Truth about Truman School (17 page)

The phone rang while I was doing my homework. It was Lilly's mom, of all people. She wanted to know whether
I'd
seen Lilly at all that day.

I just kind of “uh'ed” at her for a few seconds because I couldn't figure out why she was asking
me.
Finally, I had to just come right out and say, “You know, Mrs. Clarke, Lilly and I haven't exactly been friends for the last two years … ”

“Yes, but even if you're not friends anymore, you still know each other. You live in the same neighborhood. You see each other now and then. I just want to know whether you saw her in school today. Or after school.”

“I don't know,” I said, trying to remember. “I don't think so.” Honestly, I try to pay as little attention to Lilly as possible.

So then Mrs. Clarke started asking me a bunch of questions about whether I'd noticed anything strange about Lilly lately, whether she was still hanging around with the same girls, whether she had new friends, whether I had any idea why she might not have wanted to go to school. Each question she asked made me squirm just a little more because of course I knew why Lilly wouldn't want to go to school. So did everyone else at Truman.

Mrs. Clarke sounded so worried. So scared. She must have called like fifty other people before she called me. Had
no one
told her what was going on at school? Had no one told her her daughter was getting trashed online?

“You know, I'm sorry you and Amr and Lilly have all gone separate ways,” Mrs. Clarke said. Her voice was all choky. “But if you don't know anything … ”

“Wait!” I said, before Mrs. Clarke hung up. Because
somebody
had to tell her what was going on.

“You told Lilly's mom about the Truth about Truman?” I practically yelled into the phone. Why would she do that?

“I had to,” Zebby said. “You should have heard her, Amr. She's really worried. She asked me if Lilly was having trouble with kids at school. What was I supposed to do? Tell her everything was fine?”

“Couldn't you have just told her about the Lilly's Lesbian Diary site and the We Hate Lilly site? Did you have to tell her about the Truth about Truman?” If my parents found out I ran a website where people gossiped and posted mean things about other people, they'd
kill
me. That was why I took that fable off our website.

“I didn't think I could tell her about those without at least mentioning ours,” Zebby said. “If she stumbled across the Truth about Truman on her own, she'd wonder why I didn't mention it. Besides, there's no reason we should have to hide. We're not the ones who posted any of that stuff about Lilly.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “So what did she say? Did she get online and look at any of those sites while you were talking to her?”

“No, she—” All of a sudden Zebby stopped talking.

“She what?” I asked.

Zebby didn't respond.

“Hello?” I said. Had Zebby left me hanging here? I could hear voices in the background, so I knew we were still connected, even if she had suddenly gone away.

“Yo! Zeb? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I'm here. Amr, look outside. There are a bunch of police cars in front of Lilly's house!”

“What? There are?” I went to the window and yanked open the shade. Zebby was right. There were two police cars in Lilly's driveway and two more parked on the street in front of her house.

There were already a lot of people standing around in front of Lilly's house when my parents and I headed down the street. Some were talking to the police, others were clustered around Lilly's mom or just standing around looking serious.

Amr and his parents had just come out of their house. Amr's dad was dressed in business clothes; his mom wore a blue hijab. “What is going on?” she asked my mom.

“I don't know,” my mom replied. “Zebby says Lilly is missing.”

“Missing!” Amr's mother cried.

Our parents approached Lilly's mom to see if there was anything they could do to help. Amr and I hung back at the edge of the crowd.

A woman came over to us and introduced herself as Detective Marsh. “Are you two friends of Lilly's?” she asked as she turned to a fresh page in her small notebook.

Amr and I glanced at each other. “Not really,” I said.

“We know her,” Amr put in. “But we don't hang around with her.”

“I see,” Detective Marsh said. “And what are your names?”

We told her and Detective Marsh stopped writing. She turned back a couple of pages in her notebook, read a little bit, frowned, then raised her head.

“You're the kids who run one of those websites,” she said.

* * * *

As soon as my mom and I walked in our house, my mom said, “I want to see this website you and Amr created.”

She made it sound like the Truth about Truman School was some worthless website and that it was somehow
our
fault, mine and Amr's, that people posted all those mean things about Lilly. Detective Marsh was the same way. She wanted to know when we started the site, why we started it, did we know what was on there, did we post any of those mean things about Lilly, did we know who did, did we think it was wise to set things up so that anyone could post whatever they wanted, and on and on and on.

“It's really not
that
bad,” I told my mom as we sat down at my computer. My dad was out with a bunch of people searching for Lilly.

Mom folded her arms across her chest and waited for the site to come up.

“It's not like the whole purpose of our site is to trash Lilly. It's not. The Truth about Truman School is an online newspaper. It's a place where anyone at school can go to write about whatever is on their minds.”

“Even if ‘whatever is on their minds' is hurtful to someone else?” Mom asked.

“Well—” That wasn't my intention.

When the site came up, Mom reached for my mouse. I watched her scroll past the “Who's the Biggest Poser at Our School” headline, Lilly's picture, and all the comments attached to it. She clicked on the link to Lilly's Lesbian Diary and read through everything on there. Then she went back to our site and clicked on the link to the We Hate Lilly website. With every click of the mouse, the line of her jaw seemed to tighten.

When she finished reading, she blinked about ten times. Which meant she was upset. “What in the world makes you think it's okay to post things like this on a website?” she asked.

“I didn't post any of that stuff about Lilly. I posted the article about the Lego robotics team, and the article about school food, and the article about—”

“But you let other people post it,” she interrupted.

I clucked my tongue. “I can't control what other people post!”

“Sure you can. It's
your
website. If you and Amr don't control what people post on it, who does?”

“Nobody,” I said, sitting up a little straighter. “That's the point. It's a freedom of speech issue. We say right on the front page that we aren't going to censor anyone. So what can we do? We can't go back on our word.”

Mom cocked her head, like
you know better than that, Zebby
.

“It's not like I
wanted
anyone to post this stuff,” I went on. “In fact, I would have preferred they not post it since it's not exactly news.”

“So take it down,” Mom said simply.

“It's not that simple—”

“It is
exactly
that simple, Zebby. You're the editor of this website. That means you're the one who decides what's fit for publication. Do you really think
this
,” she pointed at the link to Lilly's Lesbian Diary, “is something worthy of publication?”

I lowered my eyes. “Not exactly—”

“Then take it down. In fact, while you're at it, I'd like you to take down
all
the articles, drawings, photographs, polls, and comments that could somehow be considered hurtful or offensive to someone else.”

“There wouldn't be much left if I did that,” I muttered.

“Then take the whole thing down,” Mom said.

“WHAT?” I leaped to my feet in protest.

Mom stood up, too. “You heard me. You either need to find a way to run this website responsibly, or you need to take it down.”

It was really quiet at our house the next morning. The explosion had come the night before, when my mom made me show her the Truth about Truman. She got really mad when she saw the site and she said I had to take it down. I told her I couldn't do that without talking to Zebby.

“Then talk to Zebby,” she said.

But I never saw Zebby online last night. So our site was still up.

Now this morning, my mom stood by the kitchen sink, sipping a cup of tea. She hadn't made any breakfast. When she saw me coming, she poured a bowl of Cheerios and set it in front of me, but I didn't feel like eating it.

My dad was still upstairs getting ready for work. He and a bunch of other people from our neighborhood had been out late searching for Lilly the night before, but they never found her.

My stomach was all twisted up. I couldn't eat, so I got up and dumped my cereal down the sink. “I better go,” I said, even though I really didn't need to leave for school for another ten minutes yet.

“Have you talked to Zebby?” Mom asked just before I went out the door.

“Not yet,” I admitted.

“Today, Amr. You talk to her today and then you take that website down.”

“Okay,” I said. I knew Zebby's mom was worried about our site, too. They went back to their house about the same time my mom and I came back here. But Zebby's folks aren't as strict as mine are. I couldn't imagine they expected her to take the whole site down. How was I supposed to tell Zebby that that was what my mom wanted me to do?

I needed time. Time to figure out the exact right way to bring it up. So I decided not to pick her up on my way to school. I went the other way around the block. Past Lilly's house.

There was still a police car parked in front of Lilly's house. Just one, though. I wondered if this was the same one that was parked there the night before, or if this was a different one that had come this morning. There was another car I didn't recognize in the driveway, too. An unmarked police car, maybe?

While I was staring at their house, the front door opened and Lilly's mom stepped outside with a police officer and some other man who looked a little bit familiar, but I wasn't sure who he was at first. He was tall and thin, and he dressed like a guy who worked in an office and made a lot of money. They were so busy talking they didn't pay any attention to me as I walked past their house. Two houses later it hit me. I knew who that guy was. Lilly's
dad
.