Chapter 10: 8 Days Earlier

Aust:

It was three days since Aust had met with his hero Sebastian Strong. Three days since the two, behind closed doors and inside inner circles, hatched their plan to make America great again. Three days since Seb Strong had reminded him of his patriotic duty. And since then, Aust had been watching.

He watched the dark-skinned SROs as they decided which students to search and which to wave past. He watched the liberal elite on the teaching faculty inculcate students with their poisonous Leftist doctrine. But most of all he watched the Mexicans. Which students were frequently absent or late? Which students arrived disheveled or hungry? Which students bitched about the end of free school meals — freeloading assholes. He’d make America great again. And prosperous again. One treasonous enemy-within at a time. 

He wrote them all down. On his phone. When the time was right, he knew what to do with the list — what Seb Strong had convinced him was the only thing to do — and that time was coming. There was just one more name he had to add first. 

Aust came up on JC like a dusk shadow. Long and sharp and pointed, moving with the inevitability of descending night. 

“Que pasa, hombre?” Aust opened, his mouth chewing the words. 

“There he is!” JC replied, almost without looking. Then followed it up with, “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish?” 

It might have been a question; Aust didn’t care. 

“I picked up a few words here and there,” he admitted. “Nothin’ like your Spanish, though—”

Aust let the words sit. Pregnant. Swollen with meaning. 

"Picked up a few things too," JC said, almost offhand.

“I heard you speak the other day,” Aust confronted. “All fast and no accent. You’re a pro.”

“Uh-huh,” JC acknowledged, his tone dropping. 

Aust knew what he was waiting for. Knew the sign of a wounded animal. 

“Well, I had a Spanish nanny growing up,” JC defended. “Y’know, before my mom lost her banking job?”

Aust tasted blood. 

“Uh-huh,” Aust replied, looking past the perfect American speech, past the sapphire eyes. Through to something he hadn’t seen before. Something that might not even have been there before. But it was now. Stark and inescapable as the drawing down of night. 

The summer-tan that never quite faded. The MAGA hat JC never quite managed to wear. The way he moved seamlessly with the white kids and the black kids and brown kids. 

“She a family friend?” Aust asked. “Your nanny?”

“I think my dad knew her from before,” JC replied.

Aust nodded and took his phone out of his pocket. He tapped away at the keypad, being careful not to let JC see what he was writing. 

“You still in touch with her?” Aust asked, locking his screen. 

“You looking for a nanny?” JC asked, his tone shifting under the weight of the interrogation. Was that panic Aust saw wash over his face? Something about this conversation rattled the guy.

“Well no. I ain’t,” he replied, coolly.

Aust didn’t mean to put the inflection on the pronoun ‘I’, but it landed right. 

“You think I need a nanny?” JC shot back. 

Why was he getting all in a bunch over this? Aust decided to let it play out. See where the guy’s paranoia and pride might take him. 

“Do you?” Aust replied heavily. 

“Fuck you, man!” JC rebuked. “I saved your ass the other day and this is how you repay me?”

Well that sure stuck a nerve. 

“Ain’t about payment,” Aust struck again. “Way I see things, we’re even.”

“Way I see things, you’re an asshole,” JC chided. 

“You take a long look in the mirror with them baby-blues,” Aust challenged, “and you’ll find I ain’t the one who needs his diaper changed by nanny.”

JC stood open-mouthed. There was something in his eyes. Something more than rage, more than hurt. More even than the look of a man betrayed. The haunch of his shoulders, the sweat on his brow, the way his whole body froze. The wide, searching dart of his eyes. Was he thinking? Or was he caught? Aust held the man’s fear by the jugular. All he had to do was squeeze. 

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about!” JC spat. “Babies and nannies. You’re full of shit, Austin Freeman.”

“Well I may be,” Aust conceded. “But you’re sure as hell the one scared shitless. What you do, JC?” Aust added, feeling for the first time the pulse of his adversary’s perspective. 

“I don’t have time for this,” JC retorted, pushing past Austin and away to class. 

But he couldn’t meet his gaze, Aust noticed. Couldn’t look him in the eyes. With those baby-blues. 

Aust let him go, smiling as he sent his notes to the address Seb Strong had given him. This was shaping up to be one hell of a day. Aust pulled his red cap out of his back pocket and placed it triumphantly on his head. And it wasn’t even Friday. 

Tammy:

Tammy hadn’t slept all night. She knew what haunted her. Knew what specter kept nudging at her, the moment she started to feel the welcome pull of sleep. Knew that everything she’d tried so far to exorcize that demon had failed. Knew that this time she couldn’t fail again. 

Tammy sat in the chair opposite her confessor and wondered how many other kids had sat there. Baring their souls. How many other girls? She wondered if this doubt she was feeling — this shame — was what Hope felt when she sat across from the school counsellor and talked about her pain. The world held so much pain for girls—trans or cis. It didn’t matter. It was always the girls.

“I need to tell you something,” Tammy said, noticing how her listener straightened, pen poised, pad at the ready.

“Is this a discl—?” the other began, but Tammy interrupted. 

“—Please. I need to get this out and I’m afraid that if I don’t do it all at once I never will.”

Her confessor put down the pad and pen, sat back and let her speak. 

“It was a few months ago it started. People say that trans kids are messed up. Misguided. That what we do every day is a phase. Or a fetish.”

Tammy paused. There was something in her eye. She rubbed it, feeling her finger glisten with moisture. 

“Go on,” the listener returned, gently. 

“And I fought against those labels. So hard. For so long. I’ve known I was a girl since I was a little kid. How I dress? How I act? It doesn’t matter. It’s what I feel.”

She crossed her legs and leant into the way her body folded. 

“But I’m still a person, right? Still a messed up, misguided teenager like all the rest? I still think about love and relationships and all that stuff.”

“This isn’t relationship counselling,” her listener returned. 

“This wasn’t a relationship,” Tammy hit back. “This was an older student taking advantage of a younger student.”

The person opposite her nodded grimly. 

“What happened?” they asked, reaching for the pen, but then perhaps thinking better of it.

“At first I thought he was just being nice. Or fooling around. The pats on the back when no one else was watching, the way he’d let his arm brush against mine when I got things out of the locker. The look he gave me sometimes. When no one else was around. 

“People say that being transgender is just a fetish. That we’re turned on by the idea of another body. But I wasn’t turned on by that. I was turned on by the fact that this guy was paying me attention. That he noticed me. When everyone else was ignoring me. It didn’t matter that he was older. People online are— Well,” she caught herself. “That doesn’t matter.”

Tammy swallowed hard, trying to force down the lump in her throat, to clear away the rising of an Adam’s apple that just gave voice to her dysphoria. 

“I thought we were dating. But it wasn’t like that. He was only ever nice to me when there was no one else around. And he made sure we were alone the first time he—”

Tammy broke off again, unable to clear what was forming in her throat. 

“—The first time he what?” the listener asked. 

“We used to sneak into the shower rooms after swim practice,” Tammy confessed. “He’d make me— He’d— I’d kneel down and he’d take my—”

“Are you saying this person assaulted you?” Tammy’s confessor asked. 

“No—” Tammy asked, the fullness of her throat erupting from her mouth in a stifled sob. 

“I gave him consent—”  Tammy disclosed through tears and shaking breath. “I wanted to— I—”

“That doesn’t matter,” her listener replied. “You’re under age. You can’t consent.” Then added, “Legally.”

They picked up the pad and began to write on it. 

“And all this happened on school grounds?” they asked. 

Tammy nodded. 

“Who was doing this to you?” 

“It was JC,” Tammy confessed. “JC McMillan.”

She watched her confessor grow knowingly tense at the mention of his name. 

“What’s going to happen to me?” Tammy asked after a pause that went on just too long. 

“Well I don’t exactly condone what happened here,” her confessor admitted. “But it’s clear that you were the victim. So, I need to know if you remember dates or times when any of this happened. This needs to be investigated properly.”

“I wrote them all down,” Tammy revealed, producing a folded piece of paper from her pocket and passing it across the desk. “We’ll be on the cameras going into the locker rooms, I guess. We weren’t exactly subtle—”

Then she let out another sob and gave herself entirely to the catharsis of the moment. 

Her confessor sat back in their chair, sucked down a large breath of oxygen, and then leant forward. 

“Alright, Tammy, I’ve heard you. And I believe you,” they informed her. “And while I can’t promise what will happen next, I can promise you that this will be taken seriously.”

“Thank you, Principal Edwards,” Tammy cried, wiping away her tears with the back of her sleeve.

She moved as if to rise, but something pulled her back. It wasn’t the weight of the moment, crushing though it was, nor the fear that her tears might in any way be construed as insincere, her performance as not genuine. Everything she had said really happened. Every tear and slice of pain really felt. It was the sudden, urgent knock on the door. 

Tammy froze. It was JC. He’d been outside, listening. He was here to silence her. To choke her story straight.

But it wasn’t JC. It was Ms Mobley, the Principal’s PA. 

“Gerald, there are some guys outside the front of school,” she cried, panic getting the better of her voice. 

“Janet, I’m in a meeting,” Principal Edwards said, gesturing to Tammy, who was still not able to stand. 

“They're armed!” the PA informed him urgently. 

“They’re armed?” he repeated. “Well, call the police!”

She cast a frightened look at Tammy then back at the principal, then she hit him with it. 

“I think they are the police.”

Rue:

When I. C. E. raided Sherman High School, they didn’t kick down doors or push past security guards. They waved pieces of paper at the powers-that-be and strolled nonchalantly in like they owned the place. 

The first Rue knew about it was when they opened the door to Mr Heinneman’s Government and Politics class and started to reach for the plastic wrist ties. 

“We’re here under the authority of the United States Government,” they announced from behind midnight black visors. There were six of them. In full body armor, black and thick, making their arms bulge like gorillas’. “We have warrants for the arrest and detention of the following students.”

They started to read from a list of names. 

“Aguilar, Alvarez, Camposano—”

Rue’s blood turned to ice. The ICE agents continued, but their words ran into each other becoming distant, blurred – just sound without meaning. He tried not to let the freezing grip on his spine take hold, but it was too late. 

When they finished up their list, they turned to Mr Heinneman. 

“Are any of these students in this class?” the lead gorilla asked. 

Nobody moved. Nobody said a thing. The students all looked between each other and then to Mr Heineman. 

“Sir, obstructing a federal agent is a felony offence. So I’ll ask you one more time—”

“He’s Camposano,” Aust drawled, lazy and grinning and pointing straight at Rue. 

Rue’s stomach lurched. The sides of his head felt tight and his breathing dropped shallow.

“Gutierrez is there,” Aust directed, standing and pointing. “Flores. Ramirez. Tasha Alvarez is down the hall wearing, stupid a tank top.”

The agents didn’t wait for an invitation. They began to move on the students Aust had indicated. 

“Hey, this isn’t right!” Rue exclaimed, standing and backing away from the ICE apes. 

“Mr Heineman, do something!” Rue pleaded, but the teacher stood rooted like some petrified forest. 

“Somebody do something!” Rue screamed as two agents advanced on him, plastic ties at the ready. One boy took his phone out and began to film what was going on. The lead gorilla bounded over to him in two steps and knocked the phone out of his hand. A second swipe — four gloved knuckles — sent the kid spinning out of his chair, crashing to the floor.

“Now just a minute!” Mr Heineman objected, finally lifting his feet from the ground and crossing the room to where the stricken student lay. A well-placed fist to his abdomen had him doubling over. 

“Oh shit,” one of the kids cried, trying to suppress the nervous, disbelieving humor in his voice. “Heiny just got pancaked!”

Rue was cornered. Nowhere left to run. Over the agents’ shoulders, Aust knelt beside the teacher, whispering something, his expression unreadable. Rue barely had time to register the betrayal before a knee slammed into the side of his leg. 

“What the fuck is happening?” Rue screamed as the agents grabbed his wrists and began to bend his struggling body over. “This is supposed to be America! This is supposed to be the land of the free!”

“This is America,” one of the men called to him as he stuck a knee into Rue’s back and brought his hands round into the ties. “And we’re gonna make it great again!” 

Then he drove his fist into the side of Rue’s head. A rush of pain. Then nothing.

*

Rue came to groggily. He felt sensation floating back into his body. It took him a moment to realise that he was being dragged, arms tied behind his back, through the school halls and towards the front gates. The classroom doors were open now and there were ranks of students and teachers lining the corridors. 

Rue struggled to look around, but his mobility was restricted. He could see three other students being marched out ahead of him. They were on their feet, the sturdy arm of an ICE officer pushing at their backs. He knew them all by name. Erica Lopez. Martin Rivera. Tasha Alvarez. They weren’t kicking or wrestling with their captors. They weren’t struggling in any way. But they all wore the same defeated expression in their body language. Shoulders slumped; head down; trying not to let their shame be paraded like the rest of them out the doors. Past the two mute SROs. Through the double doors of the school. Out into the waiting patrol wagons. 

This was injustice. This was an assault on liberty. This was exactly what his father had felt. Damn this stupid fucking country. And Austin Freeman and all his MAGA asshats. And damn the row upon row of silent, complicit students and teachers just letting this happen. There were nearly 2000 people in this school. There were maybe 20 ICE agents. Nobody lifted a finger. Nobody said a word. 

They put him in the back of a repurposed patrol wagon with all the others. Like cattle. Everyone had their head down. Nobody could meet the gaze of the others present. As though — so long as they didn’t see their own terror reflected in the face of anyone else — it wasn’t happening. Wasn’t real. 

Nobody spoke. They didn’t have to. Rue knew them — by their skin, by their voices, by the unspoken knowledge of why they were here. There were seventeen of them in total. Crammed into a space made for maybe ten. Then he heard it. Someone crying out. A voice that didn’t belong. 

“This is a mistake!” the voice cracked, frantic. “I’m an American! I don’t belong here.”

The ICE agents weren’t listening. They bundled him into the back with the rest of them. 

“You don’t understand,” the kid cried out again, “my father’s a cop. I’m one of the good guys. I’m just like you!”

The agents slammed the door closed on them all, silent and objector alike. 

“I don’t belong here,” the boy cried to himself. Then hung his head like the others and lost himself in the mute surety of denial. 

It was JC McMillan. 

Hope:

JC’s evening DM kept replaying in Hope’s mind as she stepped into the diner he’d picked. It reassured her that he chose somewhere public. Well lit. Safe. And on her bus route. That was the main reason Hope came back out again. That, and the message looping in her head: ‘Something has happened. I need to talk to you!’

She’d seen JC get marched out of school with those Mexican students. She’d seen them shove him into a patrol wagon and drive off to God-knows-where. Part of her had cheered them on. Even if he wasn’t getting punished for his crimes, he was getting punished for something. God sees everything. And now everyone saw JC. She didn’t expect that he’d be out so soon, though. Nor that he’d contact her of all people. 

She considered calling Tammy to come with, but remembered how pissed she’d been when Hope said she was keeping the baby — and how much she could flip out when she wanted to. Whatever JC had to say to Hope, he was a lot less likely to say it with Tammy there. 

But why did she care? The guy was an asshole. Maybe she didn’t care. Maybe she just needed to know how he’d orchestrated his daring escape from the ICE prison. Maybe she needed to know if they’d hurt him inside. If he’d got what he deserved for what he’d done to her. But no. As she pushed the door to the diner open and heard the ringing of the little bell, she knew why she was here. And it wasn’t anything to do with her needs. 

“You’re late,” JC said, casting around nervously with his eyes. 

“I wasn’t sure I was coming at all,” Hope replied, sitting across from him and back a little in one of the small booths. The place had a 50s vibe — waitresses done up like Rita Hayworth or Brigitte Bardot. Expensive. That meant JC was paying. 

“You want a drink?” he opened. 

Why not? She would have a drink. She’d have the most expensive drink on the menu. 

“Banoffee shake,” she informed him, glancing at the menu in front of her. Twelve dollars Take that.

“Looks good,” he replied. “I might get one too.”

She watched as he stood and went over to the bar area. JC never did have any patience. The waitresses were busy, but they’d get round to them eventually. While he was away she tried to imagine why he’d called her here. He didn’t seem too beat up. That meant whatever had happened, in wherever it was those ICE goons took him, it wasn’t physical. ‘Something has happened. I need to talk to you.’ The words wouldn’t stop going round and round. 

She waited until JC returned with the drinks, then went straight for it.

“So what did you want to talk about?” she opened, pulling the shake towards her. 

“This isn’t easy for me to say—” JC replied, lifting his banoffee shake and pressing the straw to his lips. He took a long slurp and stared expectantly at Hope. 

“I’m sure you’ll manage it,” she replied, fingering the end of her own straw and watching the patterns it made in the thick, shaken mixture. 

“I wanted to apologise,” JC confessed. Hope was glad she hadn’t taken a sip yet, as that admission might make her spit it out and all over him. On second thoughts, maybe she should take a sip. 

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said again. 

Damn, that was a good milkshake. Sweet, creamy, rich — with just a hint of bitterness under the toffee.

“You didn’t need to call me here to say that,” Hope replied, taking a long slurp of banoffee goodness. She’d go for a run tomorrow, maybe. Or finally go to that gym she’d joined a year ago. 

“No, but—” JC fumbled with his words. “I wanted to say it. Face to face. I wanted to—”

This was starting to feel like he’d called her here to make himself feel better, not her. 

“What happened to you?” she asked, cutting through his bullshit. Then clarified when he looked vacantly back at her, “You said something had happened?”

“And it did,” he replied with the focus of a person picking up something they’d laid down and forgotten about.  “When I saw what was happening to those people. In that place.”

“How did you get out so fast?” Hope asked. 

“I called my dad,” JC said dismissively. “He came and straightened them out. Brought my birth certificate and everything.”

“You needed your birth certificate?” Hope asked, a little shocked. 

“Yeah, but it’s okay. They let me out. But they’re keeping a lot of other people in there.”

“How many?” Hope asked, suddenly grown curious over the other kids carted away with JC. 

“A lot!” he replied finally. “And it was when I saw the way those ICE cops treated them that it kind of made me think about the way I’d treated you.”

“What you did to me was—” Hope began, but JC cut her off. 

“—Disgusting, I know,” he admitted. “Despicable. Deplorable.”

The guy had swallowed all the Ds from his thesaurus.

“If you think that an apology and an expensive milkshake will make up for what you did to me—” Hope went on. 

“—Never could,” JC replied. “I don’t expect you’ll ever forgive me for what I did,” he admitted, watching as she took another long slurp of the banoffee milkshake. “But I don’t want the rest of however we end up knowing each other to be defined by the way we met each other.”

A flutter hit Hope’s stomach. Why was he saying it like that? ‘The rest of however we end up knowing each other’? He couldn’t know. Could he? Hope barely knew herself, and she’d only told one person. There was no way—

Oh fuck!

What if he knew? 

The butterflies in her stomach tripped somersaults at the thought of it. 

“JC, did you have anything else you wanted to say to me?” she asked, trying her best to disguise the probing tone. 

“Like what?” he asked, smiling. 

Fuck! 

He did know. He only ever put that smug grin on when he felt in total control. She’d seen it before. When he lifted the trophy last year in front of the whole school. When he walked out of Principal Edwards’ office after beating the charges her parents had laid against him. Tammy. That little traitor. Hope had trusted her, and this is what she’d done.

“So there’s nothing else you wanted to talk about?” she asked him. 

“No,” he replied. Then corrected himself, “Well, I mean— That video. That the guys made. That’s gone. I made it disappear.”

Hope pulled her lips tight against her teeth; she wouldn’t say ‘Thank you’ for that. She put down the milkshake without finishing it. That was the moment she knew it. She didn’t want anything else from JC McMillan. 

“See you around, JC,” Hope said, rising. 

“Hopefully,” he called after her as she left. 

The bus ride home felt all wrong. Every jolt irritated Hope. Why had JC called her there? Just to let her know he knew, but not actually discuss it? More mind games. More bullshit from the king of it. Those butterflies — the fleeting what-if of raising a child with a changed man — turned to lead in her stomach.. Now she just felt heavy and bloated. Hope tucked herself up in bed, drew her knees into her chest, and tried to forget about that self-satisfied grin that had followed her out the door of the diner.