“Yeah, I think this is actually a major problem,” the skinny guy in a rugby shirt seated on Emily’s left says.
“I had no idea we were even taking money from them,” says the tall girl at the end of the U of desks.
Emily glares down into her binder. Jesse sees that, very slightly, she’s trembling.
“All right,” Emily says after a beat. “All right, let’s revise the agenda so the NorthStar support question is now the first action item on the list.” She makes a couple of sharp notes on the paper in front of her.
“Comments from the student body?” Melissa Formosa asks, and though Emily gives her a reproachful look, hands go up all around the room.
“Yeah, are, like, the flyers true?” Curly-Hat asks.
“What about them?” Emily shoots back.
“Well, like, is it true that our school is being taken over by StarMart?”
“Our school is not being taken over by StarMart,” Emily asserts firmly.
Beside Jesse, Esther stands up.
“Everything on the flyers is true,” Esther declares with a certain grandness. Jesse feels her cheeks flush. The whole room turns to look at Esther.
“Excuse me, can you please raise your hand to be recognized by the council before you speak?” Emily asks crisply. The edges of her words are razor sharp.
Esther raises her right hand perfunctorily, as if she’s being sworn in on a witness stand, and keeps talking. “The students of Vander High School need to know the truth about StarMart.”
“Are you the one behind those flyers?” Emily asks Esther.
“Yes, along with my—”
“Well, I’m actually really glad you’re here this afternoon, so you can see firsthand how much damage they’ve already caused.”
“Damage?” Esther asks. “How can the truth cause damage?”
“Well,” Emily explains hyper-calmly, just this side of condescendingly, “right now the posters are damaging the student council’s effort to build connections with our larger community. This is something student council has been working really hard on for a couple of months now, and NorthStar is a really important connection we’ve made, a really important potential resource for Vander, and it’s going to be really damaging to us if people start interfering in our relationship with NorthStar based on false or misleading information.”
“There’s nothing false on the flyer.” Jesse feels herself stand up, hears herself speak. Her awareness is a beat behind her actions, so that she only realizes that she’s on her feet when Emily turns to look at her.
Emily’s eyes narrow slightly.
“Are you working with her?” Emily asks Jesse. The question is abrupt—too emotional, too personal—and it hangs oddly in the air between them, out of place in the public forum of Room A23.
When Jesse meets Emily’s eye, she feels her voice drop away—down, down, down until it lands, far out of reach, at the bottom of her throat.
“We’re partners,” Esther says in the space left by Jesse’s silence. Jesse sees a quick ripple of something—fear? resentment? rage?—pass through Emily’s otherwise calm face.
“So, like, where did you guys get the information on the flyers?” Black-Haired-Bob Girl asks Esther and Jesse directly.
Esther explains. “It’s easy to find out about StarMart and the things they do when they move into a new town. It’s all really well documented. You can look on the Internet, like on or many other different sites about—”
“The Internet,” Emily interrupts. “Everybody knows you can’t trust what you read on the Internet.”
“The statistics about local businesses are from an article in The New York Times,” Esther continues. “The stuff about sweatshops comes from Amnesty International. We brought a bibliography of our sources to pass around.” Esther addresses this to Jesse, prompting her, and somehow it breaks the silence spell Emily had cast over her. Her voice surges back into her throat again.
“Yeah, I have flyers.” Jesse reaches into her bag and pulls out the ream of pink photocopies she brought with her. Her voice grows stronger as she speaks. “If you go to the website we have on here, you can sign our online petition. We believe that, as a public school, we shouldn’t be taking money from private corporations, especially ones that are in, like, disputes with our town government. You guys should seriously all sign the petition. And forward it to your friends.”
“What was the address for that? Can you read it out?” Black-Haired-Bob Girl asks, her pen poised.
Jesse opens her mouth to give the web address, but at that moment Emily catches her eye.