“Yeah,” Jesse says, trying to swing a note of bravado into her voice. “Totally. A joke on manifestos.”
“That’s cool. Like The Daily Show or something, right? Satire? That’s cool.” Somehow when Esther says the word cool it’s like your grandma trying to say the word cool. Her moist, wide mouth makes the word come out all awkward. And yet it’s also completely sincere. “I mean, that kind of comedy doesn’t change the world or anything, but it’s funny. It gets people’s attention. And it can get people thinking.”
“Yeah. I always try to get people thinking.”
Esther stops raking now, holds the rake away from her body and looks at Jesse thoughtfully, sizing her up.
“What’s your organization called again?”
“Um, NOLAW?”
“Which stands for… ?”
Jesse swallows. “National Organization to Liberate All Weirdos?”
“Right, very funny. And who are your other members?”
“Um…” Jesse pictures herself alone at her desk in her room, cutting and pasting, running the posters off in furtive batches on her mom’s printer/scanner/copier before she gets home from work. “We don’t have too many members. We’re not that big an organization.”
“You know what you could do,” Esther offers, “is join up with my new organization, SPAN. Have you heard of us?” Jesse shakes her head. “SPAN? Student Peace Action Network?” Jesse shakes her head again, and Esther sighs, annoyed.
“Sorry?” Jesse offers.
“No it’s okay, it’s just, this is our hugest problem. We’ve had two meetings already, me and Ms. Filarski, our faculty advisor, and we’ve submitted an application to be recognized as an official student group, but still nobody knows about us.”
“Yeah, I never heard of you,” Jesse confirms.
“You should help us.” Esther peers at Jesse directly, almost confrontationally, now. “You should bring NOLAW’s poster-making operation over to SPAN. We could join forces. Then we could both, like, do a better job of getting the word out about our activities, and both of us could get more members. You guys clearly have a really good public relations operation. Margaret says half of activism is advertising. She says you have to let people know what you’re doing, otherwise it won’t have any impact on the world. But that kind of stuff doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“Who’s Margaret?”
“Oh, she’s my best friend and mentor and adopted grandmother. She organizes a peace vigil with her husband, Charlie, that I go to every Sunday. You should come.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You should definitely come!” Esther practically shouts, overtaken by new enthusiasm. “It’s on the common in front of the Town Hall, it’s only an hour, from noon to one. Margaret and Charlie have been doing it every Sunday for forty years, they’re the most incredible people you’ll ever meet in your life. You have to come.”
“Okay.”
Jesse takes a second now to look Esther over. She’s completely abandoned her raking at this point and is using the rake as a gesturing tool, waving it around as she speaks. Her eyes are flinty and fierce. She’s as serious, as determined, as any kid Jesse has ever seen.
“It’s hard getting people to care about important issues at this school, don’t you think?”
“I guess,” Jesse says. “No, totally, yeah.”
“Maybe not for you since you’re a comedian,” Esther concedes, “but for me, I mean, I’m just a freshman, maybe I don’t really know how things work here yet, but I feel like kids are so superficial here. They’re not involved enough in their community. In a lot of ways I hated Sacred Heart, where I used to go, but at least people there were really into service. Everybody had a cause. Here, people are more interested in things like dances and pep rallies, it seems like.”
“Yeah,” Jesse agrees. “It’s hard to be an outsider here.”
“But no, I’m not complaining.” Esther shakes her head. “It’s a really good challenge for me. I feel like I was meant to come here and bring some of that spirit of service to Vander. I believe that no matter how much it might seem like people don’t care, if you show them how they’re connected to the things that are wrong with the world, they totally change their behavior. Don’t you think?”
Jesse squints, thoughtful. “I don’t know.” She thinks about Emily’s blank stare in the bathroom. She thinks about Wyatt: The masses want to stay ignorant. “I hope so,” Jesse says.