“That’s good,” Alistair says. “Because it’s colder than a Sub-Zero out here and I don’t think I could survive much longer, even with my extra body fat.”
We wait all the rest of Monday. At four o’clock the bronze doors open and the marshal steps out. He shakes his head to let us know: no decision.
We’re back at ten a.m. Tuesday. At noon the bronze doors open, the marshal steps out, and he shakes his head again. No decision.
At four he comes out again. Still no decision.
Wednesday morning the crowd is even bigger. It spills across the street and into the park. Our fingers are exhausted from playing games on our phones. No one can concentrate much on anything else. To make matters worse, at eleven o’clock it starts to snow.
By eleven-thirty I can’t see my shoes anymore. If you were flying over the Supreme Court in a helicopter right now, you’d look down and think it was a miniature forest, the people huddled together like trees, their arms and heads all dusted white.
It’s so quiet, and so white, that you might not notice the bronze doors opening. You might not notice the tall hat of the marshal, not turning side to side again, but this time nodding up and down.
They’ve reached a decision.
Soon there are footprints through the snow, and then a path up to the Supreme Court steps.
Before we head in, I stop and turn to Alistair, Jaesang, Catalina, Sadie, and Sean. “Guys,” I say, “even if we don’t get five or more on our side, what we’ve done here is pretty awesome. And we did it as a team.”
We put our hands in the center. We don’t raise them up in a cheer. We just leave them there for a second, holding on.
Then Catalina says, “To Mr. Kalman.”
“To Mr. Kalman,” we all say, and our hands fly up like birds.
Mr. Kalman said his test results were all fine, by the way. They sent him back to the hotel in a wheelchair. He has to keep his arm immobilized in a sling, but he should be okay. He’s waiting for us at the suite, and he made us promise to come right over because he wants to hear the verdict from us and nobody else.
Inside the courtroom, Alistair says, “Same seats.”
Sadie takes my hand and tugs me up to the appellants’ table, where we stand together, still holding hands like we’re about to see the Wizard of Oz. And we keep holding hands as the marshal of the court says, “Oyez, oyez, oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
“He said to draw near,” Catalina says. “Let’s go.”
Sean and Catalina and Jaesang and Alistair all crowd around Sadie and me. The justices come out from behind the red velvet curtain. They sit on their thrones. And just like before, the last one out is the Chief.
“Thank you, Marshal. In the case of Warren v. Board of Education, this court has reached a decision, a synopsis of which I will now read.”
But first he looks up at Sadie and me, and I can’t tell if it’s a look of solidarity because we won, or sympathy because we lost. Then he reads out loud.
“The Board of Education asserts that its right to give homework is justified by its monumental task: to educate our children. We agree that this is a difficult task. As counsel noted, our students consistently rank far from the top in international assessments of math, science, and reading. Clearly, much work needs to be done to improve our nation’s schools. Perhaps they need to reimagine not just what to teach, but how.
“The issue at hand, however, is whether or not we should limit the reach of the classroom into the home. Just as students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, neither do they shed those rights at their own front doors. Childhood is, as we’ve heard so ably argued here, a time of wonder, of curiosity, and of dreams. A society that cuts short that time by intruding into the private lives of children and their families may be risking its own demise. If childhood is, in fact, an endangered species, then this court asserts its duty to protect it from extinction. In the matter of Warren v. Board of Education, we side with the plaintiff, Sam Warren. The lower courts are overturned.”
Sadie looks at me. “Sam, do you understand what he just said?”
“I think so,” I say.
I turn and walk down the great aisle. I go through the lobby. I push open the heavy doors and look out at the crowd. Over a thousand people are waiting to hear from me.
So I take a deep breath and shout out to the crowd, to the sky, and to the future: “The Supreme Court rules! No more homework! Ever!!!!!!”
You could be an astronaut on the moon or an angel in heaven, and I swear you wouldn’t miss the cheer that rises from the plaza. And if you were part of the crowd, you’d see, well, a whole lot of hugging. There’s Jaesang and Catalina jumping up and down like two pogo sticks stuck together.
A three-way hug: Sean and Sadie and me in the middle.
Mom and Dad hugging
