Chapter 19: Waging War Against Nakedness

From the Edison chat page, Tamara noticed that a number of kids had written that their having to spend a week naked wouldn’t be such a problem but they were very concerned about the groping and molestation that the Program featured. Tamara thought about that and decided that if someone wanted to strip, she wouldn’t care, but those kids should be protected from any abuse. She saw that Linda had posted the idea about protecting the naked kids on the Edison chat and had gotten a lot of positive comments, so her little group of “nerdettes” began to put together a plan with ideas drawn from postings from other schools about protecting participating kids. The consensus idea of “guardians”—a number of volunteer students to accompany any naked kids in the halls to protect them—seemed to be popular among the Edison group. They had read in the main forum that students in other schools had used that idea effectively.

“Hey, can we all meet somewhere? Talk about guardians?” Linda wrote on the chat board, midweek before the planned Program beginning day. “Off school grounds? Maybe in Little Haiti Park?”

Tamara wrote back, “My mom’s temple can hold maybe 70 kids. How many of you can come?”

About fifty kids responded so Tamara gave them the address.

On the Friday before the planned beginning day, Tamara began her anti-naked campaign. Her plan required getting several staff people to unwittingly cooperate. Her plan was to keep everyone out of the auditorium on Monday, so before leaving the school late on Friday afternoon, one of the custodians was to “remember” that the auditorium door locks needed to be lubricated, but he “accidently” used super-glue, and squirted that into all of the auditorium door locks—not to forget the two doors that led outside.

Tamara had determined that the electric panel containing the auditorium light switches had a lock; so Mr Rojas was to lock the panel and “misplace” the key and to “lose” the office’s backup key. That was a backup plan in case the main plan failed and the staff could get into the auditorium.

Tamara had gleaned from overhearing conversations that the office secretary was to print out the list of selected participants and put it in Mr Laguerre’s box—so Tamara had “suggested” that the secretary replace those names with the names of kids who had graduated the prior spring. She had the secretary prepare three such lists for backup to use when the previous lists proved bogus. Then the secretary “recalled” that she needed to delete all the real student names from the special Program database used to randomly select students because a new list would be generated for the following week. The reasoning behind those instructions was confusing, but, after all, those were her instructions.

Finally, on Monday morning, none of the staff who normally unlocked the auditorium were to remember to do it until the bell rang for the end of home room period. Tamara was a busy girl Friday, delivering messages—real ones from the office, and her own.

On Saturday, the kids gathered in Nadine’s ounfò and Linda took charge.

“Hey, quiet down! We’re all here to talk about the guardians and other Program protections, right?”

“Yeah!” shouted.

“But the best way to try to stop this is for everyone to refuse to participate,” Linda called. “Like those other schools did; we read about them on that site.”

“What about graduating?” someone called.

“I don’t think they can withhold graduation,” Tamara responded. “On that site, the kids said that the graduation threat was only a threat. In every state, you legally graduate when you earn the proper number of credits and complete the state’s requirements. Period. The NiS law itself doesn’t say anything about graduating.”

“What if they force us?” another questioner asked.

Louise answered, “It’s illegal to use what they call excessive force. I heard that if someone is struggling and they’re holding them and pulling their clothes off, then that’s excessive.”

“My uncle’s a lawyer,” Carlos added. “Excessive force like that would be a felony, he told me.”

Linda continued, “Okay, let’s continue. A lot of you kids call me and my friends the ‘nerdettes’ and we think that’s funny. We’re not offended. We like school and want to do well. But against the Program, we all have to unite and forget about the cliques. If someone has to strip—if they actually agree to do it or are coerced somehow—then we must help them. Let’s talk about strategy now and how we can protect any kid who has to be naked. That means stopping teachers from doing those awful demos I read about, too.”

“What about locker rooms and bathrooms?” another shout.

“I got an idea!” another kid called. “All boys use the girls’ and the girls use the boys’ lockers and johns. If the teachers try to stop us, ignore them. If everyone does it, they can’t stop it, right?”

“Guys, I was reading some posts from a school in California,” Louise told the group. “Lots of kids there were from Marine families ... that is, the school was on a Marine base. I think it was maybe 10 percent of the kids had a Marine parent and the rest of the school had kids from civilian families. The Marine kids started what they called an anti-Program platoon but it grew to be a huge thing with many more kids—the civilian kids were in it too. They didn’t allow touching of naked kids—they didn’t allow any reasonable requests—and the kids broke up any classroom demos that the teachers tried. Oh, and they all wore a Marine insignia for identification. Maybe not the civilian ones though.”

“What insignia?” someone asked.

“It’s ... um, that one with the eagle and anchor. And someone in here had the idea of switching sexes in the lockers. Those kids did that too.”

Another person offered, “Hey, I read about a school in ... ah, maybe South Carolina? They had guardians who wore berets ... maybe red shirts too. Oh, and they gave out whistles, like to use as alarms if someone was threatened.”

Suddenly a brilliant thought occurred to Tamara.

“Hey guys, listen. I had an awful thought,” she called and got instant silence.

Tamara grinned to herself. What could be more awful than what we were discussing?

“How many of us have Haitian parents or were even born there?” she asked.

Most of the hands in the room went up.

“And anyone here—or your parents—vodouisants? You know, in polite circles we call it ‘folk Catholicism.’”

There were a lot of laughs and giggles at that as a lot of hands went up, Tamara’s too.

“Yeah, Hollywood movies make Vodou look not cool. Or too cool, whichever way you lean.”

Laughs.

“Well, my manman is a manbo. Anyone also have a relative as a priest or priestess?”

She was surprised; about a dozen hands went up.

“All right then, I’ll assume that for what I’ll say—this awful thought I had—a lot of you will understand. You know, we’re all virtually adults now and living in a scientific world, so we all know that spirits are a supernatural superstition. But in the last few years since I came to live in Miami from the sticks where I grew up, I’ve seen things here that make me wonder.”

Someone called, “What’s the awful thing?”

“I think ... Little Haiti ... might ... be haunted,” Tamara said slowly and deliberately

That statement caused a hubbub. Tamara got it settled down.

“But it’s only awful for the grown-ups who are trying to get us naked,” she clarified her claim.

Again there was some shouting—mostly asking questions that boiled down to “What the hell do you mean?”

“Okay, let’s start out with maybe two years ago or more, when kids’ SiF chips stopped working. Remember? In what schools did that happen? When scanners in the shops quit? Which shops were affected? All of the kids’ chips and those scanners were in Little Haiti or close by. Nowhere else, to speak of. Next thing, last year, what happened to those SiF chips in the Edison kids? Some of you right here in this room had your chips inactivated. Remember how that happened? Like magic, nobody could explain how that could have happened. Weird stuff, right? State investigators came looking for reasons why that stuff was happening, but it was happening only in our community.”

She had their full attention now.

“What technology could do that? How were those SiF high school students—every single one of them called by their grade—and only the SiF students—had been singled out to have their chips inactivated, right under the noses of school officials? My folks told me that the principal—everyone, really—they were all baffled. Did you guys hear about that?”

Everyone was hanging on her words now.

“So putting superstitions aside now, are you familiar with the Haitian saints—at least heard of them? The lwa? If not, raise your hand; don’t be ashamed. Oh, good. Looks like everyone knows something about them. Probably you all heard of Baron Samedi, or Papa Ghede as he’s also known in a different aspect. Baron Samedi’s known as the spirit of death; he’s the power behind deadly magic and controls the souls of those who have met death through magic—like zombies. As Papa Ghede, he’s the lwa of death and resurrection. He’s well known as a total jokester and is neither a good nor evil spirit, but he’s amused by us humans and that’s why he likes playing jokes so much.

“You all hear of him? He’s one of the major spirits, and he’s identified with St. Peter in Christianity. Well, here’s what I think has happened in Little Haiti, where the majority of his followers live, outside Haiti itself. Lwa normally can’t act in our world directly, but they can influence people’s behavior—by possessing them. You know about that? Good. Papa Ghede is also the protector of children as well as being the spirit of eroticism. But he’s neutral at the display of eroticism by humans except when humans make a mockery of it and that’s what happened in the SiF kids’ situation and it’s now happening with the Naked in School situation here. And those programs are both hurting children badly.

“So that’s why I claimed that Little Haiti is haunted. Baron Samedi, as death, will take revenge on humans on behalf of his alter ego, Papa Ghede, for their involving children in areas that should be reserved for full adults. It’s already happening; the officials’ SiF technology is being destroyed, and you all can see the evidence of that happening. Teachers and officials who try to push us kids into doing objectionable things will regret it. Angering Baron Samedi is not like pushing pins into voodoo dolls. I believe this stuff is real ‘cause I can see it happening in Little Haiti and no one can explain it, That’s why I think that Little Haiti is haunted; the spirits hate how we kids are being treated. Maybe I’ve been able to explain it to you, I hope so.

“Hey, but we still need to plan on protecting us kids—you know what they say, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ So let’s figure out how to help ourselves!”

The roar of approval was deafening after Tamara finished her impromptu pep talk. And then the group continued their planning, including the idea to try to use football and basketball athletes in their scheme to protect kids who were forced to strip.

Of course, the ideas from Tamara’s little speech became widely circulated and lots of people in Little Haiti began to wonder...

Nadine was very curious about the big meeting in her ounfò. Tamara had told her that it was a strategy session to discuss the kids’ response to the Program. Convincing herself that she was only being protective of her daughter, not being nosy, she spent time weeding the garden—which happened to be under a slightly open window of the building. That was how she heard Tamara’s little speech.

After the meeting, Nadine confessed her eavesdropping.

Tamara giggled. “I know, Manman, I could, er, taste you nearby. I think it was your presence that triggered my idea.”

“Well, darling, I must say what you told them absolutely staggered me. How you wove the characteristics of the lwa into your activities was brilliant. Your words would make an unbeliever a believer very quickly. All the more so, since your words were the literal truth. And you were the agent of the lwa!”

“I want to seed as much doubt and evoke as much superstition as I can. It’s another kind of creative misdirection that daddy calls ‘red herrings.’ I wanted to do that so people will blame what happens on spirits, not people, meaning me,” Tamara giggled.

Mid-January

It was a nervous bunch of kids who entered the school building that Monday morning. Tamara was nervous too, but for a different reason—she wondered if her preparations had worked. Listening to the kids’ chatter, she was amused about how many times the word “haunted” was used.

Good, she thought. My idea’s taken root.

She saw Mr Garcia talking to Dr Barello outside the school office, so as she greeted them, she “pushed” the suggestion to them that they had both checked the auditorium just a few minutes earlier to be sure it was ready.

In her home room, the chatter continued, with kids wondering who would get chosen, whether they would obey, and how the “protective guardians” that they had heard about would help. And there was hushed chatter about the school being haunted. Then the bell rang and the room slowly emptied, and kids began to hesitantly walk to the auditorium. And stopped in the lobby; the doors were locked and two custodians were working on one of the doors. Mrs Leonard was calling out for everyone to return to their home rooms.

Tamara hustled back to her classroom and on the way, intercepted the teacher, and “pushed” the suggestion that she had sent Tamara to the school office. Then Tamara went to the office, making herself “small,” where she sat quietly at her desk there.

Mrs Leonard was there talking to Mr Garcia when Dr Barello joined them.

Barello asked them, “When did that happen to those locks?”

Garcia threw up his hands. “Damned if I know; I was in there not 40 minutes ago to be sure it was ready.”

“And I was in there just before home room started,” Leonard said. “The doors weren’t locked then either.”

“How did the locks get jammed?” Barello asked.

“It’s hard to see past the anti-drill mechanism, but maybe super-glue? But that takes a while to harden and I unlocked those doors not 40 minutes ago! Can’t even force the key in now.”

Leonard shook her head. “We need to get the Program assembly going. Can you drill out a lock to get in?”

Garcia shook his head. “No, ma’am; take a few hours and a whole bunch of drill bits. Those are anti-drill cylinders. The guard ring is hardened and just spins with the drill and the insides are hardened steel and ceramic. The district put them in those auditoriums that have the new computer lighting systems and high-tech boards.”

Meanwhile, Laguerre had come in and was listening. “How ... or better... who could have tampered with the door locks—all of them—with all the staff present in the lobby? And don’t you need a key to lock the doors too?” he asked. “You said that they were unlocked.”

“Damn. That’s right. They were,” Garcia muttered.

“They were when I went in there too,” Leonard confirmed.

“So tell me,” Barello demanded, “how, in the space of a half hour or so, those doors got locked and super-glued right under the eyes of maybe a dozen school staff members?”

“Um ... the school is haunted?” Laguerre whispered. “There’s this rumor going around ... and with what I heard about the SiF chips, nobody had an answer for that either,” he said, more confidently.