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Chapter 4

Even though the school remained too chilly for anyone’s nudity, Norris continued to call a group of new Program selectee names every Monday. And before each weekend began, we messed with the school heat so that on the Monday, we froze ‘em out. Each week, not one of those kids would break ranks with our united front and agree to participate. Even Joyce had gotten called for the Program the week before the Thanksgiving holiday. She proudly told her mum and me how she refused to cooperate.

“They called my name during home room,” she told us. “Me and this guy named Ricky. The teacher told us to go and Ricky laughed, ‘I wanted to say this forever—it’ll be a cold day in hell before I do the Program,’ and everyone laughed. Then he said, ‘...and even though it’s colder than hell in here now, this ain’t hell, so I’m staying right here and freeze in place.’

“We all really laughed. He’s a funny guy. Anyway, the teacher looked at me and I just said, ‘Ricky said it all. I can’t add anything to that, except he might be wrong about this not being hell. We actually do have devils here—named Norris and Hayword.’ Well, the class really erupted at that and the teacher had to spend the rest of the time calming everyone down. Everyone wanted to high-five me and Ricky,” she giggled. “Word of what we said spread in the school too and I got lots of compliments from kids. That was wicked.”

I had been hearing from a number of kids that Norris and Hayword were calling to his office, more than once, every kid who had previously been selected for the Program, to try to get them to participate. Joyce had been called by them too, in early December, she told me.

“I was nervous about going but it wasn’t a Monday. Other kids had been called and they said it was to try to convince them to do the Program,” she said.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Not much. Norris told me that if I cooperated, if I changed my mind and did the Program, I would get an ‘A’ in gym and health ed. I told them I wasn’t interested; I already got ‘A’s in those classes. When they asked about why I refused, I told them about my medical condition and how it was criminal how they ignored that for an exemption. I told them that the feeling in my feet was just like frostbite was said to be like and asked them if they could imagine how much it hurt to try to stand when my feet got like that. I can’t even walk then. Also, I told them that the Program is just wrong. I totally refuse to do sex stuff with random kids and I told them that was all I’d say, because I wasn’t gonna discuss this any more.”

“What did they say?”

“You know, that dumb stuff about not graduating and all. You told us about how to get around that, Emma.”

I heard from others that Norris and Hayword were having the same conversation with all the selected kids. Those kids were proud that they continued to refuse, but I’m quite certain that the school’s temperature played a significant part in their decision. In addition to his continued threatening of students with having their diplomas withheld, Norris sent out several appeals to parents, asking them to make their children participate. Mrs F got one of those letters. We both laughed at it. Judging by the number of kids who wound up in the Program, those appeals failed too.

As well, Norris had contacted me several additional times, but when I learnt that he wanted to discuss my Program participation, I had told him that I respectfully declined to have any discussion about that. I can only assume that I was the prime target of Norris’ and Hayword’s campaign to either convince me or force me to participate, because they viewed me as the leader and organizer of the resistance, and that if they could get me to participate, then the other kids would follow suit.

Through means which couldn’t be traced back to me, I even bought several full-page spreads in the local newspapers that explained what seniors could do to get the proof of graduation that colleges or employers required, if the school refused to issue diplomas or transcripts. We heard that Hayword was livid over those ads.

Perhaps in desperation, Hayword even got the Office of Social Awareness to threaten to withhold federal school aid funds from the state, but doing that would take congressional action, so that particular threat was largely ignored at state level. For us kids, that news was met with a “so what?” attitude. I suspect that, by now, Mr Smith, and perhaps even Norris, couldn’t care less. I think that they just wanted to get their school back to normal again.

~~~~

The video meeting with the British consul in Anchorage, Sir George Marshall, was interesting. It turned out that he actually knew my grandfather. He had met him when he—Sir George—had been in his mid-twenties and had just started out in the British Foreign Office, where he had gotten a plum job as a junior attaché in trade in the New York consulate. My grandfather had dealt with him in working out duties and tariffs for several of his companies and their work together brought Sir George to the attention of top people in the Foreign Office. Basically my grandad had set him on his career path. He was delighted to meet me and was sorrowed to learn about my family and about my missing uncle, and he vowed to do whatever was necessary to help me.

So, evil me, I asked him to help me snarl up the Program’s federal bureaucracy by bombarding them with all kinds of distracting requests. We came up with a few ace ideas right then.

One: To help the British government understand the impact of the Program on any British child studying in the U.S.A., the Program office needed to provide the embassy with an accounting of each British or Commonwealth child’s location by state and school; the status of the Program’s operation in that state and school; a listing of any British national child who had been a participant, voluntary or not, in that school’s Program; and if such cases existed, a statement of what U.K. authority permitted the child to participate. For each of these cases of prior participation, the U.K. government would request a response from the U.S. State Department as to why this participation was enforced.

We figured that request, as convoluted as it was, was worth some bureaucratic anguish as the appropriate officials tried to work out how to respond.

Two: The British government would request from the federal government, for each state having the Program operating in its schools, proof that that state’s laws had incorporated the Program as part of that state’s educational curriculum, if that state had a British national enrolled in a school in that state. If the state required Program participation as a formal part of its curriculum by law, then the British government would require that that particular state education department must make a formal request for the participation for each individual British national child selected before the child could participate, and delay any participation until approval is given. If no such curriculum law existed, the British government would require that the state education department provide a detailed justification to the British government, citing the points of existing law which would require a British child on a sponsor F, H, K, L, and M dependent’s visa to participate in their schools’ Programs before any participation request can be made.

“Hah. That’s enough gobbledygook to make heads spin,” he chuckled. “Our embassy will reply to the Program office that the questions in my request would need to be addressed to our embassy’s satisfaction before your case is considered, Emma. We’ll also put a hold on having any British national selected, even if it’s a voluntary participation, and we’ll let your ... pardon, you’re a Brit too... the State Department know of this ruling.”

“Excuse me if I’m being rude, Sir George,” I said. “You’re way too senior to be the head of a pretty remote consulate—Alaska, hello? And you’re a knight too, so you’ve done some important stuff.”

“Ha-ha-ha, Emma, Emma...” he roared. “I had heard a bit about you; we did some background checking, don’t you know. Top marks for your perceptiveness. It’s true; I’m not the consul here. I’m the U.K. ambassador to the U.S., actually. News of your insightfulness has preceded you. What... erm... the kids say... twigged you about me?”

I gasped at that news. The blinkin’ ambassador? Crikey. “Actually, sir, it’s what I said I noticed, but also how you referred to the embassy and what they would do and how they would contact the State Department. I didn’t think that a local consul would swing that much authority to say what the embassy would do.”

“Well, bully for you, my dear, very perceptive. How I got involved with you now is because the consul here in Anchorage had to return to London a few days ago for a family emergency. I’m scheduled to be in LA tomorrow and was traveling there from an economic meeting in Tokyo which just ended, and since Anchorage is right along the flight route, I decided to alter my schedule a bit and step in for our consul at your meeting instead of delaying it; I was also curious to see if Malcolm was truly your grandad and meet you if he was.”

“Oh, I’m sorry if I overstepped my manners, sir. The problems I’m seeing with the school trying to enforce Program participation here have shaken me up a bit.”

“No doubt, no doubt. And your manners are just fine, aren’t they. Now then. I wonder if you would be open to visiting me and my son’s family back in the D.C. area. My son is one of our mission’s military attachés and his family lives in Maryland, not far from the embassy. We’ve heard that the Program is coming to Maryland schools soon, so this Program business of yours is much more than just of academic interest to me now. My grandchildren will, I’m sure, get caught up in all of that rot when it starts and I’d very much like to have you share your thoughts about how you’ve been able to stall it with your school and its officials. As well, I know that my granddaughters would just adore you; they are 11 and 13 now.”

Sir George made me promise to try to come to Washington to visit him and his family when the weather got better and I told him that I’d do my best to make it happen. I really liked him. Good sense of humor, humble and self-deprecating. No stuffed shirt here. It would be wonderful to have a connection to my family again, even so indirectly.

~~~~

Monday, mid-December. Third period. I’m still in school; still no talk about my being expelled. Well, not this week, anyway. Although the Program ranks very high on the stupidity scale, you have to give them high marks for persistence. It’s mid-December and the holiday break is just upon us. But they’re still picking names and announcing them. A thought. What if everyone selected throughout the year, on the last week of school, they decided to do their week then? Hmm. That’s over 400 naked bodies all milling around here. Second thought. Eeewww. That’s a really bad idea.

Bloody hell, now what? I was wool-gathering again and the teacher is calling on me.

“Yes, Mr Johns? I’m sorry, I wasn’t really listening.”

Giggles from my classmates. They know how I tend to zone out at times, when my mind seizes on an interesting idea and starts doing things with it. I read that Einstein did this and called it his “thought experiments.” That term describes exactly what I do, but I don’t think he invented the term. Another German? Wait... he was Swiss... no, German but became Swiss... Damn. There I go again. Miss Williams wants me to go to her office and the note the messenger brought says it’s about college admissions testing. Well, I haven’t had any contact with her since that attempted stripping debacle, so maybe it’s safe to see what she wants.

“Hello, Emma,” she greeted me.

Good, she looks relaxed, not angry. I looked at her hands, shoulders, and seat posture. All relaxed. It’s good, so far.

“Hi!” I chirped. “College testing?”

“Right. I’m letting the juniors know that the next group of tests will be coming up in February. You’ll need to select your tests and register for them by January 10.”

I nodded. “Okay, but...”

“One second, there’s more. Since you haven’t participated in the Program, I’m required to tell you that you won’t be permitted to graduate. But you have a chance to make that up; however, the rules are that you participate for the week you missed and then do a second week as the penalty. Now...”

I held up my hand. “Miss Williams. You said this was about college testing. Then you bring up the Program. I don’t like being lied to, ma’am.”

She started again, but I stopped her.

“No. You be quiet now and hear what I’m saying. If you interrupt, I’ll walk right out. First, I don’t need college testing. I don’t even need high school graduation. I’m in a doctoral program in physics at UAF and was told that I will receive my bachelor’s and PhD degrees together, probably in about a year and a half, if I stay on the schedule they gave me. I’m supposed to be teaching an undergrad physics course there this spring too, as a teaching assistant. Do you see why I don’t need testing or a high school diploma? You can talk now, ma’am.”

“Impossible. I don’t believe you; you must be having delusions.”

“I really don’t care if you believe me or not, Miss Williams. Now, is that all?”

“Not really. There’s a little more. Mr Hayword thinks that he’s gotten the British embassy to agree to compel you to participate in the Program. He found out...”

“Wait. I gotta hear this, but first, I need you to look straight into my eyes when you talk to me, not at your computer monitor. He was told that the embassy would require me to participate? Say that in your own words but look straight at me.”

“Just what do you think you are doing, miss?” she objected, but looked at me. “Yes, as I said, they will require you to do the Program.”

“Sorry, Miss Williams, but that was a total lie. Not only was Hayword not told that, he hasn’t even heard back from the embassy yet. The school will get an official post from them in about a month and it will only say that they are still investigating. How can I tell you’re lying? First, your eyes gave you away. Second, I know the ambassador personally and we’ve been in touch. I had an email from him this past Friday, in fact.”

“My god, she’s not like any teen kid,” Williams whispered, barely audibly. “She’s like a machine; doesn’t even act human...”

I looked at her in disgust. “If that’s what you think of me, then I have no need for you from now on. Please don’t ask to see me again; if you persist, I’ll need to get my attorney involved. Understand?”

I walked out, shaking my head. Well, that was a bust. How she went from relaxed and polite to a nasty bitch in three minutes flat is just frikkin’ amazing.

But apparently the mind games weren’t over yet, since on the Tuesday morning, I got a request to go to Principal Norris’ office. Well, he knew I wouldn’t meet with him about my Program resistance. I wondered if this was about yesterday’s encounter with Williams. I had the messenger wait whilst I composed a note back.

“Sorry, I’m not going yet,” I told them as the class gasped. “I’m sending a note back. He can read it and respond, okay?”

I wrote quickly,

You know I will not meet to discuss Program issues nor any interactions with your staff members concerning the Program. Please let me know the meeting’s topic and give me your assurance that you will stay on that topic. –Emma Clarke

I folded it up and found a roll of sellotape in my backpack and sealed the note with a piece. I didn’t want prying eyes to read it. Anyway, the response was quick; less than 15 minutes later, Norris sent a note back that he wanted to discuss the tutoring operation which I ran in that otherwise unused classroom. I asked for the messenger to wait again and wrote a second note.

I’ll meet with you to discuss my tutoring. Please limit the discussion to that subject. These are my additional conditions:

Mr Smith is to be present.

An office secretary is to be present.

No other person will attend. –Emma Clarke

I folded and taped my note securely to be returned. Later in the day I got the message that Norris had arranged to meet with me during the first period tomorrow.

~~~~

I went into Norris’ office with the secretary following me, and before I was sat down in the chair that was clearly meant for me, I faced Norris.

“Okay, sir, here I am. I need to repeat what I wrote when I agreed to meet with you. The agenda is my tutoring and our discussion will keep to that topic. I asked...”

“Hold on, young lady,” Norris interrupted. “This is my meeting. I will set the rules here, miss.”

I shot him a look, trying to mimic his fierce stare. Hmm. Not much reaction. I guess my “stare” needs more work.

Anyway, “Sir. You will listen to me. If you intend to make this into an interrogation session instead of the meeting I agreed to, I’m not staying. I agreed to have a meeting. Not to appear for questioning or to receive a lecture. Let me finish now or I’m gone.”

He raised his hand, palm up, toward me. Fine. Being a bit passive-aggressive; giving in but not verbalizing his surrender—I can deal with that.

I continued, “I was saying, I asked that Mr Smith come ‘cause he has some knowledge of my tutoring and he even got us a room to use. I assume he knows how successful and popular that project has been?” I looked at Mr Smith.

Mr Smith nodded yes.

“And I wanted Mrs Begay here for female support since I can’t trust Miss Williams. Williams insulted me to my face.”

Norris scowled at that but I raised a warning finger. “...And Mrs Begay can take notes too, okay, ma’am?”

She smiled at me. “Yes, Emma.”

I sat down and when Norris started to open his mouth to say something, I jumped right in again.

“Okay, our agenda is tutoring. I’ll give you an overview of where the tutoring project is right now, ‘cause I want to lay the groundwork for how it continues after I’m gone from the school...”

Whilst I was talking, I noticed that Smith was trying hard to keep from chuckling and Norris was fuming.

“... so I’ve begun to teach my methods to several sophomores and freshmen who are good students and want to help.”

Norris finally found his voice. “Stop, stop. This isn’t what I wanted to discuss. You just can’t take over, Miss Clarke, like you’re the one running the school.”

“I’m not going to stoop to being snide, sir, but tell me that you’re doing a good job at it yourself,” I said innocently, plucking at my heavy sweater.

The other two burst out in short laughs. Norris gave them a nasty look.

I jumped into the momentary silence. “So tell me how my talking about my plans for the future of the tutoring project is off-topic, please.”

Smith spoke up. “Wait, wait, everyone. Let’s not have this wind up like the last time. This is an important discussion, so let’s not lose sight of the real benefits the tutoring has been for everyone in the school, the teachers too.”

I shot him a grateful look.

“Miss Clarke, how did you know which students would benefit from tutoring?” he asked. “I’m sure you didn’t have access to their grades and you couldn’t have known them either... you had only recently arrived in town.”

“That’s a perceptive question, sir, and it’s actually part of my training the new tutors. Being new here, I was especially in tune with how the kids behaved, how they interacted with each other, and what kinds of groups had formed and their dynamics. In my classes, I watched expressions on faces when papers were returned. That told me who might be in trouble. In the café, I watched to identify the loner kids and those whose posture or other signs told me that they might be depressed. I spent my first four weeks, roughly, doing that, and decided that I wanted to help them if possible.

“The rest was just social interaction—approaching a kid in a friendly way and simply getting to know them. I never brought up schoolwork, but I did encourage them to talk about things that bothered them. Then I asked if they would like to meet with some other kids to talk about school issues, but we’d meet privately so that no one outside the group would have something to bully or tease them about. I wanted to separate this completely from the high school social scene, which you know is terribly hard to do—everything that happens here is fodder for the social mill.”

He laughed. “That’s certainly true.”

“So in talking with kids, I learn their strengths and weaknesses. Some kids benefit from learning how to study. That’s basically time management. I show them how time could be handled just like money and is just as valuable. I talk about ‘spending time’ and doing it carefully like spending money. If you have a budget for money, you should try to make one for time. If you want something valuable, you save for it. Passing a test has value, so you save up time for studying for it. They’re all quite familiar with handling money. I show them how to make those ideas work for time. That’s the kind of coaching I do.

“The tutoring part is a little different. Some kids may have trouble understanding concepts, so I show them how many concepts can be linked into related groups to help in recall or understanding. That works well for social studies and language art classes. I start with something they know well and lead them to the areas that they find difficult, showing how to build their understanding on the things they already know. In maths and science, sometimes the concepts can really be challenging. But a lot of the problems come from pre-conceived notions that ‘that stuff is too hard to understand.’ So I try to find ways to show simple ways to think about those concepts. Like in maths. The numbers are like building blocks and the mathematical operators and functions are like the glue or bolts that put them together. I show how doing stuff like that can be fun, not scary or hard.

“A lot of things that we learn in high school needs simple memorizing. That’s hard for lots of kids to pick up. So I show them memory tricks, like that linking-facts idea again. And many of the teachers have the idea that if they teach a class so the kids can pass their tests, then they’re teaching successfully. That’s such a wrong idea, innit. What I do is to show the general concept which underlies a type of problem and how to work with that concept. Then you can solve any problem which uses that concept. Sometimes kids will need peer support too, not just tutoring help, so I also try to match kids with others who can act as a helper and support person, kind of like study partners. So that’s what I do, and it’s what I’m teaching the new tutors.”

They were hanging on every word. When I was done, the three sighed and leaned back.

Smith shook his head. “Miss Clarke, I don’t know what to say. Everything you mentioned... all of that is a teacher’s—and administrator’s—dream, to be able to do that. And you’ve had no formal training too. That’s something we need to build on—the foundation you’ve created. That’s what I think Mr Norris wanted to talk to you about. Where we go from here.”

I looked at Norris; he was looking very uncomfortable now. Something was up. I think that my explanation shook him and he wasn’t expecting anything like that. Okay, trouble’s coming. He looked back at me.

“Um, okay, Miss Clarke. That was... impressive. You’ve done well. And you’ve become more than a simple role model for many students here. So that puts me in a real bind. We’d very much like to have you continue what you’re doing, and what you’re preparing for the future, but as our most visible student role model, there’s one part of your student performance that can’t be overlooked...”

“You said this would be about tutoring,” I accused, “not the bloody Program. That’s where you’re going, aren’t you.”

“This is about tutoring, Emma. It’s about how we can allow you to lead such an important part of the improvement in the school’s overall academic performance. We have student standards to be met and you haven’t met the ones we set for you. So unless you agree to participate in the Program and set a good example for everyone, we’ll need to terminate the tutoring project.”

Smith looked dumbstruck. This was news to him. Mrs Begay looked like she wanted to murder Norris. I sat back with a half grin on my face; I had been able see where Norris was going when he had started his little speech.

“Mr Norris,” Smith started, “this isn’t a wise thing to...”

“No, Mr Smith,” he interrupted. “We really need to hold the line about making examples of students who don’t meet proper standards.”

I said, “I saw this coming, actually, and I’m not surprised. Mr Norris, I hope you have an idea where your next job will be because when the word gets out that you’re canceling the tutoring, I expect that things will get ugly for you.” I got up to leave. “Okay, I’m done here. So is the Program. It’s just about done here too.”

As I was closing the door, I heard Smith say, “She’s right. If you stop her tutoring, you’ll have a whole bunch of parents calling for your head. You just might lose your job over this. Was this worth...”

Shit. This is not good. I hope some of the kids in my army don’t get violent over this—some of them are so full of rage. I’ve managed to turn that anger into energy for their schoolwork, but if I’m forced to stop my sessions... Damn, don’t want to even think about that. At least we’ve got a little time to plan to defuse any reaction. We have three weeks of holiday coming and the tutoring sessions end today. I think we can get away with us meeting today since I wasn’t formally ordered to stop. I’ll tell today’s group that after holidays, we’re probably gonna have to change the format of the tutoring sessions.

I should have known. The rumor mill is alive and well. When I got to the tutoring hall (our informal name for that unused classroom) a few periods later, everyone there wanted to know if it was true that the operation was being closed down.

“Ahhh...” I sighed, then told the group, “Well, I wasn’t formally told to stop, so maybe not. We’ll see. But, you blokes, don’t get carried away with objecting to what they do. If we do get closed down, let’s organize some other plans to meet. Okay? I don’t see how the school can keep us from getting together on our own.”

Well, the rest of the period was lost. Everyone was talking about how to keep the tutoring going after we returned from holiday.

~~~~

Holiday break finally arrived. This would be uninterrupted time for me to spend in the physics lab and really get some useful work done. During the last month, I had discovered that all my efforts in trying to get the system using the carbon nanotubes to work had been fruitless. We did have a hint of superconductivity occurring, but only at temps of below about negative 70 degrees C. It meant we were on the right track because it did look like my recipe was working—so there must be some form of interference happening here. When I used the measurements of electron flow we had achieved to do some calculations, I found the likely source of interference. It appeared to be coming from the carbon atoms in the nanotube channels, kind of analogous to the way the damper rods in nuclear reactors throttle the fission process by absorbing neutrons.

I should have realized carbon could be a problem. The atom likes to play sleight-of-hand with its valence electrons; that’s why it’s so versatile in forming organic chemicals. It also loves to form lattice structures (think diamonds) and my calcs showed that the surface carbons tried to latch onto the substrate’s lattice structure, interfering with the lattice shifts which allowed the Cooper electrons to do their magic.

But after further thinking about the problem and consulting some references on the physical properties of various alternate materials, I spotted a possible use of silicon, the leading substrate in electronics. Additionally, both carbon and silicon are in group IVa of the periodic table; they are tetravalent atoms which form primarily covalent compounds—that is, non-ionic ones. I did a literature search which turned up the fact that it was possible to form silicon channels, sort of like what I had tried to do with carbon, but instead of forming enclosed tubular channels, these channels would be etched into the substrate and then covered, like making a sandwich. I found a paper which discussed how a silicon nitride wafer could be made containing micropillar channel arrays using a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (that’s “CMOS” for you non-electronics nerds) process. (Never heard of “CMOS”? Sorry. My bad. So just ignore it; it won’t matter.)

This was getting way beyond my knowledge base, so I organized Sally into helping. She was delighted that she could be involved in my superconductivity idea and laughed when I called her my “Double-E nerd.” She was actually familiar with CMOS technology and apparently the Engineering Department had some equipment which could be used for fabricating a substrate wafer that could be used for testing my special superconducting recipe.

And then by mid-January, we were able to demonstrate that we had achieved superconductivity using one of the wafers that Sally had fabricated. It was small, but it worked, and continued to work all the way up to 35 degrees C! And at normal pressures too. We even observed the loss of the magnetic flux field in the substrate, suggesting that we had truly demonstrated superconductivity. Our group’s celebration was epic. And right around that time, my paper in Nature Materials came out. It attracted a fair amount of interest; the comments were positive but many recommended taking a “Let’s wait and see if this is real” cautionary approach.

Now that we had demonstrated the feasibility of the substrate material’s performance and its fabrication process, the rest of the development of an actual superconducting circuit was essentially an engineering problem and that would take far more resources than our small, remote university had access to. But the academic benefits to our group were immense: Sally got to be the primary author on an electrical engineering paper; the solid-state physics profs, together with Roberta, had made some important contributions and they got a paper out of their work too; and I could write up my own work on the physical properties of the conductor that was made of the doped substrate I had discovered ... well actually, invented, back last year, and subsequently refined into a working recipe.

The uni’s legal person—an outside attorney, since UAF were too small for an in-house legal department—recommended that the uni use a high-powered law firm in Seattle to handle the resulting patent work. There were a number of potential patents which could come from our work. Since patents are awarded to individuals and not organizations (unless a different arrangement is made prior to the invention), the legal people suggested that each person involved with this work get legal representation to protect our rights. That gives lawyers employment too, I mused.

I also learnt that our articles would receive expedited reviews and would be put on a fast track for publication. What a whirlwind this holiday break has been! But for me, the excitement is over. Back to my high school problems. I can’t wait for the year to end. But then I have my senior year after that. Do I really need to stay in high school? What for? Yes, I enjoy the tutoring, but I can do tutoring in uni too and the kids there are... well, usually... more motivated. Testing out—that’s something to look into.

~~~~

When I got to school the first day back, I learnt that the high school tutoring project had in fact been canceled as soon as I walked through the school’s front door.

“Emma! Emma!” a few of the kids in the group called to me. “Did you see? Did you see?”

“See what?” I wondered. I had been wool-gathering again. It’s how I occupy myself on the way to school.

“The door is locked and there’s a note on it saying that tutoring sessions are over!”

Norris. What a plonker. Didn’t have the bollocks to let me know in person.

“Okay, no fuss. Spread the word that we’ll meet... in... the media room. Hardly anyone uses it. And that we won’t call it tutoring anymore—let’s call it... erm...ah. ‘Emotional support focus group.’ ESFOG. I like that. But we’ll keep doing the same things. Okay, let’s meet in the media room, usual time.”

The principal is a nutter. Definitely. During home room, over the tannoy, after reciting the list of this week’s Program participant names (ignored by all), he announced that he had terminated the tutoring program because of the “inappropriate behavior” of its organizer in publicly opposing students’ participating in the Program. Talk about three quick strikes. Terminating what was regarded as a popular, pro-student support group, accusing me of inappropriate behavior, and portraying me as the sole instigator against the universally reviled Program. He had just batted a strikeout. (Cripes. I must be acclimatizing to the U.S. I just committed a baseball metaphor, of all things. Jeez.)

All over the room, kids began booing and hooting. I heard noise coming from outside the room too. Then when the class bell rang, the room emptied quickly and the hall filled with yelling students. My home room isn’t far from the office and the hall in front of it was so full that I hesitated going out into the melee. A whole bunch of kids had crowded into the hall there and they were yelling slogans like “Save the tutors!” and “Dump Norris!” and “We’re for Emma!”

Oh my. I had hoped that I wouldn’t get drawn into this. Meanwhile, another chant began to start up: “Strike! Student strike! No class! Strike!” Soon the whole area was shaking with the chant. When the class bell rang, no one moved to go to their next class.

I wriggled my way through all the bigger bodies in the hall (I know, I know, everyone is bigger) to get out of the area and went to the next building section, only to find that the strikers were in full voice here too. Where would they go next? I visualized a long line of kids circling the school with strike signs. Nope, that probably won’t happen, it’s cold, snowing hard, and snow is predicted for much of the week. Maybe an indoor parade. So the day became a bust. Despite teachers’ pleas—Norris was nowhere to be found—the kids kept up their boycott of classes all day.

Tuesday too. Kids came to school but stayed in the halls chanting. I don’t think anyone went into a classroom. And apparently a bunch of parents got involved too; there were a lot of angry parent calls to the district office demanding that either Norris change his decision or that the parents would organize a school board recall election, vote in a new board, and fire Norris. The parents who called said that they were supporting the students’ boycott, too. The board called an emergency meeting in part to figure out what to do but mostly to assuage the parents and I heard that so many parents came that they had to limit the number in the room. After hearing from a few dozen irate parents, the president closed the meeting for an “executive session.” It seems that they can do this when discussing personnel matters.

We found out the next day that Norris had been given a “vacation”—a leave until the end of the school year—a cooling-off period, I assume. For some reason unclear to me, Smith didn’t get to take over; a retired elementary school principal was recalled and appointed as acting principal and was told to keep things calm and keep the status quo.

The tutoring project was restored, but the new bloke’s, that is, acting principal Jenkins’, idea of a “status quo” was to try to restart the Program. It seems that Hayword (he was still around, I wonder what he did all day with no Program to run) had convinced Jenkins that Norris hadn’t been firm enough in insisting that the kids who got selected would be made to get stripped starkers. And since the school’s heat appeared to be finally working, Hayword told him that inside nudity wouldn’t be a problem any longer. Yeah, we had turned off our temperature controller device before the holidays. It was still installed, though, and we could turn it on again if we really needed it.

My pet secretary—yes, it was Mrs Begay—she was so grateful for the excellent gossip that I helped her collect that she had become a valuable mole in the office—told me that she overheard Jenkins telling Hayword to do whatever was needed to get the Program going. I wondered what would happen now, given such a blank check.

The following Monday morning, there was a new voice on the school’s tannoy, Hayword’s. He announced the sixteen names for this week’s selected participants but then he followed it with the names of the kids in the very first group chosen—the one that included me. The students in the second group, he stated, would be required to serve two weeks in the Program this time, not one, as punishment for not participating. I’m sure that no one in the class paid any attention to him because the level of the chatter in the classroom didn’t change one bit whilst Hayword was speaking. I looked at Adam; he caught my eye and looked down. (Ah... he must have noticed an interesting pattern in the cracks in the floor. I’m sure he had checked out all the dirt spots on the floor in the school by now, so he probably had switched to doing the cracks. I’m so nasty; the kid’s just terminally shy.)

Anyway, Adam stayed, sat where he was, and neither of us responded when the teacher asked us to leave the classroom to go to that notorious stripping room. Oh, and what about using the gym for the stripping now, with the building a reasonable but still cool temps? I had heard that it couldn’t really be heated to much above 60 F and the school had to wait for spring to reinstall the windows, which had miraculously reappeared, carefully cocooned in plywood and shrink wrap, on the school grounds sometime during the holidays.

Nobody showed up at the office to be stripped, based on demands we heard over the tannoy during the rest of the day. And no one interfered with our tutoring group; the new tutors were learning my methods and they were doing just fine. That was good; I was chuffed about their progress.

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Next: The Program’s coming back? Emma marshals her forces and fights back—again. Her physics paper is published and she gets some lecture invitations. This results in a trip to Washington, D.C.!

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