Naked in School
Emma Comes in from the Cold
Chapter 3
The week passed as plans continued to be made, definitely on the part of my army and probably on the school’s part too. School officials had lots of things to organize, amongst them how they could adapt the general Program rules to an Alaskan environment. On Friday during home room, they played a really horrid video over the classroom monitors which, during the first boring five minutes, showed talking heads extolling the psychological and social benefits of the Program. After that rot, there were clips of news programs where the TV commentators discussed the changing mores of society; that public nudity was becoming more socially acceptable. They showed clips of naked bike rides, naked beaches, bodypainting festivals, and naked attendees at rock concerts.
Scenes shown on the video: naked hiking, biking, streaking, and beaches
Then some more talking heads came on, discussing how nudity was becoming commonplace in colleges and universities and illustrated this trend with examples of naked events at various colleges. Clips were shown of students at one uni holding a naked run; at this school they do this on the 13th of every month (and for special occasions, also on the 31st or 26th). Another clip was of a festival at a different college which featured, among its events, naked attendees engaging in body painting and performing symbolic “deflowering ceremonies” where naked participants frolicked and danced around naked girls, who supposedly were the virgins. Also clips were included from yet another uni which holds an official “naked week” as a celebration of body positivity; various events were shown, including a naked Ultimate Frisbee game.
The boy in the video had to masturbate in front of the room
The video showed a couple in coitus; here they are in foreplay
There was a bit more discussion about the importance of body positivity and then the narrator began discussing what she called “sexual positivity,” trying to justify how it was important for teens to become sexually experienced as part of becoming emotionally mature, and while she droned on, the screen showed disturbing pornographic video clips of kids doing all kinds of gross things with each other in school hallway and classroom settings. From the squirming of the others in the classroom, the video was making everyone uncomfortable and it freaked out not a few girls, a couple who began to cry. Me? I was frikkin’ disgusted. And who would model for that kind of video? Wait... were those kids actors or was this the real thing actually going on in a school? Ugh, now that’s really horrid. I don’t want to even think about it. Seeing that video really freaked me out.
The video ended with another couple in coitus, scaring its viewers
Then the weekend came and went, and Monday arrived. That was the only thing I had expected to happen which actually did happen. Monday arrived. The Program assembly didn’t, and absolutely everything else that happened was unexpected. Well, not in the form that anyone, including me, expected. Let me clarify.
The school halls were bloody cold when we arrived on Monday morning—damn, how did that happen, anyway? That’s just perfect—exactly what we needed. It was snowing outside too. I went into my classroom and it was even colder in there than the halls. Could that be because there were open windows in the room, snow was blowing in, and the air coming in the vents wasn’t very warm? We got the windows shut but kept our coats on. We had expected to report to the gym after home room but then the PA announcement came:
“There will be no meeting in the gym today. Please stand by for more instructions.”
There was a buzz of conversation over this when a latecomer arrived in the class.
“My bus was late,” she reported to the teacher, handing a note over. Then she turned to the class. “We got delayed by a crash ahead of us on the way here. Slippery roads. Anyway, do you know that one whole wall of the gym is gone? The one that was all windows. The gym is open to the outside and the snow is blowing into it.”
The whole class erupted with a cheer. Things were off to a roaring start. Freezing start? Whatever. A few minutes later, a girl brought a message into the room and gave it to the teacher. She read it and looked up.
“Adam Rich and Emma Clarke. You’re supposed to go to Room A103A now. That’s the little conference room next to the school office. Take your stuff with you, too.”
Now what? I wondered. Adam was a junior like me. He was smart, very shy, and, well, somewhat overweight. And tall. Two meters? Six feet four or five, anyway, to my four-ten and a bit. A gentle giant. So we trundled off to Room A103A.
As we arrived, there were others coming to the room too. It looked like there were perhaps a dozen kids, maybe a few more, plus a few teachers, arriving. And one very obese man was stood inside. This must be the infamous Mr Hayword. I had to give my name to a woman with a clipboard as I entered the room where I got pushed against people who all towered over me. Oh, that room was cold too. Everyone was wearing heavy coats or parkas. Me too. Goose down parka for me. Soon the clipboard woman nodded to Hayword; she left and shut the door and Hayword began speaking.
“Welcome everyone,” he said. “Sorry for the tight accommodations here. There’s been some damage to the gym so we couldn’t meet there. You students are honored to have been selected as your school’s first participants in the Program...”
There were howls of outrage from everyone at this news.
“You can’t do that; it’s too cold,” cried one.
Another voice called out, “You gotta be nuts—nobody here wants to freeze to death!”
The clamoring continued until he got the noise quieted down; then he said, “You’ll get used to the cold; you’ll see. We’ll be doing partners for the Program. Miss Williams will give you your partner’s name. You are to support each other during your week. Miss Williams?”
After another round of distressed complaints, she was able to speak.
“We’ve selected two pairs from each class; we want to get through the first part of the student body quickly, hopefully before the winter gets really bad. There are two girls who must go to the nurse to get The Shot right after you’re naked. Michelle Geist and Emma Clarke. Be sure to see the nurse and tell her you need The Shot. Now here are the partner groups...”
She continued, starting with the freshman, but by then I had tuned her out. What to do? No bloody way will I get starkers. I noticed that I was virtually invisible in the room, being shielded from view by all the huge bodies around me, most of them wearing those fluffy Alaska-style parkas. But I was too far from the door to slip out.
“Go stand with your partners now.”
Wait. What? I didn’t hear my name or anyone else’s. People were shuffling around and then Adam moved next to me.
“Adam?” I wondered aloud.
“Partner,” he muttered, carefully inspecting a dirty spot on the floor from his towering height.
There were lots of dirty spots on the floor so he had ample opportunities for his curiosity about them.
Hayword was talking now, something about Program rules, when Williams sidled over.
“Emma, I paired you with Adam. He’s as shy as you. You can help each other.”
“Bloody hell, miss,” I countered. “He won’t be my partner because I’m not doing this rot. Anyway, he’s four years older and I don’t do anything social with boys either. And I checked on you. You’re not my guardian, so that consent form is invalid. My attorney told me last week that your guardian application was thrown out.”
“We can force you, you know,” she replied. “In just a few minutes.”
Hayword must have wrapped up his comments because everyone was shifting around restlessly again.
Then Hayword announced, “We’ll start with the seniors. You four, please remove your clothes now. Um, there’s no room in the clothing boxes for your coats—just pile the coats in the corner over there for now.”
The four seniors looked at each other. I was stood near them so I could hear one of the boys as he quietly asked the girl next to him, “We’re not doing this, right?” Both girls both looked back at him and nodded their heads in agreement.
“Hey, me and Jane and Nancy aren’t doing this crap, no way in hell will we strip, and it’s too damn cold anyway,” that boy proclaimed, grabbed a girl’s arm (Jane or Nancy, I didn’t know), and charged out of the room with her in tow. Immediately most of those kids near the door ran out as well, before a teacher was able to move to block anyone else from leaving. Naturally, I was too far from the door to get myself out in that initial rush and Adam was still counting dirty spots on the floor.
There were just five of us kids left in the room now. I think three were freshmen, Adam, and me. Williams zeroed in on me.
“Okay, Emma. We’ll catch up to the others soon, but now it’s your turn. If you don’t strip voluntarily, we’ll need to help you do it.”
Two of the teachers in the room began moving toward me, they were probably gym teachers since they looked like it—big men. Well, everyone looks big to me. Okay, time for the drama act.
“I can’t do it...” I sighed dramatically, rolling my eyes up and making my knees shake.
Nah, that won’t work—I’m bundled up so much that they can’t see the knees. So with a theatrical sigh, I keeled over. My parka gave me great cushioning; I landed with a very satisfying thud. As I did, I made sure to slap the floor hard with my hand as I made believe it was my head that made that crack sound. Anyway, I bounced my head to make it look real.
Damn. I had slapped the floor, dirt spots and all. Gonna have to scrub the dirt off my hand later.
Anyway, at least something worked properly for me now.
“She fainted!” A female voice.
“Get help!” A male voice, young though.
“Step back!” A male command, a teacher probably.
“Get her to the nurse, Mr Greynor.” That was Miss Williams.
“You all, stop! Stay here!” Hayword, probably trying to keep the last of the kids from leaving the room.
From the thudding of the feet vibrating on the floor, it seemed that they all successfully fled. Whilst I was being carried to the nurse, I tried to practice rolling up my eyeballs in case someone lifted my eyelids. Don’t know how well that worked, though. I couldn’t feel them move very much. Oh well, I’ll need to wing it now. If I can get alone, I can get away. I’m just too small to get away from someone if they grabbed me.
I was deposited, not so gently, on a firm surface—the exam table, I assume, and a female voice asked, “What happened to her?”
Gruff male voice. Teacher-coach, I assume. Used to yelling. “She fainted.”
“What was she doing?”
“The first day Program stripping session. They asked her to strip and she keeled over.”
“Ah. Shock.”
“Um, Marcia?” Oh. That must be the nurse’s name. “She hit her head on the floor, hard. Heard it go crack.”
“Ohmygod. And you carried her here with a head injury? Get out. Call 911. Wait for them and lead them here. Let me check her.”
I felt her hands gently slide over my scalp and heard her breathing close by and a few seconds later, she began checking my pulse. I guess she had tried looking for a lump or bleeding on my head. Then I felt a blood pressure cuff being put on my wrist.
“Hmmm. All okay,” she muttered when the cuff stopped hissing.
Then she lifted an eyelid. I tried really hard not to look back at her, keeping my eyeballs up. Suddenly a bright light flashed at the eye and went away. She repeated it with the other eye.
“Pupils okay. Miss, you’re awake. You’re not fooling me.”
“Oooohh,” I groaned. “What happened? Oh, it hurts. I hit my head.”
“They said you fainted. What really happened?”
“Ooohh... they were gonna strip me. I felt all woozy and light-headed and then woke up here. Ow, my head hurts.”
“Hurts where? I didn’t see a bruise.”
“My hairline. Here.” I pointed.
“Okay. That area may take a while for a lump to form. The skull is really thick there. You might have a concussion; we’ll need x-rays, maybe.”
“If they take me to the hospital, where’s my backpack?”
“It’s right here.”
The phone rang and she answered it. “I’ll tell her ... Okay.”
She came back. “The office called your paren... emergency contact. Mrs Flannery will be here very soon.”
In fact, Mrs F came in when the paramedics did. I motioned her over and she bent down for my whisper.
“I’m okay. Play acting. Be quiet. Go along with me.”
She nodded.
“How you doing?” one of the EMTs asked.
“Better. Getting better and better.”
“That’s a strange answer. Hurt anywhere?”
I glanced around; didn’t see the nurse.
“Not really,” I replied.
“Report is you fainted; possible concussion.”
“Okay,” I responded. “But no concussion.”
He gave me another sharp look.
“Okay miss, let’s get you on the gurney here.”
Soon they were loading me into the ambulance. I saw Mrs F was stood at her car, waiting. Whilst I was being loaded in, I released the restraint strap at my waist. The other EMT pulled a clipboard off my stretcher, looked it over, and then began securing the stretcher wheels to the floor. The first EMT was apparently the driver.
The door closed and I sat up.
“Ah-ah-ah! Can’t do that,” the EMT spoke.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just needed to get out of the school building and...”
“Now wait,” he interrupted. “You have a possible concussion and...”
“Ready to go yet?” the driver called back.
“Not yet. A minute.” To me, he said, “You need to lay back.”
“No.” I stood up then, surprising him. And in my best parade-field voice, firmly said, “I’m done here. Now you listen up, Mister! There is absolutely nothing wrong with me! Except my height,” I added quietly. Firmly again, “They were assaulting me in there, going to try to strip my clothes off me! So I faked the fainting! I’m fine!”
He gawked at me, then looked back at his clipboard.
“Hmm. Your name rings a bell... Emma Clarke. Emma... do you tutor kids here?” he asked quietly.
I glanced at his name tag. Benalley. I taught an Amka Benalley.
“You have a daughter Amka?” I asked.
“Yes!” he shouted. “You’re Amka’s Emma! She thinks you walk on water. You helped her pull up her grades, taught her how to study, gave her confidence in herself, made us all proud of her. You’re her hero and role model. I heard of that school nudity crap. They got you involved in that? How are you even in high school? At 13?”
“Wait. One at a time. Yeah, they fixed the name selection so that I would be selected today. Then they were about to force-strip me, so I faked the fainting to get away. I’m in high school ‘cause I skipped some grades when I was younger. And I need to call my solicit... erm, lawyer about what happened today, so can you let me out? I can see that my ... erm... guardian’s car is still waiting. She’s probably waiting to follow you. Let me out—you can tell your bosses that I skipped out when you were getting out an IV or something,” I giggled.
My relief at escaping was making me giddy.
“Don’t worry about that, Emma. I’ll cover for you.” he said. “Hey Bill!” he called. “I need to come up front for a sec. The patient is stable.”
He opened the back door and we both got out. He closed it and went to the cab whilst I slipped into Mrs F’s car. She had my backpack.
“Okay now, what’s going on?” she asked as the ambulance left. We drove out too.
I explained.
“I need to call Mr Jameson. First, can they use force to strip kids? Second, if the law says that only a parent or legal guardian sign the Program releases, how could Williams do it? Isn’t that illegal?” I asked.
“I don’t know, honey,” she sighed. “Let’s just get home.”
~~~~
When we got home, I called Jameson and he told me he’d get right on it; Hayword telling the teachers to strip me was actually a felony—sexual assault. Sigh. This was only Monday, I was guessing we’d have a whole week of this rot—no, probably more. Soon Joyce came home from school to report that no one had gotten naked and that the building was still majorly cold.
“They boarded up the windows in the gym and have these big heaters running in there now,” she told us. “They’re trying to get the building heat up but one of the kids heard the janitor saying it would take three or four days to get the heat much over 60. And the gym is losing heat as fast as they can pump it in. Everyone is so excited about how the Program got stopped today.”
“What about the kids who got selected? Were they bothered anymore?” I asked.
“I know of some. Two were in my fourth period English class and Hayword came by and demanded that they come with him to get stripped. They refused again. Robin knows of more. Hey, I heard a girl fainted.”
“Erm, that was me, Joyce.”
“No shit! They picked you?”
“Yeah. They falsified my consent records. And the selection isn’t random like they said it would be. And I didn’t faint. I pulled that trick to keep the teachers from stripping me.”
“No! Can they just pull off your clothes if you refuse?” she asked, horrified.
“No, doing that’s assault and battery. Jameson got a court order to keep them from trying it on anyone.”
“Ooooh, cool,” she said. “Hey, Robin told me that a couple of teachers are being real dicks. She had a kid who was called for the Program in two of her classes and each teacher wanted him to strip ‘cause they wanted to use a naked kid in their class. He refused, of course, so she said the teachers tried sending him to the office. He wouldn’t go; he said that’s where it all had started. So the teachers told him that he would get a week of class fails; that’s what their Program instructions called for, they said.”
Robin was a friend of Joyce.
“Jeez. That’s just bollocks. I’m sure they can’t fail a kid for a non-academic reason. I think I’ll warn the kids in tutoring to watch out for that if they get threatened that way.”
“I’ll tell Robin what you said, Emma. Thanks!”
Later in the afternoon I got an email from a girl in my army.
Hey Emma–
Thought you might want to know. Jeff’s dad runs a window and sign company. He and his crew took down the gym windows last weekend with their bucket trucks. Then they put someone into the school through the window opening and he opened as many doors and windows as he could.
Pat says his uncle has another surprise for the next time we need to freeze out the place. When the school goes over 60 he’ll do it. You did said to freeze ‘em out—that was a super idea. We’re absolutely gonna do just that.
Kasi
The school was still chilly but mostly quiet when I returned Tuesday. Apparently the staff had been trying to get the selected kids to participate all day Monday but the kids stood firm. The cold building went a long way to help steel their resolve. You freeze out the Program by freezing the friggin’ kids. Even if anyone had wanted to get starkers, the school’s temperature would have chilled out that thought, and any teachers who asked the kids to strip were met with cold stares. Just sayin’. Need to find humor in this rubbish somehow and thinking up the puns helps. Anyway, Williams must have found out I was back because she tracked me down and tried to talk to me, but I just walked away from her and then wouldn’t even acknowledge her when she tried a second time at my next class.
I have Biology fifth hour on Tuesdays and guess what? The teacher had me on his list as a Program person and gave me a really difficult time, insisting that I had to be naked so he could use me for some class demonstrations.
“The devil?” I retorted. “What is it with you teachers? Acting like a crew of pervs—you just wanna get to see a bunch of us kids, all starkers, don’t you.”
The class erupted in cheers.
“Miss, you’re being...”
“I’m being realistic. No way you’d support this blightin’ Program idiocy unless you were perving on us kids...”
He tried to interrupt but I stood up and pointed my finger at him.
“Tell you what... I’ll do it, but only if you join me in stripping starkers and you go first.”
Now the class was howling with glee and the teacher looked like he was about to have a coronary.
“Miss Clarke, that’s enough. Your behavior is...”
“It’s bloody appropriate,” I exclaimed. “Look. This classroom is what, only a bit over 60 degrees and everyone’s still wearing coats or heavy sweaters. Being starkers in the cold like this is a spacky idea; it’s dicky too...”
I saw his blank look and realized my slang had lost him.
“...so... means stupid idea and unhealthy. Last week when I heard about the bleedin’ Program starting here, I looked up some survival tables for hypothermia. Guess what? They all assume you’re wearing clothes, don’t they. You’ll get hypothermia right quickly, even at 60 degree temps, if you have no clothes on. And at my body size, the ratio of my body surface area to my total mass is much higher than a full adult’s, so that’d mean that I’d lose body heat very fast and be affected much more quickly than a bigger person, innit? So you can just forget about my being starkers in here. Sir.”
Got quite a bit of applause for that, I did. Which earned the class a hard glare from the teacher, but he did back down and I didn’t have any further problems with him for the rest of the term. And my reputation among the kids at school took a tremendous leap after the news about that biology class spread widely. Suddenly I was popular! What a hoot.
~~~~
Mr Jameson works quickly. After my Biology class, I noticed I had a text message from him; he had organized an ex parte court injunction issued to the school forbidding any adult from touching a student for the purposes of obtaining Program compliance. Any adult doing so would be subject to a sexual battery charge. He had also sent a letter to the school demanding that they send him the original copies of my Program permission form which Williams had signed. In the letter, he had pointed out that she had violated state law by falsely representing that she was my legal guardian. And finally, he had notified the school that under no circumstances were they to attempt to administer The Shot to me.
~~~~
My afternoons on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are spent at UAF, so I missed some of the byplay on Wednesday afternoon. But while I was at the uni, the school district’s lawyer was in court attempting to get Mr Jameson’s injunction overturned. I learnt what happened from him that evening.
“Emma, I called to update you on the school nudity situation. I was in court today to defend our ex parte injunction,” he told me.
“Ah. I hope you won—erm, what’s ‘ex parte’?”
“That means I got the preliminary injunction without any notification to the school. Doing that is justified in cases of immediate harm, where there’s no time to arrange a hearing with the parties. Anyway, yes, we won; the injunction is now permanent.”
“But the school’s lawyer tried to stop it?” I asked.
“And that was ... amusing, ha ha... to see. Their lawyer got a lecture from the judge. The judge used my motion for relief as his script. When the other lawyer tried to introduce the Naked in School Program materials as a reason why forced stripping is legal, the judge threatened him with contempt for making a frivolous argument, since those materials have no legal standing. He asked the guy how he thought an administrative document, which has no basis in state law, could supercede the state’s laws covering assault and battery. In my motion, I had pointed out that allowing the forced stripping of minors, like the school officials attempted with you, would give them free license to violate the assault and battery laws. Follow so far?”
“Yep. So we’re okay?”
“Yes, but there was more,” he went on. “Their guy then brought up school corporal punishment and pointed out that this was permitted in a number of states, where it was exempted from being battery. So I challenged that comment and told the judge that corporal punishment was prohibited by law in Alaska, but in those states where it was allowed, that kind of punishment was limited to serious behavior issues where student suspension was the alternative and spanking or paddling was the only allowable punishment—not stripping children naked and forcing them to remain that way. So legally, I claimed, kids could not be stripped by force. The judge agreed and made the injunction permanent.”
“And the teachers know this, then?”
“Yes. Their lawyer—he’s in private practice, just like me. He’s not a school district employee—he’s on retainer to the school district so they pay for his time by the hour. He told me after the hearing that he really didn’t want to go to court over this. He told the school district that there was no way he could get the injunction overturned.” Jameson chuckled. “Just like he couldn’t do anything about the local indecency laws about having naked kids in the mall. The school had him try to get those laws changed too and the city attorney just laughed at him.”
“Oh yes,” I commented. “That rot—‘outreach,’ I think it was called. I saw that was gone from the new version of the Program booklets we were given.”
“Their lawyer told me that Hayword wanted to require that the kids be naked at home since he couldn’t require it in public. He had to convince Hayword that doing this was impossible. There was no way the school could force a parent to change their household rules. So that’s the news. Have any problems since Monday morning?”
“Not really. A few very insistent teachers who were after me about why I wasn’t starkers but I got shot of that fairly easily.”
“That’s good. Oh, I almost forgot... In my letter to the school about your not having a guardian’s consent and being chosen, I mentioned that as a U.K. citizen, you couldn’t be chosen.”
“That’s ace, thanks.”
“Well, call me if something comes up, okay?”
“Sure will.”
~~~~
Something coming up didn’t take long at all. The very next day, Thursday, I got called to the office. I responded that I wasn’t showing up unless they assured me that they weren’t trying to strip me. They said they weren’t. So I told the principal that I’d come to the meeting but my mobile would be connected to my attorney’s office and if I had any problem with them, the attorney’s secretary would ring 911.
And that’s how I did it. I was gutted to see who was in the room, Principal Norris, Assistant Principal Smith, Williams, and Hayword. I wasn’t about to answer anyone’s questions, no sir. I needed to take charge here.
“Him,” I said, pointing at Hayword. “If he’s here, my mouth is zipped. He represents all that is wrong with this bloody idiocy. I want him gone.”
“But this meeting is about the Program and he’s in charge of it,” Norris objected.
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no Program happening here, so no worries,” I shot back. “Either he’s gone or I am.”
I saw Smith try to hide a grin.
“Okay, you can ask away all you want after he’s left,” I went on. “That’s when my answers will come.”
“You can’t do that,” Hayword said. “You have to respond to legitimate questions.”
“Really? This isn’t a police matter and I’m assuming that this meeting doesn’t involve my academics or any disciplinary issues, which are covered in the school’s ‘Guide to Student Behavior.’”
Hey, I looked this stuff up. Helps to be prepared.
“The ‘Guide’ says that students need to be respectful to teachers and staff,” Norris said, warningly.
“Tell me what wasn’t respectful, please, Mr Norris.”
“Talking about Mr Hayword that way and refusing to answer.”
“Okay. He isn’t a school teacher or staff member. He’s a federal employee and isn’t subject to the school board so his being at the school is a courtesy. He’s not an education person. He’s an outsider. He shouldn’t be here. Also, you certainly know that someone can be respectful whilst refusing to answer something. You people do know about the Fifth Amendment, right? People don’t have to answer, do they.”
Norris looked at me with the stern expression he uses on kids, trying to scare me, I assume. It’s actually an impressive stare. Maybe I can figure out how I can do that too. But I just looked back at him blandly, then winked. He sat back suddenly, shocked.
“Miss Clarke, that was impertinent! What kind of game do you think you’re playing?”
“What? What did I do?” I complained. “Did I do something wrong?” I asked the others, innocently.
They shrugged. Smith was looking at me with a strange expression now.
“You know what you did! You winked at me!” Norris shouted.
“Oh? I did? An eyelash got stuck when I blinked, is all. Why would I wink at you? You’re not my type.”
The others in the room sniggered but Norris’ face turned red, he stood up, pointed at the door, and yelled, “Get out. Get out now! And I’m going to have you expelled!”
“Okay sir. But first, please look at the rules about expulsion. My lawyer is enjoying helping me with the problems I’m having here. He likes the money too.”
Now the laughter from the others couldn’t be suppressed. But Norris, beet-faced, looked like he was having a stroke.
“Out!”
I waved daintily as I slipped out the door and gently closed it. A few seconds later I heard laughing coming from my mobile. It was still connected to Jameson’s office. I put it to my ear; Jameson was laughing and I heard laughing in the background.
“Hi. Did you enjoy that?” I asked.
“Emma, we all heard that. You should get an Oscar. I think the visuals would have made it even funnier. I would have loved to see their expressions. That was a masterful job at showing them that you’re playing by your own rulebook.”
“Yeah. That’s kinda what I was going for. I had assumed, when I walked in there and saw the lineup, that they wanted to ask me about the school sabotage and my role in the resistance and I wanted to try to stop them from even asking one question about that.”
“As I said, masterful. Okay, thanks for the entertainment. And keep safe, you hear?”
“I’ll try.” I rang off.
‘Cripes. It’s still cold in here,’ I thought as I walked back to my class.
~~~~
Later on that same day, I heard about what happened in the office after I left the principal’s meeting. I didn’t hear about it from any expected source, either. I was doing one of my group tutoring sessions when one of my... well, I started using military metaphors for my army group, so it was when one of my leftenants—ah, you do know that’s the word’s proper pronunciation—Karen, popped in. She had news so exciting (to her) that she was positively vibrating. I excused myself from my kids and the two of us went to a quiet corner.
“Emma, you just gotta hear this!” she gushed, her body vibrating, jiggling, and quivering.
She had her mobile out and could barely hold onto it.
She quivered, “You know how you told us to keep aware of what the staff says; their words are ammunition for our cause; loose lips sink ships...”
“Karen... shhhh... okay...” I slowed her down. Shit, this military metaphor tosh must be contagious.
“...and... and... umm... you know Marta?”
She had run down a bit. Fifty percent quiver reduction.
“Yep. Teacher’s aide in the office.”
“Okay. Wow... She... she... Oooo...”
Oops. Quiver rate up to 75 percent now.
“Slow down. Deep breaths. What about Marta?”
This was probably going to be the gossip scoop of the century... no, millennium. (Uh oh. Same thing. Damn. There goes that hyperbole.)
“Yeah. Puff puff. Okay. Um. Well. So she was in the teachers’ lounge, crouched behind the sink cabinet, putting in the stuff from the supply closet, when a secretary and a teacher came in jabbering, and one was saying ‘You won’t believe what I just heard about that Emma Clarke girl...’ Well, that triggered Marta so she grabbed her phone and started recording. Aaaand... I... have... a... copy... right... heeere!” she almost squealed and began vibrating again.
God. How these kids just love good gossip. I wonder if I’ll get that way when I grow up? Anyway, she began to play the recording. The sound was tinny and a little blurred but was certainly understandable. I assumed the first voice was the office secretary.
Secretary: “... came out and quietly shut the door...”
Teacher: “You mean Emma.”
Secretary: “Yeah. Norris had screamed ‘Get out’ and ‘You’re expelled,’ and stuff like that. Then she kind of floated out of the room with a little smirk on her face and daintily shut the door. She even winked at me.”
Teacher: “She’s a cool one. Gotta watch her.”
Secretary: “I know. But here’s the best part. Now they were all shouting in there so I could hear them. Smith said, ‘Paul, calm down! You know that she played you like a goddamn fiddle, don’t you?’”
Teacher: “Paul Norris, the principal.”
Secretary: “Right. Now I need to paraphrase because I can’t recall what they said word-for-word. Norris said, ‘She’s impertinent and obstructionist. I don’t want her in my school.’
“Smith came back with, ‘She did nothing that you can punish her for. You know, right from the instant she came in here, that she was in total control of the meeting?’
“‘I don’t see that,’ Norris said.
“Smith said, ‘She went on the attack, her very first words. She looked at who was here and figured us all out instantly and attacked, right to the heart of where we planned to go with her. She’s scary, like a mind reader.’
“Then Norris. ‘You mean, her demanding that we send Jack out?’
“‘Right, that took our attention off of where we wanted to go, and then she turned the meeting into a discussion of whether or not she was being polite. Shit. Then she baited you and you took the bait and ran with it. Threw her out. Just what she wanted. And now she has grounds for refusing to meet with us again. Sorry, Paul, you blew it. Do you know how powerful that kid is here? She may look like a little girl, but she’s probably the most underestimated person you’ll ever meet. About a quarter of the kids in the school think she’s a god or something. I know many parents do.’”
The secretary continued: “And after that, they got too low to hear. The others had been speaking too but I couldn’t make out what they said. Oh and then...”
There was a sound of something falling, then, “Oops.”
Teacher: “Someone there?”
“Just me, Marta. I’m stocking the cabinets.”
Teacher: “Did you...”
The recording stopped. I must have been blushing because Karen looked at me and giggled.
“Jeez, Emma, your face is red. Are you hot or something?” she asked, grinning.
“No, I’m ace. That talk about me is embarrassing though.”
“But it’s so true! I’m keeping that recording forever!” she gushed. “You’re not only a genius; you help everyone, protect us all, and even slay the dragons. Putting the mighty Norris down! My god, nobody’s ever done that! And he’s been here forever!”
You can see where this was going. I made Karen promise to try not to share that recording too widely, but you know, teens and gossip, well, I won’t hold my breath. Maybe it might be better if they do kick me out of here. No, I guess not. I’ll stick it out.
By Friday, the rooms in the school were right around 63 degrees on average, except the gym. Plywood has a poor insulating value, especially when compared with the triple-pane glass which had been there previously.
~~~~
After a calm weekend, when I returned to school, once again the school’s temperature was somewhere between that of a refrigerator and freezer. Through my army’s grapevine, I learnt what had happened this time. This attack was apparently a two-pronged offensive (there I go again). First, a nameless someone had somehow released some natural gas near the school building’s meter, resulting in the utility company responding and shutting off the gas supply until the leak could be found. This ploy began on Friday evening, and after some repeated releases of gas in a few random locations near the meter, thus requiring additional utility company visits, by Sunday no leak had been located—but the gas, and therefore the school heat, had been turned off the entire time. The second prong was that someone had gotten onto the building roof and opened the makeup air baffles, allowing the ventilation fans to pull in outside air. Normally the school’s heating systems used less than about 5 percent outside air and recirculated the rest; that’s what I heard. Now they were pulling in 75 to 80 percent fresh, frigid air. Freeze ‘em out. But we were the collateral damage ‘cause we froze too. I was glad for my parka.
When the Program selectee names for Monday were read over the tannoy—that’s the PA system—all the classrooms broke out in sounds of laughter and jeers.
I was at home that afternoon trying to juggle my school homework and my uni course work when I heard Joyce noisily come into the house with some friends. They passed the dining room doorway and noticed me.
“Oh! Emma! You’re here now,” Joyce said, surprised.
On Monday afternoons I was usually at the uni.
“Just catching up on all my work,” I answered. “The prof is out sick today and he didn’t have a sub.”
“You know my friends, Wendy and Robin?” she asked.
“Sure. Hi there. Keepin’ warm, are we?” I joked. “Hey, Joyce, how are you holding up with the school being frozen like it is?”
“I’m okay. I wear lots of layers. If I keep my legs warm too and wear a hat, I’m okay.”
Robin broke in, “Yeah, they relaxed that ‘no hat’ rule now since it’s so cold. Hey, Wendy’s name was picked today. You hear it announced?”
“Yep. Hey, Wendy, you’re now a member of the refuser’s club. And your other friend, Jeannie, got called too.”
“Well, the whole school thinks you’re the greatest, how you’ve stopped the Program,” Wendy gushed. “I’m so, so glad I don’t have to do that naked crap. You guys were geniuses, the way you figured out how to make the school so cold. And my uncle is loving it too,” she giggled.
“Oh, keeping it cold... that reminds me... I gotta get with my gang to figure out how to keep the building cold for the next few weeks. We’re running out of ideas,” I mused.
My housemate, Sally Iverson, came in just then. “Hi guys, what’s up?” she greeted us.
Joyce grimaced. “Just commenting about how they’re keeping the school cold.”
“And what we can do about keeping it that way,” I put in.
“I heard a bit of what you were saying,” Sally remarked. “Wendy, what’s making your uncle so happy about the school being cold?”
“Oh, he works for Jones Plumbing and Heating. He’s the supervisor. They have the contract to take care of the school’s heating system and with all of the stuff going on, he’s getting lots of billable hours at the school.”
Hearing that, I had an idea. “Oh... oooh... Wendy? You think he could help our cause? Maybe if we got access to the controls... we could figure out something. Without involving him, of course. Sally, if there’s something electronic that we could do, would you help?”
She laughed. “Oh sure. The stuff goin’ on at your school is epic. And the way you’re fighting back? Awesome. If I can help, sure.”
Wendy got her mobile from her backpack and rang her uncle.
“Uncle Ray, it’s Wendy. Got a question.”
“...”
“No, about the high school—let me put this on speaker. There. A bunch of us here were wondering if you could help us with keeping the school cold...”
“Hold on, Wendy, I can’t do anything that...”
I interrupted, “Hi, Uncle Ray, I’m Emma—a classmate of Wendy’s...”
He chuckled. “Ah, the famous Emma. Wendy’s mentioned to me what you’ve been doing. Just call me Raymond, Ray’s good too, okay?”
“Yes, sir. Here’s the idea I had, and you wouldn’t be involved other than giving us some info and maybe allow us access to the system. We wouldn’t damage it in any way, that I can promise. One of our helpers is an electrical engineer, a grad student. She’d know what to look for.”
“Well, I could do that, especially seeing the good cause this is for, I suppose. What do you need?”
“Raymond? Sir? I’m Sally Iverson—who Emma graciously called an electrical engineer. That’s my bachelor’s degree but I haven’t done enough field work to earn the ‘engineer’ title.”
“That’s okay, Sally. If you know how to read circuit diagrams and what the components look like...”
“Yes sir, I know all that. Anyway, for starters, could you tell me about the controls? Is it an integrated package system or distributed controls?”
“You asked the right question... good. That makes me feel better. It’s new; well, four years old. That’s when we put it in. All digital. Everything controlled from one box. Let’s see, it’s a Heat-Timer system...”
He and Sally continued their discussion for a few minutes, then we said our thanks and good-byes and disconnected.
Sally turned to me. “I’ll get the service manual off the internet. Ray said it’s there. After I look it over, I’ll know better what’s possible.”
~~~~
On Tuesday, I learnt from Mr Jameson that Hayword had been busy. Apparently he had contacted the Office of Social Awareness in Washington to tell them that he had a U.K. citizen in his school and he wanted the U.K. embassy to permit him to compel me to participate. Well, the embassy responded that they would need to investigate this further, so they would contact the nearest consulate office to look into the situation. The nearest one is in Anchorage. So the consulate contacted Jameson, whom Scott had listed as our legal agent. They didn’t want to spend the money to fly someone up here, especially with a bad spell of winter weather in the forecast, so they arranged for a video conference. We would do that in the Communications Department at the uni in a week.
The school remained quite cold for much of late October, but by the beginning of November, temps were threatening to climb back to the mid-60s, so our freeze-‘em-out campaign went into action again with the next planned operation. Our objective was to keep the school so chilly that everyone would need to wear at least heavy sweaters indoors. So we started November off by keeping the school at temps under 63 degrees through the nefarious interference with the heating system itself that we had planned a few weeks prior.
Sally had downloaded the system’s manual from the Web, found that it had Bluetooth capability, and learnt how to enable its portal. Ray helped her to get access to the system by loaning her a company jacket and taking her into the mechanical room, which had an exterior door. He extracted her promise not to damage the system and then gave her a key. After she flipped a DIP switch on the control board, Bluetooth was on, and suddenly we ruled the system. We didn’t tell Ray about her doing that so it took Ray’s service guys a few weeks to figure out how to put a stop to that access; when they did, we switched tactics again.
During the weeks while we had Bluetooth access, Sally had used the circuit diagrams of the control system to organize a bypass for the over-temperature safety circuitry of the system controller. The safety circuit normally operates to prevent the heat from going over a preset value; the default was set to 80 degrees F. She decided that an off-the-shelf idea would be the best approach, so we ordered a small “smart” thermostat which she disassembled and integrated into a simple but small device which could be inserted into the over-temp circuit. The device was WiFi capable, like all “smart” thermostats, so we could control it using an app on a mobile, and the school’s WiFi signal was strong even in the mechanical room. She used her key to get into the room and it only took a half hour to install the device; it only needed six connections; and she tucked it into an inconspicuous space in the cabinet.
We set her little device to turn the heaters off when the building air temperature reached 62 degrees, over-riding the original over-temp control. To avoid detection of the bypass device, Sally had included a photocell in it to disable its operation when the controller cabinet door was open—the photocell detected the light. This meant that when the repair people were troubleshooting, they needed light in the room. The light shut her device off; the original over-temp circuit became active, making her bypass undetectable, and the heating ran just fine. When the lights were turned off, the device activated again and began regulating the heat. They never did figure that one out. That device worked really well. Too bad we can’t patent it.
~~~~
Just before Thanksgiving—a unique American holiday, I guess—except that turkeys must hate it, I was summoned by the uni’s dean of the Natural Science and Mathematics college. He wanted to give me some good news. I was chuffed—amazed and delighted, actually, when he told me that the Physics Department and college had created a committee to supervise my doctoral degree candidacy and had accepted my initial work and the first presentation I had made to the faculty as the prospectus for my dissertation. Apparently this research was a completely new idea in physics—true, it was a derivative of prior work but took it in a new direction, and this is precisely what PhD research is supposed to accomplish. What a far cry—and what a contrast—there was between my uni work and the rubbish I was facing in high school!
Next: Emma gets an interview with the U.K. consul—will they make her do the Program? Emma’s school just keeps trying to coerce her to participate. There’s more physics work to do and the school starts a new push to get the Program going.
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