The Giving Quilt (36 page)

After each team presented its challenge solution, the judges would interview the children and have them describe in their own words how they had come up with their ideas, how they had built their equipment, and how everything functioned. It was an almost verbatim statement of the changes Jocelyn's team had suggested in the letter they had sent to Imagination Quest headquarters the previous spring.

She couldn't wait to tell Rahma, Anisa, and the rest of the team, past and present, that their letter had made a difference.

In her haste to depart as soon as the meeting concluded, Jocelyn was in her coat, out of the auditorium, and halfway to the exit before she realized someone with a deep voice was calling her name. “Mrs. Ames,” she heard again, and turned around to find a man jogging toward her, a briefcase in one hand and a long wool coat draped over his other arm. “You're Mrs. Ames, from Westfield Middle School, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am.” She surreptitiously glanced at her watch and waited for him to catch up. He looked vaguely familiar, near her age with a sprinkling of gray in his curly black hair, and dressed as if he had come to the meeting directly from his job as an actuary or insurance agent, complete with glasses on the bridge of his nose and pens in his breast pocket.

“I'm Miles McKinney,” he said, setting down his briefcase and extending his hand for her to shake. “I'm the manager of the Bloomfield Hills Middle School team.”

“Oh, yes.” Jocelyn thought back. There were, regrettably, few people of color among the coaches, making Miles easy to place. “Your team wore the green-and-white shirts last spring, right? If I remember correctly, you took first place in the Stop the Presses challenge and went on to nationals.”

“That's right.” He smiled, visibly pleased that she remembered. Suddenly his smile faded and his expression grew sympathetic. She knew at once what he was about to say, and she braced herself. “Please accept my belated condolences for your loss. I knew your husband—not well, but enough to know he was a good man.”

She felt a catch in her throat. “Thank you. You're right. He was a very good man.”

“I'm glad to see your team is carrying on.”

“I'm glad the kids still want to,” she heard herself say. When Miles peered questioningly back at her, she added, “Last year didn't go well for us.”

His brow furrowed and he shook his head. “I was in the bleachers with my team during your session. I thought your kids did fantastic.”

“If you were watching, you must remember the team who won our challenge.” Jocelyn had a sudden thought, and she glanced around at the managers filing past them on their way to the exit just to be sure. “I didn't see their manager here tonight.”

“No?” Miles looked around too, then turned back to Jocelyn, folded his arms over his broad chest, and shrugged. “I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't sign up this year.”

“Really? Why?” Perhaps they didn't have enough room in their trophy case, Jocelyn thought tartly, but she managed to refrain from saying so.

“Are you kidding? After they crashed and burned at nationals?”

“After they . . .” Jocelyn stared at him. “What happened?”

“You didn't hear?”

Jocelyn shook her head. She hadn't even checked the Imagination Quest website to see if the red-and-gold team had won, so certain had she been that they would, and so reluctant was she to subject herself and the girls to photos of their celebration, their proud parents beaming in the background.

“You know the new rule they implemented for this year's tournament, the team interviews?” asked Miles. Jocelyn nodded. “They actually started that at nationals last spring. All of us—the managers, I mean—were notified by phone a week before the tournament. That was enough time for middle schoolers to practice talking about something they had done and understood well, but not enough time to fake it if someone else had done the work.”

Jocelyn nodded, and although she tried to look only moderately, objectively interested, she couldn't help it—she felt her smile growing.

“Of course those kids couldn't tell the judges how their delivery device worked or how they had managed to build it given that none of them was a licensed carpenter capable of deadlifting eighty pounds, so they got a zero for that portion of their score. They came in second to last.”

Jocelyn strangled out a laugh. “How did they manage to beat anyone at all?”

“Another team went hugely over budget and didn't hit a single target.” Miles grinned down at her, curious. “You really didn't know any of this?”

“Not a bit.”

“I admire that,” he said. “You didn't care who won or lost. You really are all about the quality of the experience. I care maybe a little too much about winning.”

“I care more about winning than I'll ever admit to my team,” Jocelyn said dryly. “I feel bad for those kids, though. They must have been so embarrassed.”

“They shouldn't have cheated, and they shouldn't have lied,” said Miles bluntly. “I don't doubt that they were following their parents' lead, but come on, they're old enough to know right from wrong.”

“They are, but I still feel sorry for them.”

“Don't feel too sorry for them. They learned a valuable lesson at a time when they're old enough to benefit from it and young enough that it won't jeopardize their futures.”

“I hope so.” Jocelyn would be very sorry indeed if no good at all came of the debacle. And yet some good already had come of it. The rules had been changed, and her team would have the satisfaction of knowing that their concerns had been heard and addressed. They would learn that some adults did care about justice and fairness after all.

“Well—” Miles glanced at the door, turned back to her, and smiled, looking as if he were not quite ready to go. “I guess I'll see you at the tournament in the spring.”

“I guess so,” she agreed, smiling back.

“Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“The thing is, I have almost an entirely new team this year. All of my students from last year except one moved on to high school. I was thinking, since our teams didn't choose the same challenge—”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw you raise your hand when the director polled the group.” He winced comically as if embarrassed to admit that he had been watching her. “Maybe we can get our teams together a few weeks before the tournament for a dress rehearsal.”

“That's a wonderful idea,” said Jocelyn. “The practice will be good for all of them, and it would be nice to have another team to cheer for at the competition.”

“My thoughts exactly. Let me give you my number.” He pulled a pen and a business card from his shirt pocket and jotted something on the back. “My work number and cell are on the front, and I wrote my home number on the back. My work number isn't usually a good place to reach me, though.”

Jocelyn accepted the card. “I imagine not. Your employer probably wouldn't like you to take calls while you're”—she glanced at the card and managed not to do a double take—“while you're performing surgery. But the home number is okay?”

“Sure. It's just me and my son.” He grimaced, rueful. “Two weekdays and alternate weekends, anyway. The rest of the time my son's with my ex-wife.”

“I see.” And Jocelyn did see.

Miles prompted her for her number, so she wrote it on an extra piece of loose-leaf paper from her IQ binder. He folded it in eighths, tucked it into his chest pocket, and patted it, smiling.

They were leaving the building at the same time, and heading to the same parking lot, so it was only natural for him to escort her to her car.

“I'll call you,” he said.

She nodded. She had no doubt that he would.

He waited until she was behind the wheel and had started the engine before he waved and walked away. Suddenly she thought of something she had neglected to ask. Quickly she lowered the window. “Miles?”

He stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

“How did your team do at nationals?”

“They took third in their division, and they got a perfect score in the interview.”

Jocelyn smiled, pleased. It was the perfect answer, revealing more about him than he probably realized. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” he called back, grinning as he tucked his hands into his coat pockets and braced himself against the winter wind. “This year we're aiming for first.”

She laughed. “So are we.”

He waited until she raised the window and pulled out of her parking space before he turned and made his way across the lot to his own car.

* * *

On the morning of the book burning, the day before the millage vote, Linnea received encouraging e-mails from her sister, the new friends she had made at Quiltsgiving, and at least half the members of her California Librarians' Collective mailing list. Her phone began ringing before she was quite ready to speak to anyone other than her family, calls from eager reporters hoping to score a pithy quote about the value of libraries or a scathing rebuke of Ezra McNulty. Linnea accepted a call from Renee Montagne because she was a big fan of NPR's
Morning Edition
, but she let the answering machine take the rest.

The kids hugged her and wished her good luck before they set out for school. Soon thereafter, Linnea and Kevin kissed and parted ways, Linnea for the library, Kevin for the coffee shop and a last-minute strategy meeting with the other leaders of Vote Yes for Libraries before their final get-out-the-vote effort. “I'll see you soon,” Kevin promised as he climbed into his car. She nodded, blew him a kiss, and watched him drive off before setting out alone, apprehension forming a dull knot in the pit of her stomach.

A few members of the media had staked out the library's front entrance, probably seeking patron comments on the protest being set up in the adjacent park, but only one intrepid reporter and a cameraman had thought to wait by the employee entrance at the rear. “Of course I'm disappointed that the county didn't revoke the bonfire permit,” Linnea replied to the reporter's entirely unnecessary question, hurrying past him and inside, breathing a sigh of relief when the heavy door swung shut between her and the microphone he had thrust in her face.

Behind the scenes, the staff area was abuzz with anxious pages and solemn librarians following the developments outside via radio, television, and Internet. In the public area, staff and patrons alike strove to keep the atmosphere one of business as usual, but a frisson of nervous tension ran through the entire library. From the children's department, Linnea watched as patrons set down their books and newspapers and left their laptops unguarded in study carrels and watched from the east windows as a veritable fleet of fire engines drove past on their way to the park, their sirens muted but lights flashing. The fire chief intended to station some fire trucks at the scene of the bonfire, one in the library parking lot, and two in the fields in between. If something did go drastically wrong, they would be prepared to douse the flames.

But Linnea had a plan, and if all went as she hoped, the bonfire would amount to nothing.

She left the children's department in the care of a library assistant and summoned a few pages to help her set up the meeting room. One of her favorite artists from a previous “Saturday with the Artists” program, a papermaker and bookbinder, arrived an hour early, a bit jittery but eager to do his part. Distantly she heard loudspeakers and bullhorns, and her stomach fluttered nervously. The protest was about to begin.

She steeled herself and went to the lobby, where she found the president of the Friends of the Library Foundation and the library director already waiting. “Good luck,” the director told her and Alicia, hugging each of them quickly. “If things turn ugly, promise me you'll get out of there. I don't want either of you to get hurt.”

“At the first sign of trouble, we'll run for the fire engines,” Alicia replied.

“With any luck, we'll be back soon,” said Linnea. “And not alone.”

The library director managed a tight smile and nodded.

Side by side, Linnea and Alicia walked along the pedestrian trail through the stand of live oaks and over the creek to the park. They saw the television lights and heard classic rock blasting from loudspeakers from a quarter of a mile away, and the sounds of voices grew as they approached. When they reached the site of the protest, a stone patio on the shore of a pond, Linnea estimated the gathered crowd to number at least a hundred protesters, each carrying a book or two, and a few dozen members of the media. A stage had been erected, and upon it strode a stocky man in khaki pants and a light blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows—Ezra McNulty, older and less attractive than the photo on his website, but unmistakably the same man. A wreath of curly brown hair encircled a bald pate, and even from a distance Linnea could see that he was smiling, cheerful, and completely at ease, as if the agitated crowd milling at the foot of the stage were a handful of good friends gathered for a backyard barbecue. Nearby stood a pile of artificial fireplace logs on the edge of the playground surrounded by pea gravel; a young man with a red can of lighter fluid stood beside it chatting happily with a young, blond reporter from a right-wing television network that prided itself, entirely without justification, on its fairness and impartiality.

Linnea took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Here we go. All they can do is send us away, right?”

“Wrong,” retorted Alicia, falling in step beside her as she headed for the stage. “How fast can you run?”

Linnea laughed bleakly as they made their way through the crowd. At the foot of the stage, they picked out Ezra McNulty's producer by his headset, his clipboard, and the number of assistants scurrying back and forth carrying out his directives. “Mr. Fielding?” Linnea asked, raising her voice to be heard over the crowd. “May I have a moment?”