We All Looked Up

by Tommy Wallach

  “How long have you been going out?” Peter asked.

  “Just a couple of weeks.”

  “That’s great. She’s great.”

  Like that, it was done. Just one more lie in a world full of them. Between that and stealing the guitar, Andy was really knocking it out of the park these days, morality-wise. Whatever. None of that stuff mattered anymore. All that mattered was the quest.

  Unfortunately, Andy had more to deal with than just his conscience. From the top floor of the split-level came a single loud cough. Peter jumped to his feet.

  “Who’s here?”

  “No one,” Andy said.

  “So I’m no one now?” Anita came down the stairs, looking a little ghoulish in the shadows cast by the flashlight.

  “Anita?” Peter said, now doubly confused. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” Anita said. “For my sins.”

  It was true, though Andy hadn’t really thought about it that way before. Anita hadn’t been back to her own house since that day they’d picked up her stuff together. The cops had come looking for her once (her mom got Andy’s last name out of the Hamilton yearbook), but Andy said that he hadn’t heard from her in a week, and eventually they went away. And in spite of everything that was going on, the two of them had managed to have a pretty good time together—­playing music, watching TV (until the power went out), eating a lot of canned soup. It was a bit like it had been with Bobo back in the day, before Andy broke the pact. Like he and Anita had become roommates in some shared mental space.

  She climbed over the top of the couch and rolled down onto the cushions. “So what have you two been talking about?” she asked innocently. But Andy knew she’d heard everything, including his lie.

  “Peter got an e-mail from Eliza. Now we know where she is.”

  “Wow,” Anita said, putting a hand on Peter’s arm. “She sent you a message from jail? She must really like you.”

  “I guess so,” Peter said.

  Anita glared knowingly at Andy. But was she going to give him away?

  “Anyway,” Andy said, “Peter thought we should stage some sorta protest, but I don’t think we can get enough people to show up for it to matter.”

  “Sure we can! We know just the right people.”

  “I’m not talking to Golden, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Not Golden. Better people. Hippie people.”

  “Oh yeah . . . them.” Andy had almost forgotten about Chad and his little commune. If anyone would know how to put a protest together, they would.

  “We’ll head over there first thing tomorrow. Peter, why don’t you come here as soon as you wake up and we’ll go together.”

  “Sure. Good call.” Peter stood up and went to the door, but he hesitated before opening it. “It’s been really nice to see you guys. I’ve been on my own with my parents, and I think it’s making me a little crazy.” Even in the dark, Andy could see the sympathy flashing in Anita’s eyes. Don’t do it, he wanted to say.

  “You wanna hang out here for a bit?” she asked. “You can even stay over if you want.”

  “Really? Thanks. I mean, if it’s cool.”

  He was looking at Andy. Nobody spoke for a good five seconds.

  “Of course it’s cool,” Anita said. “I’ll go get you a beer.”

  Andy could remember watching a movie in European history class about this one Christmas during World War I when the two sides declared a truce and partied together between the trenches. Hanging out with Peter felt a little bit like that, like fraternizing with the enemy. They played Sorry!, a mindless dice-rolling game, and talked apocalypse: the kids who’d left town and the kids who’d stayed, the unlikely couples forming in the shadow of Ardor for want of better prospects, the surprising tribulations of impending doom.

  “I figured everybody would be super sociable, you know?” Peter said. “Like we’d all come together or something. But it hasn’t been like that at all.”

  Apparently, his best friend had moved away, and his ex-girlfriend (the famously lustworthy Stacy Prince) refused to speak to him. Funny, it had been the exact opposite for Andy. Without Ardor, he wouldn’t have made friends with either Anita or Eliza. Maybe the asteroid was turning the whole world upside down. The popular shall become unpopular. The freak shall inherit the Earth.

  They stayed up talking for hours. Peter passed out first, on the carpet underneath the coffee table. Andy felt giddy and detached with sleeplessness.

  “You shouldn’t have said what you did,” Anita whispered, “about you and Eliza.”

  “It was the only way to make him back off.”

  “What if he mentions it to her?”

  “Why would he? Besides, he probably won’t see her again anyway.”

  “Sure he will.”

  “What? You think this protest idea could work?”

  Anita turned lengthwise across the couch, putting her legs over one of the arms. Andy could feel the warmth of her head against his knee. “You remember that morning with Chad, with the tea?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I saw things that day. Things I still can’t put into words. Connections, you know? I felt that karass you’re always talking about. We’re all in it. You and me. Him.” She pointed at Peter, sprawled out on the carpet like a giant fallen from his kingdom at the top of the beanstalk. “Misery and Eliza. Even Bobo.”

  “Wow. Even Bobo? How drunk are you right now?”

  “I’m being serious. Chad said we had to have faith. So I’m going to. We’ll get them out.”

  She didn’t say anything after that, and a few minutes later, her breathing turned deep and even. Andy felt a fresh wave of shame wash over him. He didn’t deserve Anita, who had kept his secret safe from Peter, who was so willing to help out even though there was no one in the detention center she particularly cared about saving (in spite of Andy’s best efforts, she and Eliza had yet to really bond ). She’d revitalized his music and made him feel like something other than a slacker and a misfit. Along with the quest, Anita had given him a reason to keep getting out of bed every morning. And why? What was in it for her? What reason had he ever given her to be so good to him?

  He fell asleep with these questions orbiting endlessly around his head, like a hundred tiny asteroids.

  The next morning, the three of them drove across the bridge to Chad Eye’s house. Everything outside looked pretty much the same as it had the first time, clean and quiet and still.

  A stranger answered the door-gong in only his underwear. He was very pale and very hairy and still half-asleep.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, we’re looking for Chad.”

  “Hold up one second.” He walked away, scratching at his bare stomach. Through the open door, Andy saw that the house was a total wreck. Clothes and empty food containers were strewn all over, and a bunch of people were asleep on the floor of the foyer. Before, the place had felt like a Buddhist temple. Now it felt like an expensively decorated squat.

  After a minute, a couple of familiar faces came to the door: Sunny, the dreadlocked blond girl, and in her arms, Chad’s philosophical beagle, Sid.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m Sunny.”

  Andy shook her ring-heavy hand. “Yeah, we’ve met.”

  “Oh yeah?” She nodded as if Andy had just told her something particularly interesting. “Cool!”

  “So is Chad around?”

  Sunny frowned. “Didn’t you hear? He got busted at the riot.”

  “Seriously?”

  It was terrible news. If Chad was in jail, who would be putting together the Party at the End of the World?

  “This is perfect!” Anita exclaimed.

  Everybody, Andy included, gave her exactly the sort of look that such an outburst deserved.

  “I just m
eant that that’s kinda why we’re here. We need your help. A lot of our friends got taken away that day too. We’re planning a protest at the detention center where they’re being held. It’s only for juveniles, so it wouldn’t mean freeing Chad directly, but if we can get amnesty for the kids, it might start something bigger.”

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Sunny said. She leaned forward, dangling a single dreadlock in front of Sid, who batted it away. “Between you and me, we could really use a cause right now. It’s gotten a little depressing in here. We can make, like, a festival out of it.”

  “Sounds great,” Anita said.

  “Okay then! See you soon!”

  Sunny started to close the door.

  “Wait!” Andy said.

  “What?”

  “You don’t know where it is.”

  Sunny laughed. “Oh yeah!”

  “We’ll be at the old navy base at Sand Point, right by Magnuson Park.”

  “Cool. I’ll round up some folks and try to get there in a couple hours. And hey, I’m sorry if I seem scattered. I’m, like, super high right now.” She giggled, then shut the door.

  “If there’s still a Guinness Book of World Records a month from now, this shit should definitely go down as the smallest protest of all time,” Andy said.

  Anita nodded glumly. They’d been camped outside of the navy base for almost five hours, holding up signs they’d made over at Peter’s house: ARDOR FOR AMNESTY (Anita), FREE SEATTLE’S KIDS (Peter), and THIS IS BULLCRAP! (Andy). But though they’d gotten a few friendly honks from passing cars, nobody else had joined the cause.

  They were set up just in front of a wide gate in the chain-link fence that surrounded the base, centered so as to prevent any cars from getting past them. There was an empty gatehouse on the other side of the fence, guarding a huge cracked canvas of weed-choked tarmac. The actual navy base was a good half-mile away—too far for anyone inside to have noticed their tiny protest. The gate itself was held shut by a heavy-duty padlock, and the fence was topped with a sparkling helix of barbed wire.

  Andy stood up and put his face up to the rusty diamonds of the fence. “Wait, I think I see something.”

  A car was moving across the tarmac. It came toward them, stopping a few dozen feet away from the gate. The driver’s-side door opened up and a man in full camouflage stepped down. He had a jagged ball of keys in his hand.

  “What the hell you all think you’re doing?”

  “Blocking the gate!” Anita shouted. “None of you get to leave until everyone does.”

  The soldier chuckled. “Are you crazy? Those are criminals in there. You want them out on the street?”

  “They’re just kids.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, so far this week, kids have shot at me twice. Believe me, every kid in there did something to deserve getting put away.” He unlocked the padlock on the gate, then swung it wide open. “Don’t even think about coming in here, by the way. We got snipers covering the lot.”

  “My ass you do,” Andy said.

  “Try it, punk. It’s your funeral. I’d love to see your guts splattered all over—”

  “Excuse me,” someone said. “Are you threatening these civilians?”

  Andy turned to find a clutch of strangers propping up their bicycles across the street. Most of them were wearing an inordinate amount of hemp and beaded jewelry, marking them as friends of Sunny’s, but the one who’d spoken was dressed in a natty black suit and tie, as if he’d just come from a business meeting. He advanced on the soldier with a confident, professional stride.

  “These civilians used threatening language themselves,” the soldier said.

  “Well, I look forward to telling your superior officer about that”—the well-dressed man read the soldier’s name off his uniform—­“Corporal Hastings.”

  “Knock yourself out.” Hastings climbed back into his truck and restarted the engine. He revved it a few times, threateningly, but when the car finally moved again, it was in reverse, back toward the base.

  “That was badass,” Andy said.

  The well-dressed man grinned. “Every good sit-in requires one guy in a nice suit. It lends an air of sophistication to the proceedings. Now let’s talk strategy.”

  And with that, their protest had really begun.

  Anita

  BY THE TIME SHE WENT to sleep that night, there were fifty or sixty people sitting in front of the navy-base gate, with more coming all the time. They were black and white and Hispanic, toddlers and teenagers and grandparents. Most of them were friends of the commune, but some just happened to be driving or walking by and decided to join up. Those without sleeping bags or toothbrushes were provided for by Sunny’s friends, who must have ripped off a camping store on the way to the protest, given all the supplies they “happened” to have on hand. They also prepared a delicious barbecue of veggie burgers, veggie hot dogs, and grilled vegetables, and someone even brought out a stumpy sugar cake that had been cooked in a wood-fire oven. Around midnight, a few police cars pulled up, lights flashing and sirens blaring, scaring everyone out of sleep. Someone on a megaphone ordered them to disperse, but when nobody moved, the cops gave up and left without a fight.

  The next day was a Saturday, and the ranks of the protesters continued to swell: a hundred people, then two. Every few hours someone would go on a grocery run, collecting money with a hat or just taking the hit themselves. The protest was quickly becoming a community.

  While Sunny’s besuited friend Michael pounded the pavement to bring in new recruits, Anita took charge of managing the people who were already there. Food had to be fairly distributed. The drunk and disorderly had to be calmed down or else asked to leave. One guy showed up with a sawn-off shotgun and started screaming about how he was going to blow away whoever was responsible for imprisoning his son. It took an hour to convince him to hand over his weapon in exchange for a slice of pizza.

  Anita had hoped that Andy and Peter would share in the responsibilities of leadership, but that turned out to be a pipe dream. In Andy’s case, this was really a question of character—he just wasn’t the administrative type (perhaps best exemplified by the fact that Anita had caught him sharing a joint with the hippie contingent first thing that morning). She put him on full-time sign-making duty, where his stoner creativity could really shine.

  Peter, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have the energy to do much of anything. Though Anita didn’t know him very well, she could recognize the signs of a heavy heart. Late in the day, she found him standing alone at the chain-link fence, staring through the trees in the direction of the navy base. Night was beginning to fall, though the clouds were so thickly clustered that you could only track the setting sun as a vague sinking luminescence.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you in love with her?” The boldness of her question surprised Anita more than it seemed to surprise Peter, who didn’t even pretend not to understand.

  “I don’t even know her. I didn’t think she was the kind of person who could . . .” He shook his head.

  Anita came closer and grabbed hold of the fence, digging the toe of her sneaker into one of the holes and raising herself up off the ground. She could make out a pale-green light shining in a top-floor window of one of the buildings across the tarmac.

  “Who could do what?”

  “I thought that she wanted to be with me, that’s all. But I was wrong.”

  Sadness looked strange on Peter—too small, almost—like a sweater that reached only halfway down the forearm, that pulled up and exposed an awkward strip of midriff. With a word, she could eradicate that sadness. All she’d have to do was tell him the truth. Only then she’d be breaking trust with Andy, who was her best friend in the world. It was the lesser of two evils, then, to keep silent.

  “And
what about you?” Peter asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Are you in love?”

  “Me? Who would I be in love with?”

  Peter laughed.

  “I’m serious. Who would I be in love with?” Anita let go of the fence, falling back to the hard earth. She really didn’t know who Peter was talking about, but before she could press him, one of Sunny’s friends came running from the direction of the main gate. Apparently, someone had tossed a whole bag of charcoal briquettes over the fence, and now they had no way to run the barbecue.

  “To be continued,” Anita said, but that first errand soon became a dozen others, and pretty soon she’d forgotten about Peter’s question.

  On Sunday spirits began to turn, and by Monday, a definitive mass depression had set in. The morning fog coalesced into Seattle’s infamous drizzle, and there was a bite to the breeze that found the chinks in your clothing and led the rain inside. People had set up their tents just a few minutes too late to keep their stuff dry. Everything felt that way now—just a little bit too late. There were only two weeks left before Ardor was scheduled to arrive, and what were they all doing? Sitting around in the cold and the damp, waiting.

  Anita watched the tarmac around the navy base turn slick and dark with rain. She’d hoped things would move more quickly than this; no one had so much as tried to get out of the gate since Corporal Hastings that first day.

  Anita popped her head inside Andy’s tent.

  “Do you think there’s some other way off the base?” she asked.

  Andy sat up, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. “Anita? Why are you . . . who are you talking about?”