The iCandidate (18 page)

“Yes, ma’am, I do.”

Most Americans will say they don’t like politics, never realizing that it exists all around us – church, volunteer organizations, families, and especially at our places of work. Charlene’s message is a simple one. So long as I can be perceived in a positive light, she won’t take action against me. This is all politics for her.

“Then there’s nothing further to discuss here,” she says, standing and outstretching her hand. I take it and we shake across her desk. As I am about to release, she tightens her grip. “I wish you well, Michael. Please remember what I told you. There are far too few teachers like you, and I’d hate to have to be the person
who fires you.”

CHESLEA

The air is brisk,
although not bitterly cold this early in October. The sun is hanging low in the sky, but there is still a good hour or more of daylight left. I suppose that’s why he wanted to meet at Briar Point instead of the coffee shop. Every inch of Laura’s little haunt is covered by a phalanx of reporters and cameramen all waiting to get the official reaction from the Bennit campaign to the news about Vince, Brian and Peyton. Considering he has not yet done a single interview over anything other than Skype, no wonder he is avoiding the place.

We piled into Peyton’s SUV, breaking all sorts of Connecticut state laws for vehicle capacity in the process. Peyton
agreed to let Vince drive, because face it, when trying to lose a horde of media following your every move, the resident derelict should be in charge. He ditched our tail on the first attempt and sped over to the park for our meeting.

Cramped in the back of the overstuffed car, I struggled with how to present this to
Mister Bennit. We settled on the course of action, but convincing him we’re right is not going to be easy. He is going to protest and fight me on this, but I don’t see any other way out.

Peyton and Vince agree
d that this was best, although neither is happy about not working with us anymore. Downloading music illegally was more of an accusation than something they had proof of in the article, and we need Brian too much to let him go anyway. The damage we will cause by keeping him around is acceptable.

As we untangle ourselves and climb out of Peyton’s chariot, I still have no idea what I’m going to say
to Mister Bennit. As we have all learned in class, no argument with him is easy. I’m trying to think up some clever way to propose this, but I got nothing. Walking through the parking lot, I only settle on the direct approach at the last possible moment.

“We decided it
’s in your best interests that Vince and Peyton leave the campaign,” I say, without introduction to Mister Bennit and Kylie who are sitting atop a picnic table between the parking lot and the river.

“I
n my best interests, huh?” Mister Bennit asks. The tone he uses reminds me of what happens in class when someone makes a point he disagrees with. I get the feeling he’s in teacher mode, so I wonder if Kylie got subjected to a lesson at some point today.

“Whether we like it or not, they’re a liability,” I plead.

“Their mistakes become the story,” Amanda says, picking up the argument.

“We’re okay with
the decision, Mister B. Your campaign is too important to be sabotaged by our stupid mistakes,” Vince concludes despondently.

Mister Bennit looks over at Peyton who nods agreement.
She hasn’t said much since the story broke, whether out of regret or embarrassment I’m not sure. Mister B. looks like he is pondering the thought. Could he actually agree with us for a change?

“Okay, I understand you
r positions. As for Vince and Peyton’s resignations, I don’t accept them. You’re not going anywhere.” Nope, guess not.

“You have to
!” Vince and Peyton exclaim at the same time.

“It’s the only option,” Xavier adds.

“We came to an agreement Mister B. It’s settled,” I offer to the cause.

“Did you hear
them, Kylie? My staff thinks they settled this without me. What do you say to that?”

“
Nuts,” Kylie says, smiling. Uh-oh, she got the Bastogne talk. We didn’t cover World War II in class, but Mister B loves the story, and found some reason to tell us about the plight of the men defending the city.

“My thoughts exactly.
Grab a seat guys,” Mister Bennit says, ceding his spot on the table so we can all be seated. He stands and Kylie moves off to the side. “You think you are the only ones here to ever make a mistake? Well, let me tell you how a real-world, high-stakes mistake sounds.

“
During my last tour in Afghanistan, I was part of a three-man team on a recon mission in a village down near Kandahar. The Taliban were reasserting themselves in the region, killing everyone they thought assisted the U.S. and our allies there. Our unit was tasked with finding out where the head honcho was holed up so he could be taken out.

“
We were observing a small hamlet from a hide site when a group of armed men showed up and started randomly pulling whole families from their homes. I regularly spent time with the village elders, and they gave us information every now and then. Their cooperation made them prime targets for retribution. An idiot could figure out what would happen next.”

Mister Bennit is not here.
The light in his eyes is gone, replaced by a darkness I never want to experience. This story is taking him back to Afghanistan, and he’s reliving the nightmare.

“
I radioed in and was denied permission to intervene. I pleaded with command, but the mission was more important, or so they said. We watched as the men made whole families kneel in the street. I couldn’t stand the idea of watching them die, so I tossed my binoculars and grabbed my rifle. My two peers grabbed me and stopped me from leaving our position.

“I remember one of them
shouting, ‘We have orders not to do this Mike. Do you understand me? We have orders!’ I understood the orders, but I didn’t care. I was about to open up on them from where I was, knowing if I squeezed the trigger on my carbine it was probably all over for us. There were fifty armed men against only three of us, with no available air support. So you know what I did?”

I am so captivated
, I am unable to speak. I think we are all in the same boat until the shyest among us is finally able to mutter something. “You found a way to save them?” Emilee asks.

“I eased
the grip on the rifle, took my finger off the trigger, and watched as they killed the women and children right in front of the men. Their screams of anguish were only silenced when they put a bullet in each, one by one. Then they left them in the street as a warning to others. All sixty-three of them.”

We are
stunned into silence. No small feat for a group of talkative teenagers. I glance over to Amanda and see the tears welled up in her eyes. You would think Mister Bennit shared war stories with us all the time. Outside of some funny stuff about basic training, he never talks about it. We all knew he was a Green Beret, and assumed he was in Iraq or Afghanistan, but he never once mentioned it. We didn’t ask, either.

So to
listen to him share this with us is huge. Funny thing is, we all have heard the rumors other students spread. He got a Medal of Honor, or was Captain America, or belonged to G.I. Joe fighting off the evil forces of Cobra. Okay, maybe not those particular rumors, but ones equally laughable. Knowing the truth, or at least some of it, makes Mister Bennit much more real.

Kylie
is the first to break the silence. “You feel responsible for letting them die. You think you should have been punished, and instead, they gave you a medal.”

“What medal
did you get?”

“It’s not important, Vince.
Too long a story to explain, and much of it is classified anyway. What’s important is I could have saved them. All of them. Lord knows I should have.”

“
No. You were under orders. There wasn't anything you could have done,” Vanessa argues.

“
I could have disobeyed orders.”

“
You would have gotten in trouble though.”

“
Yeah, X, I would have. The military calls it a court martial.”

“Would the mission have been a success if you had gone into
the village?” I ask, wondering what other demons are haunting him from his time in the Army. “Yes. At least I think it would have.”

“Why are you telling us this?”
Amanda finally asks, after another silence that seemed to last a lifetime.

“
Edmund Burke once said, ‘All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.’ I did nothing, and that was my mistake. One I relive every day.

“So I learned from it. I swore I would never sit on the sidelines and not do the right thing just because someone says to, or because it’s safer, or less convenient. We make choices in life. Some of them pan out
the way you want, others don’t. You’ll learn failures define you more than successes do because of how you cope with them. They tell you the most about your character. Which leads us back to today.

“Vince, I don’t condone underage drinking or drug use, but do you think you’re the only teenager to have ever gotten busted for chugging a six-pack or rolling a joint? The more important question is, did you learn a lesson from it? I mean, other than doing better at not getting caught?”

“Yes,” Vince responds, his voice perking up
.

“
And you know I hate cheating with a burning passion, Peyton, but it happens all the time in school. You got caught and paid the price. Have you cheated since?”

“No.”

“Brian, assuming their allegation is even true, if they really want to go after you for downloading illegal music, then we’d better all hope they don’t check my iPod.”

Being a common sense teacher is
one thing I always loved about Mister Bennit. He will never condone illegal or unethical behavior like drinking, drugs, and cheating, but he’s a realist. He’s more concerned about the welfare of his students than living under the delusion that nothing is going on. He tries to warn about the consequences of bad behavior and help us to avoid making dumb mistakes. When he fails, the most important thing to him is we learn from our error and never repeat it.

“You made mistakes. Big
friggin’ deal, everyone does. You paid the price and learned the lesson. I stand by you, and that’s precisely what I told Superintendent Freeman in her office a couple of hours ago.”

Kylie raises her eyebrows in surprise. I guess she didn’t know about that any more than we did. He went to the mat fighting for Vince, Peyton
, and Brian. How many teachers are willing to do that these days? As much as I like the other teachers in school, I can’t think of one.

“Guys, i
f this is all Beaumont can come up with, he’s proving himself to be a bigger joke than people thought. Every voter watching the news will remember the stupid stuff they did in high school, so I’m not worried about the effect on the campaign. The big mistake here is thinking for a second I am letting that blowhard drive you off my staff because you made mistakes. Understood?”

We all nod in agreement.

“Okay, Mister B, so do you have a plan?” Amanda asks innocently.

“I have a feeling we wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Vanessa observes. I couldn’t agree more.

“You guys had your fun in the spotlight, now it’s my turn. Winston Beaumont wants a brawl, so we’re going to take the fight to him.”

“We’re going negative?” Vince asks, almost excited at the prospect.

“No, sorry to disappoint you but mudslinging isn’t my style. We’re going to start telling the district why they should be voting for me. Two weeks from now at the debate, they’re going to see it for themselves.”

“
Seriously? C’mon, that’s not going to happen. Neither side wants us anywhere near that auditorium,” Xavier says.

“
Then we need to convince them otherwise,” Emilee states, with as much conviction I ever heard come from her.

“
How exactly do we do that? We asked to get in and they laughed at us.”

“
I asked a month ago when we first announced, Brian. I wouldn’t have taken me seriously either, but things have changed a lot since then,” I argue, now understanding the course of action Mister Bennit wants to take. “Besides, we didn’t really care at the time.”

“That’s because he’s the
iCandidate, Chels. We lose the image the moment he sets foot on stage.” Brian makes a good point, one that I don’t have an answer to. I look toward our fearless leader, but he is content to let us figure it out.

“I don’t agree,
Bri,” Vanessa argues. “Television is every bit as digital as the Internet. I don’t think that’s the problem. Someone tell me how the debate does anything to fix our current problem?”

“
Vanessa, can you think of anything more news worthy than the first-ever public appearance of country’s most intriguing candidate? Talk about must-see TV,” Amanda says.

“Okay, now I
see where you’re going with this,” Xavier pronounces, the light bulb clicking on in his head. “What will the man who never talks about issues finally say when questioned on them?”

“
You got it. The media will go nuts speculating,” Emilee says with a twinkle in her eye.

“And forget about our
mistakes in the process,” Peyton adds, now feeling like part of the team again.

“But how do we fight our way in?”

“We don’t, Amanda, we get Beaumont to do it for us.”