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It looked more like an execution than the peaceful march we’d planned.
We linked arms, occasionally hiding our faces and gasping as we saw our friends dropped to their knees. Buchanan, hunched over and vomiting into the grass. Evan, his face yellow and puffy, his coughing uncontrollable. Wyatt and Manny and a few others, all of them sick and suffering.
Then Sebastian was kicked in the back of the knees to land hard next to Evan.
I lunged in his direction without thinking, but my cousins held me back. I realized distantly that I was crying, watching the scene in abject horror. How this had happened here, in our town, was beyond all comprehension.
Before I knew what was happening, I was being pulled away toward Main Street.
And there was nothing I could do but go.
20
Almost Always True
PRESLEY
I laid next to Sebastian in the late morning sun the next day, listening to his slow, wheezing breath as he slept.
We’d only gotten him out of jail a few hours ago, along with the dozen men who sheriff Baker’s officers had arrested. No yellow shirts had been charged.
The newspaper had already landed on his driveway when we pulled in, the headline ominous.
PEACEFUL PRO-GOODY’S RALLY INTERRUPTED BY VIOLENT PROTESTORS
The article went on to paint us in the most unfavorable light, holding up Mayor Mitchell like a sainted crusader. Sebastian was right. It was what Mitchell had wanted. With the newspaper editor-in-chief and the sheriff in his pocket, he’d been able to spin the entire thing on us, painting us as a pack of rabid bullymongers.
It was our worst-case scenario.
But there hadn’t been time for plans or discussion. Sebastian needed a shower and sleep, so we tended to that first. His face was still a little swollen and red, and the sight twisted up my insides. How anyone could do this to our townspeople—yellow shirts or blue—cut to the quick.
My only hope was that there was enough outrage that we could hold our ground. But that hope was slipping away inch by inch, minute by minute. Because this stunt had landed a blow to our cause that I didn’t know we could survive.
I glanced at the clock, knowing I needed to go, but uninterested in leaving. A long, slow sigh didn’t help motivate me. But I rolled out of bed anyway, doing my best not to disturb him.
For a second, I thought I’d succeeded. But as I pulled on my jeans, his voice—gravelly and raw from the tear gas—sounded from behind me.
“You okay?”
I turned with a smile for his sake. “Yeah. Are you?”
“Been better.”
I yanked on my t-shirt and made my way to his side of the bed where I hitched a leg. “I’ve gotta go relieve Mom of Cilla and get to my order for Renee’s boutique. I’m sorry to leave you.”
“I’m sorry too.”
“What for?”
“For not turning everybody around. For not doing something. For not—” He started to cough, and for a minute, he couldn’t stop. When he’d finished, he laid back with labored breath. “Jesus.”
“Don’t be sorry. There was nothing you could have done. Mitchell got what he wanted.”
“Fuck that guy,” he said with his eyes closed.
“Fuck him so bad.” I leaned in to kiss him gently. “Sleep. Call me later when you wake up, okay?”
He nodded, his eyes still closed. “‘Kay.”
“‘Kay.” I echoed and stood, gathering up the last of my things before heading into the living room where my shoes were.
I spotted his phone plugged in in the kitchen and thought to put it next to his bed in case he needed something. But as I reached for it, I noticed his passport sitting on top of a pile of letters, photographs of Zambian kids, I assumed.
My brows drew together, and I paused in a moment of indecision. But when I noticed the edge of a plane ticket in the stack, all propriety went out the window. My heart had stopped beating, climbing up my throat looking for escape as I leafed through the stack. A tri-folded itinerary. One of many letters asking Mr. Bastian to come back and help their village.
A paper pouch of plane tickets to Zambia.
And my world screeched to a halt.
Because there was only one thing this could mean.
He’d decided to go.
Don’t jump to conclusions, I told myself as my heart began to beat again. I restacked the papers with shaking hands and left them on the bar in his kitchen. Talk to him later. Just ask him. It’s going to be okay.
As nice as the thought was, I didn’t believe it was going to be okay. But boy, did I tell myself I did.
Too stunned to take him his phone, I made instead for the door, trying to find my guts, which felt like they’d been splattered all over his kitchen floor. But somehow, I made my way to my truck and left the Vargas ranch with my mind a category-five hurricane.
