by Cody Wagner
Halfway down the hall, Roze gestured to an open room. We walked in and I panicked, grabbing both sides of the doorway. Luke stood on the bed, talking. He was surrounded by a group of people, including all the jocks. This was enemy territory.
Other students sat around him, including Cassie, who was on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest. Taking a deep breath, I went straight to her and sat down. Roze joined us and we formed a tight little ball.
Luke saw us taking our seats and he stopped. I waited for an insult. Instead, he said, “OK we have some new arrivals so let me recap.”
He bobbed up and down on the bed.
“Zimmerman’s Zealots are planning another protest in two weeks.”
I joined a small group saying things like, “Yuck.”
Luke held up a hand.
“They’re protesting a gay pride rally in Little Rock, which is only a couple hours away.”
He looked right at me.
“We’re going to the the protest.”
I jerked back, almost falling over. “Really?”
He glared at me. “Yes, really. We may not be able to do much, but at least we can show our support.” A few people clapped. I was terrified. We were going to a Zimmerman’s Zealots protest!? There was no way Luke and Darrin knew how messed up they really were.
“How are we getting there?” a guy in the corner asked.
“Bus,” Luke said.
“I don’t have money,” a girl said, looking down at the floor.
“Don’t worry,” Luke said. “If you don’t have enough, we’ve got you covered.”
The girl raised a skeptical eyebrow, as if this were a big prank. I could see why; she had bad acne and I guessed Luke and Darrin made fun of her.
Luke held up his hand again. I admit he had a commanding presence.
“This is bigger than the stupid school. Doesn’t it tick you off every time you see Zimmerman’s Zealots laughing and dancing? I mean, here we are, all safe at Sanctuary, while other people are out there suffering. Because of them. Doesn’t that bother you?” He paused then added, “Zimmerman’s Zealots are nasty, but they have every right to protest. And so do we.”
“What do you think we should do?” Roze asked. “We can’t expose ourselves. We might screw the school. What if someone ended up on TV?” She was clearly skeptical. I had to say, I couldn’t blame her. This seemed awfully risky.
“She’s right,” a guy in front of me said. “What if we get caught and people are expelled? Or what if the school is closed?”
Luke pointed at him. “Sometimes you have to take risks to stand up for yourself. I’d risk expulsion to protest.” Then he pointed at Roze. “But you pansies don’t have to worry. I have a plan that should keep us all under the radar. This is what we do—we infiltrate them.”
“Huh?” someone said.
“We infiltrate them,” Luke repeated. “We pretend to be them. We’ll make our own signs and join them.”
There were a few astonished grumbles and Luke raised his hands.
“Let me finish.” When everyone was quiet, he continued, “We pretend to be them. That way, if we’re on camera, we look like them. But, when I give the signal, we attack.”
“With like weapons?” the guy in the corner said.
A few people chuckled, as if it were a joke, but Luke’s eyes sparkled. “Sort of, yes.”
The laughter stopped as Luke pointed at us. “When I give the signal, we all put on face masks.” He bent down and grabbed what looked more like pantyhose than a mask. He held it up and said, “Then we pelt them with paint balloons. We destroy their signs. We break up their dancing. We wreak whatever havoc we can.” He pointed to a piece of poster board in the corner. “Our signs will be reversible. On the back, we’ll put messages about equality and, when all hell breaks loose, we’ll turn them around and attack.”
I perked up. This actually sounded kinda cool.
Luke looked around again. “We’ll have about five minutes, tops, before we have to escape.” With that, he shrugged. “Well, that’s the plan. It’s the best I can do and it’s still risky. But if we do this right, it will work. So, over the next two weeks, we have to get together and plan.”
He sat down and clasped his hands together. “First thing’s first: we need people to come to the protest. We’re not forcing anyone. If you decide you’re too chicken to join us, it’s whatever. But, if anyone tells a teacher, you’ll be sorry. Trust me on that.” I could only imagine how awful they’d be to someone who sold them out. Everyone in the room nodded.
Luke clapped once and pointed at us again. “Good. Now we’re going to meet here every evening at the same time. If you know anyone who wants to join, bring them. I’m hoping for thirty students. At our next meeting, we’ll break up into groups and get to work.”
When everyone nodded again, Luke hopped off the bed and, just like that, the impromptu meeting was over.
* * * * *
Before meeting up with Jimmy, the three of us huddled together. My skin was practically on fire from nerves and excitement.
“Should we go?” I asked.
“Yes!” Roze said.
I took a deep breath. While the idea of standing up to the Zealots made me feel better—like I could make up for my pansiness at the funeral—I couldn’t make a decision. The idea was very dangerous. They were under control of the Siren. We still knew nothing about her and exactly what she could do. The unknown made her even scarier.
As if reading my thoughts, Cassie said, “This is a chance to finally learn something.”
That was a billion percent true. After months of hitting dead ends, the idea of coming into contact with the Siren—even indirectly—meant a chance to learn something. It was the first step in stopping her. That was the most exciting part of the whole ordeal.
“We’d have to be so careful,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Cassie. “We’re not in this for the reasons everyone is. If anything bad starts to happen, we bail.”
I nodded, my mind racing.
“We’ll be fine,” said Roze. “If this Siren exists, she doesn’t care about any of us.” She paused, catching her error before whispering, “Jimmy.”
“Jimmy.” I said. I shuffled my foot in the grass. The Siren definitely knew about him.
“We need him,” Cassie said.
“Dammit.” I said. Again, she was right. With his ability, Jimmy was the one person who could really help us. Even if he wouldn’t tell us directly, we’d know if he came in contact with people under control. Jimmy wasn’t good at pretending.
Roze leaned closer into our huddle. “I change my mind. If this whole Siren thing is true, I don’t want to risk Jimmy’s safety.”
“Agreed.”
Cassie nodded but I could tell she hated the idea of giving up the chance to finally learn something.
Minds made up, we raced to the library, found Jimmy, and took him back to his room.
“I’m going,” Jimmy said, after we explained the mission.
I wanted to object, but stopped. We weren’t supposed to know about all this Siren stuff and his supposed ability. How could I single him out?
Roze saw me fumbling and said, “We know you’ve been working out and everything. And that’s awesome. But if something happens and we have to get out of there, you’re going to get left behind.”
Ouch, that was harsh. But I knew Roze was saying whatever she could to ultimately protect Jimmy.
The words backfired. A fire sparked in Jimmy’s eyes.
He pointed at her. “I’ve been working too hard to miss out on this. And if something happens, I bet I beat you out.”
Roze leaned back, stunned. She couldn’t even throw out a comeback.
Guilt crept into Jimmy’s face. “Sorry.” He threw up his hands. “But this is just another thing that’s gonna make me a loser. I can’t be the only one on the list who’s not going.”
Despite his arguments, we tried discouraging Jimmy over
the next half hour. Nothing worked. In fact, the harder we went at him, the more determined he became. That’s when I realized something: this was a chance for him to do his own research. This mission gave him the opportunity to get out and help the school. Besides, if anyone had a reason to hate the Siren, it was Jimmy.
Jimmy clasped his hands as if praying. “No one knows we’re going. Besides, aren’t we all wearing disguises?”
We went silent, so Jimmy added, “Please. I need this.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll go along with this, but if things get weird, we’re backing out. All of us.” I put my hand in the huddle. “Deal?”
Without hesitation, Cassie and Roze put their hands on mine and said, “Deal.”
Twenty
Protest Planning
With everything that was already going on, I didn’t think it was possible for things to get any crazier. Boy howdy (as my grandma said), was I wrong. Between end-of-year tests approaching and running back and forth to Jimmy’s and preparing for the Zimmerman’s Zealots protest, it’s like we were playing pin the tail on the donkey, only we were handed like fifty tails and told to stick them all at the same time.
At least things with Jimmy and I were better. We were so focused on homework and preparations for our trip to Little Rock, we didn’t have time to think about The Kiss. Darrin divided us all into groups, each given a different task. Cassie, Jimmy, Roze, and I were in the “signs” group, meaning we had to steal pieces of poster board and mounting sticks from the art department.
Once we had the supplies, the four of us sat on Jimmy’s floor every night, writing on poster board with colored markers. We kept them angled up away from the door so Tanner couldn’t see what we were doing.
The first signs we made supported Zimmerman’s Zealots. Let me just say, it was mega awkward. Reading signs like “Death to Fags” was bad enough. Creating them made me want to gnaw off my writing arm. At times, my hand didn’t want to comply. Once, I wrote “Gays are NOT evil” and didn’t realize it until Cassie did her round of proofreading.
When the stupid evil signs were out of the way, we turned them around and wrote our own statements on the back. We’d whip those out after infiltrating them. That was a lot more fun, and, in addition to pro-gay messages, we came up with stuff like, “Toilet paper is for pansies” and “We hate children”. People would think the Zealots were saying that stuff. Brilliant.
Five days before the rally, we sat in Jimmy’s room, doing our final touch-ups, which consisted of putting fake backs on the signs to cover our real messages. Taking a quick break, I stood up and walked to the window, stretching my arms. I glanced out and noticed a chubby kid running toward the dorms with a box full of balloons. I thought he should have put a lid on them to avoid suspicion, and, for a second, imagined Jimmy hauling across the field with Tanner chasing him. I smiled to myself, until a gigantic problem hit me.
“Oh crap!” I jolted and flew around. Cassie, Jimmy, and Roze looked at me as if I’d just wet my pants. “How are we going to get Jimmy out without soldier boy knowing?”
A giant brain fart descended on me and Roze, and we stared at each other, blankly. In the hubbub of getting the big stuff ready, we hadn’t even thought about Tanner. Part of me was thrilled I wasn’t the only one who’d overlooked this—Roze looked mad at herself and Jimmy tensed, his eyes begging, Please don’t leave me behind.
Cassie, however, remained perfectly relaxed.
I groaned. “You thought of this, didn’t you?”
She shrugged.
Roze pushed her. “I hate you so much.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked.
“I wanted to think of an idea before bringing it up.”
“We could have helped, you know,” Roze said.
Jimmy didn’t seem to care; he was thrilled his chances weren’t wrecked. Scooting forward, he said, “What did you come up with?”
Cassie peeked at the door and leaned in. “I noticed they put Jimmy in a room with nothing outside the windows. No awning or trellis or anything to climb down. So here’s what we do. We take one of the ladders from the farm sheds. They have some that will reach this high, and I already know where they’re at.”
I studied Cassie for a second. She probably figured this out when she was following Jimmy around. I bet she was an expert on the campus by now.
“The morning we leave,” she continued, “we get the ladder, haul it here, Jimmy climbs down, and we take it back.”
“The teachers are right next to him,” Roze said. “Won’t that be really obvious?”
“We’ll have to do it really early, while it’s still dark out.”
I looked at Jimmy. “And you’ll have to be really quiet.”
“What are you getting at?” he said.
I shook my head. “You’re like a flock of elephants sometimes.”
“Flock?” Roze said.
“I can’t remember the name.” I retorted.
After discussing it further, Cassie’s plan made the most sense. And by “made sense,” I mean it seemed really risky, but was the only idea we could think of. Because it was so dicey, we made up a story about sneaking out to exercise in case we got caught. If that happened, we all agreed to stay behind rather than ruin the entire trip.
* * * * *
As the day of the protest approached, the entire student body grew jittery and nervous. Everyone knew, and those who weren’t going looked at us as if willing us to get sick (or worse) so they could take our places, while those who were going exchanged random high fives.
Despite the jealousy, I was surprised at our cohesiveness. Not a single student ratted us out. I guess we all supported the cause and it brought us together. That sounds like a cheesy movie, which was probably why a Blazing Trails was thrust at me during algebra on Friday. I guess I needed something to remind me I was in the real world. This time, I made a show of tearing it up without looking.
The night before the trip, Cassie and I couldn’t sleep. We spent hours talking about our mission. We were to watch Jimmy like crazy. If he started looking at people all weird, we’d observe them, trying to figure what was different about them. More importantly, if we heard that mesmerizing chant, we’d go after it. Not in a heroic, take-down-the-Siren sense. We just needed information. That’s it. Get in, get out.
The part that worried me was the idea of the Siren’s power working on one of us. Because of the funeral, I believed I was somehow immune. But I wasn’t sure. Finally, we decided that if the chant began working on someone, we were grabbing that person and bailing.
Admittedly, that was pretty much the extent of our plan. Not very impressive. But we thought of it as just a starter mission, our first opportunity to learn something and maybe help Jimmy and Sanctuary Prep Academy.
In addition to our own objectives, we also went through the sabotage preparations time and again. No matter how often we looked for a mistake, the signs always remained packed neatly away and my duffel always sat on Cassie’s bed with the rest of the supplies. That didn’t stop us from worrying and pacing around, trying to think of something we’d forgotten.
As I was going through my duffel bag for the millionth time, Cassie’s phone buzzed. I glanced at the clock. 2:00AM. That was weird, but I didn’t give it much thought. Neither did Cassie; she groaned and casually picked it up. The second her eyes focused on the screen, she squealed and threw the phone onto her bed.
“What’s wrong.”
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” she said, arms shaking.
“What’s wrong? You’re making me nervous.”
“Someone knows.”
“What!?”
She grabbed her phone like it was a rattlesnake and handed it to me. Glowing on the screen sat the following message from her dad:
You will check in with us every hour this weekend. First call expected at 6:00AM. If you miss one call, we are pulling you from that school.
That was it.
My hand trembled, but
I said, “Maybe they don’t know for sure.”
“They know something’s going on,” she said, shivering.
“But how?”
“I don’t know.”
The two of us paced around. Cassie was on the verge of tears.
Suddenly, she covered her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
She plopped down on the bed and put her face in her hands. “A year or so ago, I snuck to the pride parade in Milwaukee.”
“By yourself?”
“Yes. I just wanted to see what it was about.”
“Sounds like you.”
“Anyway, my parents caught me. It was horrible.”
I shuddered, picturing her parents at Christmas and how obediently she’d followed them around.
“So they know about this rally?” I asked.
She lay back on the bed. “They’ve probably looked up every rally and pro-gay event nearby. They don’t trust me.”
I almost said, They sound awful, but held it in. Instead, we stewed in silence a few minutes.
Finally, Cassie said, “We have to keep going.”
“What if they told the school?”
“They didn’t. This is about me. And my parents can’t report every instance of their paranoia.”
I paused, wondering what that meant when Cassie jumped up. “Besides, Sanctuary isn’t going to expel thirty students.”
That made sense, but the whole thing suddenly felt silly. We were risking an awful lot to throw some balloons and show our signs. I voiced this to Cassie and she crossed her arms.
“You know this is a lot bigger.”
I nodded. She was right. Whoever this Siren was, she’d formed the largest homophobic cult in years. And she attacked Jimmy. We needed to know something about her. Anything. And if the school wouldn’t tell us, we had to find out for ourselves.
