The Revealers (7 page)

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Authors: Doug Wilhelm

BOOK: The Revealers
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“She's going to be a
what?”
My mother gave me her patient smile. It meant, “You men have no clue.” I was familiar with it.
“You just wait,” she said.
“They call her Olive Oyl.”
“Who does?”
“The girls who give her trouble.”
“Who's that?”
“Well … Bethany DeMere.”
“Bethany. Yes, I remember. She's fairly glamorous, isn't she?”
“She thinks so.”
My mom sighed. “Girls your age are so easily threatened,” she said. “It's a shame.”
“You think … you think Bethany DeMere is threatened by
Catalina?”
“I wouldn't be in the least surprised.”
“Why?”
“Take a good look at Catalina sometime,” my mom said. “Imagine what happens when that long body fills in, and that black hair grows out a little. She has lovely features, and her color—it's beautiful. If I were the reigning glamour queen of your grade, I'd be worried.”
I shook my head, trying to clear it. “So you think that's why Bethany's trying to crush her?”
“That would be my strong suspicion,” my mom said. “And it's too bad. Girls at this age can be really vicious, and so vulnerable.
I almost think it's more serious business than you boys with your physical stuff.”
“You think that's worse than being dropped off a bridge? Or punched in the face?”
My mom glanced over at me.
“I'm not saying any of this is easy. But that girl … she's in a new country. She doesn't have her mom here. Try to imagine how it must feel to have people in her new school suddenly turn on her.”
But I didn't have to imagine it. That part I got.
After dinner Catalina called.
“I sent you a message,” she said.
“All right.”
A pause.
“I'm not sure what to do with it,” she said.
“Why?”
Another pause.
“You'll see,” she said finally. “Tell me what you think … but wait till tomorrow. In school. Okay?” She sounded nervous.
“Well, okay. Sure.”
 
I got on-line. Catalina's message just said, “Please read this. I thought it was a good idea before. Now I don't know.”
KidNet downloaded the file she had attached to the message. I opened it. Here's what it said:
For some reason, sometimes when you are new or different in some way, people decide to tell lies about you. I don't know why. Before I came to Parkland School I didn't know people did that at all.
My name is Catalina Aarons. I'm somebody people have been telling untrue things about. Maybe you have heard some things. In fact, if you are in seventh grade and you have heard anything about me, it's probably not true. I haven't really told people what is true, so maybe in a way it's partly my fault.
So here are some things about me that are true.
I was born in the Philippines, on the biggest island, Luzon. My mother is a Filipina. My father is American. His company sent him to work in Manila, the capital city, and that's where he met my mom. They got married, and they had me. So I am half-Filipina and half-American.
Filipinos are a mix of types of people, just like Americans. Our ancestors include the people of our part of the Pacific, called Malays, and Chinese people, and also Spanish and Americans, because both of those countries used to control the Philippines. My mother's name is Rosario. That's Spanish. But everyone calls her by her American nickname, Rose.
We lived near Manila but not right in it, in a house not that much different from the houses here. My dad went to work. He was gone a lot. My mom and I were best friends. My mom is really beautiful. Everyone said so! She is not as tall as me and she looks like a Spanish princess, with dark eyes, and she has long shining black hair like a Malay, and her eyes are almond-shaped like the Chinese. People used to tell me she got the best of everything.
My mom teaches music, mostly piano but also singing, to kids and grownups who come to our home. She used to sing to me, since I was a baby. Her voice is like liquid silver.
I rode to school and came home every day on a jeepney. That's like an American school bus only it isn‘t—it's a funny decorated contraption made from adding almost anything onto an old American jeep, or a small truck. There are jeepneys all over Manila. Some of them are incredible!
Anyway, every day when the jeepney let me off after school I ran home, because my mom and I would have
merienda.
Merienda
is an afternoon snack. It's not like any American snack. We might have
adobo,
which is chicken or meat cooked in an incredible sauce—I can't even describe how it tasted, tangy and just a little sweet. My mom would make
panyo panyo,
little pastries filled with banana and mango jam. They are fantastic! We'd have
guapple
pie, too. Guapple is a kind of hard fruit, like an apple but sweeter and softer in its taste. We'd have slices of mango with lime juice dripped over them, and hot chocolate whipped up smooth and frothy. And we'd have our own kind of limeade, which was incredible! My mom made it from our little
calamansi
limes, mixed up with melon juice and water.
Every day my mom made
merienda
for her and me, and we would talk about everything. Everything! We were happy. But I guess my dad was not. I guess he missed America, and he did not like being a foreigner in Luzon. I guess he had some problems with my mom's family. (He was the only one who was not Filipino.) When he was home he didn't seem happy, and then my mom started to cry a lot. I would hear her playing the piano and crying. I didn't really know what was wrong.
One day they told me they were going to get a divorce, and I would be moving with my dad to America. My dad said I would get a much better education in America. He said I could go home every summer, to be with my mom. He said the schools are so much better here, and the opportunities are so much more. That is what he said.
My mom did not want me to go. But she said my dad was probably right. I won't tell you much about what it was like to leave my home and my family and my school, and especially my mom.
I don't know about the opportunities in America, but so
far I don't think very much of the schools. At least not this school. It's not so much the school—the school is okay, I guess. It's the way some kids treat you in it.
It's funny, in a way. Kids who want to hurt other kids treat them like they are not a human being, but at the same time they figure out the one thing that can hurt you most, as a human being. Like if you are new they make up terrible things about who they say you are, and what you're like, and your family, especially your mom.
I would like people to know that I am proud of where I come from, and I am proud of my family. I am proud of who I am. I don't tell lies either.
You don't have to like me if you don't want to. You don't have to include me or invite me to anything at all if you don't want to. I don't mind. I am making friends. But I don't like it when people get together to act like I am not a person.
So now you know a little bit about me. I guess how you act is up to you.
 
Catalina Aarons
The next morning I brought Catalina's letter to school on a disk. When she saw me coming, she hugged her books to her chest and closed her locker slowly.
I walked up fast. “It's incredible,” I said.
“It is?”
“Yeah! And you know what? This is the thing to do. It kicks the legs out from under the evil princess.”
“The who?”
“You know.” I lifted my chin and shook my head, as if rippling my golden tresses.
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I got the idea from you.”
“Huh?”
“Elliot said you wrote down what happened. When that boy hit you.”
“Oh. I forgot I did that.”
“Well, I didn't.”
The bell rang. We started walking down the hall. “Anyway,” I said, “I brought it with me, what you wrote.” I lifted the disk out of my shirt pocket.
“I don't know what to do with it,” she said. “I mean, what if I did want people to read it? How would I do that?”
“Well, we could print it out. You know, post it.”
“Post it? You mean like on bulletin boards?” She shuddered. “That would be totally humiliating.”
“Well … we could give it to certain people. Like a letter.”
“You mean
those
people? Slip it into their lockers the way they do to me? What do you think they'd do with it?”
“I don't know.”
“They'd ignore it. Or they'd laugh about it. And nobody else would know the difference.”
“I guess.”
We were almost to Ms. Hogeboom's social studies class. The door was open and kids were slipping in around us. We hung back.
“What else could we do?” she whispered.
“I don't know.”
“Think more about it.”
I said, “Can I send it to Elliot? He might have some ideas.”
The second bell rang. She nodded as she turned, took a deep breath, and stepped into class. I went in, too.
 
In activities block I signed into the computer lab so I could send a message to Elliot at home. The room was full, as usual. Kids sat at computers around the walls and at the back-to-back line of them down the center of the room. Everyone was plugged in, tapping at keys, slouched back or tilting forward to peer at screens. I found an empty station, sat down, and clicked up KidNet.
Mostly kids use KidNet to send messages to each other, but as I've said we can also send messages to teachers, which is useful if you're confused about some homework or you don't understand something or you forgot which chapters to study for a test.
There are three levels of access. They're controlled by Mr. Dallas, the computer lab teacher and network administrator. The highest level, Staff, is for the teachers and administration. The second is MidStream, which everyone else has. This access can be suspended, or revoked, if you misuse it or behave badly on the system. Kids tend to be fairly careful about that because nobody wants to lose messaging privileges. We're always checking our messages.
Because KidNet is a local area network, it's self-contained. That means it's all ours, and it's only us. We can access the Internet, also, from most school machines, though there's safeguard software so you can't download anything pornographic or even write swear words in an Internet message. But on KidNet we can pretty much say whatever we want. There's no censorship, and also all the Net weirdos and the people selling stuff can't get at us. You can't get into KidNet from outside unless Mr. Dallas lets you.
The third access level is just Library. That's what you don't want. You can call up encyclopedias, CD-ROMs, and other research stuff, but you can't send messages or anything. If you lose MidStream access, you're stuck in this cyber-punishment ghetto, where you can only find stuff they want you to learn. Obviously, nobody wants that.
I tapped out a message for Elliot. I slipped my disk into the drive and attached Catalina's file from the disk to the message. Elliot had nothing much else to do at home, so as I did some other stuff I wasn't surprised to see a response pop up pretty quickly.
This is perfect!
Yes.
Everyone should see it.
Yes but how?
Ask Mr. D. How's school? Seen Richie?
Saw him today. He didn't look at me. School's OK.
You're not missing much.
This is boring though.
I got to go. Five minutes left in block.
Ask Mr. D!
Right as I signed off, the bell rang. Machines beeped and chairs scraped as people signed off, got up, grabbed their backpacks, and crowded through the door. I sat there watching. Finally I got up, walked to the door … and turned back.
I looked at the machines. They were waiting for the next wave. I thought how “Ask Mr. D” came pecking across my screen as Elliot typed it. And then I knew.
Of course!
 
“I have an idea,” I told Catalina when school ended. “Come with me, okay?”
“Okay.”
I took off walking. Her locker clicked shut; in about three seconds she had caught up and was striding alongside me.
I looked at her. “Some legs,” I said.
She blushed.
“I mean they're
long
,” I said, embarrassed. She blushed even more. I managed not to embarrass us any more before we got to the System Server room.
That's what it says on the door: SYSTEM SERVER. This was always the first place to look for Mr. Dallas. I knocked.
“Come ON in!” said a booming voice. I pushed open the door. Inside, Mr. Dallas swiveled his chair toward us from a blinking screen.
The headquarters of SchoolStream is no bigger than a closet, which is what it was before this year, when they put in the network. There are no windows. Tall metal racks, looking like they're from grownup erector sets, hold electronic
equipment in shelves almost to the ceiling. At desk level are four or five computers.
“RussT! Catli! How are ya?”
Mr. Dallas is a funny guy, mostly in the humorous sense. He likes to call you by your screen name, and he always shakes your hand with gusto. He has a lot of gusto. He rides a motorcycle to work, and he has a crop of gray hair that's so thick and stiff it looks like he hit a porcupine and it stuck to his head.
Catalina blinked and sort of smiled at Mr. Dallas. I don't think she had experienced him up close before.
KidNet is Mr. Dallas's baby. He convinced the school to put it in and let him run it. Before this year he taught science; now he's always bounding into other teachers' science classes to give a talk on KidNet, answer questions, and urge us to use it, which he doesn't have to do, since everyone started using it right away. Mr. Dallas says we're
innovators
.
“What can I do for you guys?”
“We've got a KidNet question, Mr. D.”
“I
love
it. Sit down, sit down.” We sat. He said, “What is it?”
I said, “Catalina's written something.” I pulled the disk out of my pocket.
“It's a letter,” she said, perching on a swivel chair. “I'd like to send it to everyone in the seventh grade.”
“Is that possible on KidNet?” I said. “Can we do that?”
“Sure! The easiest way is to attach the file to an e-mail message and send it to a distribution list. That's the network version of a mailing list. In fact, distribution lists go back to the earliest computer networks, when the U.S. government set one up in case of nuclear attack. Users on the network created a mailing list so they could talk about science fiction.”
He leaned back, hands behind his head, and chuckled.
“Imagine some far-flung network of computer nerds holed up in basement labs and bomb shelters after an atomic holocaust, with everyone on-line intently debating some science-fiction story about life after an atomic holocaust.” He looked at us and grinned. “Doesn't that just say it all?”
I wasn't sure what all it said, but Mr. Dallas broke out laughing. Catalina and I looked at each other. He suddenly sat up in his chair. “So,” he said, swiveling to a computer, “we have a number of automated lists. Teachers use them all the time. You're the first students to ask about them.”
He started rattling keys … then he paused.
“There
could
be some pitfalls here,” he said.
“There could?”
“Well, possibly. I mean, if students start to get the idea about distributing or broadcasting files … it opens up a new dimension of use. It could be a Pandora's box. That's … well, actually, that's what certain authority figures darkly predicted this whole network would become.”
Catalina said, “They did?”
“Well, yes. There were people in positions of authority—one person, basically—who said if we turned a LAN over to the students as an open system, we'd get chaos. Of course, we
don't
have chaos—we have use. But I wonder what'll happen if you start broadcasting files.”
“It'd be innovative,” I quickly said.
“Yeah! It sure would. Well, I'm for it.” He grinned at us again. “Experimentation, communication—that's what this is about, right?”
Now he lunged forward; his chair almost leaped at us. Catalina hopped backward in hers.
“It
is
important for you to be careful with this,” Mr. Dallas said. “Okay?”
Catalina gripped her armrests. “Okay,” she said, wide-eyed.
“How should we be careful?” I asked.
“Just don't do anything irresponsible,” Mr. Dallas said. “But I know you won't. Anyway, what you do is pull down this menu and choose Distribute. See it? First you've created your message. Then, let's see—Staff access gets you all the lists we've created. What does MidStream access get?”
He rattled some keys. The list choices that popped up said Grade 6, Grade 7, Grade 8, All, and Custom. There were other list names, like Hogeboom 7B, but they were in faded gray, meaning you couldn't use them at our access level.
“Okay. I thought so,” Mr. Dallas said. “You can access what you need. You could create custom lists of your own, if you wanted to. But you just want to send it to Grade 7, right? So, no problem. Just select that and send.”
“All right,” I whispered. I slipped the disk with Catalina's letter back in my pocket.
“I guess we'll go try it,” I said.
Mr. Dallas shook our hands with gusto.
“Onward!” he said.
 
That night I rode my bike to Elliot's house. I had never been there before.
He said, “You know what I can't stand?”
I didn't answer. I was looking around at his bedroom.
Elliot was sitting on his bed, his thickly wrapped ankle propped up on a big yellow pillow. The pillow was, as far as I could tell, the only non-dinosaur-themed item in the room.
His walls had posters from the original
Godzilla
movie (“King of the Monsters!”), plus
Godzilla vs. Mothra
and
One Million Years B.C
(which didn't actually feature dinosaurs so much as this starlet in skins, with major cleavage), plus pictures of stegosaurus and iguanodon and triceratops and a very wide-angle poster that showed a ferny river scene with volcanoes spouting smoke in the background, tyrannosaurus
blasting out of the foliage to attack some panicking duckbills, and a giant brontosaurus off munching in the water. On the shelves he had a battery-powered triceratops, a wooden giant flying lizard skeleton, a plastic dueling tyranno and triceratops, at least thirty realistic little rubber or plastic dino models, a dinosaur diorama, and a webbed dino footprint in plaster.

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