No sooner had I closed the curtain again than I heard Joey enter the room. “I’ll get Tom in the confessional again first thing in the morning. We’ll show him Noah’s new clip. You have it cut down already, right?”
“All done,” I heard Danny respond.
I shot Noah a questioning look. He shrugged and winced in reply.
“Great,” Joey said. “Now, show me where you are with the new narrative.”
There was the sound of tapping keys before the speakers boomed with dialogue:
“Everyone’s very competitive at Swift Academy,” came a girl’s voice. I think it was Jessica Mercer. “We’re always trying to top each other.”
The background sound changed to that of a busy hallway. “You totally stole my idea,” said Toby Nguyen’s voice.
“That’s not true,” replied Ronny Jenkins’s voice. “My invention is completely different. Besides, you said you were done with drones anyway.”
I probably wouldn’t have recognized Toby’s and Ronny’s voices, but I had seen that exact exchange a few days earlier.
The background noise shifted again, and another student’s voice filled the room: “If Barry thinks I’m doing all the work on this project, he better forget it.”
“She’s just mad that I thought of the idea first,” came a boy’s voice from a different scene.
Hiding next to me, Sam shook her head in disgust. I felt the same way. Danny had edited the footage to make it seem as if the whole academy was constantly squabbling. Sure, there were disagreements sometimes, but nothing like this. Thinking back to Noah’s footage, I wondered how many of those disagreements were incited by Joey himself.
“There’s one person to watch out for, though,” said another girl’s voice.
“Tom Swift,” said a boy’s voice.
“Tom Swift,” repeated a girl.
“Tom Swift,” echoed another boy.
I looked at my friends in disbelief. They met my gaze, wide-eyed.
I couldn’t help myself. Slowly, I peeked my head out from behind the curtain just enough to glimpse the back of Joey’s and Danny’s heads as they watched the main screen, where Jamal Watts was sitting in the confessional.
“Tom’s dad created the school,” he said. “He also owns Swift Enterprises next door.”
The scene cut to a shot of Jim Mills. “That’s where I built my roll cage,” Jim said. “But I could only finish it during the school’s lock-in.”
Next was Evan Wittman. “I bet Tom has access to all the cool equipment over there anytime he wants.”
Then the video cut to an all-too-familiar clip. “Get over yourself, Tom Swift,” Noah said. “Just because your name’s on the school doesn’t mean that you’re a big deal.”
As the screen went blank, I was so shocked that I kept my head poked out from behind the curtain, my mouth wide open. Luckily, Sam pulled me back into the confessional before either of the men could turn and see me.
“Excellent,” Joey said. “And I already told Sean and Lori to get some more footage along the same narrative.”
I didn’t hear the rest of their conversation. I was too horrified by what I’d already seen and heard. Not only were they making our school seem as if it were full of bickering brats, but they were making me out to be the biggest brat of all. A big part of me wanted to rip back the curtain and confront the film guys right then and there, but before I got the chance, I heard their voices trailing off. They must’ve been leaving the editing suite.
After a long moment of complete silence, Sam whipped the curtain back. “Unbelievable!”
“That’s horrible,” Amy said, shaking her head.
Noah put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, man.”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “I saw how you were manipulated into saying that stuff.”
After watching Noah’s entire clip, I knew he didn’t mean any of the rotten things he had said. What troubled me more was what everyone else had said on film. Did all of the other academy students really think of me that way?
“I can’t believe what everyone else said, though,” I muttered.
Sam stared at the workstation, her hands resting on her hips. “You said it yourself, Swift. Noah was manipulated into saying those things. I bet everyone else was too.” She let out a long breath. “Now… can you delete everything, Amy?”
“What?” Amy asked.
“What?!” Noah and I echoed.
“Just get rid of all that garbage,” Sam said, swiping her hand through the air. “Delete the whole thing.”
I suddenly noticed Sam’s body language. If there were a baseball bat handy, I bet it would have taken all three of us to keep her from smashing the entire setup.
“Whoa, Sam,” Noah said. “I get that you’re angry. I know I am. But that’s someone else’s stuff.”
Sam rounded on him. “That’s us. All of us! If anyone has the right to delete it, we do.”
I shook my head. “Noah’s right. We have to do… I don’t know, something, just not that.”
“We could tell Mr. Davenport,” Amy suggested.
“Good idea,” I said. “He thinks this show is going to promote the school. If he knew what it was really about, he would stop it right away.”
Sam pursed her lips. “Fine.”
“If we hurry, I bet we can still catch him,” Noah said, heading toward the door.
But as I followed the others, a thought popped into my mind. I turned and surveyed the suite. “Hey, Amy… where’s that hard drive with everyone’s plans?” I suddenly didn’t want those TV people to have access to my blueprints or anyone else’s. They didn’t deserve to even look at them.
Amy came back into the room and looked around both workstations. “I don’t see it.” She crouched to look under the desks. “Maybe they moved it.”
“All right,” I said, heading for the door again. “First things first.”
The four
