Over the next few hours, Ophelia learns that being kettled is simultaneously horribly scary and horribly boring.
The police come in from three sides, and a bunch of the protesters—her, Candace, Rowan, and Joe included—get backed against a big hospital building, its front doors barricaded. There’s maybe a hundred of them in the kettle, she figures. From texts that she and the others receive from friends elsewhere in the protest, they discover that groups have been cordoned off all along the protest route.
They are pushed closer together. People begin to step on each other’s toes. Tempers rise. Someone starts a peace song, which soon fritters out; then they all sing “O Canada,” badly and off-key. This angers the foreign police. Ophelia has a loud voice—it might not be the best, her choir teacher is always telling her to back off, but she loves singing—and one of them lifts his mask long enough to say to her, “Can it, Beyoncé!”
Nice.
So O-friggin’-Canada peters out.
There’s a man with a bullhorn—is it the same guy from before?—who keeps yelling slogans. It is alternately rallying and annoying.
She and Rowan discover that they are the same age, and what schools they go to—he’s at the alternative high school where all the professors’ and lawyers’ and doctors’ kids go, no real surprise there. She’s embarrassed to name the Catholic girls’ school she and Candace go to—but he knows it of course, it’s in the same neighbourhood. Cue jokes about Catholic girls and short-skirted uniforms.
But he doesn’t do that. He says, “Your choir kicked our ass last year!”
That’s true; they walked away with almost every prize. “You’re in your school choir?” She thinks she would remember him if he’d been at the festival.
He gives a strange, short, bitter laugh. “No.”
Something about how he says that one word makes Ophelia sad.
More time. They talk about conscription. “But they don’t even need national armies any more. They have all those private firms to do the fighting,” Candace says.
“Sophisticated, high-level mercenaries,” Joe agrees.
“That’s not the point, though,” Ophelia says. “Armies are used to mobilize patriotism, nostalgia, public outrage. And of course also they were smart enough to make it a lottery. That way people’s energy gets taken up in hoping, which weakens opposition to the new law. ‘Oh, thank god my son wasn’t picked,’ that kind of thing.”
She feels Rowan’s gaze on her and flushes. Guys are usually turned off by her opinions. But is it her imagination, or is Rowan looking at her with admiration?
“Especially now, with the Union. They need to generate neo-patriotic fervour,” he agrees.
She looks into his eyes and smiles.
Someone starts singing “Blowing in the Wind.” Ophelia and Candace warble harmonies and get a laughing attack. The song falters and dies.
Time passes. Candace has to pee so badly she even gives up on flirting. Finally she squats and pisses next to the hospital, Ophelia shielding her for some privacy.
And just as Candace is doing the shake-and-dry, some shoving starts on the other side of the group. Even giraffe-like Rowan can’t really tell what’s going on. Shouts, some people are taken, maybe. From here, all they can really see is the line of shields opening, closing. A feeling like a tooth being pulled. The “kettle” is getting smaller.
One woman has a panic attack; she folds, bending, falls to her knees, she can’t breathe. Ophelia knows how she feels. She gets them sometimes, too. She puts a hand on the woman’s back. It’s bad.
“We need some help here!” she calls to the police. “Help!”
The cops open their line, two of them dart forward. The woman is seized and disappears as surely as if the line of black is an open maw, a ravening beast.
Ophelia feels sick. Candace sees her face.
“It’s not your fault, sweetie.”
“I shouldn’t have called on the cops to help.”
“What else were you going to do? Girl, you feel guilty about everything.”
More time passes.
Now Ophelia has to pee.
It’s all going wrong, going wrong in slow motion.
“The ratio of cops to protesters must be two-to-one,” Rowan mutters. He’s got his phone out, long, clever fingers typing furiously, his bicycle leaning against one jutted hip.
“That’s crazy,” Ophelia says.
Rowan’s eyes, she notes, are as blue as pictures she’s seen of the Caribbean Sea. He’s beautiful. She feels all intelligent thought draining from her. Guys aren’t beautiful—they’re supposed to be handsome, aren’t they? But him, he’s beautiful.
He smiles.
She’s entirely undone.
And then the line of cops opens again, and two guys dart in and seize Rowan’s bike.
“Hey!” He tries to hang onto the bike and his phone flips into the air. Ophelia catches it.
The cops wrench the bike toward the horrible black line; Rowan’s hanging on, he’s being dragged. The crowd swirls, there are shouts. Ophelia tries to follow, but loses sight of Rowan—has he gone down? Has the black maw devoured him?
Her breath gets short. She puts her hands on her knees, braces, like that woman. She’ll be taken. Just breathe. Be calm. Don’t lose it. The fear of having a panic attack is greater than the attack itself. Remember? The fear is worse than the thing itself. The fear is worse . . . Breathe. . . .
The ground is heaving, shaking. Her mind opens, calms. She’s sliding in. No, not now, not here . . . but it will help. Yes.
And she lets the crowd and noise and confusion go—or is it that she drains away from it?—and she’s gone, gone to her other place.