Page 3

I’ve been smiling and nodding my whole life, Lydia Chass, benign bobblehead. A couple of cracks have let the poison slip out once or twice, but I’ve always mopped away the mess and followed up the faux pas with a teeth-whitening session, so that the smile would flash even brighter the next time. I might’ve flown my dark flag a little high back in Benson’s office, but generations of Chasses gone before have built a foundation strong enough for me to flash my temper now and again and still come out safely on the other side of public opinion. Besides, the mea culpa offering they’d devised hadn’t been half-bad.

“I’m missing a history requirement in order to graduate,” I confess to Kenzie, whose eyebrows shoot right up to her hairline.

“How?”

I wave off the question as irrelevant, relying on the magic of someone being too polite to push for the truth. It works; Kenzie has also lived here her whole life.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Remember my podcast?”

“The one that you made me follow, like, and review on every single platform?” Kenzie asks. “No, I forget. Tell me again?”

I really didn’t need that reminder, since her reviews and follows are among the very few On the Ground in Flyover Country actually has. Many of the top-tier journalism programs ask for a highlight reel along with your application, assuming that every applicant attends a high school that has a serious student news channel. One that has things like anchors, desks, blue screens, microphones, and their own budget. Henley High doesn’t even have a newspaper, and I don’t think Columbia will look too kindly on me just linking to Heather Chapman’s Instagram account, which is where we all get our news anyway.

I’d started On the Ground in Flyover Country as a way to illustrate some slice-of-life reporting, the kind that runs right before the credits, hoping to leave the audience with a little bit of feel-good after letting them know that their favorite sports team lost and it’s not going to rain anytime soon, so all the crops are going to die.

So far, my podcast has bought right into the smile-and-nod mentality. I talked to Jennifer Phillabrant, who runs the food pantry, about the number of families they feed each month. I spoke with Mrs. Levering, my fifth-grade history teacher, about the Prepacked Packs Program, where every kid in the elementary got a new backpack, filled with school supplies. Today’s episode was with Mrs. Nathans, the senior-class adviser, and featured the upcoming blood drive along with a reminder of why donating is so important. Other college applicants might have exposés on distracted driving and teen drinking, but I’m going to pretend like everything is fine and we’re all going to be okay, right up until the red button gets pushed and everyone becomes ash particles in a great big mushroom cloud in the sky.

I kind of hate myself for the angle I’m taking, but I also know that the review board at Princeton will probably be eyeball-deep in pie charts and infographics, along with emotionally controlled, acne-sprinkled teens who really, really care about global warming. When my enthusiastic coverage of the annual dog costume winner from the Halloween parade hits them, they might just be grateful for the levity. Plus, keeping it positive means keeping Mom and Dad happy, which we need at home right now, even more than the human race needs to chill with the CO2 emissions.

“Walton suggested that I refocus the podcast,” I tell MacKenzie. “I’ll toss up a couple of episodes about the history of Henley, and we’ll call it even. I get my history credit, they get to pretend—”

I’m about to say, They get to pretend that they didn’t just drop the biggest ball since circles were discovered when a horrible screech erupts over the PA.

“Give that back!”

Everyone jumps in their chairs, jerked out of the half sleep that Wilhelm’s sonorous monologue about igneous rocks had induced.

“You can’t— Hey!”

It takes a second for me to place Eva St. John’s voice. She’s the school secretary, and always does both morning and afternoon announcements in a voice so chipper it can’t be faked. She actually really does love saying things like “meat loaf sandwich” and “emergency medical forms.” But right now, she doesn’t sound happy at all. St. John sounds pissed, but she’s eclipsed in about two seconds by a voice that is neither chipper, nor professional.

“Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” a coarse female voice asks. “I want the whole school to know that I’m about to get fucked, and I don’t mean in that free-YouTube-porn kind of way, either.”

“What the hell?” MacKenzie whispers to me, but I can only shake my head.

Mrs. Wilhelm is staring up at the ceiling, her mouth working like a fish out of water. The freshmen in her class are glancing at each other, probably wondering where the motherly, happy, high-fiving staff of the middle school has gone to.

There’s a scuffle over the intercom, then the sound of a door slamming, and someone pounding on it, demanding it be unlocked.

“No more commercials, I promise,” the voice continues. “Just a straight-up PSA from Bristal Jamison.”

“Ohhhhhh . . . ,” MacKenzie says. And suddenly everything makes sense. Bristal Jamison.

A fellow senior who has been suspended more times than a piano has keys (eighty-eight—I know these things) is mad about something . . . again. The only thing that makes this time different is that she’s taken her usual method of communication—screaming obscenities in the hallway—to a different level by hijacking the PA system.

“It looks like I won’t be graduating,” Bristal continues. “So all you underclassmen bitches can look forward to another year of getting Jamisoned.”

My ears perk up as one of the freshmen puts his head down on his desk. Bristal nailed him with a baseball during gym class, claiming to be confused; she thought they were playing dodgeball. She also said it had nothing to do with the fact that he had just dumped her little sister, making Mariana cry in the hallway.

“Not graduating, big surprise,” MacKenzie sniffs. “Probably doesn’t have the attendance.”

“No,” Bristal immediately contradicts her via the speaker. “I’ll be here next year because—news flash—our guidance counselor is a drunken idiot.”

“She buried the lede,” I say.

“I don’t know.” MacKenzie shrugs. “The YouTube porn line was pretty good.”

There’s a crash and a huff as Bristal pulls the mic right up to her mouth. Her words come out low and fuzzy, her voice dropped deep in a mocking tone. “Tune in next week for my next episode titled, ‘Sorry, kids! Nobody’s going to college, because somebody has to pump the gas.’”