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The first dayback ended with me racing to Mr. Wheeler’s room for a long, boring meeting after playing volleyball for forty minutes. My hair was still soaked from my shower, and my tie was in my back pocket. Good thing Mr. Wheeler was cool. He was a total bohemian dude forced to wear a tie all day long. Long hair, beard, totally into old classic rock, talked about getting stoned off his ass at a Peter Frampton concert back in the seventies. He was the campus hippie who was pretty cool with everything as long as it didn’t harm anyone. Love and peace man. A lot of the kids made fun of him, but I liked him. He had a good eye for photography and a general dislike of “The Man,” which made his employment by a private school all that more confusing.
“Gotta pay the bills, Jonah,” he’d reply whenever I would ask him why he was here and not teaching classes at Bard, Mount Holly Oak, or Portland State U, the liberal colleges. “Besides, my partner works for the assistant governor, so Harrisburg adjacent it was. Also, I like the trees here.”
Yeah, the campus had nice trees. Mr. Wheeler was right about that. It would be a few long, cold months before we could be outside during lunch enjoying the shade from those grand old oaks that gave Mr. Wheeler such pleasure.
After fielding about a dozen dumb story suggestions—did we really want to dig into yet another story about the cafeteria not offering gourmet nut choices with lunches? No, we did not, thanks Katie—Mr. Wheeler yawned, scratched his beard, then leveled looks at all of us.
“Okay, junior journalists and photojournalists, I need you to think harder about the world around you. Are you kids telling me that your biggest concerns are the nut choices in the cafeteria or that the bathrooms should have a fragrance dispenser for every stall? I mean, where are your heart and soul concerns? What should Chesterford be doing to help battle climate change? How can the student body further the fight for human rights? Where are the electric car charging stations we were promised when the last school budget was passed?”
“Mr. Wheeler, the principal told us that we couldn’t write about radical things, remember?” Katie said as she twirled a shank of red hair around her finger. We all nodded. The first edition of theChroniclehad gotten the principal worked right the hell up when we printed a story about the lack of diversity training for athletic coaches. Mr. Wheeler had been raked over the coals for that one, but he had stood by Katie’s story.
“Yeah, well, the principal is an old fart.” He stroked his gray beard as a wicked smile pulled at his lips. “And not a cool old fart like me. An uptight old fart. Fine, we’ll go with lighter subjects, but I want each of you to write me an editorial about something important. More important than how to make friends, or what kind of pets you have, or the importance of not breaking curfew. Give me something with meat. Jonah, I want you to find something that’s not so run-of-the-mill jock stuff. Yes, your boyfriend and the hockey team are dreamy.” Everyone snickered. I blushed hotly. “And while your project about them is coming together well, I want you to stretch your wings. Look into something not hockey. Find something that has some real energy and use that camera to explore it. Maybe work with one of the staff writers to show us a side of Chesterford that we rarely see. There are places on campus that you kids would freaking love if you found them.”
“But most of those off-limits places are off-limits,” Katie said, looking at the other two kids who contributed to the paper, then to me. “Are you saying we should sneak into off-limits places for a story?”
“Of course not. I would never suggest any of my future journalists and photojournalists nose around in something that those in positions of authority dictate.” With that he sat back, placed his hands on his little round tummy, and began humming some old stoner song by the Grateful Dead or… well, I didn’t really know any other old stoner songs. We all stared at him openly. He sighed before sitting up to gaze at us with gray eyes. “Kids, go look for news. It’s literally all around you. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Snoop around, dig up facts, use those brilliant brains for something other than TikTok videos.”
“But what kind of things should we snoop aroundfor?” Katie asked and got a chuckle from our advisor.
“Put your noses to the ground, intrepid reporters. Go now. Make me proud. Go. Skedaddle. I have a roast at home waiting for me.” He encouraged us out of his classroom, smiling and nodding at our questions. The door closed in our faces.
I looked at Katie, Earl, and Wanda in utter confusion. “Why can’t old people just talk in normal-speak?”
They all shrugged, then slumped off, each of us trying to come up with an idea about something important, but nothing that would get us in trouble with the principal. When I stepped out of the high school, the hairs in my nose froze instantly. I jogged to the rink, not stopping once, until I burst through the doors to hear the sounds of the team on the ice. It wasn’t much warmer in here, but there was no wind. I took my usual seat behind the bench, opened my English Lit book because Ms. Nachez-Peirce had hit us with an assignment due in a week. She wanted us to create a storyboard for one classic book from her chosen list. I mean, really? How the hell did you create a storyboard forA Tale of Two Cities,The Color Purple, orDon Quixote? Like, seriously, where did teachers get these ideas? Oh, and we were not allowed to use images from any movies based on the books. Thanks a ton, Ms. Nachez-Peirce.
It was hard to concentrate on anything with Tyler on the ice. I closed my laptop, grabbed my camera, and did what I was born to do, took pictures. English Lit work could wait until my boyfriend and I were in separate houses. I loved watching Tyler skate, and so by the time practice was over and we were hustling to Hot Pot Noodle Shop with the team, I’d done zero homework, but had taken about two hundred shots of the Coyotes, mostly Tyler, but some of the other guys too.
We burst into the noodle shop with hoots and sighs of appreciation for the warmth. Servers smiled at us, moving quickly to set up tables, the scrape of table legs and chairs battling with Drake. We all helped out, and soon we were diving into some delicious ramen. I fed Tyler and he fed me, both of us using our chopsticks, me dropping chicken on his lap. He jumped. We all laughed. And I got a kiss without noodles. An hour or two passed, everyone loud, the eatery bustling around us as customers came and went.
“Hey, man, it’s after eight,” Shaun said, holding up his phone to show us all. “We better head home and hit the books.”
“Ugh, Shaun, you aresuchan old man!” Felix moaned, the rest of the team breaking into imitations of Old Shaun waving his cane in the air or complaining about being up past nine p.m. in a creaky, elderly voice.
“Hey, make fun if you want, but we all have to keep our grades up to stay on the team,” he replied. “Also, please fuck all the way off.”
He flipped the table off. Everyone howled in amusement, then, sadly the party began to break off as guys left one by one. Tyler and I were the only ones remaining, and after I called home, we bundled up to go wait outside for my mom to come get us. It was super cold outside, the wind snapping the Hot Pot Noodle sign back and forth, so we ducked around the corner. We’d been cuddling inside, but a table of kids and their parents had come in and we’d been getting some dark looks, so we took ourselves outside to kiss a little more. We’d keep each other warm.
The windbreak felt good. I slid an arm around Tyler, cinching him close, hoping to get a good round of kissing and hugging in before my mom showed up. Pressing him to the wall, I lowered my lips to his throat, after moving his scarf out of the way, to nibble at his neck. That was when we both heard shouts flying by on the arctic winds.
Someone shouting for help. A guy.
“Did you hear that?” Tyler asked.
I nodded, grabbed my bag, and raced around the back of the shop, Tyler in hot pursuit. Two huge guys in Chesterford varsity jackets nearly bowled us over as they raced away into the night.
“Dudes, seriously?!” I barked as Tyler slammed into me.
“Don’t hurt me!” a very familiar voice pleaded.
Tyler glanced at me eyes wide. “Was that Miles?”
“Yeah, I think so.” My pulse spiked. What the hell was going on that had sent two linebackers running into the dark?
“Shit,” Tyler said, threw his hockey bag down, yanked his stick out, and ran past me as I fumbled to get my camera lens cap off.
“Tyler, what the hell?!” I barked, dropping my lens cap into the slush. “Tyler! Hold up!” He was not listening. Off he sprinted like a jackrabbit as I slapped around in dirty snow and God knows what else—probably piss and dumpster juice—to find my lens cap. “Tyler!” I shouted, fingers finally latching onto the circlet of plastic. I shoved it into my pocket, uncaring what nastiness was dripping off it, and took off after my boyfriend. I could hear Tyler yelling as I came around the corner, my camera bouncing off my heaving chest. If he got hurt by whatever kind of predator was back here I was going to lose my shit.
“Get away from him!” Tyler yelled, his stick over his head, as I ran around another dumpster to find some skinny guy with lanky hair waving a knife at Miles. I took several images in rapid succession of the perp. Tyler brought his stick down on the guy’s shoulder, hard, and the dude yelped in pain. The stick snapped in half with a crack. He spun to glare at us, saw two people witnessing his crime, and took off like a rabbit, the knife still in his hand.
