By Any Means Necessary

by Candice Montgomery

I glance over at her. “I am. You’re right. Who’s Ryan Q? And what’s the Q stand for?”

  “You know,” she says on a laugh, “I’m not sure. But no one has ever called him anything but Ryan Q or just Q, so that’s the way we keep it. He’s part of the Collective and basically manhandles all our legal junk.”

  An image of Emery being arrested comes to mind. She says it was during a peaceful protest that got reported by the locals who live in the community. There’s a photo of it. It’s her being dragged away by two white cops who are easily twice her size. Her mouth open, suspended on a permanent, silent scream.

  I asked her once why she uses that photo as her profile picture. “Doesn’t it just tell you who I am? That what I fight for has reduced me to this, and that I accepted.” And I get it. I’m there, too, with the apiary.

  Guard bees protect their hive and queen like soldiers. They emit a pheromone to warn the bees inside the hive of danger, usually at the cost of their own lives. Emery is kind of like that, too. A guard bee.

  “So when can we meet him—Ryan Q?”

  “Now, if you want. He lives out in Mojave Desert, but we can Skype him in my room.”

  “Yes, please. That one.”

  She laughs. “You gotta stop stressing.”

  Easier said than done. Somebody give Em a heads-up on that one.

  “You’re too young to be worrying this much. We are too young to be worrying this much. If working with the Collective has taught me anything, it’s that things keep going. People keep trucking, and time keeps moving. All we can do is lead the line or follow it.”

  “Is this the equivalent of ‘let the chips fall where they may?’”

  She shrugs, letting us into her dorm room, where Clarke is sleeping, her laptop open in front of her playing an episode of what sounds to me like Grey’s Anatomy.

  “You could say that,” Em mumbles. “Think my way was much more wisdom-y, though.”

  She grabs her laptop and then leads me out into the common area of their dorm suite. Dorm rooms like this house four to six students each. It’s basically a mini apartment. Has its own bathroom and shower, its own kitchen, a common room situated right in the middle, and some even include balconies. Or maybe that’s a rumor. Only the white students would know the real truth about that one.

  Set up and ready to go, she pulls her phone out of her back pocket, gesturing for me to sit down next to her on the couch. This entire apartment smells like an apple cinnamon Glade PlugIn.

  “I’m just gonna text Q to make sure he’s free to Skype right now.”

  I hear the tiny whoooop sound that means the text’s been sent. Not even a minute later, I hear the chime of an incoming text, which prompts Em to jump onto Skype.

  Q looks like Moses.

  Yep, biblical-ass Moses. I mean, do I know what the hell he actually looked like? No.

  But have I seen The Prince of Egypt? Yes.

  So work with me here. He looks like Moses.

  He answers the audio/video call with a tight smile on his face, reserved and looking to all the world—i.e., Emery and myself—like he would rather be anywhere else.

  “You look like you’d rather be anywhere else,” she says.

  Then and only then does he loosen, the space around his mouth going smooth.

  It would only take half of half a brain to realize homedude is in love with Emery. Which, I mean. I don’t know her exact orientation, but she seems pretty goddamn oblivious about it to me.

  She pulls her shirt away from her body and sniffs the general armpit area a couple of times. Her face, scrunched up high for a moment, suggests she’s satisfied enough with the hygiene there.

  And see? The way she just stretched out long across the couch—face out of view of the camera, but Q … sprung. His eyes follow the rest of her appendages. Em? She’s uninvested, picking at the chipped black paint on her nails, pushing her feet into my thigh—“Torrey, move, you’re in my space!”—while the man on the screen scrambles to tamp his unruly, biblical hair down.

  That’s obliviousness, right? Or maybe that’s just inexperience. Lord knows I can’t read that kind of mess.

  “I was in the middle of a cat nap before I hit my night job.”

  She glances at me. “Q works four different jobs, one of which is patrol at some fancy government agency rocket science spaceship company or whatever.”

  “Only about twelve percent of what she just said is true.”

  “Oh! This is Torrey, bee-tee-dub. Torr,” she says, a bruised up hand in my direction, that goddamn foot still prodding my leg even though I’m only occupying one cushion and she’s taking up two. “This is Ryan Q, passer of law school but somehow not the bar.”

  Ouch. “Nice to meet you, man.”

  “Yeah, same. So what’s up, Emery, what’s this about?”

  She readjusts, sitting up so that one leg is beneath her on the couch. “Yeah, I’ll make this good and short. So Torrey runs a bee farm down in LA city proper and because his grandfather is a nitwit and messed up some stuff, the property is being seized by the city.”

  “I see.”

  “Yeah,” she says, continuing, “So, Torr wants to fight back. But we don’t know what his options are.”

  “He owns the farm?”

  “Right here,” I say, hand raised. “Yes, the farm is mine. As in, my name’s on the papers.”

  “His uncle willed it to him.” I feel Emery’s shoulder touch mine, and I know it’s an intentional thing. This is Emery Grymchan being “comforting.” She tries, guys. She does.

  “Does he own the land the farm sits on or just the deed to the business and its assets?”

  “Yep. I am still right here. And no, not the land, but yes to … all the other stuff, I think.”

  He leans back at his desk, the stress taking effect as he rubs the back of his neck. This is just an add-on, I know. Dude works four jobs, and Emery and I are a couple of pissy, green college freshman yanking on his shirttails.

  “First, you gotta know what’s yours and what isn’t. Because if the land isn’t yours, really the city can take it back at any time for almost any reason. What neighborhood exactly?”

  “Echo Park,” I say.

  “Mm. A pretty hot gentrification spot right now.”

  I shrug. I mean, yeah, but do these things come in waves? I feel like the Hill’s been getting snatched up spot-by-spot for my entire life, but it never really touches us—my neighborhood.

  I guess I just really am that young.

  “Yeah,” he says. He grips the bridge of his nose, squints. “So here’s what I can tell you. Find out what’s yours legally. Once you’ve done that, and based on what you’ve told me, I’m going to assume it boils down to just the business and not the land it sits on, the only real pushback the city might recognize is a show of neighborhood support as well as proof that the city or—even better—the county benefits from the business’s placement, not simply its existence.”

  “How the hell would I prove that?”

  “Like, a petition or something?” Em says. I’d almost forgotten she was there. It’s the quietest she’s ever been, I think. Like in her life. Even asleep.

  “Yeah, like, official neighborhood signatures—particularly ones of other businesses in the area.”

  I nod. “How beneficial would a social media push be?”

  “Anything will help, but if you can get enough Internet media buzz going, you should have some solid footing to stand on.”

  “Alright. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, man. I appreciate the time.”

  “Anything for Emery Grymchan,” he says. And he certainly isn’t looking at me when he says it.

  “Q, you are a god among men.”

  Dude shrugs like it’s nothing, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. He’s practically falling asleep at the computer, has to work a whole-ass graveyard shift job, and has taken his limited (should-be-sleeping) time to talk to a couple of barely college freshmen. One of whom is a complete stranger to him
.

  “For you, it’s nothing.”

  And Em waves and ends the conversation so quickly that I have to side-eye her. She definitely knows dude’s got feelinz.

  I give her a look to communicate that I know that she knows.

  “Get out,” she says. And that’s the point at which I lose it and burst into hysterical fits of laughter. I do make my way out of her dorm though, only to hear her yell at my back as the door whispers shut, “Shut up. I will kill you, McKenzie!”

  My legs feel stiff. I don’t think it’s from all the walking around I’ve done—my Health app says I climbed a total of three—COUNT ’EM, THREE WHOLE ENTIRE—flights of stairs today.

  The stiffness, I think, is everything I want to walk away from. Talking to Ryan Q didn’t help or add literally any value to my mission. It pretty much just told me I’m going to be tired for the rest of my life if I keep having to fight these battles. Fight for my right to exist and to exist on a level playing field. I mean, the apiary isn’t my be all, end all. It’s just another thing I have to fight for.

  I don’t have a choice.

  Even if I did have a choice, would it matter? Would I stand up and take care of things the way Uncle Miles would? The way he did so many times?

  [oh shiiii bihhhhh flashback right here!!!!!]

  I was sitting at the largest wooden table in America—conveniently located in Uncle Miles and Titi’s very small apartment—when Uncle Miles walked in, a loose tie ’round his neck, lying against buttons on his shirt that had probably once been done up, but now spread the shirt collar apart.

  He rolled his sleeves up as he walked by me at the table, cupped his hand around the side of my face for a moment—just a second—and then walked to Titi at the sink.

  Usually, I’d look away. But this was some sort of quiet communication between them I hadn’t ever seen elsewhere.

  This was love.

  Uncle Miles whispered something in her ear and she turned to him, smiled softly, and then walked out of the kitchen.

  He took up her post at the sink, started washing the dinner dishes from a meal he hadn’t even had a chance to eat yet.

  Down the hall, the shower starts to run in the bathroom.

  “I hear you got the elevator fixed in Mrs. Jericho’s building,” I said.

  Uncle Miles did not look up from his task, but he did smile. Actually, it was more of a grin. “She’s not mobile enough to get down the stairs. She was missing doctor’s appointments.” He said it like he had to justify this amazing and good and … just, not-his-job thing that he’d done.

  “It’s lit.” I nodded my head up and down. Casual. That’s me.

  “Man, y’all out here with all these new catchphrases just ruining the English language.”

  I laughed, glancing down at my school-issued copy of Amal Unbound, a smile perpetually painted on my face whenever he was around.

  “Talk to me about that homework you’re working on, nephew.”

  And I did. I talked my way through all his dishwashing, at which point he sat down at the table with me, scooped up the mangy stray cat that sometimes hung around, and proceeded to talk to him about the cat food he’d promised to buy.

  He was having a conversation with a cat, wherein, he promised—promised!—to have wet food for him tomorrow.

  Even I felt reassured.

  Typical Uncle Miles.

  I need to go. To be there for my farm and to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. It wasn’t something I’d have done by choice, but trusting Theo with even a fraction of responsibility—let alone the financial portion—for the farm was entirely moronic. I just thought that maybe, if Miles’s name was attached to it, something other than self-preservation would matter to Theo.

  My chest feels tight.

  If you Google “Am I having a heart attack” and navigate to the series of YouTube clips they suggest, you’ll be impossibly entertained. Go ’head. Do it. I’m not saying heart attacks are a laughing matter. I am saying I could definitely be the star of one of those stupendously dramatic heart attack reenactment videos. All I need is my 1:32 of YouTube fame, and I’m good.

  Too bad what I’m feeling now isn’t a heart attack. It’s obligation. It’s resolve.

  It’s right then and there, inside the quiet space of half an exhale, that I decide I’m going home.

  I’m saying goodbye to this short second life of Torrey McKenzie.

  15.

  I take the stairs up Prominski Hall because the elevators lag for a ridiculous amount of time and there’s always a herd of people idiotically waiting for them. Also, I feel like I need to prove something to my Health app. That’s how they get you.

  At the top, the heavy door swings inward just as I’m about to hit the push bar.

  I nearly collide with a tall someone.

  No, not nearly. I do. I completely and totally on accident throw my body at someone.

  No, not someone. Gabriel.

  He is more than a someone.

  “Oh, shit!” he says on a laugh.

  After his library exit I’m actually just super ready to hit my bed and hide from him for a couple (thousand) weeks. I’m a Taurus. Confrontation isn’t my strong point. So whenever it becomes a thing I have to do, I internalize, needing time to gather my thoughts and figure out exactly what I need to say versus what I want to say. Also, and this is probably my downfall, I have this ridiculous tendency to map out what I think the other person will say. Obviously, this is super dumb. Because when they don’t say what you think they will, problems arise. And it’s your fault.

  “What are you doing here?” It sounds a lot ruder than I expect it to.

  He scratches the top of his head. Hair down and spiraling pretty much at its own whimsy, he pushes a rough hand into it and squeezes.

  I am mesmerized. I am trash but also mesmerized.

  “You.”

  “What?”

  “I came here,” he says, “To see you.”

  Pushing past him to move down the hall to my room, I riffle through my backpack for my dorm key. It’s probably unlocked, to be honest. Desh doesn’t understand personal safety or really any kind of general security. But I need something to do with my hands and as I reach the door, I grab the knob, key in hand, and it’s actually locked. Desh isn’t here then. And he did lock the door this time.

  “Torrey,” he says.

  “I heard you. I just don’t get why you’re here after you bolted all fast at the library.”

  “Had to take care of something,” he says without hesitation. Do you think he plans his conversations, too?

  Gabriel steps forward and somehow we’re both inside the room now, the door swinging softly shut with a final push by his hand.

  His hand.

  “So you bolted,” I say.

  “Well, when you say it like that!”

  “I’m super confused by all of whatever this is. And I’m not saying it is something. But it just doesn’t feel like it isn’t. And I—” am not making any sense.

  “I broke up with my girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” What in the hell kind of answer?

  “Yeah.”

  He doesn’t hesitate. He presses into me and his lips meet mine, and I become a whisper of a boy.

  Gabriel kisses me like I am his anchor to this reality, like he’s looking for answers under my tongue, like I am the last taste of anything he’ll ever have.

  For me, time holds no relevance. He’s shaking against me, but his lips are sure. His tongue in my mouth is a period, not a question mark. It goes on and on, like a poem.

  Together, we are beautiful. There’s no denying it.

  Which is why I stop him as he begins to walk me back against the edge of my standard dorm-issue twin bed.

  I stop him because this is too big to taint with questions. With rushed endings into even more expedited beginnings.

  I want us to be a slow-stoked fire.

  “Wait, wait,” I say, pulling back. My lip
s are swollen. Gabriel Silva is a biter. That definitely was not the case in eighth grade.

  He groans, pulling back. “You want me to wait more?”

  “What do you mean ‘more,’ you weirdo. You’re so impatient.”

  “You’re too patient!”

  “There really isn’t such a thing as too patient.”

  Hands on hips, he paces the two-by-four box that is my dorm room. “You would say that.”

  “What do you mean you broke up with your girlfriend?”

  He sits on Desh’s perfectly made bed. For someone who swore he was never going to clean because his mother wasn’t around to see it, Desh sure is pretty serious about having his bed made every morning.

  He says, slowly, “I told her I could not be her boyfriend anymore.”

  “I understand what it means, Gabriel, Jesus Christ. I just need to know why you did it. I thought you guys were friends, even.”

  “We are,” he says, coming closer. “That’s why I did it.”

  I take a step back. “I’m not tracking.”

  “Torrey. Seeing you? Having you here? Having you in my life again—that was never going to work with Yuki. I did the adult thing. I was honest with her. I was already way too invested in what we had back then, and I’m even more invested now knowing that isn’t over.”

  The silence crawling around inside me stretches for so long that Gabriel shakes his head, eyes going wide. “Unless … Unless it is over for you? I guess I should have asked first.”

  “It’s not,” I say. That’s the honest truth. It’s really not over for me. Slow burn, remember? “I just … there’s so much going on right now. With my bees and back home with my family where I probably should be instead of this place.”

  “‘This place’? Do you mean, like, school? College? Because I gotta say, Torr, it’s a little messed up that you’re here doing what is presumably the first step in trying to make it out of the hood, and you think this place is the one you shouldn’t be in.”

  “I have to go back home, Gabriel. Shouldn’t have even tried coming here. It was dumb as hell, I shouldn’t have tried.”

  He shakes his head. “No. That’s not true. And you are already here, Torr. There is nothing for you back there.”