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The cops are closing in now. They’ve already got most of her neo-yuppie friends either on the ground or halfway to the cars. I can’t see Josh anywhere, so I’m guessing he’s already been carted away. What a fucking idiot, throwing that water bottle. I wish she’d at least pick smarter friends if she won’t be mine.
I’m standing in the shadows at the edge of the rec center, watching the whole mess illuminated by flashing blue and white lights. The noise is overwhelming. The rageful yelling of the protesters, shrill and deranged, the curt instructions to disperse coming from the cops, punctuated by blares from the sirens. Everyone’s moving in one way or another. Some fleeing the scene, some sparring with the cops, others writhing in impossible to get out of holds on the ground. But all I really see is Lily.
Her face is gleaming, shining golden, her long hair streaming like the fanciest black silk behind her as she runs to the entrance of the rec center, the flashing blue lights reflected in the pair of silver handcuffs she’s holding.
Two cops are right on her heels, huffing and puffing, and moving very awkwardly in all the riot gear they’ve got on. Fucking pussies.
I wince and very nearly run to her as they catch up and almost tackle her to the ground. Everything in me is screaming to do it. To help her, to get her away from this danger and somewhere safe.
But I already tried that. It didn’t take.
The expression on her face is at once triumphant and defiant as it takes both the cops—each holding one of her arms—to drag her back towards the flashing lights.
She’s not a coward. She never was. And right now, she looks like some Indian warrior woman of old, fighting to the death for her people, fierce and strong. If only I cared about any of those kinds of things. I don’t.
And she’ll never stop proving that she is in fact a warrior.
I need to walk away.
I just wish it was possible.
3
LILY
The holdingcell at the Pleasantville police station is a place I know well. The walls are painted a drab light green and the dark blue plastic benches with round, harmless edges show little signs of wear and tear. The place doesn’t even smell disgustingly of piss, shit, vomit and blood like these places always do in the stories my father’s men tell.
Well, it smells a little like sweat since all my friends put up quite a fight on our way here. Their faces are still shining triumphantly, but the light in their eyes is more manic than elated now. And the sour smell of fear, the kind that also features heavily in the stories I’ve heard, is surely and steadily growing.
“We almost made it,” I tell them. There’s ten of us here.
“I wish we hadn’t waited so long to enter the building,” Josh says as he gets up from the bench to stand next to me by the bars, his eyes bright and very wide. “If we went in earlier, we’d be chained up and ready for the morning right now.”
We’d probably be right where we are even if we had managed to chain ourselves up, but I won’t say that. Let them have the triumph, we all need it.
The door at the end of the holding area creaks open on its metal hinges, and a short police woman, her sun-kissed brown hair tied into a ballerina type knot at the back of her head, strides towards our cell. She’d be pretty if it weren’t for the growl on her face, which I’m pretty sure is a permanent fixture there. She’s followed by two tall police officers with similar growls on their faces.
“Lily Eagle Feather?” she asks loudly.
I nod and approach her. “That’s me.”
“The police chief wants to speak with you,” she says. “Everyone else, stand back.”
“How about you either charge us, or let us go,” Josh pipes up and gets a chorus of agreement.
“Stand back,” the woman barks. “You break the law, you pay the price. Surely a smart kid like you knows that.”
The two men with her chuckle darkly at her joke.
She unlocks the door and makes just enough room for me to pass. As soon as I do, she slams the doors behind me. The metallic sound of the locking mechanism echoes off the walls.
I extend my hands to her, wrists pressed together. “Time to handcuff me, right?” I ask sarcastically.
She shrugs and pulls the cuffs off her belt. “If you’re not willing to go quietly.”
The cool metal of the cuffs is sharp and cold against my flesh and reminds me painfully of all I failed to do today. Just like I almost always fail.
A huge chunk of my childhood will be gone this time tomorrow, demolished to dust, erased from the world, and the pain that thought brings is pretty much all I can focus on as the cops lead me out of the holding area and towards the interrogation rooms. I know those well too.
