Chapter 13

On Monday, Kevin rode with Roger for early-morning swim practice; Kevin was spending much of his practice time building his endurance with wind sprints and improving his breast stroke. The first competitions were not to begin until December and Kevin hadn’t yet decided whether he wanted to compete.

“You can decide last minute, you know,” Roger had told him. “You are making steady improvement, you know. Say, if your times on freestyle and back consistently reach number three, I’ll be really pushing you to consider it, though.”

Kevin got to his home room classroom just as the morning’s announcements began. After the general announcements, the principal continued with a warning.

“Students, in light of the unauthorized article in last week’s newspaper, I want to assure you that there will be no change whatever in the Program and how it runs at Merritt. Soon I’ll announce the names of this week’s participants and I fully expect that you will cooperate. If you do not cooperate, you will not graduate when the time comes. The punishment for resisting will be two days of additional time in the Program for every day you resist; we may also consider suspension. I’ll read the names of the participating students now; when your name is called, please come to the office.”

He read the names; one of the students named was in the classroom. When his name was called, he sat up straight and then his face assumed a determined expression.

“Mr Jeffers, you were called,” the teacher pointed out.

“Yeah, but I’m not going anywhere,” he responded. “Not doing the Program.”

Soon the student who delivered the attendance report returned to the classroom.

“Guess what? Nobody showed up at the office—no one! Isn’t that sweet?” he reported.

Several minutes later, Leeds used the PA again to call for the week’s chosen participants to go to the office and repeated some of the consequences of not complying. Meanwhile, a few kids had been checking the social media.

“Look at all the reports on Facepage,” one said excitedly, “the resistance is at a lot of schools now; there are posts from different schools that say that lots of kids are refusing!”

“Sweet!” “Cool!” “Way to go!” rang out.

The class-change bell rang several minutes later; it was during the next class that a message arrived requesting that Kevin and Denise report to the office.

“Ah, well...” Denise sighed as they walked there. “What is it today, I wonder?”

“No idea,” Kevin replied.

Mr Leeds wanted to talk to them. After he invited them to sit, he began.

“Mr Winters had suspended you Friday because he holds the two of you responsible for the refusal of the students to take part in the Program. It’s clear that this all began as soon as you started school after your three months in that Korea program. But only a few minutes after you were suspended, we received a court order requiring us to drop the suspension. It’s as if you were prepared for it, how, I don’t know. Care to tell me?”

“Not really, sir,” Kevin said.

“Another thing. I’ve checked with your former school in North Carolina and learned that you actually helped the school make the Program a major success there. May I ask what’s going on?”

“We helped in our old school mainly because we didn’t know anything better,” Denise began. “Because of the awful things that had happened the previous term, most of the kids were terribly scared. Kevin and I got selected for it, too, even though we had medical exemption reasons for not doing it, but Kevin found a way for us to participate but still keep the exemptions in place, and we were able to complete our week wearing protective clothing.”

“You mean that you completed the Program wearing clothes?” Leeds asked incredulously.

Denise replied, “We did, and the federal Program officials gave us a signed approval for how our exemption would work with us wearing clothes. But still, we saw things happen that really disturbed us.”

Kevin went on, “We explained our position to Mr Winters. We told him we object to the Program on moral and philosophical grounds. I was opposed to it from the beginning but helped out only to support some truly terrified kids. As Denise said, our opposition is because of the effect the Program has on kids who can’t deal with the psychological pressure it causes. During the last year, from a website that collected information about kids’ Program experiences, we learned about the great harm it caused to quite a few students. And then a study came out last spring that gives confirming evidence that academic performance is harmed when a school runs the Program—all of the students’ grades go down as an average. Plenty of reasons to be opposed to it, in my book.”

“Mr Winters also had asked you to announce to the school that you’re withdrawing your opposition to the Program,” Leeds went on.

“He did, but we’re not doing that,” Denise responded. “We’re simply one voice among many who’re against the Program. We didn’t tell anyone that they had to refuse to participate.”

“So you won’t work with our school the way you did with your former school,” Leeds said flatly.

“That’s correct, sir,” Kevin agreed. “I’m actually sorry I had gotten involved in doing that. I found out that what we did caused more harm than good, actually. So we won’t be able to help at Merritt.”

“And do you know who substituted the anti-Program article in last week’s paper?” Leeds asked.