The Five Paths

by Isobel Bird

  “Pretty much,” said Sasha. “She really let him have it. She got up in his face and told him he had no business being there and that if he ever said so much as another single derogatory word about her or Wicca she was having him brought up on religious discrimination charges.”

  “What did the caseworkers say?” T.J. asked her.

  “After they got Mom and this guy apart they came inside with us. They made him wait in the car and her wait in the kitchen. They talked to me for about an hour and asked me all kinds of dumb questions. Then they told Thea that everything seemed fine and that they weren’t going to proceed with any kind of investigation, which was lucky for them, because I think she would have gone through the roof if they’d said anything else.”

  “Wow,” Annie said. “First we get attacked and then this nut job tries to have you taken away from Thea. What a weekend. How was yours, Kate?”

  “Okay,” she said, not mentioning her visit to Dr. Hagen. “My parents pretty much left me alone.”

  “At least someone had a little bit of peace and quiet,” commented Cooper.

  “I’ll tell you, I was really scared there for a while,” Sasha said. “I finally find a home—with Wiccans—and then I almost get taken away from it just because somebody thinks being a witch means you can’t take care of kids. Thea’s the best mom I could ever hope for. That guy’s just lucky I wasn’t within kicking distance.”

  “I can’t say the same for good old Todd,” Cooper remarked, and Sasha grinned.

  “Yeah,” she said. “That was good.”

  “Are we all set for Greeley’s class?” Cooper asked Annie.

  Annie groaned. “As ready as we’re going to be.”

  “We rehearsed a little bit over the weekend,” Cooper told the others. “That is, when I wasn’t fighting with my mother.”

  “What did she do?” Kate asked, thinking of her own currently rocky relationship with her own mother.

  “Just being totally unsupportive,” Cooper replied as the bell rang. “I’ll fill you in later. See you in history.”

  They scattered to their various classes, but soon enough it was time for second period and Mrs. Greeley’s history class. As soon as everyone was in the room and seated, Mrs. Greeley began.

  “I hope the prosecution and the defense are both ready,” she said, pulling out her desk chair and sitting down. “Why don’t we have the accused come and sit in front of the class.”

  Cooper stood up and walked defiantly to the empty chair that Mrs. Greeley had positioned facing the rest of the students. She sat down and looked out at her classmates with a stony glare.

  “Much as some of the first American colonists were, Miss Rivers has been accused of exceeding the boundaries of free speech,” Mrs. Greeley said. “Today we will hear arguments both for and against her actions. Then you, the jury, will vote to decide whether she is guilty or innocent. The prosecution will go first.”

  John Reynolds stood up and walked to the front of the room. He turned and smiled at the class. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said. “The defendant has been accused of exceeding the right to free speech as defined by our society, which in this case means the society of Beecher Falls High School. By wearing a symbol that some people find offensive and even threatening, she has created an atmosphere that interferes with the rights of others to attend school in a safe environment. That alone is reason enough to justify banning this particular symbol from being displayed.”

  He paused, walking behind Cooper’s chair and standing there for a moment as if he were thinking about something. Then he put his hands on the back of the chair and leaned forward.

  “Miss Rivers,” he said. “Would you agree that all students should be able to come to school without worrying about feeling as if they are in danger?”

  “Sure,” Cooper said. “But I don’t see how my necklace makes anyone feel unsafe.”

  “And would you agree that nobody should have to look at images they find offensive?”

  “No,” Cooper said. “I wouldn’t agree with that. I find Britney Spears’s wardrobe offensive, but a third of the class has versions of it plastered all over their notebooks.”

  There was a wave of laughter from the other students, but Mrs. Greeley banged on her desk with her hand. “Order!” she barked.

  “Let me rephrase that question,” said John. “Would you agree that, for example, an African American student shouldn’t have to come to school and see people walking around wearing white hoods?”

  “That’s a ridiculous example!” Cooper said, turning to look at John angrily. “Nobody would do that.”

  “But what if they did?” he said, holding up one finger. “Wouldn’t they have the right to under the notion of free speech that you’re advocating?”

  “No,” Cooper said. “White hoods would fall under the category of hate speech. I mean it’s not speech, exactly, but they symbolize hate speech so it’s sort of the same thing.”

  “And doesn’t your necklace represent something?” said John. “Doesn’t it represent certain beliefs and ideas that can be threatening to others?”

  “Only if they don’t understand it,” Cooper shot back. “It doesn’t represent anything hateful.”

  “Really?” said John. “Isn’t it true that the pentagram is often used by so-called Satanists?”

  “I don’t know,” Cooper said. “I’m not a Satanist.”

  John smiled indulgently. “Of course you’re not,” he said. “But the fact remains that the five-pointed star is often associated with Satanism, and many people who see you wearing it might not be as aware as you are. They might think that your necklace does indicate an interest on your part in Satanism. They might not know that you’re really a, what do you call it, Wiccan?”

  “Yes,” Cooper said.

  “They might not know that you’re Wiccan,” John continued. “Don’t you think it’s unfair to make them feel uncomfortable?”

  “It’s not my fault they’re stupid,” Cooper replied angrily. “Besides, I’m not the only one who wears this symbol. Lots of people in this school wear Marilyn Manson T-shirts, and those have pentagrams on them. Witchcraft symbols are also all over the Blair Witch stuff. Are you going to ban all of that, too?”

  “That’s a good question,” John replied. “Maybe we should.”

  He turned to look at the class. “The fact is,” he said, “this symbol does frighten many people. The purpose of school is to learn. It’s not a place for espousing your personal beliefs and forcing other people to accept them. Her necklace is a distraction that prevents other people from fulfilling the purpose of coming to school, and as such it should be banned. This ban in no way interferes with Miss Rivers’s own right to an education. It simply makes it easier for others to have that same right.”

  John returned to his desk, and Mrs. Greeley looked at Annie. “Now the defense,” she said.

  Annie stood up and went to stand beside Cooper. She cleared her throat and began. “John’s right,” she said. “The purpose of school is to learn. But we don’t just come here to learn about math and science and history. We come here to learn about each other. We have many different kinds of people at Beecher Falls High, people of different nationalities and backgrounds, people with different customs and beliefs. If we learn about these things, we learn about what makes people who they are.

  “The symbol we’re debating about today does represent something. It represents a way of thinking. If we try to ‘protect’ people from understanding what the pentagram means, we’re basically saying that they’re not smart enough to learn. You don’t protect people by making choices for them. Sure, you might make them more comfortable, but you don’t teach them anything. You don’t give them the opportunity to grow.”

  Annie turned to Cooper. “You’re a vegetarian, right?”

  Cooper nodded. “Sinc
e I was twelve,” she answered.

  “How does it make you feel when you go through the lunch line and see hamburgers being served?” asked Annie.

  Cooper shuddered. “It’s disgusting,” she said. “The way those cows are raised and killed is horrible.”

  “But you’ve never asked to have meat taken off the menu?” said Annie.

  “No,” Cooper said. “If people want to poison their bodies with that garbage and contribute to the enslavement of animals that’s their business.”

  Annie nodded. Then she turned to the class. “We have a lot of young women who attend Beecher Falls High,” she said. “We walk through the halls every day. And sometimes when we do guys say stuff to us. They call us ‘sweetie’ or inform us that we ‘look really hot.’ Well, a lot of us don’t like this. We also don’t like looking at pictures of silicone-enhanced models that a lot of the guys tape to their locker doors.”

  All around the room, girls nodded their heads in agreement with Annie. Encouraged by this, she continued. “Maybe we should ban those kinds of pictures,” she said, eliciting a series of boos and groans from some of the male students. “Maybe we should make it an offense to call a girl ‘honey’ or ‘gorgeous.’ To many of us that kind of talk is offensive and threatening.”

  She paused, letting her words sink in. She and Cooper had come up with a list of examples she could use in her argument. She’d already presented the first two, and it was time to use the last one.

  “A lot of students are into sports,” she said. “Many of you in this room are wearing clothes with team logos on them. Did you know that some people are trying to ban some of those logos because they’re offensive? Think about it. The Washington Redskins. Native American groups are highly offended by that image. The Atlanta Braves and their so-called tomahawk chop. It’s a horribly racist image. But have these things been banned? No.”

  “But those are just fun,” protested a boy in the back row. “It’s sports.”

  Annie looked at Mrs. Greeley to see if she was going to comment on the outburst, but she was looking at Annie with a tight-lipped expression on her face. Annie knew the teacher was angry because she was hitting home with a lot of people.

  “To you it’s just sports,” said Annie. “To other people they’re images that perpetuate offensive stereotypes. So here’s the question we need to answer: Why are some potentially offensive words and images protected while others aren’t? Is it because they have to be offensive to the majority of people before they’re considered really terrible? The necklace Cooper wears is being singled out simply because she’s a minority. People don’t understand what Wicca is. They don’t want to take the time to understand it. So instead they try to get rid of it by banning its symbols. Is that right? I don’t think so. We all have something that upsets us, whether it’s seeing images of women portrayed as objects, hamburgers in the cafeteria, or necklaces that make us uneasy. If we banned everything that made people think, we’d be nothing but a school filled with mindless drones. So before you vote, think about this: Tomorrow something you think is important might be the next target.”

  She looked at Mrs. Greeley. “The defense rests.”

  Annie walked to her seat and sat down. Several students smiled at her and gave her thumbs-up signs. She noticed that John Reynolds wouldn’t look at her.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Greeley said, standing. “You’ve heard both sides of the argument. Now it’s up to you, the jury, to vote. Is Miss Rivers within her rights, or is she not? Please take a slip of paper and write guilty or innocent on it. Then we will collect them and I will count the votes.”

  For the next couple of minutes people ripped pieces of paper from their notebooks and wrote their votes on them. Then Mrs. Greeley walked around with a box and collected them all. When she had the last one she returned to her desk and dumped them out.

  Annie watched as she opened the first vote and put it to one side. The next vote went into the same pile. But the third was set aside in a second pile. I wonder which ones are which? Annie thought.

  She watched anxiously as Mrs. Greeley added slips to each pile. Annie tried to count them as she did, but she was too anxious. All she could do was watch each stack grow larger and larger. They seemed almost equal, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Finally, Mrs. Greeley opened the last slip and looked at it before tossing it into the pile to her left. Then she pushed all of the slips back into the box and looked up.

  “Well,” she said. “It was a very close vote. Apparently both counselors did a job of persuading some of you.”

  Annie’s heart was racing. She wanted to win. She wanted to show up Mrs. Greeley, who, she knew, had set up the entire mock trial as a way of embarrassing Cooper. Annie looked at Cooper, who was still sitting in the chair, her arms folded across her chest.

  Mrs. Greeley stood and walked over to Cooper. “As I said, the vote was very close,” she said. “But your peers have found you guilty, Miss Rivers, by a vote of seventeen to twenty-two.”

  Annie’s heart sank. How could that be? How could people be so narrow-minded? How could they actually fall for what John had said? But apparently they had. She looked over at John. He was looking back at her, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. In her chair, Cooper looked like she wanted to murder him. Annie looked at her friend sadly. If we can’t even convince the class, she thought, how are we ever going to convince the school board?

  CHAPTER 17

  Cooper pushed her food around her plate. She wasn’t hungry. She didn’t even want to be eating dinner with her parents, but her father had insisted. In the five days that had passed since the incident with the college guys and her blow-up with her mother, she’d barely spoken to her mom. She hadn’t told either of her parents about the humiliating “trial” in history class, or about the comments she faced daily from her fellow students. She hadn’t told them that someone had written “witch” on her locker in black marker on Tuesday, or that T.J. had gotten into another fight when a guy in one of his classes had made fun of Cooper and T.J. had—once again—stood up for her.

  At least he hasn’t dumped you, she reminded herself. Yet. But Brian had dumped Annie, and Kate still wasn’t being allowed to speak to Tyler. How long would T.J. keep putting up with her and the whole witch thing? He’d been the one to warn her about being too public, and now he was having to defend her because she hadn’t listened. She appreciated it more than he probably knew, but would he keep doing it forever? Cooper didn’t know. She’d hoped that everything would blow over quickly, but it just seemed to be intensifying. There had been more letters to the editor in the Tribune—mostly negative—and at class the night before Sophia had told her and Annie that people had been calling the store and accusing them of brainwashing the children of Beecher Falls.

  Maybe you went too far this time, she told herself. Maybe you should have listened to everybody. She knew that if she had listened to T.J., and to her mother, she wouldn’t be facing the horrifying prospect of standing in front of the school board again the next night. Her friends’ lives wouldn’t have been ruined. She could be looking forward to a night with the girls, or maybe jamming with T.J., instead of worrying about what was going to happen.

  But even though she was miserable, and even though things were really rough, part of her just couldn’t stop fighting. She knew that despite everything she was right. She did have the right to wear her pentacle, even if it made other people uncomfortable. She shouldn’t have to hide her beliefs just because some people thought they were unusual. She shouldn’t have to pretend she was someone else. The school board and the kids in her history class who had voted against her might not understand why it was important for her to wear the necklace, but they shouldn’t be able to stop her from doing it.

  But they have stopped you, she told herself. She wasn’t allowed to wear the pentacle, and she was sure that after tomorrow she really wouldn’t be
able to. The school board, and especially Mr. Adams, would see to that. Sherrie had been running all over school for the past week, waving her petition around and getting more and more signatures. Every time Cooper saw somebody signing it she wanted to rip it out of their hands and tear it into hundreds of pieces. And once, when a guy had stopped her in the hall to sign it, Cooper had caught Sherrie looking at her with such an expression of triumph and sadistic pleasure that Cooper had had to go down to the music practice rooms and punch the soundproofed walls for half an hour to work out her frustrations.

  “Are you coming to the school board hearing tomorrow?” Mr. Rivers asked his wife. He sounded uncomfortable, and he spoke to her almost as if she were a stranger instead of someone he’d been married to for nearly twenty years.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mrs. Rivers answered, sounding equally uncomfortable. “I’m a teacher, Stephen. I’m not supposed to be taking sides here.”

  “You mean you’re not supposed to be taking my side,” Cooper said.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” said her mother. “Everybody already assumes that I’m taking your side because you’re my daughter.”

  Cooper snorted. “I guess they don’t know you very well, then, do they?”

  Mrs. Rivers put down her fork. “For someone who talks a lot about freedom of speech, you need to learn to let other people have their opinions,” she said.

  Cooper looked down. She wanted to say something back, but she held her tongue. Once again, she wondered if maybe her mother was right. Was she so caught up in thinking that she had the right to wear her pentacle that she wasn’t allowing herself to consider any other sides of the argument? She was the first to admit that she could be as stubborn as the day was long. Was she being stubborn now, or was she really in the right?

  “You don’t live in the real world, Cooper,” her mother continued. “You don’t have to deal with eight-year-olds asking you if your daughter can fly because their parents told them she was a witch. You don’t have to go into the teachers’ lounge for a cup of coffee and have people stop talking when you walk in.”