How It All Goes Down
When the Saints Go Marching In
- Deciding that Lena was to blame for the winter dance debacle, the Jackson Disciplinary Committee holds a hearing to kick her out of school.
- It starts raining. Lena must already be getting angry at all this. Can you blame her?
- To soothe her nerves, Ethan gives her the silver button she left in his car way back in the fifth chapter (9.11, Collision).
- Principal Harper presents the charges against Lena. Unfortunately, they still haven't forgotten about the broken window incident.
- Link and Ethan try to defend Lena, but the school board won't listen.
- As if the false allegations weren't enough, Mrs. Lincoln pulls out a bunch of tawdry facts about Lena's past. First, she accuses Lena of having bipolar disorder. Mrs. Lincoln isn't very sensitive toward people with mental illness. She talks about them as though they're animals that need to be caged.
- Mrs. Lincoln also reveals a secret: Lena's mother killed her father.
- Yikes.
- Everyone in the room is shocked.
- None of this seems fair (at all), and Ethan likens the whole thing to a witch trial.
- But just when it's looking totally hopeless, Macon Ravenwood shows up with Boo Radley and Marian the Librarian.
- The town goes wild. "There was nothing, nothing, Gatlin loved better than a spectacle" (12.16.115).
- You really have to read Macon's insults for yourself. They're priceless.
- After Macon and Marian get some excellent verbal jabs in, Lena is saved from expulsion.
- Phew.