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Authors: Doug Wilhelm

The Revealers (19 page)

BOOK: The Revealers
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“Whoa,” somebody says.
“Go back to the fight scenes.”
“They're
bullying
scenes, fathead.”
“Hey, you call me that again …”
The crowd was growing even bigger and noisier. Everyone was demanding this and that—the scenes, the stories. I didn't know if anyone was at any of the other exhibits anymore. I couldn't see beyond our throng.
“What's on that screen—
WrestleMania
?” said a booming voice, coming through the crowd.
“Hey, Mr. Dallas,” Elliot said.
“Elliot,” he said, “you're a hit.”
“Yeah. We need more computers!”
“Well, we only made the one CD, at least for now,” he
said. “Who knew you'd draw a crowd like this? What do they want to see?”
“Mostly the videos.”
“So give them a video!”
As the crowd pressed in around us, Elliot went back to the Video Interviews menu and punched up Bethany DeMere and Catalina Aarons. Catalina made a feeble effort to grab the mouse and choose something else, but then she sat back.
Mr. Dallas leaned over to me.
“Any glitches?” he whispered.
“None so far.”
“Great. ‘Cause after school is when the judges come through. With the principal.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and backed away in the crowd. Mr. Dallas hadn't seen the interview with Mrs. Capelli—I hadn't had the nerve to show him. Mrs. Capelli hadn't seen anything. I knew the kids would like our project, though I also hadn't expected a crowd like this; but I wasn't at all sure what would happen when a bunch of grownups, including the principal, saw the scenes and interviews, especially this one:
Bethany and Catalina are sitting in chairs. Bethany is styling her hair with her fingers, then she sees the camera is on her. She lowers her head and smiles.
“Bethany,” Catalina says. Bethany ignores her.
“Bethany.”
“What?”
“Why did you make things up about me?”
“What?”
“Why did you make up stories that weren't true about me, and about my family and where I come from?”
“I never did that,” Bethany says to the camera. “You're hallucinating.”
“Actually, you did do that. You also made up the story that said you were cheating.”
“What? You're
crazy.”
“Am I?”
Catalina picks up her backpack. She zips open the front pocket and pulls out a note. “You wrote this note to Russell Trainor. You taped it on his locker.”
“No, I didn't.”
“It says,
Hi there, Smart Boy—Guess you got outsmarted, huh?”
Catalina says, “That was taped to Russell's locker before the student body came in and read our letter, saying the story we'd published about your cheating wasn't true. Whoever wrote this note knew that story was a fake. At that point, no other students—except the ones your father interviewed, who were all your friends—knew anything about the story being fake. At that exact point, only the students who actually planted that story would have known to say we had been outsmarted.”
Bethany smiles at the camera. “That's ridiculous,” she says. “And anyway, you can't prove I wrote that note.”
“Here's another of your notes,” Catalina says. “You wrote this one and dropped it in my locker.”
“Yeah. Right.” But Bethany is trying to peer at the note as Catalina unfolds it.
Catalina reads:
Everybody knows why the weird girl had to leave where she came from. Because she was so EASY the boys wouldn't even look at her in public anymore. She learned it from her mother …
“That one was pretty horrible, Bethany. It wasn't true at all.”
“I never wrote that! I didn't write either one of those.” Bethany turns her hurt-looking face to the camera.
“But you did, Bethany. You wrote this one, too.”
Catalina reaches in again, unfolds, and reads:
I'm not talking to you ANYMORE. I don't care WHAT happens.
“You wrote that to Russell in social studies class,” Catalina says. “You wrote it in front of him, and you handed it to him and he kept it. He kept all these notes. They're all in the same handwriting, Bethany. They're all yours. You made up the story that you cheated, just so we would publish it and get in trouble.”
Bethany is stunned for just one second. Then she turns to the camera and cocks her head with an innocent expression.
“You know, my father's an attorney,” she says nicely. “I think you've met him, haven't you?”
Catalina nods. “Yes, I did,” she says. “Actually, we talked to a lawyer, too—a good friend of my dad's. He said we've got solid evidence, and if anybody has a case for slandering someone's reputation, it would be me. Against you.”
Bethany crosses her arms. She doesn't say anything.
“I still don't understand why you'd want to hurt somebody that way,” Catalina says. “But I finally decided if I let you get away with it, you'll think nobody will ever stand up to you. You'll think you can control everything. I realized it was worth taking a risk to prove what's really true. So if you'd like to talk to your dad, we think you should. In fact, here are the notes.”
Catalina hands her the papers. Bethany looks wide-eyed for a second, then grabs them and gives the camera an amazed expression, as if she can't believe we're that dumb after all.
“Of course, those are photocopies,” Catalina says. “We kept the originals. We even scanned them. They're on this CD—in the Gallery of Nasty Notes.”
Bethany stares for a second at the papers in her hand. Then she turns to the camera. She inclines her head with a patient expression.
“Turner,” she says softly, nicely, “I think you should give me the tape now, Turner. Come on, Turner. I'm stronger than you and you know it. Turner … give me the tape.”
Bethany gets up from her chair. The camera backs up.
“Turner, take the tape out and give it to me. Come on.” Bethany's walking forward; the camera moves jerkily back. “Give me the tape, Turner!”
She rushes for him and the whole image tilts, and then there's snow and noise. And that's it.
The crowd around our monitor erupted in a swirl of talk. Jake said in my ear, “What happened? Did she get the tape?”
“It's a new digital camera—only Turner knows how to work it,” I said. “She grabbed it and shook it a little, then she handed it back and stormed off.”
Jake grinned. “Huh!” Then he frowned. “But aren't you scared she'll get her dad to sue you? Didn't he already say he might?”
I shrugged. “If you were Bethany, would you want your dad to see this? And even if he did see it, would he want a lot more people to know she did this? I mean, we have the evidence.”
“I guess so,” he said. “So what about when the principal sees it?”
“Uh, well …” I felt a familiar prickle of fear. “That part I'm not too sure about.”
“Well, that was fun,” I said as the last classes crowded back out the gym doors.
“Yeah,” said Elliot. “The network's still history, though. You heard what she said.”
“So we can't do miracles. At least we won't be outcasts with the kids.”
Elliot smiled. “Not anymore.”
It was quiet in the gym. We could finally take a break. It was two-thirty; school got out at two forty-five, but we had to stay here and wait for the judges to come at three. After that we got to go home for dinner—then we had to be back when the parents came to see the fair at seven.
“I bet Bethany tells her dad there's nothing interesting at the science fair,” Elliot said.
“Oh, yeah. He wouldn't want to see any of
this
stuff.”
Catalina punched Eject on the CD drive and the tray slid out. She lifted the shiny disk by its edges. It was silver-blue as she tilted it, holding it up to the light. Then she slid it back in. Her fingernails were painted with silver sparkles.
“Well, these last four weeks were definitely fun,” Elliot said.
“Yeah.”
“We might even win the science fair,” Catalina said.
Elliot and I both shrugged. After all, that was never really the point.
 
The judges were a tall woman in a white lab coat with a hospital name tag that said MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIST, a burly guy with a beard and a heavy purple shirt who looked like a mountain man but who they said was a software developer, and a man in a suit who was looking bright-eyed at everything. Mr. Dallas and Ms. Hogeboom were there, too. Mrs. Capelli was fluttering around the man in the suit.
“Children, this is Dr. David Bennett, the chair of our school board,” she said.
We shook the man's hand and also the others'. Dr. Bennett—I never found out if he was a medical doctor or some kind of scientist—had sandy hair and a roundish, open face, almost like a little kid's, and a quick, happy smile. When we punched up the main menu, he slid eagerly onto the chair between Catalina and me.
“So let's see this,” he said. “‘Then Bully Lab,' in multimedia. Well, isn't
this
unusual. Hmm … okay. The hypothesis.” He double-clicked. Allison's voice came on again:
“Our hypothesis is that bringing bullying and harassment incidents to light among the whole student body in a school will result in these incidents happening less often, and being less severe.”
Dr. Bennett whistled. “Now that's a hypothesis,” he said. He leaned back. “Grady? Sharon? Any thoughts?”
“I'd love to see the proof,” the lab-coat lady said.
“Click on,” said the mountain man.
Dr. Bennett pulled up Research Methods and read the list of questions. Nodding, looking interested, he brought up Research Report. He clicked on Audio Text.
Catalina's voice came up, alternating with Allison's:
“We distributed our survey to all students, and received an eighty-five-percent response,” Catalina says. “This seemed like an incredible response. We think it showed a lot of interest and support for our project.”
“Out of the three hundred forty-three surveys we received back,” says Allison, “two hundred thirty students—sixty-seven percent—said they had been involved in a bullying or harassment incident at our school. Seventy-four percent of those students said they had been on the victim side. Twenty percent had been on the bullying side. Six percent did not answer this question.”
“Forty-eight percent of the students said they had been involved in more than five incidents,” says Catalina's voice. “Twenty-three percent said they had been involved in more than ten.”
I looked back. Mrs. Capelli's face was stiff. Her eyes flicked from the school board chairman to the screen.
“Our final results were these,” Allison says. “Ninety-two percent of the students who responded said they had read
The Revealer
on the SchoolStream network.
The Revealer
was an electronic publication that gave kids a chance to tell their own stories of bullying.
“Eighty-two percent of the students who responded to our survey,” says Catalina, “felt bullying had decreased in our school since
The Revealer
was first published.”
Dr. Bennett broke into a wide smile. “Eighty-two
percent,”
he said, turning back to the other grownups. “And you have this
Revealer
on the school system?”
“We had it,” Catalina said.
His forehead crinkled for just a second. Then he said, “So … what was in it?”
“Click on The Stories,” Elliot said.
He did. For a good five or ten quiet minutes, the judges read story after story.
“And these are all true?” said the mountain man, in a quiet voice.
“Kids sent them in,” I said. “We got everyone's permission to include their stories.”
“Not at
first
,” Mrs. Capelli said.
“But we learned,” said Elliot.
“These three students conceived, directed, and coordinated the project,” Ms. Hogeboom piped up. “But they were helped by literally dozens of others. Not only the additional students who are credited on the menu, but also, what was it—forty—six?”
“Forty-two,” I said.
“Forty-two students contributed their own stories,” she said.
“Forty-two out of more than four hundred,” Mrs. Capelli pointed out.
“That's
very
impressive,” Dr. Bennett said.
The principal made a sound like a strangled duck.
“We didn't do this to make the school look bad,” Elliot said. “We did it because this stuff happens.”
“Well, of course—you're social scientists,” Dr. Bennett said. “I want to see more. What else is good?”
“Try the interviews,” I said, and he clicked up this one:
“Hey, Elliot, it was all just for fun. You know that,” says Jon Blanchette. He, Elliot, and Burke sit on three plastic chairs.
“Yeah—until you dumped your lunch on me in the cafeteria,” Burke says. “That wasn't fun. I got you back, though, didn't I?”
“Did you?” Elliot says.
Burke smiles. “Maybe I did.”
Elliot shakes his head. “You're the weird one, Burke. You know that? You guys thought it was so much fun to wait for me before school, after school, on the playground, in the halls, just so you could do something nasty. I mean, you hung my backpack in a tree, you played soccer with my lunch. You even dropped me off a bridge.”
“You
did that,” Burke says. “We were only teaching you a lesson. The guys never would have dropped you if you'd just held still.”
“But what was all that about?” says my voice, off camera. “Why do all that stuff to one particular kid?”
“Hey, we were just having fun,” says Blanchette. “You
liked
it,” he adds, grinning at Elliot.
“You think I liked it?”
“You definitely liked it. You could have avoided us. You never did. Right? It was part of your day, too. We were the guys who paid attention to you, Elliot. Weren't we?”
Elliot is shaking his head, but he's smiling, too.
“Calling me Geekowitz.”
“At least we called you something,” Jon says. “I mean, weren't we the only ones?”
“Nah, there were lots. You were just the nastiest.”
“Now you're talkin',” Blanchette says, leaning back and giving the camera his big natural smile.
Next, Dr. Bennett clicked up Richie—and suddenly he was in your face, filling the camera.
“What are YOU looking at?”
Dr. Bennett's head jerked back. I glanced around. Mrs. Capelli looked paralyzed, and everyone was staring at the screen.
Richie's face was darkly angry. That was our idea, his and mine: to show you what it's like.
“Hey. You.” He points with his chin. “Why are you looking at me?”
“I wasn't,” my voice says.
His eyebrows clench and his head tilts. He speaks softly, as if he's puzzled: “Are you calling me”—the eyebrows lift—“a liar?”
“No! I didn't mean to.”
“Oh,
please,”
he simpers in his baby voice. “I
didn't mean to.”
He looks you up and down. He smirks, and doesn't say anything. Finally he leans even closer, and whispers, “You know what I'm going to do to you?”
He nods, with the slightest smile.
“You don't know, do you? And you don't know when … do you? Might be in the bathroom. Might be after school. Might be almost anyplace where no one's watching.”
He raises those eyebrows again, like now you and he have a secret. “I might be …
anywhere.”
He slowly smiles. But his eyes stay hard.
“See ya,” he says, and the screen goes blank.
The grownups were totally silent. For a long time, no one said anything. Finally, Dr. Bennett almost whispered, “That was powerful.”
“A remarkable actor,” said the lady judge.
“I don't think he was acting,” said the mountain man.
“Perhaps not,” Dr. Bennett murmured.
Another pause.
“Tell me,” the school board chairman finally said, turning to us. “How did this project get started?”
We three looked at each other.
“We were each getting picked on—for different reasons,” Elliot said. “So we got together.”
“We wanted to figure out why stuff like that happened,” I said.
“No,” Elliot said. “We wanted it to stop.”
“Well, yeah. To figure out how we could stop it. But the things we tried at first didn't work.”
“To say the least,” Elliot said. “But then Catalina wrote something.”
Everyone looked at her. She blushed.
“I just wrote about who I am and where I came from,” she said. “Some people were saying things that weren't true. And then Mr. Dallas showed us how we could send what I'd written to everyone in school. On the network.”
“On the network?” the mountain man said.
Dr. Bennett nodded. “The school has a LAN,” he said. “Go on.”
Catalina shrugged. She looked at Elliot.
“Then I wrote something,” Elliot said. “Then other kids started writing stuff—things that happened to them. They were sending them to us, on the network. So we started
The Revealer.”
“That's what we called it,” I said. “Every time we received a few stories, we would publish them for everyone—all the kids—on the network.”
“Amazing,” Dr. Bennett said. “Don't you think?” he said, turning around.
The mountain man and the lab lady nodded. Mrs. Capelli looked like if she moved she might crack.
“And clearly, what you did made a difference,” Dr. Bennett
said. “Your survey demonstrates that. Do you think it was just because you made these things public?”
We looked at each other. Nobody said anything at first.
“We're … pretty sure the school atmosphere was affected,” I said. “I mean, not only did the research say so, but it
seemed
that way. It just didn't seem like it was okay to do the things that were okay before. Not as okay, anyway.”
BOOK: The Revealers
4.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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