Chapter 11: 7 Days Earlier

Rue:

Rue was not let out of detention early. Rue didn’t have a white father with a white piece of paper who could come get him out. In fact, as the hours stretched on, he wasn’t sure anyone was coming to get him out. Midnight rolled around. Then one. Then two am, before he was finally hauled out of his cell and taken to an interrogation room. 

The room was dark. There was a long mirror on one of the walls. Rue was certain it was two-way. In the center of the room a steel table squatted, its legs taut, ready to pounce. Two chairs were positioned either side of it. They dumped him unceremoniously into the chair; there was a steel ring for restraints, but they didn’t shackle him to it. Then, without a word, they pulled the other chair out and left.

So. Intimidation tactics, then. They’d probably leave him there for 20 minutes or so, leave him to stew before a team of hard-hitting interrogators moved in. Beat him to within a drop of his lifeblood then get him to sign a piece of paper renouncing his US citizenship. He gritted his jaw and waited. He could out-wait them. He could outlast any torture they could impose upon him. He could—

The door opened slowly. The guards were back. With another man. A thin shell of a man they supported under each arm. He was shackled. They threw him into the chair and ran his chains through the steel ring on his side of the table. Then they left the two of them alone in the room. 

“Papi?” Rue asked with trembling breath. 

The man sitting opposite him was gaunt and his eyes sagged with deep purple bags under them. His face was dirty, his lips were dry and cracked and he looked to have dropped nearly 10lbs. It had only been a few days. What the hell had happened to him?

“They got you too?” the man growled in Spanish so deep that for a second Rue thought they’d made a mistake. This wasn’t his father. Just another wretch, tossed in a hole and forgotten about. 

“I’m sorry, Ruben,” he continued, still in Spanish. “I’m sorry for everything.”

His father looked close to tears. Rue reached out a hand and placed it on top of his papi’s. 

“What the hell did they do to you?!” Rue asked, trying to force his father’s gaze up from the steel ring on the table, back into focus and away from whatever distant shore they were now collapsed upon. 

“There was a sickness,” Alvaro informed him grimly. “On the second day. A bunch of us got sick with— with the dysentery. They took some of us away to the doctors. They never came back.”

“But you’re okay.” Rue replied. He wouldn’t let it be a question. His old man was fine. Sure, a little weak, a little dehydrated, but he’d be fine. 

Alvaro nodded weakly. 

There were so many things he wanted to say. To ask. To know. He wanted to reassure his father that they’d tried to get him out, tried to protest— surely he’d heard the calls from outside the detention center? He wanted to tell him that his mother was safe, that they were being looked after by his uncle. By Esteban.  He wanted to reassure him that this wouldn’t last, this injustice, this evil. That the president was already down in approval, that the people, united, could never be defeated. 

“They said you wouldn’t come to see me,” Rue said, switching to English. 

The words just tumbled out. And, heavy with their own weight, crashed and collided down the mountain that had suddenly risen between them, crushing the very breath from their lungs. 

“I—” Alvaro began, but tears picked up where words left off. 

Rue squeezed his father’s hand, but the tears only kept coming. 

“I—” the old man tried again, but a deep and mournful sobbing had taken hold of his shoulders and bent him low. The tears washed their way through the dirt on the old man’s face and dripped onto his stained pants. Rue looked at the two-way glass. I hope you’re getting a good fucking laugh out of this, he simmered. I hope you get to sit in the chair and I get to watch while your world is torn apart. And if it isn’t, then I’ll tear it apart myself. 

“I didn’t want you to get sick,” his father managed eventually. 

Rue squeezed his hand again and set his lips at the response. 

“Because they took them away. To the doctors,” the man before him explained, dragging the sobs back inside and caging them. “And they didn’t come back—”

“I understand, Papi,” Rue placated, then, switching back to Spanish, “I understand.”

The door to the cell opened and a cleanly shaven man stepped in in a neatly pressed white shirt. He was flanked on either side by large, thickly-set guards.

“Camposano?” he said, reading off a list. 

“Yes?” Rue and his father replied at the same time. 

“The boy,” neat white shirt clarified. “You’re being released into the custody of your mother. Don’t leave town.”

“What about—” Rue asked, but his father shook his head. 

“We’re coming back for you,” Rue reassured his father, then two guards hauled him out of his chair. 

“Do you understand me?” neat white shirt questioned with a halting glare. “If you leave town, we won’t be able to find you. And we won’t be able to deport you.” 

He shot Rue a very meaningful stare, but the bullet slid off his rage.

“Don’t worry,” Rue replied, looking past the man to his father. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Tammy:

Tammy sat motionless on the low wall in front of the school parking lot, her fingers interlaced with her friend’s

“I just don’t get why they took him?” Sparkles sobbed, tears and snot smearing against the leather of Tammy’s shoulder.

“He’ll be fine in there,” she reassured Sparkles, brushing the girl’s hair with comforting affection. “There’s a bunch of them in there together. And that activist kid is with them.”

“Ruben?” Sparkles asked, lifting her face to dry her eyes with the back of her sleeve. 

“Mhm,” Tammy confirmed, eyes sweeping the parking lot. She was looking for someone. Someone who had just the right connections to worm his way out of a government facility. He wasn’t there yet. 

“But what if they split up the boys from the girls?” Sparkles added, resting her head finally down on Tammy’s shoulder. 

Tammy didn’t want to acknowledge the unspoken fear behind that question. To the ICE guys, Juanito was just Tasha Alvarez – another potential undocumented.

“Well then Juanito will deal with that too,” Tammy whispered. 

Sparkles fell silent. 

Tammy took a moment to look again around the parking lot. There were a lot of people not there. Especially for nearly 08:15. Nothing like a government raid to make parents keep their kids out of school. Some parents, anyway. Looking around, she could see a sea of white faces, the tips of some giant wave, washing into the school like that painting by Hokusai. It rolled through the halls, under the doors of every classroom, seeping into the woodwork, washing away the color and hissing with a crashing voice; “We did it! We made America white again!”

“You wanna bounce?” Sparkles intruded after the foam had settled. 

Tammy had been lost in rumination. Yesterday, she’d poured her soul out to Principal Edwards – a last, desperate gamble to get JC McMillan even a sliver of the punishment he deserved. Then those ICE guys had burst in and dragged him out like he was a common criminal; dragged him out like they’d dragged the rest out. Tammy wanted to know how it had felt for him, inside that place. Wanted to know if some tattooed hulk of a man had made JC do to him what JC had made Tammy do. But no. That only happened on TV and in movies. And besides, most of the people ICE dragged away had been too scared shitless to do anything to anyone.

“You wanna?” Sparkles asked again, hopefully. “I don’t think we belong in there today.”

Tammy felt the squeeze on her fingers, the pull of a desire to be anywhere and anyone but where and who they were. Tammy did want to bounce. Part of her wanted to run as far away from Sherman High School as she could. To run and keep running to the county lines, the state boundary even. Hell, maybe all the way to the ocean. Watch the real waves come in and pick up the sand and wash it out again, sure in the knowledge that when the tides washed away all the white sands, there was hard, black rock beneath them. But a bigger part of her wanted to stay. 

“Come on, man,” Sparkles prompted again. “Half the damn school is out anyway. Who’s gonna care if the trans kids don’t come in?”

Her eyes were pleading. Tammy knew from experience. She also knew not to look into them. Not if she was going to do what she needed to do. 

“Nah, you go,” Tammy instructed, suddenly locking onto a couple of the fishheads moving with purpose across the parking lot. “I got a few things I wanna find out about first.”

And with that, she uncoupled herself from her friend and stepped away towards the school entrance.

The halls felt empty without so many people there. The lack of a line made it almost feel like she was waved through by the SROs, but in reality they weren’t checking shit. Guess they figured no one would be stupid enough to bring a weapon or contraband in the day after a government raid. Either that or all the bad apples were locked up. Talk about unconscious bias.

Tammy had a destination in mind. Had questions in mind too. She wanted to see Principal Edwards. She wanted to remind him that just because JC McMillan was marched out of school by ICE agents, it didn’t make what he’d done to her go away. It didn’t absolve him of his crimes anymore than being a Promising Young Man had the last time. Times. But the sudden gathering of the fishheads and their purposeful stalking down the corridors pushed that urgency to the back of her mind for now.

There were five of them now. With that scumbag Christopher Eddington at their tip. Tammy couldn’t see their faces – had only seen from across the parking lot – but the way they walked, the swaying of their shoulders from side to side, their fanning out to command the width of the corridor, the way they ran their fingers down the row of lockers, banging one of the doors shut – it was a language. And it didn’t speak: it screamed.

Tammy kept a safe distance behind them. She thought about giving them a full corner’s worth of lead on her, so if they turned they would never see her in the hallway. But they didn’t turn. They had their eyes dead-set ahead of them. They had a destination in mind too. But Tammy didn’t think they were so keen on asking questions.

She followed them for perhaps a minute or so, as they swept through the halls of Sherman High, wondering who they might sweep up in whatever cleanout they had in mind. She had a mind to go find out, but – as they disappeared around a corner and out of sight – she felt a sudden tap on her shoulder. She spun, arms tensing, ready to fend off an unseen attack. It was Principal Edwards.

“A word!” he demanded, his curling finger obscuring the knot of his bow tie. 

Tammy gave half a look behind her, then ducked reluctantly into the empty classroom Edwards had picked out for them.

“This about who I think it’s about?” Tammy launched right in.

“This is about you,” Principal Edwards replied.

Tammy perched on the edge of a desk, half-waiting to see if Edwards would go full authoritarian and snap her to attention. Edwards perched the same way on the desk opposite her.

“I got the feeling that there’s something you weren’t telling me yesterday,” he opened.

Jesus. He’d pulled her aside for this?

Where did she start? With the rape JC had committed? The video evidence that was probably marching its way through the corridors in the pocket of some swim team jerk right now? Hope’s pregnancy? The fact she was going to keep it? You’re damned right there was something she wasn’t telling him yesterday. It was called private shit that ain’t none of your business.

“Oh?” she replied, as evasively as she could.

“About a certain young man, captain of the swim team,” the Principal prompted.

“Security footage didn’t show anything, huh?” Tammy asked, a little incredulous.

“Oh it showed the two of you, alright,” Edwards confessed. “So I decided to go back a little further–”

Shit!

“–See if I couldn’t find any evidence of this happening to someone else–”

Double shit!

“–Imagine what I found…” he left a pause into which Tammy could feel the sharp, gilt-edged invitation to speak.

Tammy could imagine what he’d found. Imagine why it might change his whole perspective on her story about JC. Imagine it would give him just the excuse he needed to bury the whole investigation. Can’t lay the blame on someone when it’s your own idea in the first place…

Goddamn it. It was one time. One fucking time. They were close. They were curious. It had been silly. Taken back and sworn to secrecy as fast as it had happened. She’d convinced herself being trans wasn’t a fetish. So why did every goddamn trans girl she met want to see what was in her pants? 

“Nothing to say, huh?” the Principal grunted. “Then I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw you and another boy, Duquon Harris, sneaking into that same spot, holding hands. And then, about five minutes later, I saw you come out, buttoning up your pants.

“Sparkles,” Tammy managed, her friend’s name dissolving on her tongue. “His name is Sparkles,” she whispered again, then gave herself over utterly to defeat.

Aust:

Aust was swimming in victory sauce. He glided through Sherman High’s hallways, arms outstretched, basking in the magnificence of what he’d done yesterday. Sebastian Strong would love him for this. He was sure. His chest puffed out, his smile surgically attached to his face; the corridors ran with the stream of his self-assurance. And the stream was red, white and blue. Then he turned the corner — and the stream crashed into the fist-shaped dam of Christopher Eddington’s mitt.

Aust sprawled backwards, reaching his arms out for anything to keep him from biting the floor. But there was no support — no one to catch him, help him, or even see five guys pummeling him with fists and feet.

“What’s this all about?” he managed, spitting blood down his second favorite Romney shirt. 

“You know what you did?” Christopher fired. 

“What I did?” Aust returned fire. “What I did made this school a safer place!”

“Not for you,” Christopher cried, and signaled for the fishheads to kick him again.

Aust pushed himself up to sitting, then tried to stand

“Stay down, asshole,” Jeremy Dalton growled. 

So he was the new second now Christopher was calling the shots. 

“Where’s your fearless leader at?” Aust spat before he could even stop himself. He steeled his jaw for another barrage from the boys. But the assault didn’t come. 

“Not where you put him,” Christopher answered quickly. “No, he got out about a half hour after you ratted him to those government types.”

Christopher looked down at Aust, pity in his eyes. “No thanks to you,” he added. 

“So where is he?” Aust demanded. 

If this was all for JC, at least he wanted to face his accuser. 

“Staying the hell away from here,” Christopher informed him. 

Something about that statement bothered Aust, but he didn’t have time to process it before the fishheads hit him with another verbal assault. 

“You turned on your own,” Jeremy accused. 

“You so sure he’s one of us?” Aust redirected. He’d been hoping to lead them down the road to the same conclusion he’d made. That JC was of Mexican descent. Illegitimate son of some bastard union between his father and a ‘family friend’. Turned out it was the wrong direction.

Aust put his arms up to cushion the blows from the five swim team guys. They were stronger than he expected. Maybe he should go cheer at a few more meets before deciding they were all leg-shaving pussies.

“You’re not one of us,” Christopher chided after the beatdown had stopped. “You put yourself before the team.”

“Which team is that?” Aust asked, wishing for a minute that his mouth would stop digging his body deeper into quicksand. 

“You wanna hate on Mexicans,” Christopher responded, “we could give a shit. You wanna make America great again for you and all your red-hat-wearing buddies, we won’t stand in your way. But the second you start attacking good, honest white people, good, honest white people are gonna show you the meaning of people power!”

As if to underline his point, Christopher pulled his foot straight across Aust’s jaw. Then he pulled the rest of the swim team together and slipped off effortlessly away from the blood-spattered hallway. 

Good, honest white people? Aust would have laughed, if the movement didn’t make his face ache with it. Those guys were pretty tough in a group. Let’s see how tough they were staring down the barrel of an AR-15. He scooped himself up off the floor and wiped the blood from his split lip on the sleeve of his now ruined shirt. It was then he noticed he wasn’t alone. 

“What the fuck you staring at?”

he demanded of Tammy, who stood perhaps seven or eight feet away from him. “You never seen a guy get beat up before?”

“I never seen you get beat up before,” she replied. 

He took a step towards her, but she didn’t back away. Her body didn’t stiffen like it had that time when he’d confronted her in the bathrooms. 

“What, you gonna take a shot too?” he asked, pressing his hands to his ribs and feeling to see if any were cracked. 

“Not everyone is like you,” the trans kid replied. 

“There something I can do for you?” Aust demanded, pulling his hand from his side, satisfied nothing was broken

“You’re doing it,” the kid said again, a little smile inflating her cheeks. 

“Yeah, well if you ain’t gonna help: kindly fuck off!” Aust snapped, beginning to move in her direction down the hallway. 

“I ain’t gonna help,” Tammy reassured him.

“Mighty fine of you,” Aust crowed, trying his best not to favor his right leg as he walked. 

“Y’know, I oughta beat the shit out of you for what you did to my friend Juanito,” Tammy informed him coolly. 

“Who?” Aust retorted, stopping. 

“Tasha Alvarez,” Tammy confirmed. “Leastways that’s the name you gave to ICE.”

“And you’re gonna beat the shit out of me for that?” Aust ridiculed. “You? Even half dead I could wipe the floor with you.”

Tammy looked behind him.

“The floor needs wiping alright,” she said, chin-checking the blood where Aust had taken his beat down. 

“Yeah?” Aust growled, stepping right up in her face. “Why don’t you take your best—?”

Before he could react, his nose exploded under the force of Tammy’s fist. The shock of it felled him and sent him toppling back to the floor. Fresh blood stained his shirt and his ego. Aust cradled his nose and half-stood as he spoke. 

“Guess you are like me,” he sneered. 

“Go fuck yourself, Austin!” Tammy cried and turned away before he could see if those were tears in her eyes. 

It was as Tammy McIntosh walked away, hands thrust in her pockets probably to keep from murdering him, that Aust realized what it was that had been bothering him earlier. Ain’t no way JC McMillan would be too scared to come into school today. If he’d beaten the charges, if he’d waved his Promising Young Athlete card and swanned out of that detention center, he’d be swanning his way through the hallways of Sherman High, high on the wave of untouchable me. No — as Tammy slouched out of sight and Aust was free to wallow in his own self-pity — if JC McMillan was out and still wasn’t in school, then something else was keeping that rat bastard away. 

Hope:

This was the third time Hope had woken up today.The first time, she woke curled in agony, a deep, tearing pain clawing at her insides. Like cramps. Like stinging period pain. But worse than anything she’d ever experienced. She’d barely made it to the bathroom in time. When she noticed the blood, she began to cry. Then to wail. Then to sob mournfully. That was when her mother came in and called the ambulance. 

The second time she woke up, she was being wheeled through a hospital on a gurney. Doors banging open ahead of her. Dimly, she recalled being given something in the back of the ambulance ‘to help with the pain’. She remembered losing her grip on reality – and on her mother’s hand. It was the crashing of the hospital doors that jolted her awake. But only long enough to find the pain in her lower abdomen. Then she lolled her head back and welcomed the release of unconsciousness. 

This was the third time Hope had woken up today, and the room was filled with people. Her mother and father were the closest, each one clinging one of their daughter’s hands. Had her mother even let go since they got into the ambulance? She looked tired. Her eyes were tear-stricken and heavy with the weight of something— Hope couldn’t quite tell. 

Her father set his face in stony grimace. 

“She’s coming to,” he directed to Hope’s mother. 

“We were so worried,” her mother said to Hope. 

“What happened?” Hope slurred, then winced as she tried to move. Her lower abdomen pinched with a dull ache; the constant reminder of a pain barely held at bay by strong meds. 

“You had a bleed,” her mother said to her, squeezing her hand and speaking as lightly as she could. But Hope could see the weight of something pressing down on her face, sagging her cheeks so she appeared hollow and gaunt. 

“The doctors need to talk to you,” her father said, his voice tight.

Hope forced her eyes past her worried parents and to the faces of some of the other people in the room. One was a nurse, certainly. He adjusted her IV and checked something on Hope’s chart. The other was a doctor. Her blue scrubs and neck-slung stethoscope pressed past her parents and towards her. 

“How are you feeling?” the dark-skinned doctor asked. She looked Indian. 

“Terrible,” Hope replied. Speaking was difficult. Sleep still clutched at the sides of her head. Sleep and the low depression of something strong in her system. Hope forced the words out again, “What happened?”

The doctor looked between Hope’s parents. 

“You had a miscarriage,” she replied heavily. 

Hope tried to sink back into her pillow, tried to let the downy sleep tugging at her pull her under again, drag her down to some depths where language and sound were impossible. 

“Did you know you were pregnant?” the doctor asked. 

“No—” her father started. 

“—Yes,” Hope said at the same time. 

Both her parents turned to look at Hope. Her father’s mouth was open, his jaw slack. Her mother’s lips stayed shut, but her eyes — wide, darting — searched for an escape from the unmovable truth.

“What do you mean, yes?” her father cried; Hope felt his grip tighten on her hand. But it was her mother’s look that hurt Hope more. 

“Is that why you—?” she couldn’t finish the question. 

All Hope could see was her mother scooping her up from the blood-soaked, vomit-stained floor of their house. Carrying her upstairs. Putting her in the shower. Cleaning her up and calling the hospital and telling her, pleading with her daughter, to stay awake. Stay with her. Stay alive. 

“I’m sorry, mommy,” Hope whimpered. Her voice was small; her speech was thin. 

“Why she what?” Hope’s father demanded. “Carolyn, did you know about this?!”

Hope’s mother did not respond. 

“Who did this to you?” His gaze hit her like a hammer. “Was it that swim kid? JC? I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill him.”

Then he stopped. And looked. Past the doctor. Past the nurse. Out to the two other people in the room. They both wore suits. They weren’t doctors. 

“When can we take her home, Doctor?” Hope’s mother asked, lifting her head heavily. 

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” the doctor informed them, reading off Hope’s chart. “We found misoprostol in your daughter’s system,” she explained. 

“What’s that?” Hope’s father asked, his brow knotted, his jaw clenched. 

“I know what it is,” Hope’s mother cried and she her eyes bored into Hope. 

Her mother had never looked at Hope this way before. Even when she was twelve years old and she and her friends stole a bottle of her dad’s whiskey for a sleepover. There had been vomit then too. And recrimination. And secrets kept from a father and a husband. It had taken Hope nearly a year to earn back the trust that she had washed away. But that look was a pale spring breeze next to this typhoon. 

“Well what is it?” Hope’s father asks, turning once again to the doctor. 

“It’s used to bring about termination of a fetus,” the doctor replied. 

“What does that mean?” the man asked, his ignorance slipping. 

“It’s an abortion drug, Thomas,” Hope’s mother replied, her eyes still firmly holding her daughter in place. 

A voice cut through the tension. “Abortion’s illegal in this state.”

The two men stepped forward out of the recesses of the room. Hope could see the badges they wore on their belts now. 

“That’s five years minimum,” the other added. 

“So we need to know,” the first one picked up, looking through Hope, “did you do this to yourself?”