Chapter 3: 23 Days Earlier

Tammy:

It didn’t take long for the Instagram post to sweep around the student body at Sherman High, getting into every dirty nook and secluded corner of people’s DMs and groups chats. Now the morning had come, half-finished conversations left-on-read were picked up in earnest and dusted off, leaving everything coated in the worst motes of people’s imaginings. Everyone had a theory and they ranged from the wild to the utterly mundane. Tammy had little interest in either, but since she only had two friends and since it was the only topic of conversation at 8:15 in the morning, she had to at least tolerate it being talked about. So she sat outside the front of school and watched as the students arrived, some in cars, some on buses or on foot, and she let her friends talk. 

“Bet it’s some rat-catcher-guy looking to stir up publicity,” the girl to Tammy’s left declared. “I mean think about it. He’s coming to exterminate the vermin. It’s gotta be a joke, right?”

The girl went by the name of Sparkles (though the school insisted on calling her by her roll name, Duquon). Sparkles was a junior, nearly 5’8”, dark skinned and sporting a black Hard-Ons t-shirt under her open green parka. The tee was the subtlest of fuck-yous to the school. They took away her glitter and tutus; she wore a satanic-looking top in return. Her get-out clause was that if anyone actually looked at the design, they’d see it was Goofy and not a goat inside the yellow pentagram. Can’t ban Disney. Even if you can ban bathrooms. 

“I don’t know, Sparks,” the boy to Tammy’s right replied, “it didn’t feel like a piece of publicity to me.”

The boy was a sophomore like Tammy, tall and thin, light-brown skinned with short black hair and a stud through the top of his lip. He went by Juanito, though everyone else had pretty much reverted to calling him Tasha when he started wearing skirts again and using the girls’ bathroom like he was told. They were Sherman High’s trans kids. The last holdouts. 

“Whadda you think Tams?” Sparkles asked. 

“I think everybody loves themselves some drama,” Tammy replied coolly. “So long as it’s not their drama.”

“But you don’t think this is something to worry about?” Juanito asked, looking but failing to capture his friend’s gaze. 

“I think people make threats all the time,” Tammy replied, still looking ahead. 

“Ah-ah!” Juanito exclaimed, seizing on Tammy’s words, “so you do think it’s a threat.”

“I think someone made a threat, yeah,” Tammy clarified, looking for a moment at Juanito. “But I don’t think it’s a real threat, no. People talk shit all the time.”

“Who do you think made it?” Juanito asked, the devilish grin of a gossip-monger creeping into his jaw. 

But Tammy wasn’t grinning. She wasn’t even looking at her friend anymore. Her gaze was trained on the Sherman High swim team and their captain, pretty-boy, Bible-thumping JC McMillan. He was fist-bumping that wannabe Republican asshole Austin Freeman in the parking lot. The two of them were smiling and laughing about something. Probably some joke about who they were banging. Either that, or politics and religion cozying up to make America great again. Aust still had that stupid red hat in his hand. He was trying it on JC’s head and the two of them were joking about wearing it. Tammy tried hard to look away from JC. Tried hard not to see his smile and what lived in the sewer beneath it.

“Who do you think made the threat?” Juanito asked Tammy again. 

“There’s plenty of people to choose from,” Tammy replied, her gaze following JC as he joked and laughed with Austin Freeman and the others. 

“You know what I heard about him?” Sparkles asked, following Tammy’s gaze, pointing to JC and injecting just enough sass into her voice to suggest that what was about to follow was going to be really juicy. 

“What you hear?” Tammy asked, still looking through narrowed eyes at JC. 

“I heard he invited a bunch of the sophomores to a Christmas rainbow party up in the Heights that he was throwing for the fishheads. And only one sophomore girl was slutty enough to turn up. And she did all the guys there with about six different shades of lipstick.”

“Can they really get away with that?” Juanito asked. 

“Fishheads can get away with anything,” Sparkles replied. “They won state championships last year. If you’re in the team, you're a god amongst men.”

She went all wild-eyed and Johnny Depp when she said the last part; Tammy couldn’t decide if it was mockery or tribute.

“They make me wanna puke,” Juanito commented. Then waited a respectable second before asking, “Who was she? Who was the rainbow girl?”

Sparkles turned to her friend and waited a second or two herself for dramatic effect. 

“Hope. Davidson,” she said slowly and deliberately. 

“Miss Goodie Two Shoes?!” Juanito gasped. “No way!”

“Yes. Way,” Sparkles said just as slowly and just as deliberately. She was grinning. Tammy wasn’t really listening. This was more of what she’d just been talking about. Other People’s Drama. 

“Did you hear that, Tams?” Juanito asked, picking up the drama and passing it around like it was a bottle from his dad’s liquor cabinet. 

“No,” Tammy replied, still looking after where JC had disappeared through the school entrance with his gaggle of sycophants and hangers-on. “I heard something different than that. I heard something very different than that.”

Aust:

Aust had barely had time to get out of his cousin’s SUV before JC accosted him in the parking lot with his smooth grin and slicked back, once-blond hair.

“Austin Freeman, future leader of the free world!” JC greeted and stuck out his fist for Aust to bump. It was mild for January and Aust had his jacket open, revealing his favorite Mitt Romney-style checked shirt, white with blue cross-crossing. Aust extended his own fist in acknowledgement of the bump. 

“I’d just settle for leader of the good old US of A,” Aust joked, waving his cousin’s SUV off casually. He thought about adding ‘One day’, but he didn’t need to. This was JC. JC got people. 

“That’s literally the same thing,” JC joked back. “USA? The free world? We literally just said the same thing—”

“—Only different ways,” Aust finished his sentence, laughing. 

Inside, he was mentally picturing the very second when JC McMillan outlived his usefulness to him. When he would no longer have to put up with that smarmy, self-satisfied arrogance. JC was a tool (in just about every way possible), but he polled extremely well with pretty much every demographic. Aust mirrored the smile breaking out on the swim team captain’s face and the two withdrew their fists, each daring the other to deflate their upturned mouth first.

“So did you go through with it?” JC asked, still smiling and looking eye to eye with the 6’1” Austin Freeman. 

“Ahem,” Aust cleared his throat. “You are lookin’ at the newest, card-carryin’ member of this fine state’s Young Republican Party. Minus the actual card, of course.”

“They stiffed you on the card?”

“Oh the recruiter lady stiffed me alright,” Aust thrust with smirking, one-upmanship innuendo. 

“Hot?” JC inquired, doing his best to downplay the comment. 

“Smokin’. I got her number too,” Aust exaggerated. 

“Damn, that was fast. She got a friend?” JC asked with a curl of his lip. 

“You lookin’ for a hook up?” Aust replied, then stopped himself. 

A guy like JC didn’t need a guy like Aust to get him girls. Then why the hell did he ask him about it, Aust wondered.

“Only if she meets my usual high standards,” JC replied with an air of playfulness. 

“Pulse,” Aust replied, numbering off on his fingers dryly, “credit card and—”

“—Daddy issues!” they both said at the same time. 

Aust wondered at the similarity between the way a smile pushes the corners of the eyes together and the way a wince does much the same; he wondered if JC ever thought about that stuff.

You had to be careful with JC, Aust knew. The guy’s rep had a rep. and there were definitely limits to how friendly Aust wanted to appear with the Golden Boy of Sherman High. But he made a lot of sense to a lot of people when he talked. And the swim team all followed his lead. Aust understood the value of being in with all crowds. No matter what those crowds said they believed in. No place for morality if you had political designs. And Aust had some pretty major political designs. Popular kids like JC McMillan were just too good to pass up. Plus what they said in a mild January parking lot didn’t really matter; nobody important was listening anyway. 

“Hey JC,” Aust asked, looking around the parking lot and lowering his voice conspiratorially. “You wanna come up to the range at the Heights this weekend?”

“Shooting?” JC asked. 

“Just a little target practice,” Aust replied, suddenly feeling like he was taller than the swimmer somehow. More upright. 

“I don’t get up to the Heights much anymore,” JC replied diminutively. “Plus I got a swim meet in town.”

“They makin’ you swim all day now?” Aust asked with a curious cock of his head. 

“No, it’s a morning thing,” JC replied. 

“So you’re free in the afternoon then?” Aust pressed. Why was he even chasing this? The two weren’t that close. They hung out; they measured out their braggage together; but they kind of went to different parties. Aust looked down at the swimmer again. The way his hands fidgeted nervously at his mention of the Heights. Aust smiled. He knew exactly why he was chasing this. 

“I don’t know,” JC replied. It’s kind of a busy weekend for me.”

“You sure now?” Aust asked, looking around the other members of the team. “We still got a few of them Hunter Biden target sheets to shoot at?”

“It’s tempting,” JC replied. “Maybe I’ll swing by after I’m done winning.”

Aust smiled to himself and straightened up his red MAGA hat. 

“You should try out for the team,” JC added, suddenly straightening up himself. “With your size and strength, you could dominate in the breaststroke.”

The smile faded from Aust’s lips. 

“Maybe I’ll swing by,” he parroted back, unsure of how he was suddenly looking up at JC. 

“Hey, you know what you should do?” JC asked, changing the subject and draping a friendly, annexing arm around Aust’s shoulder. “You should wear your hat inside…”

“Inside the school?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They’ll take it off me for sure,” Aust replied, placing a firm hand on top of JC’s and squeezing it just a little harder than necessary. 

“Maybe not, man,” JC replied, withdrawing his arm. “Things are changing in this school. And we’re a big part of that. Soon enough, everyone’s gonna be wearing ‘em!”

“Once DJT fixes the country, we won’t need to wear ‘em anymore,” Aust sermonized.

“How do you think the country gets fixed?” JC asked, moving away but locking onto Aust with a meaningful gaze. “When ordinary folks like us make ordinary gestures like this.”

It wasn’t that Aust agreed with JC, but he found he wanted to. JC had that power over people. Aust had seen it (and heard about it a good deal more). The guy had a way of serving you ideas that you would swear were your own, then growing fat off the tips of that service.

“You gonna wear yours?” Aust asked him, refusing the bill. 

“Nah,” JC replied. “I don’t have mine with me.”

“You can wear mine,” Aust offered, taking his hat off and putting it loosely on JC’s head. 

“Nah. You’re good,” JC replied, passing the hat back. “But I tell you what I will do.” And he leant in and whispered in Aust’s ear. 

“All right,” Aust replied, stepping towards the school entrance and pulling his hat down firmly on his head. “You got yourself a deal.”

Rue:

Rue was shooting his usual favorite subject, politics, when he saw Aust Freeman breeze past the two School Resource Officers with his MAGA hat still on. They just waved him past the scanners like he was the Principal’s bow tie. The same SRO’s who had, only moments earlier, insisted on scanning Rue’s bag and his brown-bagged lunch, citing a ‘partial lockdown alarm’ yesterday. They didn’t scan Aust’s bag. Or JC’s. Or any of the swim team that swept through in the wake of their leaders’ self-appointed magnificence. 

“Heyyy!” Rue cried, breaking off his discussion about why any TikTok ban was really about the security risk of Americans talking to other Americans and marching down the hall to the school entrance. 

“No political symbols in school!” Rue stated, loud enough to ring out a reminder for anyone actually listening.

Aust let an innocent grin slide onto his face and looked around the hallway, gauging the temperature of the school. 

“What about that?” Aust asked finally, pointing out a small pin, almost lost amongst a sea of others, on the lapel of Rue’s battered tweed jacket. Rue looked down, picking out the one Aust was pointing to. 

“That's a United Farm Workers pin,” Rue replied. “They’re a farming union. My uncle works for them.”

“Trades unions are political organisations,” Aust announced to the gathering gaggle of onlookers. “You take the pin off and I’ll take the hat off,” Aust offered. 

“Dude, no one even knows who the UFW are,” Rue reasoned. 

“Then it’s a loser political symbol,” Aust admonished. “And I know who they are. They’re the people bringin’ food production to a halt in the midwest.”

“Workers have a right to strike!” Rue countered. 

“Also got the right to remain silent,” Aust grandstanded. “But I don’t see them exercisin’ that right.”

“I’m wearing this pin to support my family,” Rue explained through gritted teeth. 

“Well so am I,” Aust hit back, tapping his hat and grinning to show his own teeth.

Rue weighed his words, not to make sure they could hold his argument down against the storm that was circling, more to gauge if they would drag him overboard with them once he’d given them form.

“Fine,” he said at last, fumbling with the pin on his lapel. He decided this time to cut the anchor loose, undid the pin’s fasten and slid it noiselessly into the pocket of his jacket. 

“Your turn,” Rue gestured.

“To take the hat off?” Aust asked smugly and moved his hand up to its bill like he was genuinely considering it. “Sure. I’ll take the hat off. But you gotta answer me one question before I do.”

Rue looked around the packed hallway, exasperation beading itself on his forehead. This was just the sort of thing Aust was always pulling. You give him an inch and he takes a mile in every direction, forwards, sideways and upwards. Surely there was a teacher? A classroom assistant? Surely some adult in a position of authority could see what was going on here? Rue’s eyes settled on the two SROs by the main entrance. They stared. Intently. But they didn’t move. Just as intently. Seemingly held by the same paralyzing spell that now gripped the entire hallway. 

“What’s your question?” Rue asked dejectedly, forcing his eyes up to meet Aust’s, just below the jutting bill of that intrusive, red MAGA hat. 

“Well all this talk of strikes and protests and family members got me thinkin’,” Aust pontificated. “How does your family goin’ on strike help this great country?” 

Politics was Aust’s favorite topic too, Rue knew. Only Aust wielded politics like it was a cudgel, to subdue anyone who argued with him. 

“My family?” Rue replied, looking again at the motionless security guards; one of them was Hispanic, the other was African-American. Their identical badges sewn onto their uniforms in cheap, gold thread, reminded Rue of the shields he’d seen on toy, plastic knights.

“Your pa,” Aust clarified. “Your mamacita. Your Tio Pepe and all them folk from across the border that come round on Christmas and Cinco de Mayo to eat at Casa Camposano.”

At least he got his name right. Smug son of a bitch.

“Tio Pepe is a drink,” Rue corrected him. “My uncle’s name is Esteban. Esteban Rodrigo Camposano.” He trilled the Rs when he said it, puffing himself up in the chest. “And you know fucking well how striking improves working conditions for good, honest Amercians.”

“If I see any, I’ll let you know,” Aust joked and looked around for simpering approval from the crowd. There were nervous smiles and murmurs. They weren’t quite on-side yet. 

“See here’s the thing about a strike,” Aust went on. “It don’t help the company if they can’t get their produce out. And when that produce is basic food, it don’t help the community either.”

“I thought your fearless leader was going to lower the price of eggs,” Rue hit back.

Aust smiled back at him. Smiled the way a cat smiles at a canary.

“Ain’t no point in lowerin’ prices if there’s nothin’ on the shelves to buy,” Aust rounded on him. “And when there’s no food to buy, people gonna get angry. Now who you think they gonna turn that anger on, huh? The companies who are just tryin’ to make an honest buck and provide an honest service for them honest Americans you were talkin’ about? Or the people refusin’ to work? Strikin’ don’t make America great again and it don’t make your family noble for doin’ it. Just leaves them outta pocket and the rest of us outta bread.”

“My mom had to pay $3 at the Chinese market for bread the other day,” one of the swim team announced. “And it tasted like ass.”

“Well you’d know,” JC McMillan quipped; Aust smirked; Rue watched the faces of the crowd turn on him like a spring tide. They were pulling taut now, smiling, some breaking out into laughter. He’d seen this response before. It was the ebb before the tsunami-swell that washed up hate and left only resentment in its wake. He flet like he was about to get flattened by his own jettisoned anchor. This was for what happened in class yesterday. When Rue had cornered Aust about MAGA voters.

“Go on,” Aust prompted Rue. “Answer the question.”

“Going on strike helps to make better conditions for workers,” Rue replied. It was a weak response. He knew it was. He was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing full-well how Aust would beat him with it.

“There you have it, ladies and gentlemen,” Aust summarized. “Strike’s gonna make it better for the workers and hang the rest of us.”

Rue tried to speak, but words were swallowed up in the cacophony of jeers and the general breaking swell of any emotion long enough held still by silence. 

“That’s not what I said!” Rue cried, but the seas — that had seemingly parted to allow Aust’s comment — now closed again just as quickly to drown out Rue’s rejoinder. 

“I don’t matter what you said,” Aust said, leaning in close so Rue could hear him deliver his lesson. “Only matters what they heard.”

With that, Austin Freeman pushed past Rue, letting his shoulder check the smaller student out of his way. 

“What about the hat?!” Rue cried after Aust. “You said you’d take the hat off if I answered your question. I answered your question. Or does the word of Austin Freeman mean nothing?!”

Aust stopped, smiled and turned to Rue. 

“My word?” he asked, looking Rue squarely in the eyes.

He took a couple of steps towards Rue and reached up towards the bill of his hat. 

“You can have my word,” Aust drawled. “And more.”

He gripped the front section of the visor, pulled the hat off and positioned it quickly on top of Rue’s head. 

Rue knocked it onto the floor before Aust had even finished baiting him. 

“Looks good on you, hombre. You should keep it,” Aust offered.

A kind of wildness took Rue’s eyes. Like something angry and terrible was fighting to find a way back up out of some long-suppressed subterranean slumber. Rage, raw and untempered, with naively simple intent. 

“You gonna hit me now?” Aust asked casually, squaring up and staring down as Rue’s eyes filled with tears. 

“No,” Rue swore. “I don’t believe violence is the answer.”

Aust squatted down and reached out an unerring hand for his hat, never taking his eyes off Rue’s own. 

“Then maybe you’re askin’ the wrong questions…” Aust replied, smiled, stuffed his hat into his back pocket, and slunk off down the hallway. 

Hope:

The endless questions of Counselor Weinberg’s counseling sessions always left Hope drained. They wrung her thin and left her numb to the world. Weinberg characterized the numbness like it was a veil, descending to cloud Hope’s eyes and ears and leave the world indistinct and fuzzy. And it could be blown away as lightly, with just a little application and intent. But Hope thought of the numbness more like a blister. Something that grew out of her and around her to protect her from the outside world. She had no intention of blowing it away.

The outside world was loud and bright and full of people talking about the most inane things. How mild it was for January. Which top went with which skirt. The price of eggs. Small talk. Hope thought small talk was the human equivalent of what dogs did when they sniffed each other’s butts. Are you friendly? 

Will you talk to me? 

Do you bite?

It didn’t really matter what was said. They were just feeling each other out. It was how people broke down barriers, she supposed. That was what Weinberg was trying to do: pop her blister; break down her barriers. And Hope had thrown a lot of barriers up since the Incident. That’s what they were calling it. The Incident. Probably because ‘Incident’ (always with a capital ‘I’) was easier to deal with than some of the other, more combative words Hope wanted to use to describe it. ‘Incident’ made it sound somehow more manageable, more approachable, reduced it in size; made it small talk. 

Counselor Weinberg had been asking a lot about the Incident today. She’d pressed Hope on it three times. Maybe she’d decided Hope was ready to talk about it now. Or — at the very least — if she didn’t start soon, she might never get it out. The counselor’s thin reassurances still hummed in her head, like part of a tune heard in early childhood, half-remembered and the words all wrong. 

‘I shouldn’t have gone to a senior’s party,’ Hope recriminated. 

‘It’s not your fault,’ Weinberg had reassured. 

‘I shouldn’t have worn that short dress,’ Hope blamed. 

‘It’s not your fault,’ Weinberg had said again, passing her the tissues this time. 

There was something else Hope shouldn’t have done. She carried it around like an anchor, or an albatross from Mr Nimzike’s English class. 

‘I shouldn’t have said yes,’ Hope cried. 

‘It’s not your fault,’ the counselor underlined. 

But it was her fault. She felt it. She knew it. You can’t say yes to a guy and then change your mind after he’s finished, right? She was 16, he was 17. She’d given consent. There was no case to answer as far as the authorities were concerned. Not that she’d involved them by choice. And anyway, it wasn’t just that night: awful, painful, buried. It was what came afterwards. Hope scratched at the bandage on her arm. 

The hallways of Sherman High were usually clear when Hope finished her sessions with the counselor. True, that was because Hope usually ducked out early to cry or hide without an audience. But today it was two minutes into recess when Weinberg let her go. Today the audience seemed to flank her on both sides. An honor guard of bright and loud people babbling inanely. They seemed to turn towards her as she passed them, each group tracking her for a moment, then returning to their conversations. It was her imagination, she was sure. Like some spot lit corridor dropping away into darkness and silence in both directions, except where she was. 

Hope felt her chest tightening. 

What if they know? Not just about that night? All of it? 

What will they say? What will they call me? What will I do?

Her pulse raced and her head throbbed with the pressure of her blood hammering on the doors of her body, hammering to get out, to release the pressure; beneath her bandage, her arm ached. 

Her breathing dropped. 

I have — to get out — of here. 

The walls of her protective blister were collapsing around her exposing something raw and painful beneath; her vision narrowed, elongated. She’d felt this before; she knew what was coming.

Hope tried to think about anything to stop the rising panic from taking her. Her family and friends—

—who weren’t talking to her anymore. 

Her nice safe, suburban house in the nice, safeHeights—

—that didn’t feel so safe anymore.

She held onto the one thing she was certain of, the one thing she had been told again and again—

—It’s not your fault. 

The girls’ bathroom at the end of the hall seemed so far away. People were turning toward her now — it wasn’t her imagination. They were saying things, muffled and indistinct. 

Are you okay?

Do you need help?

Why are you so weak?

Platitudes. Butt sniffing. Small talk. 

Sniff-sniff. Be my friend. 

Sniff-sniff. Talk to me. 

Sniff-sniff. I don’t bite. 

She smiled through it all. Smiled though they might have been throwing shade and blame and horrors upon her. 

It's your fault, you know?

Smile-smile. 

You can’t change your mind afterwards. 

Smile-smile. 

You’re a slut and you got what you deserved. 

Smile—

She forced the door to the bathroom open and poured herself inside its safe space. There were people in here too. It was recess, of course, there were bound to be. She couldn’t take any more judgmental faces. She thought for a second on wheeling about and just bolting for the front gates of school. This wasn’t a prison. They couldn’t keep her here against her will. Her mom would come from work and pick her up if she asked, she knew she would. She’d be there with the ‘There-there-dears’ and the ‘I-knew-it-was-too-soons’. She didn’t know the half of it. The worst of it. 

No one did. 

Yet. 

But the people weren’t looking at Hope. They didn’t even see her come in. They were staring instead at the space on the wall just above the basins. Hope didn’t see it at first. Like one of those ‘can’t unsee’ memes, she saw only what she expected: the walls, the basins, the mirrors; normality. 

But then something twisted in her vision. Something righted her eyes like a smack on a faulty television set. Something twisted at the static of her insides with it. Her arms pulled themselves around her waist as far as they would go. Her throat closed off and tears stabbed their way through her already puffy eyes. 

There, scrawled on the front of every mirror in large black sharpie writing were the words: ‘Your body, my choice. Bitch!’