The Wave (3 page)

“Well, I meant I wanted to be here first,” Amy replied.

“Meaning to be first doesn’t count,” Brian said. “Besides, I have to talk to Dave about football.”

“And I have to talk to Laurie,” Amy said.

“What about?” Brian asked.

“Well, about keeping her company while you talk about boring football.”

“Stop it,” Laurie said. “There’s room for two.”

“But with them you need room for three,” Amy said, nodding at Brian and David.

“Hardy har har,” Brian grunted.

David and Laurie slid over, and Amy and Brian squeezed in next to them at the table. Amy was right about room for three—Brian was carrying two full lunch trays.

“Hey, what are you doing with all this food?” David asked, patting Brian on the back. Although
he was the team’s quarterback, Brian was not very big. David stood a full head taller than him.

“I gotta gain some weight,” Brian said as he started to wolf down his lunch. “I’m gonna need every pound I’ve got against those guys from Clarkstown on Saturday. They are big. I mean, huge. I hear they got a linebacker who stands six three and weighs two-twenty.”

“I don’t see what you’re worried about,” Amy said. “No one that heavy can run very fast.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t
have
to run, Amy. All he has to do is squash quarterbacks.”

“Will you have a chance on Saturday?” Laurie asked. She was thinking about the story they would need for
The Grapevine
.

David shrugged. “I don’t know. The team’s pretty disorganized. We’re way behind on learning our plays and stuff. Half the guys don’t even show up for practice.”

“Yeah,” Brian agreed. “Coach Schiller said he was gonna throw anyone who didn’t show up for practice off the team. But if he did that we wouldn’t even have enough guys to play.”

No one seemed to have anything more to say about football, so Brian bit into his second hamburger.

David’s thoughts drifted to other pressing matters. “Hey, is anyone here good at calculus?”

“Why are you taking calculus?” Amy asked.

“You need it for engineering,” David said.

“So why not wait till college?” Brian asked.

“I heard it was so hard you have to take it twice
to understand it,” David explained. “So I figured I’d take it once now and once later.”

Amy nudged Laurie. “I think your boyfriend is strange,” she said.

“Talk about strange,” Brian whispered, nodding toward Robert Billings.

They all looked. Robert was sitting alone at his table, engrossed in a Spider-Man comic book. His lips moved as he read and there was a red streak of catsup on his chin.

“You see him sleep through the whole movie?” Brian asked.

“Don’t remind Laurie,” David told him. “She’s upset.”

“What, about that movie?” Brian asked.

Laurie gave David a dirty look. “Do you
have
to tell everybody?”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” David asked.

“Oh, just leave me alone,” Laurie answered.

“I can understand how you feel,” Amy told her. “I thought it was just awful.”

Laurie turned to David. “There, you see? I’m not the only one that it bothered.”

“Hey,” David said defensively. “I didn’t say I wasn’t bothered by it. I just said it’s over now. Forget about it. It happened once and the world learned its lesson. It’ll never happen again.”

“I hope not,” Laurie said, picking up her tray.

“Where’re you going?” David asked her.

“I have to go work on
The Grapevine
,” Laurie said.

“Wait,” Amy said, “I’ll go with you.”

David and Brian watched the two girls go.

“Gee, she really is upset about that movie, isn’t she?” Brian said.

“Yeah.” David nodded. “You know, she always takes stuff like that too seriously.”

Amy Smith and Laurie Saunders sat in
The Grapevine
office talking. Amy wasn’t on the newspaper staff, but she often hung out with Laurie in the publications office. The office door could be locked, and Amy would sit inside by an open window, holding a cigarette outside and blowing the smoke out. If a teacher came in, she could drop the cigarette to the ground and there would hardly be any smell of smoke in the room.

“That was an awful movie,” Amy said.

Laurie nodded quietly.

“Are you and David having a fight?” her friend asked.

“Oh, not really.” Laurie couldn’t help smiling slightly. “I just wish he would take something besides football seriously. He’s—I don’t know—he’s such a jock sometimes.”

“But he gets good grades,” Amy said. “At least he’s not a dumb jock like Brian.”

The two girls giggled for a moment and then Amy asked, “Why does he want to be an engineer? It sounds so boring.”

“He wants to be a computer engineer,” Laurie said. “Did you ever see the one he has at home? He built it from a kit.”

“Somehow I missed it,” Amy said facetiously. “By the way, have you decided what you’re doing next year?”

Laurie shook her head. “Maybe we’ll go somewhere together. It depends on where we get accepted.”

“Your parents will be thrilled,” Amy said.

“I don’t think they’d mind that much,” Laurie said.

“Why don’t you just get married?” Amy asked.

Laurie made a face. “Oh, Amy. I mean, I guess I love David, but who wants to get married yet?”

Amy smiled. “Oh, I don’t know, if David asked
me
I might consider it,” she teased.

Laurie laughed. “Would you like me to drop a hint?”

“Come off it, Laurie,” Amy said. “You know how much he likes you. He doesn’t even look at other girls.”

“He’d better not,” Laurie said. She noticed that there was a wistful note to Amy’s voice. Ever since Laurie had started dating David, Amy had wanted to date a football player too. It sometimes bothered Laurie that underlying their friendship was a constant competition for boys, grades, popularity, almost everything one could compete for. Even though they were best friends, that constant competition somehow prevented them from being really close.

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door and someone tried the doorknob. Both girls jumped. “Who is it?” Laurie asked.

“Principal Owens,” a deep voice replied. “Why is this door locked?”

Amy’s eyes went wide with fear. She quickly dropped her cigarette and started digging through her pocketbook for a stick of gum or a mint.

“Uh, it must have been an accident,” Laurie replied nervously, going to the door.

“Well, open it immediately!”

Amy looked terrified.

Laurie gave her a helpless look and pulled the door open.

Outside in the hall were Carl Block,
The Grapevine
’s investigative reporter, and Alex Cooper, the music reviewer. They were both grinning.

“Oh, you two!” Laurie said angrily. Behind her Amy looked like she was going to faint as the two biggest practical jokers in the school stepped into the room.

Carl was a tall, thin guy with blond hair. Alex, who was stocky and dark, was wearing earphones connected to a small tape player. “Something illegal going on in here?” Carl asked slyly, making his eyebrows bounce up and down.

“You made me waste a perfectly good cigarette,” Amy complained.

“Tisk, tisk,” Alex said, looking on disapprovingly.

“So how is the paper coming?” Carl asked.

“What do you mean?” Laurie asked in exasperation. “Neither of you has handed in your assignments for this issue.”

“Oh-oh.” Alex was suddenly looking at his watch and backing away toward the door. “I just remembered I have to catch a plane to Argentina.”

“I’ll drive you to the airport!” Carl said, following him out the door.

Laurie looked at Amy and shook her head wearily. “Those two,” she mumbled, making a fist.

CHAPTER 4

S
omething bothered Ben Ross. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he was intrigued by the questions the kids in his history class had asked him after the film that day. It made him wonder. Why hadn’t he been able to give the students adequate answers to their questions? Was the behavior of the majority of Germans during the Nazi regime really so inexplicable?

That afternoon before he left school, Ross had stopped at the library and taken out an armful of books. His wife, Christy would be playing tennis that evening with some friends, so he knew he would have a long period of uninterrupted time to pursue his thoughts. Now, several hours later, after reading through a number of books, Ben suspected that he would not find the real answer written anywhere. It made him wonder. Was this something historians knew words could not explain? Was it something one could only understand by being there? Or, if possible, by re-creating a similar situation?

The idea intrigued Ross. Suppose, he thought, just suppose he took a period, perhaps two periods, and tried an experiment. Just tried to give his students a sampling, a taste of what life in Nazi Germany might have been like. If he could just figure out how it could be done, how the experiment could be run, he was certain it would make far more of an impression on the students than any book explanation could ever make. It certainly was worth a try.

Christy Ross didn’t get in that night until after eleven o’clock. She’d played tennis and then had dinner with a friend. She got home to find her husband sitting at their kitchen table surrounded by books.

“Doing your homework?”

“In a way, yes,” Ben Ross replied without looking up from his books.

On top of one of the books Christy noticed an empty glass and an empty plate with a few crumbs from what once must have been a sandwich.

“Well, at least you remembered to feed yourself,” she said, picking up the dish and placing it in the sink.

Her husband didn’t answer. His nose was still stuck in the book.

“I bet you’re just dying to find out how badly I beat Betty Lewis tonight,” she said, kidding him.

Ben looked up. “What?”

“I said I beat Betty Lewis tonight,” Christy told him.

Her husband had a blank look on his face.

Christy laughed. “Betty Lewis. You know, the Betty Lewis who I’ve never won more than two games in a set from. I beat her tonight. In two sets. Six-four; seven-five.”

“Oh, uh, that’s very good,” Ben said absently. He looked back down at the book and started reading again.

Someone else might have been offended by his apparent rudeness, but Christy wasn’t. She knew Ben was the kind of person who got involved with things. Not just involved, but utterly absorbed in them to the point where he tended to forget that the rest of the world existed. She’d never forget the time in graduate school when he got interested in American Indians. For months he was so wrapped up in Indians that he forgot about the rest of his life. On weekends he’d visit Indian reservations or spend hours looking for old books in dusty libraries. He even started bringing Indians home for dinner! And wearing deerskin moccasins! Christy used to get up some mornings wondering if he was going to put on war paint.

But that was the way Ben was. One summer she’d taught him to play bridge, and within a month not only was he a better bridge player than she, but he was driving her crazy, insisting that they play bridge every minute of the day. He only calmed down after he won a local bridge tournament and ran out of worthy competitors. It was almost frightening, the way he lost himself in each new adventure.

Christy looked at the books scattered about the kitchen table and sighed. “What is it this time?”
she asked. “The Indians again? Astronomy? The behavioral characteristics of killer whales?”

When her husband didn’t answer, she picked up some of the books. “
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
?
Hitler’s Youth
?” She frowned. “What are you doing, cramming for a degree in dictatorship?”

“Not funny,” Ben muttered without looking up.

“You’re right,” Christy admitted.

Ben Ross sat back and looked at his wife. “One of my students asked me a question today that I couldn’t answer.”

“So what else is new?” Christy asked.

“But I don’t think I ever saw the answer written anywhere,” Ben told her. “It just may be an answer they have to learn for themselves.”

Christy Ross nodded. “Well, I can see what kind of night this is going to be,” she said. “Just remember, tomorrow you have to be awake enough to teach an entire day of classes.”

Her husband nodded. “I know, I know.”

Christy Ross bent down and kissed him on his forehead. “Try not to wake me.
If
you come to sleep tonight.”

CHAPTER 5

T
he next day the students drifted in slowly as usual. Some took their seats, others stood around talking. Robert Billings was by the windows, tying knots in the blind cords. While he was doing that, Brad, his incessant tormentor, walked past and patted him on the back, sticking a small sign that said “kick me” to his shirt.

It looked like just another typical day in history class until the kids noticed that their teacher had written in large letters across the blackboard: STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” someone asked.

“I’ll tell you just as soon as you’re all seated,” Ben Ross answered. When the kids were all in their places, he began to lecture. “Today I am going to talk to you about discipline.”

A collective groan went up from the seated students. There were some teachers whose classes you knew would be a drag, but most of the
students expected Ross’s history class to be pretty good—which meant no dumb lectures on stuff like discipline.

“Hold it,” Ben told them. “Before you make a judgment, give this a chance. It could be exciting.”

“Oh sure,” someone said.

“Oh sure is right,” Ben told his students. “Now when I talk about discipline, I’m talking about power,” he said, making a fist to accentuate the point. “And I’m talking about success. Success through discipline. Is there anyone here who isn’t interested in power and success?”

“Probably Robert,” Brad said. A bunch of kids snickered.

“Now wait,” Ben told them. “David, Brian, Eric, you play football. You already know it takes discipline to win.”