Chapter 4: 21 Days Earlier

Rue:

“Hurry up, Papi,” Rue complained, “I’m gonna miss the bus!”

Rue rode the bus to school. It was a five minute walk to where it set down each morning; two minutes if you ran. The bus picked up in nine minutes. Rue hated to be late. 

“I'll walk you down,” Rue’s father replied ominously, grabbing his coat off the hook. “We got plenty of time. I can talk on the way.”

Rue rolled his eyes. 

“Alright then.”

Rue’s father, Alvaro Camposano, was a thin, wiry man. In his youth he had been a long distance runner. But a busted knee and a busted bank account kept him from going much beyond a local level. He’d already slowed down, even before the first of his four children arrived. Rue was the third. These days it seemed like the old man never got out of the gates at all. 

“What is it you want to talk about?” Rue asked, running through his head the possible reasons his father could have for pulling him aside. 

A complaint from school? 

A visit from one of those MAGA assholes?

A sick relative back in Mexico? Not his Abue, surely?

“Well, you know Pablo is moving in with Jessica next month?” Rue’s father began. 

Great. This was about his older brother, Señor Estupendo. 

“Uh-huh,” Rue grunted. Then added, “She’s his wife. His pregnant wife.”

“And your sister Isabella is already working two jobs?”

“At the diner?” Rue responded. He was pretty sure that was just one job. Did he mean she’d taken on extra shifts?

“No,” his father replied, earnestly. “She’s taken on some singing lessons too. Up in the Heights. In her free time.”

Isabella worked 10 hour shifts five days a week, Rue knew. She didn’t have ‘free time’. He slowed his pace for a second. He didn’t like where this was going. 

“Well, I was thinking,” his father went on, “how maybe you could help out some around the house.”

“You want me to do chores?” Rue asked, quickening his pace again. 

“No, not housework,” Alvaro replied, pulling him back a little. “You know how your mother does the laundry for the abuelas on the street? Well maybe if you helped her she could do more. Take on more clients.”

“You want me to fold sheets with Mama?” Rue asked, his tone choked with disbelief. 

“Or get a part time job, whatever—” his old man replied, struggling to match his son’s pace. 

“Papi, I’ve got the ACTs coming up. I need to study. If I don’t get into a decent college, I won’t get a decent job.”

Rue’s father stopped. Rue was two paces past him before he noticed. The old man had a look on his face. Rue had seen it only once before. When their dog got hit by a car when he was in sixth grade. He could still remember the low, mournful howling; the desperate, doggy cry for help from its human. Provider of Food. Scratcher of Ears. Fixer of Broken Things. He remembered the blood and the whining and that look. It had been an act of kindness, in the end. An end to his suffering. They didn’t have the money for a veterinarian. They didn’t have the money. 

“Dad, I gotta go to college,” Rue said, jumping ahead in the conversation. 

He watched his father wince when he called him ‘Dad’ instead of ‘Papi’.

“It’s just for a year,” his father replied. “Just to get us through. Then you can go the year after. I promise you can.”

He’d promised Pablo the same thing. Four years ago. Then a part time job turned into a full time job. Jobs. A wife. A kid. Now a new home. Pablo had lost thirty lbs since getting married. Sure, he smiled and he laughed, but what was behind it was somehow thinner. Rue had been 13 then. It was then he realized that the Camposanos didn’t pass on wealth, they passed on the cycle. The next cog in the wheel of a system built to grind you down, to reel in the ladder; even as you reached for the next rung, you were being pulled back into the mud. 

“Well, can’t you ask for more shifts at the farm?” Rue grasped. 

Alvaro worked at one of the industrial farming greenhouses owned by Tomasantos. They grew tomatoes hydroponically. It was a year-round industry. 

“I don’t think there are going to be any more shifts at the farm,” Alvaro replied, lowering his head. 

“But—”

“I don’t think there are going to be any more shifts for us, son.”

Rue didn’t ask what that meant. He didn’t have to. 

“Well can I at least finish up the year?” Rue asked. “Graduate? See my friends?”

“Hey, sure you can,” Alvaro reassured him. “We’re just talking about a part time job here. Working Saturdays, maybe. You can pick up something more in the summer. I’ll talk to your uncle Esteban. They always need packers at the warehouses. Strike’s gonna be over any day now. Este told me.”

Great, Rue thought. Grocery packer. Filling crate after crate to order for stores and restaurants and middle-class, farmbox-ordering, white households. Washing the dirt and chicken-shit fertilizer off your boots every evening. It was a minimum wage job. School was supposed to be a gateway to something so much more. Rue fixed a smile on his face and tried to hold together the pieces of his broken heart. 

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever we need. Make the call.”

“It’s just for one year,” his father whispered to him. But the look on his face screamed otherwise. Screamed and whined like a dying dog that took two hits not one to finish off. 

“I know,” Rue replied and started walking again. He didn’t want to miss his bus. It was important he was at school on time. It was important he was at school. 

Aust:

Aust’s left knee jiggled involuntarily. He hated sitting outside the Principal’s office. Ever since he was a little kid. He hated the thought of being in trouble. The trouble itself he could deal with, but the anticipation of it played on his nerves. Particularly when it blindsided him like this had done. A note, brought to his third period English class. Mr Nimzike had read it to himself silently when the hall monitor arrived, folded it again, then called Aust out to the front and handed it to him. 

The words had been a jumble on the page. Aust didn’t read so quickly with cursive, but two words jumped out at him. ‘Principal’s Office’. He didn’t embarrass himself in front of the class by reading the rest there. He’d read it while he was cooling his heels. Principal Edwards was an expert at making people wait, stretching out the dread like a slow drip. Aust had read the note five times now. No additional information. No clues. Just, ‘Austin Freeman to report to the Principal’s Office’ on a matter of school discipline.’ At least he knew he was in trouble. That was something, he supposed. His left knee jiggled involuntarily. 

“The Principal will see you now.” Miss Summers waved Aust in. 

“Mr Freeman, sit down please,” Edwards instructed. Aust sat. Principal Edwards was a large man. Dark-skinned with a thick, bristling mustache and a barrel belly which he did his best to hide from day to day behind a series of flamboyant, triple-XL waistcoats. He even wore a chain on the checkered one (the one he was wearing today, in fact). Smart money said there was nothing on the end of it. Edwards was a man who kept up appearances, but dig a little deeper and you come up empty. No wealth. No name. A little education. But he knew how to play the game of politics, like Aust did. He’d be up for Superintendent in a few years, so long as he steadied the ship here. So long as he didn’t let the students get away with murder. 

“How can I help you, sir?” Aust began, clamping down on his knee to keep it from moving. It would be over in a second. In a second, he’d know what this was about. And then the game would begin. 

“It’s been a long time since I saw you in that chair,” the Principal replied, pulling his half-moon glasses down his nose. 

“Graffiti,” Aust reminded him. “On some lockers.”

“I seem to recall you wrote, ‘Build the Wall’ on the lockers of some of our Hispanic students,” Edwards reminded him back. 

“That was a long time ago, sir,” Aust replied. “Just dumb kids stuff.”

“Mhm,” Edwards grunted noncommittally.

So what if it was on Aust’s permanent record. Bush had survived worse. And Cheyeny. Trump too. Everybody makes mistakes. And boys will be boys. 

“That what this is about?” Aust asked. 

“In a manner of speaking,” the Principal replied with measured caution. He moved, then clicked the mouse of his desktop computer and turned the monitor around for Aust to see. It was a picture of a bathroom. In school. Some basins and some graffiti on the mirrors. Aust took his time to read the graffiti. Something about ‘bodies’ and ‘bitches’.

“This is that Nick Fuentes thing,” Aust informed the Principal. “Don’t know him, myself. Don’t follow him online.”

“Oh, I know what it is,” Edwards replied, staring menacingly at Aust. 

“But you can’t think I wrote that,” Aust hit back. “Ain’t even my handwriting.”

“No, we know who wrote it,” Principal Edwards admitted. 

“So it’s an open-and-shut case then,” Aust summarized. “So why d’you call me in here?”

“Watch your tone, young man,” the Principal admonished. 

Aust said nothing. 

“I called you in here,” Edwards explained after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, “to see what you thought about it.”

“What I—?”

“—Go on,” the Principal gestured at the screen. 

Aust narrowed his eyes. Was this some trick? Some attempt to get him to incriminate himself in some misogynistic plot? Get him kicked out of school? Or was this going the other way? Was he being groomed? Recruited by Edrwards for some women-hating cult. No. Edwards was the biggest Dem in the school. Ain’t no way he’d be courting any anti-feminist feeling. 

“Well,” Aust replied, clearing his throat, “I think the penmanship is lousy and unless it was written by some self-hatin’ female at this school, you can add trespassin’ in the wrong bathroom to your perp’s list of crimes. Probably one of them trans kids, if you ask me.”

“What do you think about the message, Mr Freeman?” Principal Edwards growled. 

“I think that’s some misogynistic bullspit right there, sir and I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.”

He could play the ally. He could play any role Edwards needed to believe.

“Really?” Edwards asked, looking down low across the rim of his spectacles. 

“Really,” Aust confirmed. 

Principal Edwards reached for a piece of yellow paper on his desk and slid it in front of Aust.

“Then why do I have a signed statement sheet from ‘the perp’, as you say, stating this was all your idea?”

Aust scanned the statement. More lousy cursive. 

“Well?” Edwards pressed. 

Aust was barely halfway through the statement. He skipped to the signature at the end. 

No!

It couldn’t be!

JC McMillan! 

“Mr McMillan says that you put him up to this, Mr Freeman,” Edwards explained. “Said this was part of some bet with you. I called you in here to give you the chance to explain yourself.”

This was about the other day. In the parking lot. What JC had whispered to him. He’d hung him out to dry. That son of a bitch. 

“No sir,” Aust countered quickly. “There was no bet. I never put anyone up to nothin’. He told me he was gonna send a message to his haters. Never said what it was.”

“And what did you say?” Edwards probed. 

“I—”

“Well?”

“I told him to go for it,” Aust conceded. 

“So you sanctioned it?” Edwards entrapped. 

“I ain’t in a position to sanction anythin’ with JC McMillan,” Aust retorted. “I ain’t his pastor or his pa.”

“When you first came to Sherman High I had a difficult time trying to figure you out, Mr Freeman,” Edwards explained. “But now I see you very clearly.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Aust replied, straightening up. “Cos I see you clearly too, sir.”

He was overreaching, Aust knew. But it was now or never to play whatever hand he had. 

Edwards sighed resignedly. 

“And what do you see, Mr Freeman?” he asked. 

“I see someone who has to dish out a punishment for this little misdemeanor. Someone who has to choose between their all-state, all-star swimmer with a bright future and a political troublemaker. Where is the Sherman High Swim Team sittin’ in the league, right about now?”

“You see far,” Edwards replied, turning his monitor around and clicking some more with the mouse. “And they’re top. Haven’t lost a meet all season.”

“Uh-huh,” Aust replied. 

“The truth of the matter is that I have to punish someone over this and I have to punish them now. Mr McMillan’s punishment can wait until after the season is over. What I need right now is—”

“—A sacrificial lamb,” Aust interjected. 

“Succinctly put, Mr Freeman,” Edwards replied. “You'll serve a three-day suspension for putting Mr Freeman up to this, starting today. And then you’ll come back on Tuesday like nothing ever happened.”

Edwards picked up his pen and began to sign the paperwork already laid out on his desk. 

“You forgot to ask my price,” Aust replied; the principal’s pen stopped cold.

“Mr Freeman, you are in no position to—”

“—I get to wear the hat,” Aust said, pulling his MAGA hat out of his back pocket. “That’s my price. For keepin’ your little secret. And not a word of this on my permanent record.”

“I have to put it on your permanent record,” Edwards came back. 

“No, you just have to say that’s what you did,” Aust countered. “How often are those things actually read by anyone other than you?”

“You don’t want the stain?” Edwards clarified. 

“I don’t want this poppin’ up when I’m in the middle of a campaign for somethin’, sir,” Aust explained. 

“I see I had the right measure of you,” Principal Edwards commented and sat comfortably behind his barrel chest. 

“I think we sized each other up pretty well,” Aust agreed.

“You can wear the hat on Fridays,” Edwards conceded. “We’ll call it a ‘dress down’ rule. And this will stay off your permanent record.”

“Deal,” Aust said, and — without waiting to be asked — stood up and left the room. 

Tammy:

Tammy pounded the wall as she sat in the far stall of the boys’ bathroom and took her pee. Someone, some damned snitching busybody — probably that roll-over classroom assistant Hernandez — had taken their beef with Tammy straight to the principal. So that now — when she asked to be excused to use the bathroom — she was escorted by a male member of the faculty to the ‘bathroom for the gender you were assigned at birth.’

She felt cold. No – angry. Damned angry. All those struggles, all those battles she’d won down the years for recognition. All of that was just flushed down the toilet like wastewater. Tammy finished up and flushed, watching her dreams of a normal life disappear. At least she’d gone in class time. No chance of running into anyone. This was humiliation enough; having to share it would be unbearable. 

She exited the stall and washed her hands. There was a silhouette outside the door to the hallway. Had that asshole teacher waited to make sure she didn’t sneak out and use the bathroom across the hall? No. That wasn’t a teacher. That was—

The door opened. 

—Great, Tammy thought. This day can’t get any worse. 

“So you finally figured out which was the right bathroom,” Aust said as he breezed into the room. 

“The right room is whichever one you’re not in,” Tammy responded. 

“Well now I got a right to be here,” Aust replied. “Leastways for the next two minutes or so. Then I’m headin’ out. Gonna take a couple of days to myself.”

Tammy couldn’t resist the bait. 

“They're kicking you out?!”

Aust smiled down his nose at her. 

“Let’s just say I’m taking one for the team,” he answered. 

“Fine,” Tammy replied. “I hope they never let you back in.”

“Well now what you got against me?” he asked, still standing between her and the door. “You’re not in my year — yeah, I know you was skipped—”

“—Twice,” Tammy informed him, and held up two fingers to illustrate. 

“—You don’t even know me,” Aust concluded. 

“I know the type,” Tammy replied. “I know that look. That hat!” She pointed at where his MAGA was sticking out of his back pocket. 

“I think you’ve prejudged me,” Aust replied. “See this hat?” He pulled it out from his pocket. “This hat says ‘Patriot’. I want what’s best for this country.”

“And what’s best for this country is telling people where they can take a piss?” Tammy exploded. 

“Well alright, let’s talk about that,” Aust replied calmly. 

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore about anything,” Tammy informed him. 

“Afraid you’ll lose?” he asked.

“I ain’t afraid of nothing,”’Tammy stated. 

“See but you are though,” Aust pointed out. “Your voice, the way you stand, the way you’re keepin’ yourself at a good distance from me — hell, your whole body language screams that you’re uncomfortable.”

“I’m uncomfortable because you won’t let me leave,” Tammy accused. 

“No, you’re uncomfortable because I’m bigger, older and stronger than you. I’m in a dominant position and it makes you feel intimidated.”

“I said I was uncomfortable,” Tammy corrected. “I never said I was intimidated.”

“Right,” Aust agreed. “And how do you think all them women feel having someone who’s bigger and stronger in their bathroom? In between them and the door? You think they feel uncomfortable? You know 81% of women are on the receivin’ end of some form of sexual assault in their lifetime?”

“And 43% of men too,” Tammy hit back. Then added, “You wanna know what 99% of all those cases have in common? The person doing the assaulting was a guy!”

“You don’t see it do you?” Aust asked, looking Tammy up and down. “They don’t see you as a girl. To them, you’re no different than I am. To them you are the 99%.”

“We are different,” Tammy countered. “Because I’m not the one standing in a bathroom refusing to let another human being leave it.”

“I didn’t refuse you nothin’!” Aust argued, stepping away from the door and placing his hat back in his pocket. “You stayed cos you know that if you didn’t, you’d lose this argument.”

“If you have to intimidate someone to win an argument, then you already lost,” Tammy explained. 

“See?” Aust replied coolly. “You was intimidated. Guess now you know what it feels like for all those real women.”

That was a kick in the gut; Tammy felt it land, but refused to be doubled by it. She just stood facing him, defiant.

He reached behind him and held the door open for her. 

“Makes for a pretty convincin’ argument, don’t it?”

She wouldn’t let him see how he’d wounded her. Wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of letting out a single self-pitying tear nor rage-filled, barbaric yawp. Tammy stepped into the doorway and took the handle from him. 

“You’re an asshole, Austin,” she confronted, controlling her tone. “And I hope one of these days you get everything that’s coming to you.”

Hope:

Hope found him in that place she usually went to get lost. She’d claimed it as her own, she thought. On extended-bathroom breaks and early-exit counselling sessions. The stairwell in D-corridor. It was her own quiet place. Down past the shop rooms, towards the bottom end of the school where no one went. No one but her. But now he was there. Body drawn up into the same position she owned. Knees pulled into chest, head down and low, air sucked out of lungs through low, mournful sobs. 

“Are you alright?” she asked him, her arms closing around her midriff. He was in the year above. A senior. One of the Mexican students she didn’t really mix with. 

“I’m just—” Rue looked up and saw who it was he was talking to. 

“—I’m fine,” he lied, wiping away his tears on the sleeve of his jacket. 

“It's okay to cry,” Hope tendered. Then added, “My therapist says.”

That got his attention, the way Hope had wanted to. But the instant his eyes fell upon her, she wished it away. Pity swam in those eyes. Pity and empathy that threatened to drown her. He’d seen her now. That was enough. Did they really have to push off into the waters she had just drawn?

“I know you,” Rue replied before Hope could turn away “You get the same bus as me. Only I get off before you. At Santana Valley.”

“I live in the Heights,” Hope told him, still standing a few feet away from him. Her hands went down to the baggy pants she was wearing, her palms rubbed against the sides of them.

“Nice houses in the Heights,” Rue commented. “Nice people there too.”

“You're just saying that cos you don’t live there,” Hope corrected. “Not all of them are nice.”

There was that lookin his eyes again. A reaching, floundering pity; an arm flailing above the waterline for anyone to take. Hope quickly tacked away. 

“I come here sometimes,” she explained. “To get away from all the crazy.”

“It’s a nice quiet place for it,” Rue agreed. Then added, “I’m sorry, do you want to be alone here?”

She didn’t. 

“I do,” she replied. 

Rue stood to leave. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, “I didn’t know this space was taken. I’ll go be morose somewhere else.”

“Wait!” Hope called after him. Wait what? Was she really calling him back? She barely knew this guy. They shared the same bus: so what? They shared the same pain. 

“It was you,” she stated. “The other day. With that MAGA bully.”

“Austin Freeman,” Rue admitted. 

“Did he do something to you?” Hope asked. “Is that why you were crying?” 

“I wasn’t crying,” Rue corrected her. 

“Is that why you were upset?” she pressed him. 

“No,” Rue replied. “I mean—”

“It’s okay,” Hope reassured him, sitting on one of the short stairs and inviting Rue to sit a few feet away from her against the wall. He sat. He drew his knees into his chest again. 

“It’s my dad,” Rue informed her. Hope listened, knees together, body at a slight angle. Feet positioned so she could spring up and run or else extend a kick. She thought about these things now. She thought about a lot of things now. 

“Is he okay?” Hope asked, fearing more that the drawn out conversation the answer might draw her into than she feared the answer itself. 

“He's gonna lose his job,” Rue replied. “This week. Next. Doesn’t matter. The farm he works on is cutting down.”

“Oh, he owns a farm?” Rue replied without thinking. The expression on the boy’s face told her that his father did not own a farm. 

“And assholes like Austin Freeman and JC McMillan — white people — they don’t get it.” Rue looked at Hope, maybe noticing the color of her skin for the first time. “White men don’t get it,” he corrected himself.

Had he noticed her flinch at the mention of JC McMillan’s name? That momentary, rising panic that took up root in her stomach and spread like a withering sickness throughout every corner of her body. Involuntarily, she wrapped her arms around her waist again. 

“People talk about male privilege or white privilege,” Rue went on. “But it’s all the same. If you’re never the butt of the joke, you don’t know what it feels like.”

“I know what it feels like,” Hope shared with him. “And not just jokes. More than that. It’s not being listened to. It’s not being believed. It’s being told to shut up and be the good little girl—”

“—Be the friendly Mexican,” Rue interjected. 

“Be whatever they want you to be. Just don’t be loud. Don’t be brash. Don’t be in the way.”

“I get you,” Rue confederated. 

Hope wasn’t sure that he did. 

“There’s a lot of bad people at Sherman High,” Hope commented. “Sometimes I wish someone would just—”

“What?” Rue asked, sitting up and leaning a little towards Hope. 

Instinctively, she leaned a little back and wedged her foot against the wall in case she needed leverage. 

“You know that comment someone posted on the school Insta?” Hope redirected. 

“Yeah?” Rue replied. 

“That!”

“You want someone to come and exterminate the vermin?” Rue asked, leaning back and away from Hope now. 

“But only the bad people. Y’know?” Hope clarified. “Like only the people who really, really deserve it?”

“I don’t know,” Rue answered, growing suddenly dramatic. “It’s only those who never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood...’”

“That’s poetic,” Hope replied, permitting herself an inner smile. “Who said that?”

“Ha,” Rue grunted. “It was General Sherman. The guy the school is named after.”

“I thought the school was named after a tank,” Hope interposed. 

“Tank was named after the guy too,” Rue added. 

His tone was comforting. Like he’d just schooled her, but wasn’t lauding it over her. It gave her a momentary melt to the wiry agitation that flushed anxiety through her veins at being this close, this alone, this open with another guy. 

“I bet General Sherman never had to survive a r—” then she stopped herself. Just for a second. Just in time. Then she continued, “— A really dumb high school.”

“I think they only had really smart high schools back in his day,” Rue quipped back. 

Hope smiled. 

“You’re funny,” she said.

“Ruben,” he offered. 

“You’re funny, Ruben,” she said, feeling the root of something dislodge and break away inside her. “You’re one of the good ones.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to exterminate me?” he asked with a playful smirk. 

“Not right away,” she replied. 

Then pressed her leverage and stood and turned and left.