The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy (28 page)

And so I watched the show.

“A thousand welcomes to you from chilly Minneapolis, Minnesota,” Trisha cried.

“Here we are,” said Willis Wolfe. “It’s the live finale of the show that’s stolen the hearts of the nation—”

“For Art’s Sake!”
said Damien.

“Tonight is a celebration,” began Trisha. She introduced the seventeen students who, as she put it,
used
to compete on the show. They’d serve as one of the judging panels for the finalists. “They’ll have one vote,” said Trisha, “the studio audience another, and we three judges the third. And with those three votes, we’ll choose the inaugural champion of
For Art’s Sake
!”

I wished I could talk to Elizabeth. I was alert for any sign that they’d read our
Contracantos
, that something was different, but I hadn’t picked up on anything yet.

“And now,” said Trisha, “the trio you’ve been waiting for—our finalists!”

“First,” said Willis Wolfe, “the newest addition to the show, poet extraordinaire, budding man of letters: Luke Weston!”

There was Luke. He was wearing these snazzy dark jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt. The Luke I knew did not wear V-necks.

“And next, everybody’s favorite actor,” said Damien, “the guy who can dance like Fred Astaire, act like Brad Pitt, and sing like Pavarotti.” He only stumbled a little bit over Pavarotti. “I give you: Miki Reagler!”

Miki F.R.’s entrance will be seared in my memory forever. He walked in all nonchalant, but then he recoiled at the sight of the audience. He clapped his hand over his mouth and
widened his eyes in this hideously fake moue of surprise. Then he recovered, winked, and handsprang across the stage. Yuck.

“And now,” said Trisha, “the prima ballerina. First in the company, first in the hearts of men!” She raised an eyebrow until everyone, even Damien, got her stupid joke. “I present graceful, gorgeous Maura Heldsman!”

Maura just walked, but her walk looked about ten times more elegant than Miki F.R.’s gymnastic cavorting.

“Thank you! Thank you!” said Trisha. “Just look at your three finalists! Aren’t they incredible?” You have no idea how much applause I’m omitting. This finale was straight-up thirty percent clapping. “We’ll be back soon with interviews, performances, and a special, surprise announcement that will make you
all
very happy.”

A special, surprise announcement.

They’d read it.

EZRA was up and running.

It only took one boring commercial break for me to realize that Trisha’s claim of a special, surprise announcement meant absolutely nothing. It was a buy for time. They had read the
Contracantos
, but now they would scramble to find a way to sidestep it. I could imagine the frantic conversations. “I’m not going to do it,” Coluber would say. “I simply refuse.”

“You have to,” Blazer Guy would respond. “Look at this audience. They’re going to rebel otherwise.”

“These children can’t force me to do anything,” Coluber would say.

Blazer Guy would be the sort to nurture a secret fear of teenagers. “They could form a mob. They could kill us all.”

“Better death than generosity.”

During the break, the stage crew had brought in some couches, where Trisha Meier sat with several former contestants. All her interview questions were designed for controversy. Tears were an obvious goal. I kept one hand in my pocket, wrapped around Baconnaise, and paid only intermittent attention.

I had to look when they played that odious bush-shaking footage again, back from the Landscape Arboretum episode.

“Josh DuBois,” said Trisha, “you
clearly
enjoyed your time with Maura. Are you rooting for her to win?”

Josh was sitting all akimbo on the couch, just as he did in Latin class. “I’ll go out on a limb here and say no. No. Maura Heldsman does not deserve to win.”

Trisha feigned shock, but she was loving it.

“The champion should be a great artist, sure, and nobody’s saying Maura can’t dance. But they should also have, like, character.”

“Come on, Josh,” inserted Kyle Kimball. I always knew I liked him.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to say this,” said Josh. “Maura doesn’t care about other people. She’s sold herself to win this show.”

“Wow,” said Trisha. “I see some true emotion coming through here.”

That only tightened my resolve. “kTV is the wrong side,” Jackson had said once in the Appelden. “They’re wrong. Usually I don’t even believe in right and wrong, but they’re wrong.”

*   *   *

“Here we go, Baconnaise,” I whispered half an hour later. “The moment of reckoning.”

The orchestra had set up in the pit, and the stage was ready for the three performances.

“We’re ready for our first finalist!” said Trisha.

“What about that special, surprise announcement?” said Damien.

Trisha ignored him. “Willis Wolfe, tell us. What’s the challenge this week?”

“The challenge is that there is no challenge.” You could tell Willis Wolfe thought this was vastly profound.

“The finalists have simply been told that they have three minutes,” said Trisha. “Three minutes, for the performance of a lifetime. Miki Reagler, you’ve drawn the first slot. Miki, come on down!”

Miki F.R. jogged out to wild applause. He grabbed the handheld mike. I shot him beams of animosity.

“I am performing one of my favorite show tunes—and that’s saying something!” he said. “This song speaks to the amazing, crazy time I’ve had on this show, a time I’ll never forget.” What a suck-up.

Trisha made a heart shape with her hands and pushed it toward him. “Love ya!” she cooed.

“I present the anthem of lovers everywhere. From
A Chorus Line
, ‘What I Did for Love’!”

Damien leapt to his feet. “OH MY GOD, THAT’S MY
FAVORITE SONG!” He
had
to be going off script. “Best. Song. Ever.”

The orchestra launched into it. Miki F.R. crooned, and then he belted. He could sing, I’ll admit. I took Baconnaise out of my pocket so he could watch.

“Kiss today goodbye,”
sang Miki F.R.,
“and point me toward tomorrow. We did what we had to dooooo!”
Baconnaise was not won over.
“Won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love!”

“Miki, you make me cry every time,” said Trisha.

Miki F.R. was shaking his head. “Trisha, honey, I make
myself
cry.” Baconnaise and I rolled our eyes at each other.

“And now for our second contestant!” said Trisha. “Maura Heldsman!”

“Here she is,” I told Baconnaise. “Here’s the girl.” He’d never seen her, except on TV.

Maura entered in a leotard and pointe shoes. “Hi, everyone. I’ll be dancing the part of Odette from
Swan Lake
.”

“Classic,” murmured Trisha.

“Using a variation on the Petipa-Ivanov choreography.”

“Also classic.”

The orchestra swept into the piece, and Maura danced. There were only a few feet between us, but it felt like miles. She’d become otherworldly. It was alien, what she could do with her body, the concentration on her face. When it was over, she had to bow about eight times before the audience would shut up.

It was impossible to believe that she would lose.

“Maura,” said Trisha, “that was virtuosic. How are we ever going to choose among our three finalists?”

“Yeah, that was awesome,” said Damien. “And I wish I had calves like yours.”

“Thank you
so
much, Maura,” Trisha said quickly. “We’ll take a short break, but we’ve got so much more left! Our third finalist’s performance. That special, surprise announcement. And at last, the winner will be crowned! Stay with us.”

Now I really wondered whether they were just dangling the special announcement to pacify the schemers out there. Maybe they’d keep mentioning it, and then suddenly conclude the episode. Coluber was probably persuading Blazer Guy. “We can give them kTV backpacks,” he’d tell him. “However, we cannot make this announcement on national television.”

“But they could ruin our episode,” Blazer Guy would say.

“This announcement will ruin my
life
.”

But Luke was up next, and he would make the announcement for Coluber. That was why Elizabeth had replaced the scripts. That was why Jackson was hacking the teleprompter. They did
have
a teleprompter, right? I took a few wary steps, craning as far forward as I could without betraying my location. They had to have one. Sometimes Damien sounded downright intelligent.

Ah, there it was. I could just see it. It was strung up in a makeshift fashion, hanging from the ceiling with unconnected wires dangling down. There was only one bundle in use, a couple of green wires that made a circus-awning swoop to where they were tacked at the top of the curtain. TV looked
so crappy from the inside, the glamour as jury-rigged as that ceiling I’d Scotch-taped back together.

I retreated back to my hiding spot, and that’s when the physical nervousness hit me. My knees went all loose, as if my patellas had liquefied. My left thumb started spasming and my heartbeat was quick and light and the only thing keeping me from melting into a gormless, formless mess was Baconnaise, cupped in my right hand.

Because it was then I realized I hadn’t heard from Jackson. He’d never responded to the update about the green room. And he had said he’d text us when he accessed the teleprompter. I didn’t dare check my phone; the light would be a dead giveaway. I hadn’t felt a buzz, but maybe my nervousness was dulling my senses. I reached into my pocket and grabbed the phone. Baconnaise vibrated, but the phone was still. I wished I could look at it. It was surely holding that text message, I told myself.

“I am overjoyed that it’s time for our third finalist’s performance,” said Trisha. “His work just blows me away. Luke Weston, it’s your turn!”

I put Baconnaise back in my pocket. He didn’t want to see Luke. He felt betrayed by Luke, who had always pretended to like him.

The cheers rose as he came onstage. Luke had always had an admirable walk. It was the only fast walk you could ever describe as a saunter; it was confident and eager and athletic. He was holding the black notebook that disguised his script.
That was what Elizabeth had found in the green room. She’d said so. So why was I so nervous?

“Looking good, Luke!” said Damien.

“Hi, everybody!” said Luke with a grin.

And he opened his notebook, and he froze.

He’d hit our poem. Jackson had wanted to type it with the same font and formatting that kTV used for their scripts, in case Luke glanced at it beforehand. But Elizabeth and I had prevailed, symbolic force over logic: she’d written it out and I’d illustrated it, just as we’d done with the first two issues, just as we’d done with the issue we’d distributed today. It was unmistakable, and we knew he’d recognize it immediately.

But—and this was our biggest gamble in a plan full of them—we hoped, we believed, that he wouldn’t be able to recite his true lines from memory. Luke knew every word of the
Contracantos
that he actually wrote. But we had bet he hadn’t written these lines. It could have been Coluber, it could have been BradLee, it could have been some other kTV screenwriter. But it wasn’t Luke.

Or was that giving him too much credit? Maybe he
had
brought himself to write it. Maybe he’d written that dross.

But by the way he tensed, staring at the notebook in disbelief, I knew that we’d bet right. He’d never written anything that appeared on
For Art’s Sake
. He’d just parroted their lines, going along with the scripted reality. I thought it’d be worse if he turned out to have written the crap that he’d read on the show, but as I watched him fumble with his artsy notebook and shoot a panicky smile to the audience, I felt a wave of loathing for him, for his duplicity and weakness.

But I had to pay attention.

Luke gave a desperate look to the judges’ table.

Trisha beamed at him, but I could see the ire in her bared teeth:
Start talking, Luke, or live to regret it
.

Luke gestured to his script.

I saw Trisha surreptitiously flip a page on her desk. Then she grabbed Damien’s script. But they’d have the versions with the missing pages, the pages Elizabeth had destroyed. Unlesses flooded my mind—unless she’d missed one, unless they had multiple copies, unless they’d printed out new versions—but Trisha’s toothy grin didn’t relax.

No hero jogged onstage with a new script. Twenty seconds of Luke in confusion had been broadcast across the country. I could imagine Coluber’s face right now, hissing in anger, cursing the incompetence of his crew.

Then Luke’s face cleared. He smiled, his old rakish grin, and the audience cheered.

“Hey there,” he said. “Sorry about the technical difficulties.” He was adorable. They cheered again. “I’m stoked to present the final installment of my long poem, the last section of my
Contracantos
.”

I couldn’t figure out why he felt so good. Was he stalling? But he kept glancing at his notebook as if the correct words had rematerialized.

“I can’t let this opportunity go by without thanking the person who made it possible for me to stand up here. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a mega hand to the beautiful, the talented, the great Trisha Meier!”

Trisha had relaxed too. She shook her head lovingly at Luke and pretended that she wasn’t lapping up the applause.

I didn’t get it. He wasn’t reading from his notebook, because this stuff wasn’t in the script we’d put in there. And Jackson had hacked the teleprompter. That was the whole plan.

I took a few steps forward. Then I understood why his glances down were so quick and fake, how he was able to face the audience so winningly and to speak with such assurance. It was indeed the teleprompter. Which was in perfect, working condition. The screen loomed balefully, flanked by the cameras with their Cyclopean eyes, and on it the words appeared like karaoke. It was mesmerizing to watch the confluence of the typed words and his speech, and I almost let my jaw go slack and watched the episode, just as I’d watched the seventeen before it.