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Authors: Doug Wilhelm

BOOK: The Revealers
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And he had a bookshelf full of dinosaur books. A chubby, inflated green T-rex was tipped over backward in the corner. On Elliot's bed was a dinosaur comforter—it had a red duckbill, a blue bronto, a green pterodactyl, a yellow tyranno. They were all smiling. I said that didn't seem too realistic, dinos smiling.
“Nah,” Elliot said, waving it away, “I got all this stuff when I was a kid. You know what I can't stand? I'm stuck here and those guys think they won. They probably think, ‘Hey, man, we showed
him
,' and I can't do anything about it.” He lifted his wrapped foot a little, then let it drop.
“Pretty soon, though,” he said, “it's my turn.” He started to smile, slyly.
“What, are you nuts? They dropped you off a bridge.”
“Yeah. And you know what? I am going to get them back.”
I thought, Who is this kid? What happened to the cautious little Bird Boy? Elliot was sitting up proudly, with his arms crossed.
I sighed. “Well, we need to change our approach,” I said. “There's no future in getting the crap beat out of us.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I stood up to 'em, didn't I? Just like you did. They might think twice before harassing
me
again.”
“Yeah. They think you're insane.”
“You think so? They think I'm nuts?”
“You
were
nuts. Totally.”
“Yeah.” He was just beaming. I shrugged. Maybe he
was
a little nuts. Maybe the concussion …
“Hey,” I said. “Has anybody talked to you or anything? Like the principal or the police?”
“Nah,” he said. “Forget about the principal—I told you, she never does anything. The cops … my mom wanted to make a report but I said don't. Burke and Blanchette would say they were trying to save me or something. The worst kids are the best liars.” He shrugged. “So what.”
“If it was grownups who did that, they'd be in jail.”
“Well it wasn't and they're not. Hey, what'd you do with Catalina's thing?”
I told him we'd sent it around to the whole seventh grade. We'd gone right from the System Server room to the computer lab, and done it.
Elliot whistled. “I like it! Hey, can you believe those girls made that stuff up, about Catalina and her mom?”
“I told you they did.”
“Yeah. What do you think people will say? I mean when they read what she wrote?”
“I don't know. They'll
read
it. Most of 'em probably already did. And I bet they'll talk about it. I just don't know what they'll say.”
“Tell me what happens, okay?”
“Yeah. I'll make a report.”
“A lab report,” Elliot said, and he smiled again. “The bully lab lives.”
The next day in social studies we were doing
Anne Frank
. We were halfway through the book. Ms. Hogeboom said, “People, let's talk today about Anne as a person. What was she like, do you think?”
The usual heavy silence. Answers came like questions.
“She was bright?”
“She was a prolific writer?”
“Well, yes,” Ms. Hogeboom said. “But do you think she was annoying?”
“Huh?”
“What do you mean,
annoying?”
“Well, Anne writes again and again that she is the center of all the tension in the Secret Annex,” the teacher said, perching on her desk and picking up the paperback from beside her.
Ms. Hogeboom has long straight hair and she wears long, loose, peasant kind of dresses. I think she used to be a hippie. Her copy of the book had a lot of bent yellow Post-its sticking up from the top, like a shaggy blond Mohawk. She pulled one of the yellow tabs open to a page.
“How about this? On page 29 she says, ‘Nothing, I repeat, nothing about me is right; my general appearance, my character, my manners are discussed from A to Z.' Then she says, ‘Am I really so bad-mannered, conceited, headstrong, pushing, stupid, lazy, etc., etc., as they all say?'”
Ms. Hogeboom looked up. “What do you think? Was she?”
There was buzzing and murmuring now.
“People always say that about teenagers.”
“Yeah. It's ridiculous.”
“It's
stupid
.”
“All right. So is she just a normal adolescent who is being typically persecuted and misunderstood? I mean, everyone who's hiding together in that little apartment has to be pretty edgy, right? Maybe they just take it out on Anne, who could really be the nicest teenage person in the world. Anne Frank has become a hero in our eyes, and for good reason.
But …
is it at all possible that as a person, at this time in her life, she might have been a little bit exasperating? What if you'd been stuck with her in that apartment? What do you think she was really like?”
There was a lot of murmuring now. Some people were flipping through their copies; some were rolling their eyes, making faces, and whispering to their friends. When you ask seventh graders to share anything, you always get a certain amount of that.
“She was very intelligent,” Leah Sternberg piped up helpfully. Leah talks a lot, always helpfully. She's involved with everything—Student Council, school newspaper, drama club, soccer and basketball and softball, chorus
and
band … Whenever there's an awkward moment in class, Leah will pipe up.
“She was also very sensitive,” she added.
“She was
hyper
sensitive,” said Jake Messner. Jake's a tall
kid who's good in sports and very smart and serious. He's actually one of the nicer kids in our class. “She says so herself,” he said. “It's in here somewhere.” He was searching through pages, frowning.
“She does say she's hypersensitive,” Ms. Hogeboom agreed, and opened her book, too.
“Well, for god's sake,” said Allison Kukovna, “who
wouldn't
be? I mean, she's very bright and she's got all these interests in life, she loves her friends and she even likes school, and now she's shut up all day and all night with her parents and these other dorky grownups she doesn't even
know
who can't tell each other they really hate each other so they pick apart everything Anne does. And, I mean, if any of them makes one loud noise they could all be
dead.
Wouldn't you be a little edgy?”
Allison shut her book with a thump. “It's not fair to say it's Anne's fault.” She crossed her arms and sat up straight, dramatically.
Allison has cascading red hair and she is dramatic. She sang the lead when the chorus and band did a number from
Annie
in the last school concert. She was funny and good. She could be one of the cool girls, except I think she's not tense enough.
“It's being stuck in there,” Jake said. “They're in those rooms all the time, surrounded by all that fear and danger. It brings out the worst in everybody. I mean, in the beginning she says her family never quarrels—they're shocked when the other family does. But before long everybody is squabbling like crazy.”
Ms. Hogeboom smiled. “Anne's got a strong character and she is a teenager. So whenever things get edgy, she's a magnet for adult disapproval. Is that what you're saying? People? Is that really what this is about?”
“It's about what it's always about,” said a voice in back.
Everybody turned around.
Turner White always sat in the back, and always wore black. He was sort of pale, like he didn't get a lot of sun.
“Turner?” Ms. Hogeboom said. “What is it always about?”
Turner shrugged. “Isolation,” he said. “What else?”
We just looked at him.
“Well?” he said. “If it wasn't for the isolation, none of this would have happened.”
“
None
of it?” Ms. Hogeboom said.
Turner tilted his head like he was waiting for the rest of us to get it. “Think about it,” he said. “The Nazis take over all of Europe and they isolate it, right? Nobody can go in or out. They hate the Jews, so they isolate them. Right? It says in the book no Jews were allowed to visit Christians or go to the movies or the parks or anything. Right? Then they start shipping people off to those camps, where they're completely cut off. And meanwhile these two families have to hide upstairs in a warehouse with blankets over the windows.”
Turner sat back and folded his arms. “If it wasn't for the isolation, none of this
could
have happened.”
There was a silence.
“Well,” said Leah helpfully, “what if the Jewish people had a computer network? I mean, what if the Franks could have sent messages?”
Somebody said,
“What?”
“Well, why not? All over the world. ‘We're in here. We're hiding. They're trying to
kill
us. Please help.'”
“Then the Germans would have found them and killed them a lot sooner,” said Jon Blanchette. He twisted around, shrugged, and grinned. “Well?”
“It's a big joke to you, isn't it, Jon?” said Big Chris, turning to face his friend. “Nothing but a big joke—no matter who gets hurt.”
Jon gave him a funny look, and shrugged.
“But,” said Allison, “what if you could send messages when people
started
to tell lies about you?”
“Yeah,” said Jake. He leaned forward with a sly expression. “What if you could tell everyone the truth about yourself right away?”
People were shifting in their seats and sneaking glances at Catalina, who sat in the middle of the class blinking behind her glasses. Bethany DeMere sat stiffly in the front row. She didn't look around.
Ms. Hogeboom was puzzled. “Well …” she said, “Anne was sending a message, wasn't she? Her book has been read by millions of people.”
“But she's dead,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
“Well, she is. What good did writing the book do her?”
“It's a good question,” Ms. Hogeboom said. “What do you all think …”
“But what if she could have sent messages to everyone when this whole thing started?” Allison said. “What if they
all
could have?”
Ms. Hogeboom said, “What do you mean by …”
I said, “The world didn't believe this stuff was happening at all, right? 'Cause the world didn't want to know. Sounds kind of familiar.”
“It's true,” Allison said. “I mean, if a few people persecute somebody, most of us pretend it isn't happening, right? We don't want to see it. But what if the person it's actually happening to could send a message to everyone, like, right away?”
“What is all this about messages?” Ms. Hogeboom asked.
Everyone knew. Nobody said.
“If Anne Frank had had the Internet,” the teacher said
slowly, “she'd be alive today? Is that what you're saying? Anyone?”
“That's pretty stupid,” said Burke Brown.
“Well, I don't know,” said Jake. “I mean, it all started with lies, right? They pretended the Jewish people were evil. They told everybody they were, and they kept saying it and saying it until everybody at least
acted
like it was true. And meanwhile they were pushing them around, shoving them and locking them up and beating up anybody who disagreed with them.”
“It was like the bullies were taking over the world,” I said.
“I think that's exactly what it was,” said Ms. Hogeboom.
“But,” said Jake, “if there had been an Internet then, the Nazis couldn't have stopped it, right? There's, like, sixteen zillion sites on the Web. You can't censor it.”
“Yeah,” said Blanchette, “but who would have paid attention to just one site?”
“If it was talking about mass
murder?
Hello?”
Everyone started talking at once. Ms. Hogeboom's class got that way sometimes. She wasn't big on control.
Catalina lifted her hand. Everybody got quiet.
“Catalina? Yes?”
She didn't stand up this time. And there were no giggles.
“Anne Frank's whole diary was in one little red-checked writing book,” Catalina said quietly. “They found it in a mess of things the Gestapo left on the floor after they took the people away. It wasn't that different from the notebooks we use—not really.” She held up her spiral notebook.
“Yes?” Ms. Hogeboom said.
Catalina blinked. “That's all,” she said. “Anne Frank wasn't trying to stop anything, or change anyone. She was just writing down her story.”
The bell rang but nobody moved. Ms. Hogeboom was
nodding and looking around, looking pleased, which was funny, because she was the only one who had no idea what anyone was really talking about.
“Okay, everyone, that was excellent,” Ms. Hogeboom said. “Now we've run a little late, but for next time, please read through page 175.”
Chairs scraped and backpacks zipped.
“Wait,” said Turner in the back. The scraping and zipping stopped. “I found it,” he said. “Just listen, okay?
“‘Lately I have begun to feel deserted,'” Turner read. “‘I am surrounded by too great a void. I never used to feel like this, my fun and amusements, and my girl friends, completely filled my thoughts. Now I either think about unhappy things, or about myself.'”
The next class was waiting outside. You could see the dark bodies through the frosted glass by the door.
“That's how it is,” Turner said. “
That's
why everyone relates to this kid. It's not because of Nazis, it's 'cause of the blankets on the windows. It's because everyone knows about feeling alone.”
After a second, everybody got up and started moving for the door. But nobody spoke. The door opened, and the kids from the next class stepped back and just looked at all these quiet solemn faces filing past.
 
At lunch I was going for our table in the Bun Appetit corner; but I stopped just past the cash register and stood there, holding my tray. Three girls, Allison Kukovna and two of her friends, were sitting with Catalina, talking with her, at our table. Catalina looked a little bewildered.
I knew it was a good thing, what Catalina did, writing down her story, and then us sending it out. It seemed like it had really hit people. I remembered what my mom said, that Catalina would be beautiful someday. I guessed she had
new friends now. And, I mean, if you have new friends, fairly cool friends, who'd want to hang around with two invisible rejects anymore?

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