Rebels Like Us

by Liz Reinhardt

  It’s hushed in the crowded foyer when my mother walks out with a tray of cookies. I breathe deep the hot vanilla smell—not quite homemade, because Mom is a dodgy baker, but freshly baked—and contemplate how damn weird it is, the mix of Toll House and gas, comfort and marrow-deep fear.

  “Is the meeting over? These just came out of the—oh my God, what the hell is that?” my mother screams.

  The cookie plate drops to the floor and shatters the quiet. Two girls rush to help clean it up as my mother darts onto the lawn, Doyle and me at her heels, the cacophony of so much pissed-off confusion at our backs.

  Mom puts her hand up to her mouth and stares.

  “It never looked this scary in my history books,” I whisper, staring at the towering cross upright on our lawn, the orange-and-red flames licking into the pale purple evening sky.

  Mom’s face crumples with pure, gut-deep pain, illuminated by the light of the fiery cross in our yard.

  She clutches a hand at her throat before she turns to me, her eyes wide. “Jesus, Aggie, what the hell did I do? Where did I bring us? Are you being bullied? Harassed? I’m calling the cops, now. We will fix this, sweetie. I swear—”

  “This ain’t about Agnes, ma’am,” Doyle says, and, in the midst of this madness, I reflect on how much I love the way my weird, old-fashioned name sounds when he says it. “Not directly. It’s about all of us, here, doing this our way. Throwing all their traditions in their face.”

  “The alternative prom?” Mom’s expression is bewildered, and my guilt is a thousand times heavier than my anger ever was.

  “It’s not, like, an ironic prom,” I attempt to explain.

  Mom waits, her eyes wild with the reflection of the crackling flames.

  When I don’t explain further, Doyle jumps in. “We’re doin’ this because Ebenezer holds segregated proms.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her words drag out slowly. “What did you say?”

  “It’s been tradition—shitty tradition, pardon my French, ma’am—to hold a prom for black folks and one for whites at Ebenezer. Me and Nes and a couple others decided it was bull…crap, so we started to rally for some change, and—” He gestures to the flaming cross licking and crackling in our yard. “It must not’ve sat well with some folks.”

  His arm draws me hard to his side, and I accept the embrace happily. I want to be close to someone who has grown up in this crazy culture and can forge a sure path out of the danger.

  My mother is breathing heavily, one hand pressed to her stomach, the other pulled back to curve around her body, empty. I don’t want to leave the safe haven of Doyle’s arms, but I go to my mother and fill the space left open by her confusion and terror, hoping our double fear will somehow cancel itself out.

  Doyle stalks away with purpose, and drags back the hose he first used to water that stupid stick of a tree the day I met him. He turns it on full blast and douses the fiery cross, like he’s the prince who breaks the spell. We all blink and come out of our shock once the orange-flamed cross is reduced to a charred, smoldering relic. A few other guys race over and, even though it must still be hot, they shove, grunting as it collapses like a felled giant in my front yard.

  “How do we get rid of it?” one of the guys asks, wiping soot on the legs of his jeans.

  “I say we bring it back where it came from.” Alonzo turns to the crowd of kids huddled on my front steps, speaking like one of those charismatic cult “prophets.”

  “They think they can come here and intimidate us?”

  “No!” comes the resounding yell.

  “They think they can scare us with ass-backward KKK tricks?”

  More voices join in, louder and more insistent.

  “No!”

  “We need to show them what we’re capable of!”

  The verve in the air goes from meek to menacing, and though I hated feeling that buckling fear, I hate this blind fury even more. Mom’s fingers bite into my arm, and Doyle rustles at my side, but it’s Khabria who walks straight over to Alonzo and stares him dead in the eye.

  “What we’re capable of?” Her confident, measured voice leaves no doubt in my mind she is a descendant of royalty. “I feel like you might be talkin’ violence, Alonzo. I really hope I’m wrong ’bout that.”

  “So they come burn a cross in the front yard and we ignore it? We s’posed to ignore it if one of us gets dragged behind some pickup or lynched too?”

  The murmurs behind Alonzo get louder.

  “They did this ’cause they’re cowards.” Khabria crosses her strong arms over her chest, her feet spread wide, in a true warrior stance. “They want us to go wild. They want us to get in our trucks and go cruisin’, out for blood, and prove exactly why this county has insisted we need a segregated prom. I, for one, ain’t taking their coward-ass bait. I’m gonna go back in and vote on streamers and songs and all that normal prom crap.” She turns her back to the crowd and takes three steps toward the house.

  “So you’re gonna let them win?” Alonzo sneers, throwing his arms wide.

  “Naw.” She spins so she’s looking right at him. “I’m gonna win. I’m not gonna let them control how I act and what I do. When I dance the first dance with the guy I love at our prom—then I win. We all win.”

  Khabria marches back in with a pretty decent rally behind her, but not everyone heads her way.

  “We can’t let this turn into eye-for-an-eye payback, or it’ll never stop.” Doyle pitches his voice low against the whoops and hollers of the group gathering in a clump around the settling ash in my yard.

  “You can turn the other cheek if that’s your thing, Doyle,” Alonzo says, his mouth stretched tight. “My granny talks about how her daddy came out to a burnin’ cross in their yard the first time he tried to set up his own business back in the day. They didn’t have no choice but to lie down and take it. But it’s a different world now.”

  “This is cowardly crap, man. Prankin’,” Doyle argues, but Alonzo cuts him off, squaring off with him.

  “A prank, Doyle? Be serious, man. Don’t pretend this is someone eggin’ the house or throwin’ some toilet paper up in the trees. This is a message, loud and clear, that we—we black folk—better step down and get back in our place. I’m not about to retreat. Back off, man. This ain’t your fight anyway.”

  Doyle rips off his hat and rakes his hands through his hair until it sticks up in a dozen light spikes as we watch Alonzo and the group he’s rallied head to their cars, pull out, and speed off into the night to search out whoever started this war.

  “Doyle? I don’t want you getting caught up in all this. If you kids want to throw a prom, my house is open. You can invite whomever you want. But maybe, officially, you should back off.” My mother glances at me, the fear in her eyes burning brighter than that flaming cross. “Baby, I know how hard you’ve been working, but—”

  I shake my head and step back, away from her and her total lack of understanding about the crazy circumstances I went through to finally arrive here, and why this is happening no matter what. “We can’t back down now. I don’t want things to get out of control, but I can’t—we can’t—let things stand the way they are.”

  “Sweetheart, I admire what you want to do.” Mom’s voice and eyes and shoulders all sag with exhaustion. “But this is getting dangerous. It’s not up to you to change the world.”

  Tears prick behind my eyes, but I hold them back. “If I don’t change it, then the people who lit that cross in our front yard get to call the shots. You have no idea, Mom. No idea how crazy and…idiotic this is. They get to keep things the way they’ve always been because no one wants to stand up to them? I can’t just lie down and let it happen.”

  Mom presses her lips together and puts both hands on my shoulders like she wants to root me in our front yard—the front yard that used to be a safe place, a private place. It’s scary how quickly and completely your safe haven can be taken away from you for good.

  Mom looks a little calmer in the
cool moonlight than she did in the face of the mini inferno, but she’s still obviously shaken.

  “I can find a sub position back home. If Newington can’t let you back in, you can always finish remotely. There are solid online programs, and you’ll get a legitimate high school diploma, not just a GED.” She blinks hard. “I know… I should have handled this better. I should have let you finish in Brooklyn, but I didn’t—”

  “Mom, it’s okay. Honestly.”

  There’s too much to fight for in my life right now; I have no energy left over to fight with my mother, who I know, without a single doubt, loves me. Wants to protect me. Wants what’s best for me.

  A few months ago, I was too trapped in my own little pity bubble to see all the love being heaped on me. But my perspective has changed. There are things I wish I could unsee, except for the fact that witnessing them helped me realize my place and all I have to be thankful for. Including my mother, who’s standing in front of me, asking for my forgiveness. I’ve waited a long time for this and, now that the moment’s here, all I want to do is assure her there’s nothing to be sorry about.

  “I messed up, Aggie. I didn’t realize just how badly until tonight. I can’t believe I brought you here. Trust me, I know I can’t just apologize for this—”

  I take her hand and we both get uncomfortably quiet. “These last few months I’ve had to come to terms with who I really am. It wasn’t always pretty, but I’m glad. I’m not the same girl I was when I came down here, and that’s a really good thing.”

  Mom rubs her free hand up and down her arm. It’s not cold by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the Georgia warmth has thinned our blood. We’ve acclimated to this place in ways we never expected. It’s changed us on a molecular level. “I’m all for growing as a person, but this is dangerous. I don’t like it, baby.”

  A few months ago, the next words out of my mouth would have felt sweet. Now I hate to add to her worry.

  “I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but I have to do this.”

  Doyle inches back to the house, giving my mother and me the space to say what we need to say in private.

  “We should have never left Brooklyn.” It’s a refrain I don’t think she’ll give up on for a while after tonight.

  “But we did. And there’s no way I’m leaving now.” I give her a quick hug, then pull away. “It’ll be okay.”

  Her smile is haggard at best. “That’s what I’m supposed to say to you, baby.”

  “I know,” I whisper. She cups my cheek with one hand, then nods at the front door.

  “I’m going inside to call the police and see about filing a report. And I’m going to make sure I’m the squeakiest wheel in their station until this gets resolved.” She takes a deep breath. “I guess you have a prom to plan.”

  “Yeah.” I look over my shoulder and grimace. “If these bastards can decide on streamer colors.”

  “Agnes, mouth,” Mom says, but it’s basically an autoresponse at this point. She caresses just under my ear with her thumb, the way she used to when I needed comforting as a kid. “Be careful, baby. If you need anything, if anything comes up, if there’s any trouble, I’m here. I’m here for you.”

  “I know that, Mom.”

  I do know. And I realize that’s all I need to know to vault the worst of what went wrong between us. That doesn’t mean I’ll be able to come to her as much as she’d like me to. It’s my fight to see through to the end.

  But it’s nice to know she’s there for me anyway.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Ebenezer becomes a high school divided.

  Someone—we never figured out who—snapped a picture of Doyle, my mother, and me, arms around each other, backs to the camera, staring at the flaming cross in my yard. It got shared a few dozen times on social media and went viral within a couple of hours, and our prom campaign went from incredibly generous to holy-crap old-oil-tycoon-trust-fund levels overnight. No one is sure who’s in charge of all the excess funds, and I have a feeling it could cause real problems in this place, where so many people have never had enough.

  As if we don’t have enough to worry about, reporters are tracking us down, blogs, and news sites are foaming at the mouth over us, and a few colleges have reached out with their glossy, tree-covered catalogs and wink/nod hints about possible scholarships. I’m ignoring it all. It’s snowballed into so much more than I was ready for, and I feel like an insect pinned to a display board and sealed behind glass, still alive but just barely. Some of the others seem to bask in the attention. Alonzo is rumored to be in talks with some big prime-time investigative journalist.

  When I first got here, the rah-rah Ebenezer school spirit was a little grating, but the recent dissolution of any kind of school pride is kind of terrifying.

  “It’s like some evil alternate universe version of Ebenezer,” I mumble to Doyle as we stride through the halls, which seem bleaker than ever.

  “The whole damn place’s gone straight crazy.” Doyle half raises his hand to wave to a group of guys who intentionally turn their backs on him.

  It’s like Doyle’s natural magnet got flipped, and he’s repelling the very people who used to worship him. Doyle Rahn used to be the Daryl Dixon of Ebenezer High—now he’s the Merle.

  “So what do we do?” I ask, even though what I mean is what will you do, because I’m used to being on Ebenezer’s crap list.

  “Keep my head down. Try to remember why exactly I’m the guy they all hate.” His smile is a fraction of its normal wattage. “That makes things easier.”

  The remnant of a smile is enough to rev my engines, but, like electrodes wired to a dead frog, what’s making me jump is an illusion of the real thing. What we have now isn’t what we had, and I have to accept it, no matter how much it sucks. “Is it still worth it?”

  He stops and runs his eyes over me in that kind of possessive way that makes me feel like maybe this isn’t just forced electricity. Maybe this is real and undeniable and love.

  Holy Mary, mother of God, please let it be love. Please.

  “Of course it is,” he insists in a voice I don’t trust for reasons I don’t understand. He leans over, and I pucker as his lips brush my cheek.

  “See you in English?”

  Doyle deserts me while the hope of a real kiss is still perched on my lips. I look around at the school I thought I was starting to know and feel an eerie sense of displacement.

  The lines are drawn in intersecting grids all over Ebenezer High. It’s not just the group of us doing the alternaprom fighting the people who want to white-knuckle what’s always been. Sides get taken and retaken, old friends flip each other off in the hallway, the Rose Court campaign posters get so regularly defaced, they’re all taken down, and there’s this crackle in the air, like we’re suspended in those few sparking seconds it takes for a fuse to burn down before it explodes a firecracker. All of us wait with our breaths held for the boom.

  *

  “I finished.” I’ve waited for everyone else to file out of class, Doyle included. He’s racing off to double-check his senior project in the greenhouses behind the courtyard. He gave me a quick wave on the way out. I try my best to ignore Ansley, yipping at his heels.

  Ma’am Lovett eyes the copy of Passing I’m holding out to her. “And?”

  “And it made me wonder if I might be passing. And if I am, what am I passing as?” I pull the paperback close to me again and flip through the pages idly. “I don’t have the same problems Clare and Irene did. But there are things that are complicated in my life right now. I’m black in the South, so people seem to assume that means I’m African American. But that’s not my experience. Yes, I’m black. But I’m Dominican and Latina and Afro-Caribbean and European American, and I’m proud of that. Of all of that! I want to celebrate it, I want people to know that about me. But it feels like the powers that be just want everyone to keep quiet, fit in their little assigned boxes, and not speak up about who we are and how we want to
be heard and seen. Like with Clare and Irene, they want us to stay on one side or the other, to choose and take sides. To not challenge the status quo. So many people are sick of that, myself included. And I have a feeling things are going to get crazier before they calm down.”

  “This whole prom business is shaking things up, isn’t it?” A crease deepens on her forehead. It’s the first time I’ve noticed any kind of glitch in Ma’am Lovett’s cool.

  “It’s a freaking mess,” I agree. “People are pissed, and things are escalating fast.” I button my lip before I say more about the rumors I’ve heard, the plans that always seem to be simmering in the lunch line, in the parking lot, online, and everywhere at once.

  Maybe I don’t want to admit that the swaggering braggarts might actually make good on their threats because that would create a level of terror I’m not prepared to face right now. “I kind of want it to be over with already. I would never back out now, but I want to fast-forward to the end.”

  “I heard about what happened at your home.” Her lips flatten into a line that makes it clear how furious she is.

  “Yeah, it was pretty terrifying.” When I close my eyes I’m instantly back in that surreal moment. I can still feel the heat of the flames, smell the acrid bite of smoke that seems permanently stuck in my nostrils. “My mom was ready to book me a ticket into JFK that night.”

  “You didn’t want to go back?” Ma’am Lovett asks like she’s genuinely interested in the answer.

  “Part of me did. Still does,” I admit, then I lose my words for a few seconds. “But I’m not who I was when I left anyway. I’d go back, and it wouldn’t be the right fit. So I’d lose the memory of what I loved about being there. And I’d lose the chance to find out who I am here.” I slide the book over to her. “I’m sick of passing, I guess. Sick of pretending to be someone I’m not. Problem is, I’m not doing that great a job figuring out who this ‘new me’ is either.”