Hell's Hotel (2 page)

Jenn's Blues

Tara couldn't find Jenn anywhere. Jenn's parents had said on the phone that she hadn't come home on Saturday or Sunday. Tara scoured downtown. Courtenay, who sometimes hung around with Jenn on the street, said she'd seen Jenn “around,” but Tara didn't have any luck tracking her down. She wanted to apologize for the way things had gone. Instead of helping her friend, she had ended up causing her more grief.

She ran into Craig Hollet in front of the free soup-and-coffee bus that sometimes parked on Grafton Street. “Maybe she doesn't want you to find her,” Craig said. Craig had been on the street for a long time. He had problems like all of them, but he seemed like some kind of leader. If new kids showed up, Craig was willing to go the distance and make sure they knew where to get free meals, where to bum quarters, and where to crash for the night and not get messed up. But Craig had never been too friendly towards Tara. She wasn't one of them.

“Craig, I'm her friend. She needs me. If you see her, will you tell her to call me? Please?”

“I'll be sure to pass on the message,” Craig said, his voice flat and insincere. “By the way, about your boyfriend and his little paper, I hope he knows what he's doing. You know, reporters try to write about us all the time or they come down here with their freakin' cameras and start snooping around. They never get it right. They never get the whole story, the real story. They see what they want you to see.”

“I think that's why Josh is starting his paper. He thinks there's another side to a lot of things. Did he talk to you?”

“I gave him some good quotes. I hope he doesn't mess with my words.”

“Trust him,” Tara heard herself saying as she started to walk off. Maybe Josh's intentions were good. He loved to help out at anything he considered a noble cause, but she didn't really trust him to get the story straight. He would have his own spin on the whole thing and his own opinions.

***

On Monday, Tara finally zeroed in on Jenn walking away from her down the hall at school, so she ran to catch up. “You still mad at me?”

“I don't know,” Jenn said, looking straight ahead. “I get dumped on so often, I kind of get used to it.”

“Well, it was stupid of me to be talking like that.”

Jenn stopped in her tracks. “Tara, no one would ever accuse you of being stupid. Cruel, maybe, but not stupid.”

“Whatever I was, I'm still sorry. I don't want you staying mad at me.”

“Whatever.”

“You know I've been worried about you. Where have you been all weekend?”

“Working things out. Look, you know I can't go back home and I can't stay at your house forever. I guess I just got a little spooked that first night back on the street. But now everything is cool. I got friends there.”

“Yeah, friends,” Tara said, studying how tired and frazzled Jenn looked. “But you need a place to live.”

“Oh right. Like your bright idea of signing me up again for a group home. Remember last time?”

The last time Jenn had allowed Social Services to put her into a group home, she quickly made friends with a couple of kids who were experts at breaking and entering. She'd learned all about ripping off jewellery and electronics. And then she'd been busted.

“You just got in with the wrong crowd,” Tara said.

“I think I'm better off on my own.”

Jenn was walking faster now. The bell for class had sounded. Tara felt that a big chasm was opening up between them, and she didn't like it. “Jenn, okay, I'll stop preaching. I just want to know that we're still friends.”

Jenn stopped. “Fine, I'll forget about the other day at the nursing home. I'm okay. It was a good lesson. Yeah, we're still friends. Next time, though, let me tell my story, all right?”

“Yeah.”

But Jenn wasn't smiling as she walked into her class. Tara was left alone, feeling confused. She wasn't sure she had patched things up. Tara realized how much she needed Jenn as a friend. If Jenn had written her off, who would replace her? Tara had to admit to herself that she would have felt really lost, and it would have hurt a lot.

Tara needed to talk to someone, and she didn't feel like going to math class. She decided to find Josh, find out how his paper was coming along. Hadn't she promised to write a piece for it? She wasn't really sure that she wanted to be part of the controversy that was bound to erupt, but she had promised. For only the second time in her entire life, Tara decided to cut class. If Josh was in school at all, he could only be in one place, sitting at a terminal in the computer room with some phoney reason for being there instead of in class.

There was a substitute in charge of the computer room when Tara walked in. She looked up at Tara, as if waiting for an explanation.

It wasn't easy for Tara to scan the room without standing up on her tiptoes to see over the computer monitors. But there he was, in the back, hunched over a keyboard, his face close to the screen.

“I'm here to work on my, uh, my project, with Josh.” She pointed to him in the back of the room.

“You have permission to be here?” the substitute asked. She was new at this, Tara could tell, and didn't know anything about the rules around the school.

“Of course,” Tara said convincingly. “It's a special project for the newspaper.” She didn't say which newspaper.

“Okay,” the young woman said.

Josh was wearing earphones that were plugged into a digital recorder. He was busy transcribing the recording, crunching away on the keyboard, fast and sloppy, as was his style.

Tara was trying to focus on the words on the screen when Josh noticed her.

“Hey, Tara,” he said, taking off the earphones. “How did you, like, just appear out of thin air?” He turned down the brightness control on the monitor and the screen faded to black.

“You should be in English,” Tara said.

“And you should be in ...” Josh checked his watch, “math. Right?”

“Yeah. But we're both here now.”

“That we are.”

Tara suddenly had the feeling that Josh was nervous about something, that he didn't want her there. “What are you working on? Something for
The Rage
?”

“You got it. It's all coming together great.”

The substitute was giving them a dirty look. Tara pulled up a chair beside Josh and decided to whisper. “Maybe I should get a look at what you're including so far, so that I know what to write about.”

Josh still had his finger on the brightness control of the monitor, almost as if he were guarding it. There was something on the screen that he didn't want her to see. “Well, you know the whole first issue is only going to be like a four-page news-paper. Space is getting kind of tight. Maybe you should just hold off until the second issue.”

Tara felt a little chill run through her. It's true that she had offered to write something because she thought Josh could use some help on the first issue, but now what was he saying? That she wasn't wanted?

He read her look immediately. “No,” he said earnestly. “It's not like that. Look, we've established a certain tone to this first issue. It's mostly about kids who get kicked around by the system. It has to be angry and it has to focus on the problem and go right for laying the blame.”

“And you're writing the entire issue — just you, right?” Tara couldn't believe it. What an ego.

“No, not quite. Look, here's the thing. I've talked to a lot of these kids on the street. I know why they're there. It's like a conspiracy between the parents, the school, the city, and the law. It's like they've been shoved out of everywhere and all they have is the street.”

“That's a bit simplistic, isn't it? You know it's more complicated than that. Tell me how this school encourages kids to end up on the street.”

“I'll give you one example. It's in my story. Mr. Henley. Now there's a vice-principal who likes to throw his weight around. Craig Hollet says that he was kicked out of here because Henley had it in for him. Craig was caught vandalizing Henley's Toyota. Now that might not have been the right thing for a young scholar to do, but Henley took it personally, and he made sure that Craig got booted from the school for good. Henley is part of the system that pushes kids out onto the street.”

Tara could see where this was going. “Josh, Henley was responsible for getting you kicked off the school paper. Are you just trying to get personal revenge?”

“What should I do, go scratch up his car instead?”

“You know what I mean. But you're not being objective. Isn't that what writing the truth is supposed to be all about?”

Josh gave her a dirty look. “Tara, when this paper comes out, I'm going to get in a lot of trouble.”

“Then don't do it.”

“I have to. How many kids are down there hanging around Grafton Street without any real place to go? Twenty? Thirty? I owe it to them. I'll get this issue of
The Rage
out and make sure every kid in the school reads it. I'll get myself in trouble and then go to the media. They'll have to take notice of the real story about kids on the street.”

“I thought you didn't trust the TV or the papers to report anything fairly.”

Josh threw his hands up in the air. “Look, I know I hurt your feelings on this, but I don't want you to get into trouble over something I cooked up. That wouldn't be fair.” He looked up into her eyes with a warm, genuine smile.

Tara looked away and stared at the black screen of the monitor. Then she reached out and turned up the brightness control until the words came up on the screen. This time Josh didn't stop her.

At first she didn't recognize the story. “This isn't your writing,” she said.

Josh squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “I told you I didn't write the whole paper. I had help. I was just transcribing this.”

Tara punched a couple of keys and scrolled the story to the beginning. The title read, “Becky's Blues.”

“Who's Becky?” Tara asked as she began to read.

“We changed the name. It's a real person but I'll use the pseudonym. It's her story. It needs to be told.” Tara was reading the third paragraph when it clicked. The arguing parents, the group home. It was unmistakable. It was Jenn's story. And just like Josh had wanted, the tone was definitely angry. The language was rough — offensive even.

“Everybody's gonna know who Becky is,” Tara said.

“No they won't. I'm not going to tell. Jenn gave me permission to use her story. It took more than a little persuading, but once she started, it all just spilled out. She told me the whole thing. I got it word for word. It's tragic, but it says it all, even better than I could. I'm going to run this as the lead story and then follow up with commentary. The first issue of
The Rage
is going to be a screaming success. It's going to do some serious damage to the system that created this tragedy.”

For a split second Tara didn't know whether to hug Josh for being so bloody committed to his cause or to scream at him and tell him he was crazy. She read on down the screen and heard Jenn's words echoing in her head, the story that she too had heard before over the many years that they had been friends.

“But what if you're wrong? What if everyone knows this is Jenn's story, and what if her language and her accusations here get her into big trouble? Remember, you told me that Mr. Henley likes revenge, and he doesn't exactly come off looking like a saint here. What if this gets her in so much trouble that she gets kicked out of school?”

“That's not going to happen,” he said, all too confidently.

“You're wrong. It could happen. It's a real possibility.”

Josh studied the words on the screen for a minute, then he looked at Tara. “I guess it's just a chance we have to take.”

Tara felt like reaching around and yanking the cord out of the computer, or deleting the file, sparing Jenn from seeing her story in print. But she knew that wouldn't be enough. Josh would persevere. He'd write it again. Josh didn't give up on anything he'd set his mind on. It was one of the things that had attracted her to him, that and his great, sensitive eyes. But now she saw this other side of his stubbornness and his so-called compassion and she didn't like the looks of it at all.

She scraped her chair back across the floor, got up, and walked out of the room.

The Rage

Tara had to admit that Josh was right about one thing: when the first issue of
The Rage
came out a lot of people noticed. He printed hundreds of copies with money out of his own pocket — that is to say, money saved from his allowance. The paper was everywhere around the school and in a bunch of shops downtown.

When Tara arrived at school on Friday morning, she saw Josh surrounded by a crowd of students. She could tell by the look on his face that he was soaking up the attention. When she noticed her friends Carla and Beth doting on Josh, she had a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Tara hung back, but Josh came over to her with a big goofy smile on his face. She knew the paper was his personal triumph and he was on top of the world.

“Whaddya think?” he said, putting his arm around her.

“About what?” she toyed with him.

He pulled a copy of
The Rage
out of his back pocket and held it out in front of her. “The paper, man. What did you think about the first issue? It's hot, I'm telling you. Everybody's onto it.”

“I thought you were asking me the question. Or were you answering for me, too?”

“Ooh. A bit touchy, are we?”

Tara found herself bitter with jealousy, but also proud to be, well, his girlfriend. Here was Josh, the centre of attention, just like she was sometimes. Like the time she had led her school debating team to win the provincial championship, or when she had organized the school's first battle of the bands. Tara liked to be at the centre of things, too. She was good at making things happen, and so was Josh. But now it seemed like he had gone one big step ahead without her. “I found a major typo on page two,” she snipped.

Josh threw his hands up in the air. “What? Is that all you can say?”

Tara decided to back off. “Okay,” she said. “It was excellent. You captured everybody's attention. But I still wish you hadn't run Jenn's story.”

“I had permission.”

Jenn's story had
made
the whole paper. It showed just how easy it was for parents, social workers, and even the school to accidentally “conspire” to push a kid out onto the street. Jenn's own words in the paper were simply, “Sometimes there's just nowhere else to go.” And so that was the essence of “Becky's Blues.” Combine that with the interview with Craig Hollet and a lot of editorializing by Josh, and this was a paper with one hell of a punch.

Josh walked Tara to their first period, study hall. Everyone was reading copies of
The Rage
, until the announcements came on. It was Mr. Henley himself making announcements about basketball practice cancellations and school fund-raisers and the dance on next Friday night. Then he got to the serious stuff.

“We are very concerned about a so-called alternative newspaper circulating at our school. This paper has abusive language and will not be tolerated at Citadel. Any copies seen by teachers should be confiscated. If, after today, students are still found reading this paper in school, they may face detention.”

Josh was up on his feet. “That's censorship,” he said out loud. “He can't do that.”

Tara knew that this was just what Josh wanted. There was no stopping him now.

“Will you please sit back down?” said Mr. Philips, the study hall teacher. “And be quiet.” Mr. Philips was already walking up and down the aisles picking up copies of
The Rage
. If anyone stashed one in their school bag before he got to them, however, he didn't ask them to give it up.

Josh purposefully picked a handful of copies out of his bag and put them on his desk. Tara's first reaction was that Josh was acting like a jerk. He just wanted the attention. All the other kids were looking. She knew she had a choice: let Josh go it alone or become his ally. It was a decision she wanted to avoid but she did feel a strong sense of loyalty to him — for all the time they'd been together and for the fact that he had stuck his neck out.

Tara grabbed a copy from Josh's pile of papers and opened it up, pretending she was reading it, just as Philips got to her desk. When Philips asked her for it, she refused to give it up. When he tried to take it away from her, she held onto the paper until it ripped in half. Tara could read the look in his face:
Don't make me do this
. Tara was beginning to think that she had gotten away with quite a bit in her day because she was one of the smartest kids in the school. None of the teachers wanted to see students like her get into too much trouble. Josh, however, was clearly an exception to the rule.

Mr. Philips looked at the stack of newspapers on Josh's desk. “I'll let you have one if you promise to read it,” Josh said.

Mr. Philips picked one up and tucked it under his arm. Then when he reached for the rest of the pile, Josh smacked his fist down on top of the papers. “Sorry,” he said, “only one per customer.”

The full attention of the class was on them now. Mr. Philips was trying to remain calm. “Okay,” he said to Josh. “Go down to Mr. Henley's office.” Then he turned to Tara and added, “Both of you. Now. Before I lose my cool.”

Out in the hallway, Josh said, “That'll be the day. Philips never loses his cool. In fact I don't think the man has any emotions at all. He was manufactured, not born.”

Vice-principal Henley appeared to be expecting them. His office door was wide open. “I hope we're not interrupting anything,” Josh said. He should have had his classic sweatshirt on, the one that read, “Don't mind me. I'm just a smart-ass.”

“Sit,” Henley said. Tara was beginning to wonder if this was a cause worth fighting for. It was Josh's deal. Sure, she wanted to see something done to help the kids on the street, but the method was all wrong.
The ends justify the means
. She could hear Josh's words echoing in her head.

“The issue,” Henley began, “is this paper of yours. I don't like something circulating around this school with that kind of language.”

“What kind of language?”

“Four-letter words. Foul, abusive words that offend many people.”

“If it offends you, don't read it.”

“The issue is bigger than that, Josh. The issue is both foul language and distributing lies.”

“The issue is freedom of the press,” Josh snapped back. This was his scene. If he was going to be a martyr on this one, he wanted to go down in style. Suddenly Tara felt almost like she had been set up to be there as the audience for Josh's big showdown.

“There are some valid points in
The Rage
,” Tara said. “People who run the school and people in government don't seem to understand what it's like out there. Josh's trying to help to change that.”

“If I wasn't your vice-principal, I'd probably sue this young man for libel.”

“You don't like what I said about the way you treated Craig Hollet?” Josh interjected.

“Craig Hollet has a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder. It's unfortunate that he pushed us all too far.”

“I think it was a personal thing.”

“Young man, what you think doesn't matter all that much to me. You may think you're setting out to save the world, but I worry you don't care who you hurt in the process.”

“Who am I hurting — aside from bruising your ego?”

“What about Jenn O'Brien? Are you sure it's going to help her now that everyone knows her issues? I think you're setting her up for bigger problems.”

Tara looked at Josh and saw that her instincts had been right. Henley knew. Everybody knew that “Becky's Blues” was Jenn's story.

“All I did was print the truth,” Josh said. “And like they say, the truth shall set you free.”

Tara couldn't help but notice that Josh was looking pretty smug. She knew he was on top of the world. He didn't care about Jenn. He had used her.

“Yeah, my friend. It has set you free. I'm giving you a one week's suspension as of now. As you know, we don't usually do this sort of thing, but I've already discussed the problem with a number of members of the school board. They agree with me on this, so I have their support. You're free to do something other than come to school.”

“That's not fair,” Tara blurted out. She wanted to say more, but it was hard to come to Josh's defence when she could see him sitting there so satisfied with himself.

“I'm not sure I'm prepared to discuss what is and what isn't fair,” Henley said as he turned to Tara. “Now what about you? How do you figure into this?”

“Leave her out of this,” Josh insisted, trying to play the macho hero now.

“Should I suspend you as well?” Henley asked Tara. “Am I missing something here that I should know?”

Tara really did not want to be suspended. This was Josh's crisis. She knew that a week off would mean missing schoolwork, missing tests, getting lower grades. She had plans, big plans, and that meant she had to finish high school near the top of her class.

“I don't know,” Tara heard herself say.

Before Josh could say anything else, Henley told Tara to go back to class.

She and Josh both got up to leave. Tara followed Josh as he walked to the front door of the school. “I guess I rubbed his face in it,” Josh said, beaming.

“What about Jenn?” Tara asked. “Don't you think it might be tough for her around here now that everybody knows all about her problems?”

“No big deal,” Josh said. “She'll get over it. Everything will be cool.”

Tara wasn't so sure, but she knew that what was done was done, and some things couldn't be changed. But maybe it was time for Josh to do a little damage control. “Why don't you do a second issue. No heavy language. Maybe print an apology to Henley. He was pretty reasonable, all things considered.”

Josh suddenly looked at her like she had just arrived from Saturn. “Are you crazy? I'm holding all the cards.” Josh was out the door. He turned once to say, “Have a nice day in school, sweetheart,” and he was gone. For once Tara was really glad to see him go.