devised a little system, sorting everything in an old cardboard box. The tricky part was sometimes discerning where the money should go. Most of the writers were clear—for David’s college fund, or for the movement, or to treat himself to something nice—but sometimes Kevin had to make a judgment call. David could make some choices later, but at a minimum, every contribution would get a thank-you, no matter how small. It was the $5 donors who could probably spare it least.
Working his box made Kevin happy. David would thank him some day.
3
Misfits. David kept calling them misfits—and theater geeks, drama nerds, and journalism fanatics. He loved the image of the misfits fighting back. “I think it’s very true,” his mom said. “They’re used to being outliers and they don’t care about being different.”
Some of the other MFOL boys were using the misfit label too. A few days later, I met three of them for a long group interview. As I tossed out some of David’s phrases, Alfonso and Ryan Deitsch giggled and agreed. Daniel Duff looked a bit taken aback. Finally he spoke, hesitantly. “Are we? Misfits?”
Ryan let out a howl. “We are totally misfits!”
“The fact that you asked that question proves you’re a misfit,” Alfonso said.
Ryan kept riffing. “You have to ask if you’re the weird guy on the bus.”
Daniel decided to go along. “Yeah, we’re like the drama club and the TV club.”
“Can we be honest? Those are not the popular clubs,” Alfonso said. “Although, me, I was an exception. I feel like that’s all I have to say.” He said it with a big smirk, and then let out a hearty laugh.
But I sensed Daniel had it right. We have all seen our share of teenage misfits, and it’s hard not to wince. These kids had huge circles of friends, and Alfonso was constantly trailed by a pack of girls. I bounced the idea off Jackie and she was incredulous. “Who’s a misfit?” she asked. When I mentioned Alfonso, she laughed. “Come on. Those boys were overplaying it.” They were comedians, so they had fun with themselves. The real outcasts weren’t laughing.
Jackie was battling different stereotypes. She was blond, petite, and pretty, a deadly combination. “I’ve gotten the dumb blonde,” she said. It reared up often on Twitter. She avoided feeding the trolls, but she was touched when friends defended her. Her friend Adam was irked by a post saying she obviously hadn’t paid attention in class. “Adam Alhanti tweeted that comment and was like, ‘Actually, Jackie’s class president, has an SAT score of 1510 and a GPA of 5.2.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my god, Adam.’ They’ll go after everything they can to demean me, but it’s not working.”
4
David Hogg was exhausted. He couldn’t even find time to schedule all his interviews—mine had been double-booked with 60 Minutes, and then frantically rescheduled thirty minutes prior. The National School Walkout was set for March 14, the one-month anniversary. He was planning to walk out for seventeen minutes and walk back in. He was thrilled to see it happening, but grateful not to be in charge this time. David had been crisscrossing the country on a month-long tear. So many interviews. “Probably over a thousand,” he said—on every conceivable network, in every language, on every continent. “I’ve done Venezuela, Colombia, Norway, Germany, Sweden. . . . I’ve done about ten in Australia alone.”
“Is it getting any easier?” I asked.
“Nah. It’s just as crazy. I’m just getting more tired.”
“Are you sleeping at all, or eating much?”
“No to both.”
“Is there any end in sight? How long can you keep that up?”
“I can keep going till the day I die.”
Although . . . his body had other ideas, he admitted. The pace had just taken him down. “I was sick for the past four days. Sinus infection. And that just knocked me out, so I just laid in bed for like three days and didn’t answer anyone.”
It was one p.m. on a Monday, and he wasn’t in school. “I woke up late and was just like, eh, whatever. So I’ve kind of just been moseying around, cleaning up my room finally because it hasn’t been cleaned in like a month.” He liked order, hated a mess, but everything was on hold. He had put one thing in order, when he was too weak to do anything else.
But he was plowing ahead with interviews, defiantly presenting indefatigable David. Scheduling was a nightmare. David was better with concepts than keeping track of