You Must Remember This

Chapter 20: The Fundamental Things Apply

As the summer dragged on, Frank found himself making the walk downtown more frequently. Food was abundant and the park was pleasant, where Frank found some reprieve from the inexorable summer heat in the shade. His house was air-conditioned, certainly, but it felt sterile at times; the constant room-temperature almost seemed worse than the muggy heat outside. Frank had enrolled in some community college classes held online, which meant that his mornings were generally spent taking notes and being studious, but beyond that, he needed to find his own amusements.

Alan, as usual, took about ten seconds to pick up the phone. "What's up?"

"I'm just calling in to see if you finished the paperwork Ms. Wolfe gave at our meeting. I want to make sure we aren't burdened by any needless delays—this is vacation, you know, and the last thing any of us want to do is paperwork." Not long after Frank and his team agreed to do the celery juice project (other contenders were mouthwash and acetaminophen, both of which were rejected for potentially having health effects), they came to the realization that it needed to be school-sponsored if it were to be effective. Mr. Kurtz was not as dismissive as they had expected:

"So why should we be doing this instead of bringing in drug dogs?" he asked, frantically Googling how much celery cost.

"Well, for one, you don't bring in drug dogs. We think drug dogs would be far more effective, but as those are seemingly off the table, think of this as a plan B," Frank explained. Mr. Kurtz was extremely hesitant to bring in drug dogs, which he saw as a signal to the PTA and everyone else important that his leadership had failed. Heller wasn't supposed to have problems—it was in a reasonably rich residential area and sent at least one kid to Stanford every year. Drug dogs were for what Mr. Kurtz publicly described as "troubled areas" and privately described as "the inner cities"; his colleagues at conferences told him tales of woe, and he responded by promising to help in any way he could, which he never did.

"How do you know this will work?" Mr. Kurtz weighed his three options, as he saw them: he could either do nothing and tell his colleagues that he was choosing to ignore the drug epidemic on campus, bring in the drug dogs and polarize the parents, or go for the third plan and ensure nobody complained. If, somehow, this didn't work, and Mr. Kurtz did not expect this to work, the blame fell squarely on the students and they would be "punished"—not really, of course, because then they would reveal the administration told them to implement the scheme and become heroes in the process.

"When you run a club like I do, you begin to learn something about human nature. There's that classic P.T. Barnum quote: there's a sucker born every minute. And unfortunately for us, those suckers are tarnishing our school's reputation and their health. If teenagers can be taught good and evil, if teenagers can be taught multivariable calculus, they can be taught to drink celery juice. It's cheap, cost-effective, and it tastes like it ought to be medicinal. They'll think it's weed or something."

"Fair point, fair point. Why celery though? Couldn't you just give them sugar pills?"

"I learned a few things about celery in middle school. I was one of those Pemberley kids." Mr. Kurtz laughed and reached out his hand for a fist-bump: that was convincing enough.

"Send Ms. Wolfe an email whenever you need supplies and we'll get them to you by the end of the day," he said, and gestured toward her, who was standing in the corner and trying her hardest to remain calm. If they had gone to her first, she'd have chastised them for the sheer audacity of the affair; unfortunately, they foresaw that outcome and went directly to the principal. They all shook hands, and Frank and Pranav cheered when they left. This was going to be fun. More meetings and calls followed as Mr. Kurtz and Ms. Wolfe tried to file paperwork with the fewest number of people knowing, and Alan was brought in after a few weeks. Alan's role, which he was only partially aware of, was to sell the celery juice without getting beat up; Frank did not trust himself to maintain his composure under pressure, and Alan was eager for a leadership position, already thinking his status threatened by Juliet. Alan considered Juliet a suck-up, as she always showed Frank special favor while treating Alan rigidly and perfunctorily—the issue was that Juliet acted toward Alan as a good person should. What Alan did not know was that Frank, his cabal, and the administration had struck a backroom deal to make Alan the scapegoat should the operation collapse; Alan did not think he volunteered to be a martyr, he thought he finally would be able to hang out with the cool kids.