The cheering started to settle down, and Jax smiled. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were bright, reflecting yellow sunlight.
I stepped away and he dropped his arm from my elbow. “Brilliant plan,” I mumbled through tight lips.
He wiped his mouth with a bashful grin.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Sometimes you have to take one for the team.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You are not sorry.”
“You promised you wouldn’t be mad,” he reminded me, and his smile faded. “Are you?”
I ignored his question.
“I’d hire a bodyguard,” I warned him. “Justin’s going to pummel you.”
He smirked. “No he’s not. He was too busy to notice.” Jax nodded toward the tents. I looked over and Justin was there, in a huddle with Shawn and Megan, deep in conversation. He hadn’t noticed.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” He waited until I met his dark, thoughtful eyes. “He’s always too busy to notice.” Jax broadened his shoulders. “Well, I’m not.”
I dropped my gaze and looked back at Justin, surrounded by a steady swarm of followers.
“He sees you as part of the cause, Madeline,” Jax said. “I see you.”
I felt anger rise and scatter through my core, all the way to my toes. I pushed Jax back.
“Is this funny to you?” I demanded. “Is everything a joke?”
“No,” he said, his face serious.
I shoved him again. “You were just a contact, get it? You were a recruit—that’s it. You were one day out of my life, just a random drop-by.” I raised my hands in the air. “This was never part of the plan.”
Jax gave me a crooked smile, and I realized he smiled like that when he was looking under the surface, when he was seeing me.
“Leave me alone,” I warned him, and backed away. I pressed my fingers against my lips, still tingling from the kiss.
“Look!” somebody yelled, and hands pointed to the digital scroll over the stage. The numbers next to DS were plummeting. The number of dropouts was climbing so quickly, it changed every time I blinked.
The crowd exploded in cheers. I watched Justin’s reaction; he blinked at the scroll like he was imagining it. He looked in our direction and smiled. We had more supporters than ever. The number of DS Dropouts grew and continued to spiral.
I looked back at the votes. DS: 1,212,224; DS Dropouts: 5,432,535.
I couldn’t believe it. Jax’s plan had worked. One single kiss changed the entire swing of the riot. It started the wave we had needed all along.
“Crapsticks,” I muttered. Clare caught my arm.
“Well, Justin didn’t see that, but the rest of the nation did,” she said.
“It was just a publicity stunt,” I said. Clare had a trace of a grin on her face.
“Maybe you should start practicing saying those two really hard words,” she told me.
I nodded. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She shook her head. “No. It’s over,” she said. “That’s what you need to say to him. ‘It’s over.’ Your heart’s somewhere else, Maddie.”
I kneaded my knuckles against my forehead. This was the last thing I could deal with right then, at the brink of the vote announcement. I could taste Jax on my lips, sweet and warm and familiar.
I hated that Jax was right, that I needed to kiss somebody else before I understood how feelings could range. I had to fight so hard to have a small piece of Justin, and Jax opened up and gave me everything. I knew that I deserved everything. People can’t offer you a piece; they need to offer themselves whole, or you will always be asking for more, wishing for more. A piece is never enough.
Chapter Twenty-six
By noon the tally was 48–8. Digital school needed four more votes to secure the win. Though each state gets two votes, both votes go to the side that wins the majority of votes. It’s winner takes all. The sky was clouding up, and so were people’s moods. When you lose, when you see there will be no victory lap, it gets personal. It becomes suffocating.
Inside the locked, guarded courthouse, strangers who didn’t know any of us proceeded to determine our futures and didn’t offer us the chance to speak. They didn’t even offer us their opinions. At 12:30 p.m. the voting updates were announced: 66–10. We had lost.
The crowd stared up at the numbers and waited. We watched commentary videos from inside the courthouse, celebrating the victory. I watched a video on Clare’s flipscreen.
“Is there anything you’d like to say to the protesters?” a reporter asked one of the committee members, who was drinking a glass of champagne.
“Yes.” He looked directly at the lens, as if he could see us through the camera. “You can’t fight technology. You have to embrace it. Technology will always win. Digital school is the best thing that’s ever happened to this country. It’s like electricity and clean water. It makes the world a safer place. You don’t pass up these discoveries. You don’t back away from improvements in our lives. You thank people for inventing them. Now it’s time to go home. This is over.”
A group of guys climbed up on one of the concrete wave sculptures along the riverbank. It started to rock from the weight, and when more people climbed up, the wave cracked. It came down in a shattering concrete pile. People picked up smashed pieces and hurled them at the building. Cops were heading down the steps, aiming their guns at the crowd. Clare and I ran over to Scott and Justin, who were trying to calm people down.
I didn’t want to calm down. I wanted to throw something. I moved in the rioters’ direction and Justin stopped me. He grabbed my hand.
“Don’t,” he said. “It isn’t worth it.”
I met his eyes.
“You’re just going to give in?” I said, and pointed at the numbers projected on the courthouse screen.
“What’s throwing concrete going to do? Make us poor losers? Get somebody hurt? They just want a reason to arrest all of us. Now they’ll get it.”
“Shouldn’t you be a little more pissed off right now?” I shouted over the screams of protesters.
“I don’t see this as losing,” he said, and pointed to the screen. “Look at that—ten votes. Ten. Five states support us. That’s huge.”
“So now what?” I asked. “The law is in place for another ten years.”
Justin nodded. “We’ll start working harder with the states that support us. In ten years we’ll come back here and fight again.”
Justin’s eyes were on fire, his face energized. Losing the vote wasn’t what hurt. It was losing Justin. Today gave him a ten-year dose of inspiration to never stop fighting.
Speakers surrounding the courthouse pavilion turned on, and a voice boomed out.
“Kevin Freeman has something to say,” the voice said. The crowd responded with boos and curses. I felt my stomach curl with disgust. I wanted to crawl in on myself. This was going to be the same speech I had told Molly to broadcast after the vote. What could my father possibly say now?
The front door of the courthouse opened, and my father walked out with four security guards surrounding him. I stood next to Justin and watched his progress like I was watching a snake slither out of a cage.
Out of all of the congresspeople voting, only my father had the nerve to speak publicly. I wasn’t sure if it was confidence or arrogance. At this point, no one appreciated it.
People stopped throwing rocks. My dad stood in front of a plastic shield on top of the steps and wore a microphone clipped to his suit coat. His face was broadcast across all the digital screens on the building. One hundred pairs of my father’s eyes scanned the crowd.
I looked at Justin. His eyes were fixed intensely on my father. He squeezed his fingers around mine.
Chapter Twenty-seven
My father’s pale, stoic face was emotionless, as it usually was before his public speeches. He exuded self-assurance, even in front of so many hostile rioters. It was as if he didn’t see us. All he saw was a world he controlled. There
was no drumroll to welcome him, no cheers or applause, just angry silence.
He spoke out and his voice floated around us, echoing through the park like an ominous force.
“The final votes have been counted. Eighty-eight votes to keep DS a national law, and twelve votes in favor of making digital school a state-by-state educational decision.”
The crowd rumbled at this. Thanks for shoving that in our faces, Dad.
“That is a sweeping majority in favor of DS,” he continued, and held up a hand before the audience could shout. “However. Today the law to make digital school mandatory for every state officially expires. In the agreement, one vote is necessary in order to renew this as a law. That vote is mine, as president of Digital School. This law will not pass without my support, without my signature, as I still own copyrights to the DS program.”
A strange silence loomed. I squeezed Justin’s hand. I started to smile because my father’s plan was finally becoming clear to me.
“I will not give my signature to let this vote pass. As of right now, digital school is no longer a law. It will be a choice, and it will be decided on by each state.”
Justin and I looked at each other, our mouths wide open. There was a collective gasp around us, and then the crowd came alive with screams. No one could hear my father. The police in the front of the building stared at one another in surprise to see rioters hugging, cheering, jumping, gathering closer to the iron gates that separated us from the courthouse. My father held up a finger for silence.
“I created digital school. Now, looking back on my system, I have something to admit. Digital school is not working. It is not the answer.” He stopped again when the crowd screamed and celebrated. My heart hammered and I tightened my lips with impatience. Let him speak, I wanted to yell. Slowly, the shouting diffused.
“What I realized is that I tried to fix the moment instead of considering the future,” he continued. “I panicked. I set up a system in response to a tragedy. It was a short-term fix. I didn’t think about the long-term consequences.”
He paused for a few seconds, staring out at the crowd, his head held high.
“After M28, I needed to make an immediate plan. I didn’t have time to weigh alternatives. There was a war going on. How could I know the long-term effects of digital school? No one has ever tried to do what I did. I had politicians, parents, and the government counting on me, waiting for me to solve a crisis. I had thousands of dead children to bury. I had broken hearts to contend with. I had a nation mourning and looking to me to heal it. Someone had to act. Someone had to get us moving forward.
“I thought I found a cure,” he said. “I think, at that time, all we wanted was to escape. I simply built the technology to do it.”
The crowd was so quiet, we could hear the wind flapping a few DS Dropout flags back and forth over tents.
“Now I realize I only exacerbated the problem. I multiplied it. I let all of us live inside of our fears for too long.” He coughed and cleared his throat. I could see the exhaustion in his eyes. I wondered how long he had been leading two lives. “In a time of crisis, people should pull together. Not be ripped apart,” he said.
Justin’s eyes were fixed on the screens, and my mouth dropped open at the expression on his face. He was smiling at my dad. He was agreeing with him.
“I see this now,” my dad continued. “I was reacting more than I was planning. Sometimes all you can do is react. I don’t think my system failed. It kept people safe. It does protect us. And that was my number one priority, but it came at too high a price. Because none of us are free. We’re barely human.” He shook his head and looked out at the crowd. “I once heard that society grows only upon destruction. Something needs to be destroyed for anything new to be introduced. A city is flooded before anyone thinks to build a dam. Someone you love dies and you search for a cure to the disease. It seems that only tragedy compels us to change or move forward. But must we wait for tragedy to strike to encourage us to change? Why don’t we aim to avoid it in the first place?
“Today I stand in front of you and ask you to be open-minded. We should never engrave a rule so thick in stone that it is unmovable. I ask you to be flexible with me. I ask you to consider a new system. One with more choices. One that allows all of us to be free. Let’s not wait for another tragedy to strike to force us to change. Do we need to lose one another to learn to appreciate one another? Can’t we take strides, now, to improve our lives, today?”
He aimed his eyes at the crowd. He seemed to be staring at everyone at the same time. He smiled, and it was the first time I had ever seen him show emotion during a speech.
“I believe there is a better way. I want to reopen face-to-face schools. I want to reinstate real sports teams, tutoring groups, and clubs. I want students to have input on our new school designs. After all, it’s their lives. Shouldn’t they have a say in how they want to learn, on what they want to study? Maybe we should start giving students more of a voice in the matter. These are only a few of my ideas. Let’s begin our change today.” He dropped his hands and took a step back to mark the end of his speech. The crowd erupted in cheers.
Justin grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. “We need to get your dad out of here,” he yelled. “They’re going to arrest him for this.”
“He’s a hero right now,” I said as Justin tried to cut through the tightening mold of fans.
“To us,” he said. “He just made a lot of enemies.”
I looked up at the steps to see a barrage of reporters and police zeroing in on my dad like a hungry flock of birds flapping to a meal.
Rioters surged forward. Justin and I were pushed with a stampede of bodies behind us. I was shoved into Justin, and people fell behind me. I pushed with all the strength in my legs to stay standing under the weight. People in front of us screamed to get back.
Rioters were trying to climb over the gates to get to the courthouse, but the police were opening fire. The ones who did make it over were falling from tranquilizer shots.
People screamed for the gates to be lowered, pleading as bodies collided over bodies.
Before the stampede could crush us, the metal gates dividing the protesters from the steps of the courthouse were lowered. People fell over one another, rolling to their feet, slowly picking themselves up. Some people stayed motionless on the ground.
Justin kept his eyes on the stairs ahead.
“Move,” he told me. His eyes were fixed on the flock of police still pecking at my father. “Now,” he ordered.
I tried to step around bodies lying on the ground. We caught up with Clare and Scott. Blood was smeared across Clare’s white T-shirt. Her eyes found mine for a moment, and they looked blank. Stunned.
“Have you seen Joe?” I asked her. “Jax?” Clare slowly shook her head.
Justin was already ahead of me, flying up the steps toward my dad. We were separated by rioters still pushing and scrambling over one another and cops trying to push people back.
“Justin!” I yelled, but I lost him in the crowd.
I sprinted up the stairs, taking two at a time, when a hand reached out and grabbed me. I slid backwards and Paul Thompson twisted my arm around, pinning me in place. I fought to yank my arm back, and he kicked his knee into my stomach. I doubled over, trying to suck air into my lungs, but it felt like my diaphragm was lodged in my throat. I looked up and saw a gun barrel inches from my face. I could see inside the dark, hollow tunnel. Paul’s face sneered behind it.
“Sore loser?” I said between gasps for air.
He smiled, but his blue eyes were grimacing. “I saved you a little present from the past. Since you seem to prefer living in it.” He used his thumb to push the safety back on his gun, but somebody caught his wrist before his finger pulled the trigger. Jax whirled him around, ripped the plastic shield out of his hand, and used it to smash Paul in the face so hard that blood sprayed across the clear plastic. I staggered back, and Jax smashed the shield across Paul’s back, k
nocking him to the ground. Another officer was on top of us, but Jax twisted the shield out of his hand and drove it straight into his stomach. The guard’s knees buckled from the blow, and he leaned forward. Jax raised his arms and smashed the shield over the back of his head, knocking him down.
A herd of police officers swarmed in our direction. Jax grabbed both of the shields in time to protect us from a stream of shots. I screamed and held my hands over my ears as shots ricocheted off the thick plastic. They were answered by more shots, coming from the armed rioters behind us.
We scooted up the steps. I grabbed a gun lying under an officer and pinned my back against Jax’s. I fired shots with the rest of the rioters, until we had picked off the swarm of cops.
Jax turned and grabbed my hand and lifted me up. We looked around, taking in our small battle victory.
“And they say you learn nothing from video games,” Jax said, breathing hard.
I looked across the courtyard and finally spotted Justin. He was closing in on my mom and dad, who had descended the steps and were surrounded by cops. Joe was down there too, trying to get close to my dad. We ran down the steps to the street as my dad was being pushed toward a black car at the edge of the courthouse grounds. Justin and Riley managed to pick off the police on either side of my father and separate him from the mob. More shots broke out and Riley fell forward onto the street.
A van pulled up; Scott was in the driver’s seat. We raced down to Justin. He was trying to get my father into the van.
“Leave me here,” my dad ordered. “I’m turning myself in.”
“They’ll arrest you, Kevin,” my mom said.
“Go with the police, Jane,” he ordered her.
“I’m staying with you,” she insisted.
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