The Year They Burned the Books

Terry slammed his tray down on the newspaper table at lunch that same day; Jack was there, plus all the editors, including Nomi. “We do have a choice, blast it!” Terry exploded. “We can’t let them silence us.”

“What’s that AIDS bumper sticker?” Jamie said. “Silence Is Death? Something like that.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “It sure applies here, too.”

Cindy, her gray baseball cap askew, bit fiercely into an oozing tuna sandwich. “Aren’t we supposed to have free speech in this country?” she said when she’d swallowed. “Freedom of the press? We ought to be able to say what we want to say in spite of the stupid school committee. Maybe we could sort of, you know, bend their rules.”

“I wish.” Terry pulled out a chair and sat down. “But how do you not reflect all sides and look as if you are? I’m only a sports editor, but I can’t make a win look like a loss, and that’s what it would take. It’s not possible.”

“No, it isn’t,” Jamie said quietly. “Maybe we just shouldn’t run editorials at all for a while.”

“Maybe,” said Cindy, “we shouldn’t run a paper at all.”

Tessa grimaced. “That would be giving in to them. What we should do, maybe, is another paper. A different one.”

They all stared at her.

“Cool,” Jack said admiringly. “I wonder if we could.”

“Yeah.” Cindy gave Tessa a friendly poke on the shoulder. “That’s a neat idea.” Then she frowned. “But wouldn’t that get Matt in trouble?”

“Not,” Jamie said slowly, “if the new paper had nothing to do with him.”

Nomi pushed her tray away and scraped her chair back, standing as if about to leave. She’d barely returned Jamie’s tentative but hopeful “Hi” right before the bell in homeroom, and hadn’t looked at her in the two morning classes they shared.

“Hey, Nom’.” Jamie put her hand on Nomi’s arm. “You haven’t eaten anything. You okay?”

Nomi nodded.

“No, you’re not,” said Terry. “Come on. Give.”

Nomi burst into quiet tears. “Don’t you guys see?” she said, sobbing. “It really is all my fault. If I’d written that stupid op-ed …”

Jamie stood up quickly and hugged her; Nomi stiffened. “You couldn’t have known what would happen, Nomi.” Jamie moved out of the hug and studied Nomi’s face. “Hey, who knows? It might have happened anyway.”

“Yeah.” Cindy handed Nomi a tissue. “I think the school committee’s out to get us no matter what we do. Out to get Matt, anyway, especially that Buel woman.”

“No one blames you, Nomi.” Tessa pushed Nomi’s tray forward. “Come on, girl, sit down and eat. We can’t have you fainting from hunger. We’ve got plans to make.” She looked at Terry, then at Jamie. “Don’t we?”

“I don’t know.” Jamie sat down again. “Do we?”

“We could go ahead with the old Telegraph and publish another paper, too,” Terry suggested. “That’d keep Matt out of it.”

“I like it,” Cindy said eagerly. “Wow, what genius!” She swept her cap off her head and bowed from her seat, first to Tessa, then to Terry.

“We couldn’t use the school print shop, though,” Jack said.

“Good point,” Jamie agreed. “We’d have to keep the school completely out of it. We could distribute it here, I think, but we couldn’t print it here or write it here or anything.”

“Have we got enough news for two papers?” asked Tessa. “I mean, I can always take plenty of pictures, but there’s only a limited amount of stuff happening.”

“How about just opinion?” Jamie suggested, her excitement growing. “It’s true there might not be enough news for two papers. But if the renegade paper …”

“Good name!” said Terry. “The Renegade Telegraph—that’s great!”

Cindy grinned. “I have a funny feeling FTV isn’t going to like this much. Or the school administration.”

“But if we don’t do it on school property or with school materials,” Jack said, “how do we do it?”

“He’s got a point, Jamie,” said Terry. “It’ll be pretty tricky if we can’t use school stuff.”

“Yes, but a couple of us have computers at home. And you’ve got a scanner, too, or your parents do, anyway. We’ll self-publish. Look,” Jamie went on, “we could do it like an old-fashioned broadside. They were more like bulletins than newspapers, and they dealt with one subject, usually. We’ll stick to opinion, not news, unless the news is, I don’t know, pertinent. And we’ll all write it,” she added, looking significantly at each of them in turn. “I don’t want it to be just a vehicle for me, even if it is opinion. And we’ll do it right. Each piece can really represent its own view, none of this weak stuff they’re looking for.” She glanced around the table. Nomi had sat back down, but she hadn’t said a word, and although she still wasn’t eating, she was looking at her lunch tray instead of at the rest of them.

“Nom’?” Jamie asked gently. “What do you think?”

Nomi started, then said, “Huh? About—about another paper? I—I just …” She got up before anyone could stop her and bolted past the teacher-monitor, who looked up with a startled expression and then looked down again as Nomi fled out the door.

“Oh, my,” said Terry.

Everyone looked at Jamie.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her. It can’t just be that she feels responsible for the trouble we’re in.”

“Right,” Tessa said. “Maybe she doesn’t trust our opinions about much of anything to be the same as hers. I mean, we do all sort of feel the same way about most things, you know? But she doesn’t.”

“Maybe she should start her own paper,” Terry said angrily.

“She’s entitled to her opinion,” Jamie said, trying to make light of it. “I’d be sorry to lose her. Cindy, I bet you could fill in as art editor until she decides—do layout, anyway; you’ve already done a great job helping Nomi lay out ads.”

Cindy looked pleased. “Thanks,” she said. “Okay.”

“Nomi’s suffering,” Tessa said. “And so are you,” she added softly to Jamie.

Jamie knew Tessa was right, on both counts. She felt a hard place in her throat, as if all her pain over losing Nomi’s friendship were stuck there.

“Okay,” Jack said briskly, breaking the silence. “Okay. So we do two papers, one regular and one just opinion. The thing is, Jamie, if we do that, what’ll there be left over for you to write about in the Telegraph for editorials?”

“Let’s see,” Jamie began, trying to pull herself into the discussion. “Um …”

“Oh, there’s plenty,” Terry said, glancing at her sympathetically. “The shortage of soap in the boys’ bathroom, right, Jack? Now that’s a real stunner. I bet you guys don’t know about that.”

“Really?” said Cindy. “Don’t be so sure. There’s a similar shortage in the girls’ bathroom.”

“Yeah,” Tessa put in. “And the little soap that’s there is really harsh. It’s murder on your skin.” She made her eyes big and round. “Something needs to be done …”

“On the other hand …” said Terry.

Cindy groaned, and Jamie managed a feeble smile.

“On the other hand,” Terry continued, “it’s important to have clean hands …”

“Even,” Tessa put in, “if there’s no skin on them. You could interview the nurse, Jamie.”

“Right,” said Jack, “and Mr. Zemma in auto shop. I don’t think he knows what soap is, so maybe he’s got some ideas about it being more healthy not to wash.”

Terry snapped his fingers. “Geeze, right! There’s a potential op-ed there, so I bet it’s really a Telegraph subject.”

Jamie laughed. “Okay,” she said as the bell rang. “I guess there’ll always be plenty of stuff to write about in the old Telegraph.”

Jamie called Nomi that night to see if she was all right and to ask if she wanted to work on the Renegade.

“Thanks for calling,” Nomi said evenly—cautiously, too, Jamie thought. “Yes, I’m okay, and no, I think I’d better stick to the Telegraph.” Her voice caught a little then as she added, “Jamie, I’m sorry. I just think you’re so wrong. I’m just—I’m sad for you.”

“Sad?” Jamie asked, astonished. “Why sad, Nom’?”

“It’s wrong,” Nomi whispered. “What you believe, what the others believe. And what you—what you’re doing, I guess. It’s so very wrong. I’m afraid your Renegade paper’s going to be a vehicle for that, for those things.”

“But, Nomi, we—what things, for Pete’s sake?”

“I’ve got to go, Jamie. Goodbye.”

Before she could object, Jamie heard a click and the line went dead.

Jamie bought paper for the Renegade Telegraph, and they designed the first issue on Terry’s computer, with Cindy’s help. Cindy surprised them all—herself, too, she told them—by drawing a really good cartoon for the first issue, showing the Wilson High Telegraph office and staff in chains. And they all tossed around ideas for stories, finally ending up with two short articles, announcements really, on one side of a single sheet. “Like a broadside,” Jamie said again. They put Cindy’s cartoon, thanks to Terry’s scanner, on the other side, and they decided to print 400 copies. There were about 350 students in the school, so that would be enough for faculty as well, with a few left over.

By late Friday afternoon, when the Renegade began bouncing out of Terry’s printer, Jamie felt as if she’d suddenly been freed of binding chains like those in Cindy’s cartoon.

THE RENEGADE TELEGRAPH

Published occasionally, independently of the Wilson High Telegraph

Renegade Founded

The Renegade Telegraph has been founded as a journal of opinion by the Wilson High Telegraph staff, to fill a gap opened by the recent school committee ruling on editorials. In that ruling, made on October 13, it was decreed that all editorials had to present all sides of every subject. “The Telegraph has always tried to balance editorials on its op-ed page and/or on its letters pages,” said Jamie Crawford, editor of the Wilson High paper. “But it is in the nature of an editorial to be persuasive. The new ruling fails to recognize that. We founded the Renegade in order to be able to continue publishing honest opinion.”

Editorial

In its recent action to muzzle the Wilson High Telegraph and to “study” the school’s health texts, the school committee appears to be embarking on a dangerous and repressive course. Freedom of speech and of the press applies to schools as well as to the community at large; the sooner the school committee admits that and retracts its decision, the better.

Renegade staff: Jamie Crawford, Terry Gage, Tessa Gillespie, Jack Kellog, and Cindy Nash. The Renegade will be published as needed, whenever the Telegraph is unable to explore a vital issue honestly and thoroughly. With that in mind, we may do some investigative pieces, and from time to time we may cover news as well.

“Pretty good first issue for a simple broadside,” Terry said, stacking the sheets neatly as they came out of the printer. Tessa, Cindy, and Jack had already left, and Terry, though he had worked as hard as the rest of them, had seemed preoccupied all afternoon. “I can’t wait for Monday,” he said with what sounded to Jamie like forced enthusiasm, or maybe sarcasm.

“I can.” Jamie read through the Renegade for the hundredth time, trying to imagine how Matt would react, her parents, the principal, Lisa Buel. “But I’m glad we did it. I think I am, anyway.”

“I also can’t wait till Monday,” Terry said, sitting on the edge of the table, “because I won’t see Ernie till then.”

“How come?”

“He had some news for me this morning,” Terry told her, with what Jamie recognized as false casualness. “He’s decided to see if he can be straight. He asked Vicky Chase out.”

“What?” Jamie asked, stunned.

“You heard me. Vicky Chase.” He laughed sardonically. “He thinks if anyone can make him straight, she can.”

Jamie hardly knew how to react. “At least Vicky’s kind,” she said slowly. “I don’t think she’s homophobic or anything. And if he really is gay …”

“It’s okay, Jamie.” Terry slid off the table and turned his back to her, picking up the finished papers and putting them in the box they were planning to take to school early Monday morning. “Thanks. It’s okay.”

Jamie touched his shoulder. “It’s not okay. And I’m—Oh, Terry.”

For Terry had turned then, clinging tightly to Jamie for an anguished moment before breaking away and leaving the room.