THE STUDENT COUNCIL

Chapter 1

One Week Earlier

For sixteen-year-old Amy Westin, the first day of a fresh school year had always been a spectacle, a real sideshow. The cast of characters never changed much between May and late August, not in Oil City, but the actors themselves evolved dramatically. Over a few summer months, old names took on new appearances and personalities, especially since reaching high school age. With the start of her junior year only minutes away, none of that mattered this time around. Not to Amy. This year was going to be different.

Walking up the hill toward the school, lagging a few steps behind chattering friends, Amy considered the monumental task ahead of her. Oil City High School, the town’s largest building, had to go. It had to be damaged beyond repair at the very least. A massive fire would accomplish that. The ashes would fuel a new beginning, a fresh start.

Amy didn’t take arson lightly. Not the consequences of apprehension either. Her internal debate had raged for the past week. Because her initial motive was arguably selfish, she concocted a host of altruistic rationale. The resulting volume of benefits not only tipped the scale, they knocked it right off its pedestal. Failure to reap that crop of positives now seemed like the far greater crime.

Three future beneficiaries ambled along in front of her, boys oozing with unrealized potential. Her best friends, they had been linked since Amy moved to their neighborhood five years ago. Still, they were only friends, not confidants. She preferred to serve as her own sounding board - no outside reassurance required. Secrecy was especially important now. When the time was right, the boys would follow orders that she viewed as directions to the discovery of their own greatness.

Throughout most of Amy’s first day, all the faces were blurs, the voices mere background noise. She explored the entire building at lunchtime, planning its demolition. One of the fire department’s three pumper trucks would be out of action for the next two weeks, gone to Pittsburgh for a major overhaul. If the school’s alarm and sprinkler system were disabled, multiple blazes at strategic locations, late in the night, should do the trick.

The structure featured two levels, one mostly below ground. Flames in the basement would be least noticeable at first. They could be fueled by material in the storage, maintenance, and supply rooms. The specifics of her plan were taking shape.

In her final period of the day, Amy’s family name proved valuable. The new English Composition teacher assigned seats alphabetically. Westin landed the back desk in the window row, a spot to observe without being seen. Last year a Geometry teacher seated students based on first names. That inspiration put Amy in the front seat of the first row, directly beneath the room’s focal point, the clock. She’d been obliged to transfer to a different class the second day.

Her only issue with this classroom was decor, specifically the banner on the front wall above the whiteboard: Home of the Samaritans. Until three years ago, the school nickname had always been Oilers. A single student orchestrated the change as a senior project - more a parting prank. The girl brainwashed a majority of the voting enrollment, fifty and a half percent to be exact, into believing that do-gooders was a good idea. The school had been a laughingstock ever since, and no student body had shown the initiative to correct the misdeed with another vote. The moniker was especially embarrassing to Amy because the perpetrator had been her very own sister. Why hadn’t Sadie just scratched her initials on a locker as a legacy?

Since school’s opening bell, the hot topic of conversation had been Trisha Berman, the fledgling teacher in front of the room. The boys already crowned her Miss Universe. The girls frowned on her as an overdressed harlot. Exercising due diligence, Amy had checked out the new arrival on the internet last night. A graduate of the Northwest Collegiate Academy in Erie, seventy miles to the north, she earned a B.S. in Secondary Education from Mercyhurst University, also in Erie. At age twenty-two, this was her first teaching job.

Amy now appraised her in person. Despite preaching subject matter deemed unfit for human consumption by her audience, she commanded attention from all twenty-five students. Fourteen males gawked, all in love or lust. The girls whispered an opposite and even more passionate view, already referring to Miss Berman as Vermin. They had zero tolerance for sophisticated competition for the boys’ attention, especially from a teacher that looked their own age. And her dress! Was it painted on that cheerleader body like one of those Sports Illustrated swimsuits? Unfortunately for her, Miss Berman had also posted a selfie on her Facebook page before school. Cross-eyed and fish-lipped in the photo, she had captioned it: Meet the new teacher! Some girls mimicked the expression every time she turned her back.

Amy didn’t envy or despise Berman; she felt sympathy for her. With the area so economically distressed, the school district had been hiring only teachers at the bottom of the pay scale in recent years. That meant those without experience. Translation: the district had been sending lambs to the slaughter. Like the boys, only for a different reason, the she-wolves in the class were licking their lips. Lamb chops were back on the school lunch menu.

Amy shook her head. The teacher’s rapid descent had been so unnecessary. She would have advised Berman to borrow a guy and a baby for a photo, dummy up a Facebook page, and put a fictitious family on display. She could have set up her real page under an assumed name. As for her appearance, the snug dress, high heels, eye shadow, and billowing honey hair were an invitation for scorn from the female piranhas. Blue jeans and a sweatshirt was the basic dress code for Oil City faculty, both male and female. For Berman, loose-fitting jeans would have been the way to go. Once she gained twenty pounds and that hair lost its luster - things that occurred naturally and rapidly in Oil City - she would at least be comfortably ignored. Amy could vouch for that personally.

Lifting a stack of paper from her desk, the teacher said, “Now that I’ve explained what we’ll be doing this year and what’s expected of you, I’d like to get to know you better.” She delivered five blank sheets to the front desk of each row. “Take one and pass the rest back. I want you to write down the single adjective that best describes you. Then write two sentences that explain why you chose that adjective. Be honest. This is the one time you won’t be required to sign your paper.”

The teacher moved to the whiteboard, stood on her toes, and lifted an arm to write. The boys sighed appreciation of the pose. “It’s this simple,” she said, and wrote the word excited.

The boy to Amy’s right called out, “Excited’s what I’m feeling right now!” A chorus of chuckles followed.

Miss Berman spun around frowning, but reverted to a smile. “I’m glad to hear you’re all excited! What could be more exciting than English Comp?”

She proceeded to write her two sentences in elegant, flowing cursive. I’m excited to be part of this high school and the Oil City community. I can’t wait to help you learn to express yourselves like the responsible adults you are becoming.

Ouch! Amy thought. Had Berman really been the editor of her school newspaper? Seventh in her graduating class? Writing run-on sentences like that?

Amy rewrote the second statement in her head: I’m anxious to help you express yourselves succinctly. Eight words instead of seventeen. Reader friendly. More accurate.

Did Berman realize that teaching these students to write would be mission impossible? A person learned to write by reading. These kids barely glanced at real literature.

From the corner of her right eye, Amy looked at the adjacent fourth row desk. Ugh. Noah Ragsdale. After his wisecrack about being excited, she’d wanted to reach over and yank some of that Mohawk plume from the crest of his empty damn head. What adjective was he scribbling on his paper? How did he view himself?

Noah and his younger brother Miller were sons of a respected family practitioner, the same doctor that ushered Amy into the world. They saw themselves as badass “gangstas,” which took imagination in a rural town of ten thousand. The boys thought their waists were an inch above their knees and wore pants accordingly, all except their plaid flannel boxers. It was rumored that Noah once made fifty free throws in a row in gym class. He may have been a basketball star if not for the uniform problem – hard to run with the trunks pulled halfway down. Both brothers sported chains that did nothing but connect a couple belt loops. Their oversized headphones leaked a steady stream of vulgar rap when they walked the down the hall.

Amy decided the right adjective for Noah was scary. He’d shown his colors back in sixth grade when he lit an M-80 and flushed it down a restroom toilet. The explosion earned him a two-week suspension and shut down the boys’ bathroom for almost that long. Yes, the twisted little shit was scary.

Twenty-two of the other twenty-three students in the room were also familiar to Amy. They’d been classmates for years. With the town population in steady decline, new faces were rare. She started writing down an adjective for each of them. Athletic. Artistic. Confused. Sweet. Pregnant. Narcissistic. Stoned. Backstabbing. Goofy. Stoned. Dramatic. Inquisitive. Stoned. Right on down the rows.

The one new boy was wheat-haired and buck-toothed and sat right in front of her. Fred Waltz. The other boys had already branded him as Cow Pie. It wasn’t a flattering handle to dump on a newcomer, but Amy knew most of her classmates were Samaritans in nickname only. She was curious to find out how he fell off the social ladder so quickly. She instinctively labeled him overwhelmed.

For herself, Amy wrote the word invisible. Explanatory sentences weren’t necessary - not when the adjective said it all. To prove her point, she didn’t pass in her paper with the others. She crumpled it in her fist and dropped it in the waste basket as she left.

Would Miss Berman even notice that an assignment was missing? That would be the teacher’s first test.