gephardt asked the angry custodian.

  “I tell him to stop, he laughs. I make him clean up the table once, and then I see he greased all the chairs,” Mr. Garcia complained.

  Kenny suppressed a chuckle.

  “I got no time for this! I got whole cafeteria to clean by three o’clock.” Mr. Garcia turned and stared hard at Kenny, who only lowered his head, grinning at the floor.

  “Okay, Kenny. Your turn,” said Darien.

  “Aw, it’s only in fun, man. I didn’t hurt anyone. The other kids were laughing, and it was Joe’s idea to butter the chairs. So I cleaned them up! What’s the big deal?” Kenny said.

  “Big deal for me!” Mr. Garcia said heatedly. “You got time, maybe, but I don’t have time to watch you all day, see what you do next.”

  Mr. Gephardt broke in, not allowing Kenny more time than he deserved. “Any questions from the jury?”

  “How old are you?” Lori asked Kenny.

  “Fifteen,” Kenny answered.

  “You bring your lunch or buy it?” asked Kirk.

  “Buy it, mostly.”

  “Your money or your parents’?” Kirk wanted to know.

  Kenny had to think about that a few seconds. “My dad’s, I guess.”

  We nodded to each other that we’d heard enough, and the secretary escorted Kenny back to the library across the hall while we discussed it. The custodian was excused. Mr. Gephardt and the teachers let us debate it among ourselves.

  “What do you think?” asked Darien. He’s a round-faced, somewhat pudgy guy, with a radio announcer’s voice, who could run for any office on his smile alone. But he wasn’t smiling now.

  “Ten years, maximum security,” Murray quipped. “It’s obvious he thinks he’s funny.”

  “Mr. Garcia has the whole cafeteria to do single-handed, with community groups using it some evenings,” Lori said. “All he needs is a joker like Kenny.”

  “What about the other kids who he said were in on it too?” I asked.

  “Mr. Garcia says it’s always Kenny who starts it, from what he’s observed,” Mr. Gephardt said.

  “And I’ve seen one instance of it myself,” a teacher put in. “I was there the day he was ‘buttering the chairs,’ as he put it.”

  We deliberated for about five minutes, then Darien went across the hall to tell Mrs. Free we were ready. She led Kenny back in.

  His shoulders were a little less relaxed, we noticed, as he stood at one end of our table, his smile a little less fixed.

  Darien read the verdict: “The jury has decided that Kenny Johnson’s problem seems to be that he’s forgotten how old he is and thinks he’s still five. So we’ve decided he needs the job of a man for a week to keep his focus on being fifteen. We recommend five days’ detention in the cafeteria during the lunch hour. He’ll be responsible for seeing that all garbage is removed from the trays, all trash bags are tied up and hauled out to the Dumpster. He’ll wash down the tables, wipe off the chairs, mop the floor, or do any other job assigned to him by Mr. Garcia. If he doesn’t do his work well or does it discourteously, he’ll repeat his detention the following week.” He looked at Kenny. “Any questions?”

  This time the defendant wasn’t smiling. “Yeah, when do I eat?”

  “That’s your problem,” said Darien. “Excused.”

  After Kenny left, Mr. Gephardt nodded his approval. “I’ll tell security to keep an eye on him, make sure he gets there ev
ery day,” he said.

  The only problem with bimonthly jury duty was that our newspaper deadline is also on Wednesdays. I got back to the newsroom in time to do a short write-up and get it on the computer in the space Phil had allowed. We decided we’d report each Student Jury case so students would be aware of how the panel worked, describing the incident and the penalty assigned, but we wouldn’t name the defendant. Enough for Kenny to be embarrassed doing cleanup in front of his friends, and they’d guess soon enough.

  It was a mistake to send Amy around asking questions. The feature story would focus on how much homework teachers assign and how much sleep, or how little, we get because of it. Amy came by the newsroom over lunch on Thursday, and I could tell she was down.

  “Nobody makes any sense,” she said, looking at her notebook. “And they won’t even give me their names.”

  I hadn’t expected this much trouble. Usually kids are eager to get their names in The Edge. “You asked how much sleep they got at night?”

  She nodded and read off the five replies: “‘Who wants to know?’ ‘You’re a reporter now?’ ‘Yeah, right.’ ‘Don’t bother me.’ ‘Later, maybe.’”

  I felt anger rising inside me as I imagined her humiliation. But it was largely my fault. “You know what, Amy? You just need an official badge,” I said, my mind racing. I opened the drawer where we keep plastic holders for name tags when we send reporters to a board of education hearing. I printed out a badge in Times New Roman bold typeface and slid it in the holder. But I realized when I pinned it on her that even this might not be enough. Did I really want her to fail twice?

  “Listen, Amy,” I said. “I just want you to ask five teachers the same question. We’ll include them in the article so kids will realize they’re not the only ones up late at night.”

  She did it. By the close of school on Friday, Amy had five quotes from teachers, and after I’d typed them into the computer, I showed her the printout of what the article would look like. The teachers, of course, had answered Amy’s question politely, and Miss Ames was pleased with the way the whole thing was coming together. Following the feature article, “Who Stays Up Late and Why?” with a byline from a senior reporter, were the two questionnaires: