Chapter 4

The Recognition

As Mr. Soothe continued his presentation, a shadowy figure brooded in the wings. His body was cloaked in black—or perhaps it was obscured by the shadows from the backstage curtains. But Heather recognized him intuitively even as his eyes seared into hers: Burton Childress. The light reflecting off Heather’s trophy seemed to fix itself upon Burton’s face. His skin had grown paler than Heather remembered it during the summer months, and she thought immediately of a vampire. It was an appropriate comparison, she thought. Judging by the anger on his face, he was out for blood.

He stood with arms crossed, head tilted as if pondering Heather’s situation. Heather shuddered and peered backstage for help, but the only other person around was the stage manager, and he was busy marking something on his clipboard. Indeed, something was happening on stage. As Burton held Heather’s gaze in the wings to stage left, a procession of people ascended onto the stage from stage right and sat next to Principal Elders, directly behind Heather. She heard the creaking stairs as they mounted the stage, but she did not turn to look. She dared not move her gaze from the lips of Burton, who was now speaking to the stage manager. Heather watched his lips, and in the new silence on stage, she could just discern the conversation.

“Excuse me,” Burton asked the boy with the clipboard.

The boy looked annoyed at the interruption but humored him anyway.

“I’ve been out sick since the start of school. What’s going on?”

“Character assembly,” the stage manager said.

“To punish her?” Burton pointed at Heather with his beady eyes.

The stage manager shrugged. “The girl on stage, Heather Primm, broke a big story through her blog. Steroids on the football team. Surprised you didn’t read about it in the paper. Or on the Internet. The superintendent loves her for it, but everyone else is pissed. She wrecked our chances of winning a third state championship, and they stripped our past titles. The only decent player left on the team is Hollowcast.”

“Adam Hollowcast?”

The stage manager nodded. “Look at Principal Elders’ face. Even he’s burning with hatred for Heather. She made him look like a fool.”

“Didn’t she mean well?” Burton asked.

“Doesn’t matter. She killed school morale. Most of the students hate her for it. That trophy she’s holding is supposed to be a mark of character, but from now on it’ll be her mark of shame. Every time she looks at it, she’ll wish she’d never been born.”

“Hmmm. Who was her source? Who revealed the dark secret of the football team?”

“That,” the stage manager said before gesturing for Burton to be silent, “Heather insists on keeping a secret.”

Burton narrowed his eyes and stared at Heather. She felt his obsession like a physical force, and she wished she’d never befriended him. Added to everything else, the weight of the trophy was making her hand tremble, and she shifted it across her arm, cradling it like an infant. She averted her eyes to look back out over what she could see of the student body. Each eye stared at her with malice. Yet she counted her one blessing for the moment: she was glad for the spotlight and the crowd. Were they absent, she would be forced to confront Burton alone. And that was something that terrified her more than all the scorn the student body had to dish out.

Under the dizzying glares of the light shining from her trophy and her classmates, Heather barely realized Mr. Soothe was speaking her name. Reality came slowly, and Heather turned to the side. Mr. Soothe had walked to the front of the stage and now stood directly next to her. He was finishing up a sentence Heather couldn’t understand, and she watched the world in slow motion. Mr. Soothe handed the microphone to someone behind her, and the student body clapped halfheartedly.

Heather turned to see the group now seated behind her. There was the superintendent, the school’s athletic director and football coach, newspaper editor Janet Burke, and football captain Adam Hollowcast. And standing before them all was Principal Elders, the microphone in his hand. The principal took a few paces toward the front of the stage, but he did not enter Heather’s sphere of light. When he glanced at her trophy, his eyes darted away from the blinding light it reflected.

Principal Elders cleared his throat. “Heather Primm, it’s such a great honor you’ve received. You are the first person from our school district ever to receive such an award.” He looked at the editor-in-chief sitting behind him. “Even our now-famous newspaper has not earned such an honor.”

Students clapped hesitantly from the creaky seats, as if they weren’t sure whether they were supposed to.

“And yet a disservice has been done.” Principal Elders turned his back on the crowd for a moment, and he greeted Heather with a malicious glare, a look that challenged her to defy him. “A disservice has been done,” he repeated, turning back towards the auditorium. “Here Heather stands, basking in all the limelight of this award. Here she stands, a model of good character. It took integrity and courage to write the story exposing the team, but perhaps it took even more integrity and courage to be the whistleblower and expose the team in the first place. And so here Heather stands while somewhere out there, likely in this very auditorium, sits her source. The one who came forward about the use of performance enhancers by the football players. Perhaps he sits here now, wishing he could share the credit for his bravery. And in some ways, shouldn’t the whistleblower receive more credit for this than Heather?”

Principal Elders paused and turned to the stage manager in the wings. “Can we have some lights?”

Heather glanced to the side. The stage manager stood alone now. Burton had disappeared—perhaps evaporated into thin air, or turned into a bat and flown up to the catwalk. Or perhaps he had never existed at all except in Heather’s nervous imagination.

The stage manager spoke into his headset, and a moment later Heather’s spotlight departed from her and moved out among the crowd. The students it touched shied away from it. The search light continued for an uncomfortable minute, lapping at the panicked rows of students.

Principal Elders raised his hand to the auditorium. “I implore you, come forward and let yourself be recognized. It seems unfair that all the credit should go only to our Heather.”

His words were fair, but his tone was sinister, and Heather’s intestines gurgled. She looked out at the audience. No one came forward. Eventually the spotlight returned to Heather, its glare reflecting even more harshly off of her trophy. She glanced quickly behind her to see the trophy’s glare reflect into Adam’s eyes. He shielded them, leaning away from the brightness. Heather turned away.

Principal Elders was quiet for a moment, and the creaking chairs filled the silence. “Perhaps Coach Reck would like to try his hand at asking our young star to share the credit for her deed?”

Heather heard footsteps behind her, and soon the hulking form of Coach Reck appeared next to the principal. Principal Elders turned sideways and narrowed his brow, handing the microphone to the athletic director.

“I don’t know this girl,” Coach Reck said. He tried to keep his voice steady and neutral, but its tone sounded as warm as if he were addressing a piece of gum on the bottom of his shoe. “But I have heard that she was once friends with one of the boys on Coach Perry’s team. So I have asked this boy, our new captain, Adam Hollowcast, to speak to her. Maybe he could ask Heather to reveal her source so that he—or she—might share the credit.”

Coach Reck turned and walked back to hand the microphone to someone sitting behind Heather, and as he did so, he snarled at her, and his lips mouthed a silent, two-syllable word. She turned to watch as he handed over the microphone.

This was the first time Heather had fully turned and paused to absorb the scene behind her. Her heart raced at what she saw. The superintendent gazed with pride at Heather. His eyes told her that her award was more prestigious than any number of football championships—and more important than any scandal. But the others on stage—though for propriety’s sake they smiled at her—showed something deep in their eyes that could not be seen from the creaky old chairs below. Each pair of eyes—Coach Reck’s, Principal Elders’, and Janet Burke’s—conveyed a somber message. They wanted no less than for Heather to vanish from the face of the earth, and all her deeds with her. They wanted no less than to return to Orchard Valley’s former glory days in which college scouts swarmed like locusts to the football games. Heather shuddered at their hateful stares.

But even worse than these glares was one other, one whose gaze she dreaded. There, sitting behind her, was her would-be boyfriend—and her secret source—Adam Hollowcast! The boy trembled, pale and sweaty, as he stood to take the microphone. He looked much more sickly than even the vampirish Burton.

Even despite his weakened state, his voice reverberated with its characteristic timbre. It was enough to melt Heather’s heart even as she stood in misery. She had not spoken to him directly—not in any meaningful way—since the release of that fateful blog entry.

His dark brown hair was soft and thick and gelled with casual, sultry spikes. His dark brown eyes pierced into the very soul of anyone they met, causing hearts to flutter and cheeks to blush in every hallway. Only Heather, who knew Adam before his rise to popularity, recognized the change that had come over him in recent weeks.

Heather was close enough to see what others could not. Adam’s knees trembled, and he reached back to his chair for a moment, stabilizing himself. Even then, he trembled as he took another step toward her. He took another few steps so that he now stood in front of her, addressing the audience. “Even though your blog hasn’t made you any friends, you should be happy with yourself. You stayed true to what you believed was the right thing to do. As for revealing your source…” He paused, then turned his back to the audience so that he was facing Heather only. When he continued, he spoke as if to her only. With every word, he gained confidence.

“As for revealing your source, as a journalist it’s your right to keep your source to yourself. If you’ve promised him—or her—protection, then you should keep your word. But maybe your source would feel better if you revealed his name. Maybe there are too many pressures preventing him from doing so himself. Maybe his own cowardice, even. Consider the fact that revealing your source might be an act of mercy for him—or her. It may be that he hates seeing you up here on stage all alone. It may be that he longs to join you even as I speak. Maybe you should tell us his name.”

His eyes lingered upon Heather. For just a moment, Heather got lost in those eyes, eyes that had captivated her two months earlier in the carefree days of summer when they had been dating. The days before Adam had ever mentioned steroids. The calming memories of their time together made Heather reconsider her silence. Was this Adam’s quiet way of telling her it was okay to reveal his identity? Wouldn’t it be great to have someone with whom to share the burden? Even if the whole world turned against them, at least they would have each other!

A smile blossomed on Heather’s face, and her heart pounded. She kept her eyes fixed on Adam as she drew a breath and prepared to speak his name. “Adam Hollowcast!”

The name echoed against the auditorium walls. Adam’s eyes flashed with terror. Then he cast them downwards, his face drawn up in a mixture of anger and shame. It was as if her echoing words had pierced his heart. He looked ready to die, and the way his eyebrows curled up seemed like he wanted to bring Heather with him. So recognition wasn’t what he wanted after all.

She had done wrong in saying his name, and so she quickly moved to right it as best she could. “Adam Hollowcast,” she said again to cover her mistake, “I can’t reveal my source.” Relief washed over Adam’s face. Heather’s smile evaporated, and she spoke robotically, feeling more than alone. “I’ve offered protection to my source, and I won’t break my promise to him. Or her.”

“She’s true to her word,” Adam muttered without looking up. “She’ll keep her source.” He shuffled back to his seat and handed the microphone back to Principal Elders. Slowly, the color filtered back into his face, though his figure slumped.

“Our Adam is too modest,” Principal Elders said into the microphone. “He barely tried to coax the source out of Heather. Very well, then. Heather has decided to keep her source a secret and take the credit all for herself. I ask you one more time, Heather. Will you speak the name?”

Heather faced the audience now, and a simple shake of her head answered his question.

“Speak! Speak!” a student shouted from the crowd, starting a chant around the room.

Heather shuddered, turning pale. Though she could not see the student who had spoken those first words, she recognized his voice from many car rides to her babysitting jobs. Yes, that soft voice with threads of steel running through it—that was the voice of her neighbor, R. Burton Childress.

Mr. Soothe, sensing the futility of the situation, took up the microphone and began his closing remarks, speaking again of ethics and honor. Heather looked out over the crowd, and in the glazed-over eyes of her fellow students, she could see the ghosts of Orchard Valley’s glory days. They were haunted by remembrances of the football team’s rise to victory, the years of regional championships culminating in the state finals. All the championship games, the press, the accolades—all gone now. And Heather saw something else, something much more sinister, in the eyes of the crowd: as Mr. Soothe spoke of honor, the students in the crowd imagined all the ways they’d like to seek revenge on Heather Primm. And so as Mr. Soothe finished his remarks, all eyes seared maliciously into the girl in the spotlight.