The crowd knows Storm is still out there. I try to catch the adrenaline I see on their faces, to feel like fighting on, to be brave. It’s hard.
I thought it was over.
Kevin exhorts the crowd and the crowd responds with yells and hoots and claps. It keeps growing, as if all of Portland is coming together in this one place, in spite of the dark, in spite of the windstorm, in spite of anything about this moment.
Fireworks blaze overhead. Just three of them, three big umbrellas of bright red fire like streamers. They are impossible, a thing that can’t exist, but they do and they’re so beautiful my chest fills with heat. Another thing I’ve always wanted to see, another little dream that still lives in the real world.
I’m hungry and thirsty and cold. But the afterimage of the fireworks leaves me a little brighter inside, a little lighter. I can go on. Beside me, Monday looks exhausted. “Are you okay?” I ask her.
“Yes.” She turns and looks at me. “This has endured for years. Why would we think it could end tonight?”
“The crowd believes it. They’ve been here all along.”
She reaches a hand out to put it across my shoulders, and I lean into her, and we watch the sky for more fireworks, but there aren’t any more.
Kevin hands the microphone to Aisha. Bryce stands by her side. Aisha starts the same songs she took us through in jail, the microphone carries her voice out across the crowd to join her. Monday and I sing, too, almost a reflex. Aisha sings, we sing.
The doors of the train station open. A small army pours through them with pitchers and cups of water, with dried apples and bottles of soda and big canisters with pumps on them. A young girl in braids serves me two fingers of coffee from one of the canisters in a small paper cup and even though I haven’t gotten any food yet the coffee helps. Eventually I snag a soft, tasteless apple and a cup of water.
Raj leads me and Monday into the station. Four big men with serious faces control the entrance, but being with Raj is apparently enough. They step aside.
I spot the unique blue of Trill’s hair and a few of the other people from the march, and more faces I remember from the hangar. There’s also a lot of people I don’t know, and I take a deep breath, remind myself that I’m getting used to crowds.
Raj spots someone he wants to talk to and turns to us. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Then he’s gone.
Monday and I head to the bathroom. There is a small half-used bar of soap by the sink. At the moment, the soap looks like a miracle.
“I never thought I’d get jailed for doing good,” Monday mutters while I fill a bottle I’d saved with water from the sink. “They could jail me now. I shot that guy.”
I remember how she felt about the boy she didn’t shoot. “He deserved it, and you didn’t kill him.” I start pouring the bottle over her head, slowly so it’s not a shock to her.
“I want to throw the gun away but I can’t.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you did.”
She purses her lips in a way that tells me she isn’t going to do it. Her hair is so thick it’s not wet through yet, so I refill the bottle.
“Were you in the same cell with Kevin?”
She nods.
“How was he?”
She sighs. “He didn’t apologize. Not even after they threw me in jail with him. I think being in a wheelchair and running all this has made him stubborn.”
Did she shoot the guard to prove something to Kevin? I don’t know how to ask her that, so I fill the bottle again and let the warm water out slowly through my fingers and massage her scalp. Her hair feels coarser than mine. Must be the Indian blood.
I remember how she looked at me in the jail, full of need.
If she wasn’t a girl, I’d know how to react. Maybe I don’t know the difference between friendship and love. I worry about her when I’m not near her. Actually, I worry about her when I am near her. I keep rubbing her scalp, keep my hands busy doing something they won’t get in trouble doing.
“What about Seattle?” she asks, the question so casual it gives away how much she wants to leave.
I place the bar of soap into her hand and start wetting my own hair, sighing at the warmth of the water. I don’t know why some things work here and some don’t; why there is warm water in a train station. Some piece of renewable energy built from Before, like solar panels on the roof. But I don’t need to know. I’ve accepted stranger things on this trip. “We’re in this now.”
Her face falls a little. “I thought this was over for a while.”
“I know. At least no one thinks we’re spies anymore.”
She nods, her hair slick with soap that smells of mint. “It feels dangerous.” She doesn’t say this like she minds.
“Everywhere is dangerous.”
She snorts.
“Seattle is a few hundred more miles of I-5.”
“This sucks, too.”
I don’t argue. Everything is dangerous except the garden, and maybe Just Robyn. In fact, now that I know what’s out here, those places don’t feel safe either. I understand more about why the Board was always scared, although I still think it’s the wrong choice. But I might die here, and that’s not the best choice either. “Maybe after we win, this will be a good place to be.”
Monday doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t agree. She holds her hand out for the empty water bottle and I give it to her and start rubbing soap into my hair.
“I feel like this is my fight now. If we leave Portland like this—under Storm—then maybe someone like him will want to run Just Robyn and the garden someday. Maybe they’re already there. Maybe Seattle has its own Storm.”
“Justice could take Storm.” Monday fills the bottle again.
“I heard he tried once.” I take the bottle from her and start pouring a rinse into her hair. As I tell her the story I got from Aisha, Monday shifts her head under my hand and I take the hint and scrub at her scalp and she whimpers a little.
“Now I know why he sent me here,” she says.
“Really?”
“I bet he wanted to know what’s here. And he knew there were good people here.” She smiles. “Maybe he wanted to send me someplace safe after all.”
“We might have died on the way here.”
She touches me with a wet hand, withdraws it again.
I’m confused by how close she feels. Telling her about Raj and his kisses seems wrong and right, both, and in the end the words don’t come out of my mouth. This feels a bit messed up. Still, I do a good job helping her finish washing and lean my head back so she can rinse the soap from my hair. Her hands are strong.
Three women I don’t know walk in, ruining our quiet moment. We’re as clean as we are going to get in a small public bathroom. There is no way to dry our hair so we leave it soaked and dripping.
I’m ready. When this is over I can think about what to do next, and I can think about how Monday makes me feel, and whether or not to go to Seattle.
Outside, Raj is waiting for us. This makes me smile, and I feel both better and more torn. “Now what?” I ask him.
He looks rather pleased with himself, like he has some great secret. My stomach hopes he is going to surprise us with an excellent meal.
Instead, he swings his arms around from behind him, and he has a phone for each of us.
“Cool.” Monday says, flipping the one he hands her open to be sure it works. It’s pretty banged up on the outside, but its display lights up and looks cheerful.
“Clean and with communications ability restored,” I say. “What more could a girl want?”
Raj smiles and continues to look entirely too pleased with himself.
He leads us to a huge room in the train station with benches and a ticket counter and a lot of open space. This must have been where people waited to take the train Before. Best of all, there is a sense of space since no more than twenty people occupy a room designed for many more.
Kevin’s wheelchair is on the far side of the room, near where people would board the trains. Leaning on the counter where the conductor must have stood to take tickets, I spot the beautiful ebony of Robyn’s skin, and beside her, the bulk of Justice.
Monday looks as shocked as I feel, and then she gets a broad smile and looks like someone gave her presents.
I would be that happy if it was Oskar or Kelley. In a way, this is even better. Justice is right for this place, fierce and a bit feral. Robyn appears exotic in contrast to Aisha’s ethereally pale skin.
Monday starts forward. I put a hand on her arm and say, “I want to know what they’re talking about.”
We walk as quietly as we can and sit down on benches near them. Aisha and Bryce notice us, but the other three are deep in conversation, focused only on each other. There’s so much tension in the air it stops us.
We catch the end of a sentence by Kevin. “...now. This late. You can’t swoop in from outside.”
Robyn’s voice is high and full of anger. “Justice got you out of jail. He came the day after you got locked up and he’s been running logistics and ops out of here for twenty-four hours straight.”
Justice says nothing.
Kevin nods, which I suppose is acknowledgement of Justice’s role, although it’s perfunctory. He doesn’t even look grateful.
There is a lot of silence.
Aisha and Bryce stand still, gaping, like they’re shocked to see Justice and Robyn here, too. Kevin sees us, although Justice and Robyn haven’t yet. He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes meet mine for a minute and pass on.
Damn him. Monday just shot a man for him.
Kevin is still looking at Justice, looking up since he’s in the chair. “Why now? Why not last year or the year before?”
Justice speaks so quietly I can hardly hear him. “We’re not going to stay, Kevin. We have another life, now.”
“So why did you come back?” Kevin asks. “Why now?” He points at us. “Because of them?”
Justice and Robyn swing around, and both of them look ecstatic to see us. Robyn comes toward us, stands beside Monday. Justice turns back to Kevin. “I came for a lot of reasons. Not half of which was to help you finish this.”
Kevin shakes his head, not believing.
This feels like the way they didn’t trust us, and it makes me angry with Kevin all over again. I like him and I don’t; he is my enemy and my friend. I hate it that I don’t know how to feel about him, or about Raj versus Monday for that matter.
My stomach is clawing my backbone for food and I’m tired of people acting stupid. This is all inside me, demanding to get out until my feet start moving almost all by themselves.
I stalk over to Kevin.
As soon as he looks at me, I half-kneel by his chair and look him straight in the eyes. He looks back, curious and maybe a bit annoyed.
“It’s always about trust Kevin.”
No response.
“It turned out that you could trust us. Does it really matter why Justice is here? Isn’t it good?”
Kevin gives me a long look. He doesn’t want to respond. I can see it in him, this inner fight that shows in his eyes and the way he grips the arms of his chair and in the short sharpness of his breath.
Aisha senses how important the moment is, and comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder. I touch her fingers and let go, but keep looking at Kevin.
It feels like there is a ball of silence around us.
Kevin actually shakes a little.
“We’re on your side,” I say. “And I bet Justice can help. Winning the battle matters more than anything, and Justice and Robyn can help.”
Kevin swallows, looks away, looks back. His eyes are damp and his face struggles to decide what expression to wear. I turn my head away so that he can fight his own fight, and after a few breaths I hear him say, “Okay. Let’s go free Portland.”
Justice smiles and says, “Together.”
That breaks all of the silences between us. Monday is in Justice’s arms and I’m asking Robyn if they saw the things we posted on PDXNET, and she says, “Yes,” and that makes me feel pretty good.
Raj is watching and Bryce is talking to his dad quietly.
Pretty much everyone needs to hug everyone, which feels awkward but also like it has to happen.
A half an hour later, we’re all standing just inside the doorway to the parking lot, checking phones. Everyone else has phones and earbuds. With some fiddling, they all work and we all have contacts for each other and a way to get texts to and from each other as a group.
Kevin must see the irony in this because he gives me a soft wink before he leads us back out to the half-circle, to the thousands of his supporters that are waiting for him to lead them to freedom. We’re all bundled up but my damp hair still makes me feel cold. And I’m still hungry, damn it.
Justice and Robyn walk beside Kevin, with Bryce and Aisha behind. Raj walks with us, and a few of the reporters, including Alex. I’m always pleased when I see that she’s still alive.
Collectively, this third line that has me and Raj and Monday in it forms a half-circle of protection for the leaders. I’m holding Raj’s hand and Monday’s hand, and there is no tension in this moment. Only resolve. This is a big family out for a big fight.