“Meri told me right away what happened.” Rose sits down next to her father as she makes her point. “She wanted to go back to the school and tell Principal Velshi everything, but I convinced her it was better to talk to you first since neither of us understands what’s going on. I know she’s scared. I would be. I mean, why would a search for a word on a school computer set off alarms and make people at the school call for the police?”

Mr. Webster answers his daughter, but his eyes—clear and steady and searching—stay focused on me. “I can see why Meri would have been upset by what happened today. It would upset anyone.” He folds his hands and taps his thumbs together as he studies me for several long moments. “Neither of you are supposed to know this, but I am going to trust you both to keep this information to yourself.”

He pauses long enough for both of us to nod. “The paper Meri found outside the school had a code word written on it. It’s a word used by a gang of known criminals to help them identify each other. They’ve been causing problems around the city—breaking into buildings and encouraging violence.”

“I haven’t heard about any gangs causing problems,” Rose said.

Neither had I, and that would be news even I would have noticed. Since the pilot City Pride Program began, Chicago’s crime rate had dropped to the lowest of any major city in the country—something that was touted on all the public screens at least several times a week. A gang wreaking havoc in the city would be the featured story on both public news channels.

As if reading my thoughts, Rose’s father continued, “The authorities have been careful to keep this quiet. To do otherwise would give the gang the publicity they need to recruit new members and quite possibly inflict even greater harm on the city. We’ve been mostly successful, although we haven’t been able to cover up all of it. You might have heard reports of an explosion near the lake or the Blue Line train going off the tracks. They were reported as accidents, to keep the city calm. Public panic is something the mayor would very much like to avoid,” he explains in the cool tones he is known for when he gives interviews on behalf of the mayor. “It is easy for this kind of thing to get out of control.”

Everyone is required to take American history as freshmen and one of the units is about Chicago. According to the history text and my teachers’ droning lectures, not all that long ago Chicago had the reputation of being the most dangerous place in the country. Gangs ran rampant. People were scared to step out of their homes for fear of being shot. Thousands of Chicagoans were killed every year just walking down the street. People began to flee the city in droves until finally the government stepped in and order was restored. Once a year, the news runs a special on the city Chicago used to be and how much we’ve grown since those dark days of just decades ago. Still, it’s hard to imagine that kind of chaos and fear now that the murder rate is the lowest in the country and the only gangs on the streets are people working with the city to keep neighborhoods welcoming and prosperous.