When You Believe (11 page)

“Yeah,” somebody whispered, “he’ll tail you back, all right.”

“Daniel Maher, defensive end, scored the game-clinching touchdown on an interception against Downs High last week. Adam Buttars,
kicker, has scored five extra points and field goals of 34 and 43 yards so far this season. Sam Leavitt, tight end, is a solid
blocker and a terrific receiver, including the 54-yard reception in the Van Alstine game…”

One by one they mounted the platform, received a certificate from Fortney that had been signed by the superintendent of schools,
while Sam mentally promised he’d take out anybody who made comments about
tight end.
He stepped up with his minicam rolling, his ribs still aching and his tie still AWOL. He got a great shot of Coach Fortney’s
nose hairs as he handed over the certificate of merit for Sam’s senior football season. The pin for his letter jacket would
come in December at the banquet.

Once Fortney had finished, Mrs. Saunders introduced Amy Sondergroth, the president of the student council, and the students
settled down. Amy adjusted the microphone, stepped away wincing when it started to buzz. When somebody somewhere adjusted
the sound, she pressed her mouth close and relied on her notes. With a hollow, ringing voice she announced, “Students of Shadrach
High, I’d like to introduce you to
your
choices for the 2003 homecoming court!” The place went wild. “When I call your name, please step forward.”

And so she began.

The stands erupted into cheers and screaming each time a name was called. At least fifteen different kids had to hug, raise
a fist in victory, or clap-on-the-back and jump around as the candidate started down. Everything was going fine until Amy
announced, “And
your
choice for sophomore princess, Shelby Tatum!”

There was the initial outburst of applause and then… nothing.

Sam, who had been holding the pain in his side and panning the student body with the camcorder in hopes of catching somebody,
stopped filming in shock.
Where was she?

“Shelby’s absent,” somebody bellowed. A few people were still clapping and looking around. The applause dwindled, like splatters
of intermittent rain.

“Shelby’s trying to avoid Leavitt,” Devine hooted, his voice cutting through everything else. “Ask
him
why she isn’t here.”

Amy rattled the papers as she flipped to a new page. “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll just go on to another—”

The double doors to the hall slammed open. Sam began to shoot again; he wasn’t even sure why. The apparatus hung heavy in
his hand, and he used it. He began to pan the doorway as the lens brought everything into focus.

He’d pointed his minicam and found himself photographing another camera. This one a nice Pentax, taking stills, clicking away.
A couple of people he didn’t recognize wore laminated badges. Press passes from the
Shadrach Democrat Reflex.
His first thought:
Why would they care this much about the homecoming court?

But he saw quickly that this wasn’t about the assembly at all. The man with the Pentax approached Amy. Someone had a broadcast
microphone, too, with well-marked call letters from the AM hottest-hits station in Osceola.

“Someone called us this morning with an anonymous tip,” said the woman with the microphone to their student-body president.
The man with the Pentax clicked away.

“What?” Amy was lost.

“We have from a reliable source that a Shadrach student is accusing a teacher of molesting her. Do you have any comment about
that?”

Amy tried to shield herself with her hands. “I don’t know any—”

Patrice Saunders wrapped an arm around the girl and safeguarded her, steering her down off the platform. “Who gave you permission
to come in here and do this? You know we have security rules. All visitors sign in at the office.”

One man flashed his pass at her. “You know me, Patrice. Dan Parker from the
Democrat Reflex.
I always cover the school news.
”

“Not today, you don’t cover it. Now go on back where you came from.”

“You might as well give us the story. If this is true, it’s gonna be big. Something that might bring all the networks down
on Shadrach.”

Sam was still taping when Brad Gritton climbed down off the bleachers. He focused the lens on his journalism teacher, who
came striding purposefully toward him. “Cut the camera, Sam,” Gritton said while the camera lens focused automatically on
his nose. “There’s no reason you need to be taping this.”

Sam punched the Pause button. The screen went black. Sam watched his teacher move with determination toward the knot of people
and microphones.

“You know how it’s supposed to work,” Sam heard him say. “If this is true, then you’ll have to publish it from courthouse
reports. Not from some hearsay evidence.”

“We’re just the little guys. I think we have the right to know first.”

“Hey.” Johnny Nagle came up from the wall, out of his bored slouch. He fished for a wallet in his baggy back pocket and flipped
it open. “I’ve got pictures.” He pulled out a whole stack of 2x3-inch school photos that he’d collected from his friends.
“This is my entire collection. All the hot babes in the school. One of these girls just might be the one you’re looking for.”

“Let me see those.” Parker swiped at them but he grabbed empty air. Nagle, always one to make an extra buck, had yanked them
aside.

“I didn’t say you could have them. They’re up for sale. Fifteen bucks a shot. You want them, you’ve got to pay.”

Brad Gritton was at the podium almost before anyone had seen him coming.

“Can you confirm this rumor about the school, Gritton?” And Parker was close enough to Patrice Saunders and the microphone
that the question broadcast to the rafters. “Or can you deny it?”

But Sam saw that the journalism teacher wasn’t listening. He was following the electrical cord from where it left the metal
base and snaked across the floor beneath a long, narrow strip of duct tape. Dr. Minor, the band director, who was much too
far away to come to the bodily rescue of the staff on the floor, lifted his hands, the left one gripping the baton.

“Can you deny that school officials are meeting with police and the Department of Health and Human Services right now, trying
to decide what to do?”

“Number
three,
” the band director mouthed soundlessly so his high school band members would be able to find the music. “
LOUD.”

“Can you confirm that there are going to be charges filed, Gritton? Can you tell us if this is a credible accusation?”

Zip.
Up came the length of tape. Brad Gritton jerked the plug out of the wall.

The sound system went dead. Three hundred kids were no longer privy to their conversation.

“Now I’m going to tell you what I think about you coming in like this, Parker,” Gritton said, and nobody heard him except
for Sam Leavitt and Johnny Nagle and about a dozen others who happened to be standing in his path as he strode angrily back.
“It all started during CNN and Desert Storm. Journalism as an unfolding drama instead of a fact-finding mission. Everybody’s
in a rush to be the first to say something, even if they aren’t sure what they’re saying yet.”

Parker came right back at him. “If you had an ounce of professional loyalty, Gritton, you would be the one turning in this
story.”

“You think you’re going to discover anything by coming in here and shouting about what you know?”

Up in the stands, Dr. Minor marked the downbeat of the song with a heavy stroke of his arms and a slash of his baton. The
Mighty Fire-Rattler Marching Band broke into a staggering rendition of “We Will Rock You,” rivaling in both finesse and volume
any version that might have ever been played for the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium or for Kurt Warner and the St.
Louis Rams at the Trans World Dome.

The entire Shadrach student body rose to its feet, sensing only that everyone needed to stand up for the honor of the school.
Stomp-stomp CLAP. Stomp-stomp CLAP.
And then, at the top of their lungs, they began to sing, even if they didn’t know the words.
Da da-da-da young boy da da-da-da tempo…

Sam started the minicam again. The musical interlude, as deafening as it was, and Brad Gritton’s interruption, had given Patrice
Saunders the moment she needed to compose herself. Sam taped again as, “If there is any news to be released about this school,
we will notify the press in an official statement this afternoon,” she informed the invading microphone with a voice that
could freeze Springfield in August.

Later, when others would look at Sam’s video, they would see that it was Brad Gritton, the journalism teacher, and Charlie
Stains, the woodshop teacher, who began to move up and down the bleachers, touching students with great care on the shoulders,
releasing them in rows so that no one would get hurt. In Sam’s video, they would see the two male teachers standing guard
together with crossed arms as the students of Shadrach High trampled their way down the steps in hoards, headed to their next
classes.

But because Sam hadn’t filmed this, no one would ever know that, after the gym had cleared, Charlie Stains stood alone in
one corner, his spine pressed against the wall, his face gone as gray as the cement blocks behind him. He stood with his eyes
closed against the world, as if he might soak up just one more piece of this place before he had to walk out.

And, of course, the whispering in the hallways began as soon as the Shadrach students cleared the gym.

They passed each other as Lydia came winding her way through students in B-hall and Charlie was heading toward the door.

As if she felt his gaze on her, she lifted her eyes to his.

He stopped so fast when she looked at him that, like dominoes, people ran into him from behind.

For one beat, another, they stared. Then her eyes jerked away.

“Lydia.”

In his arms, Charlie carried a box filled with personal belongings he had packed out of his classroom. On the top of the pile
was the Billy Bob Big Mouth Bass, a plastic fish that, when you punched a button, turned toward you to sing its song. “Don’t
Worry, Be Happy.”

Fifteen months he’d spent settling in at Shadrach High School and this was what he had to show for it. One Dell computer carton
filled with his junk. The boat he’d managed to win in a church auction. One woman he had thought trusted him enough to spend
her life with him. And this knotted-up, physical sensation in his belly, like one of those deep, painful dreams where you’re
in a public place and don’t have any clothes on.

Even if he didn’t have anything to hide from, he still wanted to, and couldn’t. He felt helpless. Exposed. Vaguely scraped
and guilty on the inside, as if parts of everything he had ever done were wrong.

There were so many things to say. So many regrets to share. “You’re leaving,” she said.

He nodded as the kids began to move around both of them like creek water rushing around rocks. “I am.”

She said the words as if she needed to take great gulps of air around them, like the fish they’d caught by hand and hauled
out onto shore. “They’ve let you go.”

“L.R. requested it. A leave of absence. But we all know he’ll release me from my contract as soon as he can.”

By the brusque way L.R. had stepped into his classroom and launched immediately into speech, Charlie knew he must have been
practicing it all the way up the hall.

You understand, don’t you? You understand what I have to ask you to do?

He hadn’t answered. He’d just kept packing the box. In went a battery-operated pencil sharpener, a small case of whittling
tools, a half-full bottle of Gorilla Glue.

Charlie, you’ve done a fantastic job with these kids. It will only go into the record as a leave of absence, you know, until
the investigation is over. Until everyone’s figured out what’s going on.

In the hall with Lydia, Charlie shoved the plastic fish down as far as it would go and began to fold shut the lid to the box,
two sides down. He didn’t want her looking at his belongings. You would have thought, by the way she focused on them, that
they were the most fascinating things she’d ever seen.

“This is what L.R. wants,” Charlie said to Lydia as she stood in front of him. Just a good-bye, a disappearance into the sunset.
Clean and neat. Quiet and simple. The school district would be legally covered. “He asked what I would be doing with all my
free time. I told him I had a new boat. I told him I would spend a lot of time out on the Brownbranch. Fishing. I don’t know.”

I put a call in to personnel this morning at the University of Missouri,
L.R. had said.
I’m waiting for someone to phone me back. You know, I didn’t check your references the first time. I had known you so long
that I didn’t think it necessary.

I appreciate that,
he’d answered with pain in his voice.
That means a lot to me.

Why is it you decided to leave your college professorship? You told me it was politics. We talked around it during your interview,
but you never ever really said. Why did you really come back? Were you running from something?

I’m not much in the mood to rehash my work history right now, L.R.

Do I have something to worry about in my school? Did you touch that girl, Charlie?

As the students moved around Charlie and Lydia in the corridor, the stream of people pressed them closer toward each other.
And he suddenly felt like he was gasping for air, with her being so near, as he hunched over the cardboard box like he had
an abdominal wound. The lid wouldn’t stay shut. He shoved it down, clamped his teeth together so hard that he figured she
could see veins straining in his jaw.

Two people who had thought they had known each other so well. Two people who could list each other’s allergies and ring size
and favorite movies. Two people who had discussed fishing holes together and house plans and wedding dates. They stood in
poignant wordlessness, as if they had never really ever talked to each other at all, as if someone else had been carrying
the conversation, and now they were lost.