The room was small and cold. The agent, a slender white man with fair hair, gestured to the chair across the table from him and waited until I sat before clicking his recorder on.
“Ready?”
I nodded.
“State your name and age.”
“Camila Dubois, fifteen.”
“You’re going to have to speak up.”
I cleared my throat and lifted my chin. My mother had whispered to me when we were getting out of the agent’s car not to show any fear, no matter what they said. I held my face expressionless.
“Where do you go to school?”
This was a game. I was sure that they already knew everything there was to know about us.
“At home.”
He tapped a finger on the table between us. “Unless you are being home schooled for religious reasons, you are required to attend one of the National Schools.”
“The vouchers don’t pay for a school I can afford to bus to. Too bad there aren’t any public schools I can bike to anymore.”
“Miss Dubois, your father is a professor at the university. Your mother teaches at the community college. Your family can afford to send you to one of the charter schools on a public bus.”
“My father has been supposedly ‘detained for deportation,’ and you won’t tell us why or where you’re holding him. He used up his vacation three months ago; there won’t be any more paychecks until you release him.” My voice was tight.
He ignored this. “Your family is keeping you out of the National Schools for religious reasons, aren’t they? Your father is Muslim; you should all be wearing the mandatory ID badges.”
I swallowed hot words. The way he was looking at me made me want to check my head to make sure I wasn’t wearing a hijab.
“My family feels I can get a better education at home. My father is not Muslim. He’s not anything, he’s agnostic.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about the night of your father’s arrest.”
“The National Guard took him on Father’s Day, in June. 2019 will be over in a month and we still haven’t heard anything about when we can expect to see him again. It’s been five months! We need to know that he’s okay.” My voice cracked.
The memory of that night still plays over and over in my head. I can’t shake it. It’s like the fly caught in a chunk of amber that my friend Charlie brought to school in sixth grade. A horrific moment frozen in time.
One minute, we were enjoying the Father’s Day dinner of roast lamb and vegetable kabobs that my little brother and I had helped my mother prepare, and the next, Father’s place at the table was empty, his food still warm on the plate.
“Guardsmen handcuffed him and took him away with no explanation.” My eyes blurred with moisture; I looked down.
“What did your mother do?”
“She called our lawyer.”
But that was after she had chased the Guardsmen out the door, screaming at them to let him go. Only my little brother’s wailing stopped her from following them to their car. I squeezed my eyes shut. The agent was talking again.
“Did you know that your father was born and raised in Morocco?”
My head snapped up. I stared in astonishment at his expressionless face. “That’s a lie! My father was born and raised in Pasadena.”
“No, he wasn’t. But you know that, don’t you?”
“I can’t know that because it’s not true. I know you people think everybody with brown skin must be a Muslim terrorist, but this is ridiculous.”
My heart was racing. Was it my turn to be cuffed and hauled off?
The agent ignored my response.
“What does your father do for a living?”
“He’s a professor; he heads up neuroscience research at the university. He’s also a great digital media artist. He was working on a project funded by an NEA grant that he needs to finish, so how about you let him go now?”
‘What do you know about this project?”
“Nothing. I was twelve when my father got the grant. I was too busy with my friends and school to pay any attention to what he was doing.”
The agent looked at his watch and stood, his chair scraping the floor as he straightened. “Thank you for your time, Miss Dubois, we’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”
Relief washed through me as I scrambled to my feet. “You’re letting me go.”
“Yes, you’re free to go.”
I grabbed my backpack from behind the chair. Hopefully they were done with my mother and brother and we could go home together.
The hallway was as white and featureless as the room I just left. I could see an exit sign at the far end. It was so quiet my boots echoed on the linoleum.
A voice sounded from behind me. I inhaled sharply and jerked to a stop.
“Excuse me, miss. I need you to come with me.”
I turned to face the voice behind me, a burly man in a gray suit. “No, I’m done; he said I could go.”
“I’m sorry, miss.”
I looked longingly one last time at the exit sign in the distance and followed him back into the room I’d just left.
A different agent sat at the table now. He had small, close-set blue eyes under bushy eyebrows and slicked-back gray hair. He was wearing a badge of some kind.
“Sit down, please. The agent who did your interview seems to think you don’t know anything about your father’s work, yet somebody released it on the internet yesterday and it’s gone viral. What can you tell me about that?” His voice was harsh and too loud.
The blood rushed to my head, and for a moment I thought I might pass out. So much for the lie that they took my father because they thought he was Muslim.
“How is that possible? Nobody has access to his work. You took his computer.”
“You tell me, Miss Dubois. Your mother and brother don’t seem to know anything, and it’s not going to go well for any of you if we don’t get some answers.”
“What have you done? Let me see them.”
“I’m sorry, we can’t do that.”
His eyes were cold and his face glistened with a fine sheen of sweat. The asshole was enjoying this.
“No! I want to see my mother.”
He pressed on. “Right before federal funding was cut for the NEA, a small number of grants were awarded and yours was one of them, isn’t that right Miss Dubois? Did you run out of money and apply for a second NEA grant under your grandfather’s name?”
“It wasn’t…”
“Your grandfather doesn’t know anything about this grant application in his name.”
They knew. My gut clenched. My life was over, but at least my father’s program was out there now, and maybe things would change fast enough to make a difference.
“It went viral already? How many hits?”
He seemed to forget it was me he was talking to. “Thousands, apparently, but not for long. Our experts are working around the clock to take it down.”
He was so sure of himself. I smiled. He had no idea.
“This is serious business, Miss Dubois. Soldiers are putting down their guns and going AWOL, workers are walking off the oil fields.”
It was all I could do not to jump up and whoop. Nobody could stop it now. It was the nature of the art. My father’s program was brilliant. Once people interacted with it, their desire to destroy it would evaporate.
My father had told me about his emergency plan months ago, just in case something happened to him. The project was close to being done when he was taken, and the directions he secreted away in my closet last spring made it simple to complete. He had written the second grant and signed his father’s name to it; I only had to submit it. It was enough to keep us going while I completed the project.
The beauty of the program is that’s impossible to look at it without being sucked in by the immersive, interactive art. You experience an orchestrated array of pleasurable colors, sounds, and images that initiate cerebral reprogramming through keystroke patterns and neural stimulation. It increases your empathy, honesty, and ability to think critically. Most importantly, it erases patterns that lead to violence. It’s a game changer.
“Nothing to say for yourself, Miss Dubois?”
“Can I call our lawyer?”
The man snorted, and shook his head as he stood and told the burly agent to escort me back to my holding cell.
I looked back at him and smiled. “My dad always says that the only constant is change. Get used to it; nothing can stop it now.”