by Mark Oshiro
“You?” Moss said, shocked. “In a gang?”
“I know, I know,” they said. “Pretty surprising, right? I got jumped real bad once, around age twelve. Stopped talking much after that. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t stand up for myself, like I was a disappointment. I stopped talking to Njemile during that time, but she never stopped being my friend.” They spread their hands out in front of them dramatically. “That’s where Bits came from.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t know that.”
“I only talk when I wanna talk,” Bits said. “I’m just a lot more careful about myself these days.”
“Well, I’m flattered,” said Moss. He squeezed Bits’s hand again. “Thanks.”
Moss released Bits’s hand and draped his arm around their shoulder, pulling Bits in closer to him.
“I only barely met Javier,” said Bits. “You liked him a lot, didn’t you?”
Moss nodded, his throat constricting again at the thought. His words felt tiny. “Yeah. A lot.”
“It’s hard to like someone. I try not to.”
Bits then leaned into Moss and they sat together like that for another half hour, silent but calmed by the presence of each other. They watched cars go by on 23rd, heard the sound of amplified voices in the church, felt the cool fall wind rush down the street. And still Moss sat, unmoving, but with his friend’s body next to him, warm and comforting.
A commotion spilled around the corner, and Moss pulled his arm back to push himself up off the ground. He helped Bits up, and they both saw people spilling out onto the streets.
“It must be over,” said Moss. “Lemme go find my mama. You’ll stick around, right?”
Bits nodded, and then Moss pulled them into a quick hug before sprinting off. He darted around the crowd forming on the steps and pushed his way into the church. People were still making their way outside, so he expected it would take a while for him to find his mother. But she stood up near the pulpit with Reverend Okonjo, Martin, Esperanza, and someone in a navy hoodie who had their back to Moss. He tried his best to be quick about the greetings he gave to all the familiar people he passed, but it was hard. Shawna stopped him to express her thanks again and say she was sorry about what had happened to Javier. Mrs. Torrance pulled him aside at one point, but she could tell that he was preoccupied. “I’ll see you in class Monday, Mr. Jeffries,” she said. “We all got your back.” He was thankful.
He ascended the steps quickly, and Martin made room for Moss to join the group around the pulpit. When he did so, the man in the hoodie turned to look at him, and he smiled weakly.
It was Mr. Jacobs.
“What are you doing here?” Moss asked.
“Not so loud, honey,” Wanda said, and she directed the group into the wings on stage left. She focused her gaze on Moss. “You okay?”
“I’m okay, I guess,” he said, dismissing her. “A little shocked to see him here. How’s your jaw?”
Mr. Jacobs’s hand shot up to the bruise on his face. “I’ve had better days,” he admitted. He sighed. “I know this doesn’t mean much, but I’m really sorry about what happened to your friend.”
There were other folks sitting on the edge of the stage, and Moss watched as Esperanza hovered nearby. I can’t talk to her right now or I’ll explode.
Instead, Moss looked directly at his mother. “What’s going on, Mama? I don’t understand. I just want to help.”
“I know,” she said. “And you did a fantastic job tonight.”
“So why all the secrecy? What’s going on?”
This time, Mr. Jacobs stepped close to him. “I got a chance to talk to your mom before this started, Morris, and—”
“Moss,” Wanda corrected.
“Sorry. Yeah, of course. Anyway, I wanted to help because what happened last week was … awful. Really awful.”
“I know,” Moss said, his face burning as anger flared in him again. “You don’t need to tell me. Again.”
It was quiet for a beat before Mr. Jacobs continued, pushing past the awkwardness. “Look, I know more about this than you think I do, and I told your mom everything I could, and she decided that it was best to share what I know with … a select few.”
“A select few?” Moss turned to his mother. “A select few what?”
“People I trust,” she said. “And I think you and some of your friends deserve to come along. You’ve done the work that’s gotten us here.”
Rawiya joined Moss at his side. “Okay, now I’m confused, too,” she said. “What do you know?”
Mr. Jacobs cleared his throat. “I know everything,” he said, and then he paused. “And where James Daley is.”
Martin whistled as the others gaped at Mr. Jacobs in shock. Moss snickered, if only because he’d been shocked so many times that night that he had no surprise left in him.
“Well,” said Moss. “You better start talking.”
28
They sat down in the pews, before Mr. Jacobs began to talk. Moss curled up next to his mother and leaned his head on her arm, and Bits found a spot behind them. Rawiya sat across the aisle from them with her parents. Moss had never met them, and he marveled at how tall her mom was and how short her father was. He realized that Rawiya must be the exact median height between them, and it amused him.
Reg and Kaisha had stayed behind, along with Martin, Shamika, Njemile, and Njemile’s moms, but Moss crossed his arms when he saw that Esperanza had not left.
“No,” he said. “I love you, Esperanza, and I know this isn’t your fault, but you can’t be here.”
“Moss,” said Wanda, a harshness slipping into her tone.
“What if she says something to her parents and they go snitchin’ to Mr. Elliot again?”
Wanda grimaced. “I can’t really argue with that,” she said. “Esperanza…”
She put her hands up. “I am just as pissed as all of you,” she said. “Trust me, I’m not going to be speaking to my parents for a long time, so I can promise you that nothing said here will get back to them.”
Moss sighed. Maybe this was Esperanza’s chance to stand up to her parents, to get them to realize that they couldn’t make everything about them. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “We can talk more about this later.” He gazed at Mr. Jacobs. “This better be worth it.”
Mr. Jacobs shook his head at first. “I didn’t really think it would get so out of control,” he said, shifting to cross his other leg. He looked so uncomfortable when he spoke, his gaze jumping from one person to the next. “I just wanted to—”
“To what?” Njemile said, ire in her words. “I’m really interested to hear what you have to say about what you did to us.”
“Njemile.” Wanda’s voice was clear and sharp, and Moss had heard her speak like that on the rare occasion when he decided to get smart with her. If the atmosphere weren’t so tense, he probably would have laughed as he watched Njemile’s shoulders drop. He hid a smile in a yawn as his mom continued. “I know you’re angry. We all are. But let’s allow him to talk first.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Jacobs said.
“You’re not off the hook,” Wanda shot back. “Tell ’em what you told me.”
Mr. Jacobs sheepishly picked a bag up off the floor in front of him, slowly opening it and pulling out a stack of manila folders filled with papers. “I made copies,” he said, handing them to Wanda, “as much as I could before I left the office today.”
She took the folders from him, but set them aside. “What are we going to find in here?”
Mr. Jacobs sighed. “I don’t know that much of it will make sense. There’s a lot of information about our contract with the Oakland Police Department, as well as the blueprints and whatnot for the metal detectors. It might give you some sort of answer to what’s been going on at the school.”
Wanda paged through one of the folders, and a thin bound book fell out of it. Kaisha darted in and out so quickly that Moss’s mother couldn’t stop her. She flipped it open and began to p
eruse the table of contents. “Now this is what I wanted to see,” she said, running her finger down the page.
“It’s just a—” Mr. Jacobs started to say.
“What is it?” said Shamika, her focus on Kaisha.
Kaisha turned to a page with a sketched diagram on it. “They lied to us,” she said. “That was not a metal detector.”
“What?” Esperanza said, and they all gathered around Kaisha.
“Look, I’m no expert, but that’s a giant magnet here,” she said, and she traced her fingers along the outline of the machine. “Not only that, but what is that thing?”
Moss looked to where she was pointing. “‘Endo-bio-imaging plate,’” he read aloud.
“What does that mean?” said Wanda.
The group stared at Mr. Jacobs, who trembled under their glare. “It’s part of the imaging mechanics of the machine,” he explained. “So that we can see more than just what a person might be carrying.”
“Like what?” asked Moss, and his pulse flared in his throat. “Is that why our phones don’t work? I still can’t get service on mine at all.”
Mr. Jacobs nodded. “It was the magnetic band your friend just pointed to,” he said. “Unless you had an older model, the machines destroyed the inside of all your phones.”
Wanda cursed and it echoed throughout the church. “Don’t repeat that, none of you,” she said.
Mr. Jacobs didn’t let anyone recover, though. “That’s not the worst part. That imaging plate allows the school to scan bodies.”
“Meaning what?” said Martin, who had stayed quiet throughout all of this. “Ain’t you scannin’ bodies anyway with those things?”
“We can scan inside them.”
The silence that fell in the room sent a chill up Moss’s spine. He shuddered as his mother flung herself upright.
“Inside? Mr. Jacobs, how can that be possible?” she demanded. “Do you realize what a huge violation of privacy that is?”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “The Oakland Police Department has access to stuff I never knew existed. They claim that they get a lot of it from the federal government. Surplus from all our country’s military spending or something.”
“Like … actual stuff used in warfare?” Esperanza said.
“Weapons,” Reg said, and the realization spread through the group.
“You mean all that stuff they used on us?” Njemile said. “It’s all from wars?”
“It’s not exactly unheard of in activist circles,” said Ekemeni, her chin in her hand, her head shaking from side to side. “I just never heard of it being used at a school.”
“What do you mean?” Rawiya’s father looked at Ekemeni with panic on his face. “Sorry for interrupting, but we haven’t lived here long.” He gestured to himself and then his wife. “Hishaam, Afnan. We’re Rawiya’s parents. What sort of stuff?”
“You remember those protests about the BART fares last year?” Wanda asked them.
Hishaam looked to his wife. “Afnan, do you remember?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Was that the one where they brought out the tank?”
“No, that was the BART police shooting two summers ago,” said Martin.
“Wait, was that the time the National Guard got called out?” Afnan said.
“Nope,” said Kaisha. “That was for the school shutdown in East Oakland.”
“Wallahi, this city is a mess,” said Rawiya. “I think we get your point.”
“You wanted to know where everything came from,” said Mr. Jacobs. “And what happened last week. Well, it’s pretty much a lot worse than you imagined.”
“But he hasn’t told us anything, Mama,” said Moss, and he stood up and wrung his hands together. He paced in the aisle, from one pew to another. “We haven’t learned anything new from what he’s said.” He leveled the assistant principal with a glare. “So tell us something new, Mr. Jacobs. We’re listening.”
Mr. Jacobs visibly gulped. “Well, I know that the school was looking for an excuse to start the pilot program, and they used Shawna’s assault as a means to justify its use.”
“We knew that,” said Kaisha. “It was obvious to anyone who went to that school that that was the case.”
“Do you know anything?” Moss said. “Or are you just wasting our time?”
“I’m not, I swear!” Mr. Jacobs said, and he shifted nervously in his seat once more. “It’s just that … look, I don’t know what kind of trouble I’m going to get in for doing this. Not just for talking to you, but if I tell you everything.”
“No one recognized you, right?” Kaisha said, her hand in Reg’s. “So what are you worried about?”
“They did this all on purpose,” Mr. Jacobs said. “None of this was an accident. None of it.”
“Meaning what?” Wanda said.
He sighed again. “We knew that the metal detectors were of a higher grade, that they were intended for high-profile border checks. In Afghanistan. It’s supposed to be for detecting terrorists. We knew that the walkout was happening, thanks to Mrs. Miller’s phone call. It was embarrassing, really; Mr. Elliot was so thrilled with himself for feeling like he had ‘insider knowledge,’ as he put it.”
Moss leveled Esperanza with a glare, and she refused to look him in the eye. The anger returned again, and he was certain in that moment that he would never talk to Rebecca or Jeff ever again.
“We knew when it was planned for, and we knew that the Oakland Police Department was going to use their full riot gear in order to stop it.”
“What do you mean by ‘full riot gear,’ Mr. Jacobs?” Afnan asked. “What we heard from our daughter made it sound like there was a science fiction movie unfolding at the school.”
He rubbed his temples with the fingers on his right hand. “Once Mr. Elliot contacted the Oakland Police Department, they came and met with us on Thursday evening, after no one was left on campus,” he explained. “And I don’t just mean a few low-level officers or sergeants or whatever. Top brass. People who make three or four times what I’ll ever make in my life. We were given a complete briefing about how many officers would be on campus and what they’d be bringing with them. They told us that the metal detectors would be on, and that the magnetic band would be turned higher to break your phones.”
“Wait a second,” said Reg. “You’re telling me that they knew that these magnets were there? The whole time?”
It was only then that recognition dawned on Mr. Jacobs’s face. “Oh, damn,” he said. “Your leg.”
“Yes, my leg,” he said. “I’m in this chair again now, probably forever, because of what those things did to me!”
“I know, I know,” Mr. Jacobs said. “And I feel bad about that, I really do!”
“Man, I’m getting real tired about you feeling bad,” said Moss. His mother turned to say something, but he cut her off. “I know, Mama, I know that he’s supposed to be here to help us, but how long did he have to feel bad before he did something? Was Reg or Shawna getting hurt not enough? Did it have to take Javier dying for this man to actually do something?”
The words stung, and he knew it. Mr. Jacobs dropped his gaze down and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Moss’s heart was raging in him, so he sat back down next to his mother. “I’m tired,” he said. “Real tired.”
“Well, I have some questions, too,” said Njemile, “and I’m also bored of Mr. Jacobs here actin’ like he’s conflicted about telling the truth.”
“I’m not acting,” he said, his eyes wide in shock. “I promise you! I’m just worried that—I might lose my job over this.”
“What about my leg?” Reg said. “Was it worth it to keep your job for that?”
“Javier lost his life,” Moss sneered. “You feel any better?”
“Please,” Wanda said, her hands raised up to silence them. “Njemile said she had questions, and frankly, I have a few of my own. Let him talk.”
Mr. Jacobs did not thank her this time. He pu
rsed his lips, then turned to look at Njemile.
“What made everyone’s faces swell up?” Njemile said, frowning.
“A combination of pepper spray and tear gas,” Mr. Jacobs said. “Deployed with aerosol cans. And portable … uh … grenades.”
“Grenades?” That was Afnan. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“What were those other things they had?” Njemile asked. “The ones that looked like bullhorns.”
Mr. Jacobs sighed. “How familiar are any of you with human physiology?”
He got silence in response. He motioned for Wanda to hand him back the folders that sat next to her and she obliged. Moss watched as he began to look through them, then pulled out a set of papers from the middle of the stack. “I didn’t believe them until I saw it in action myself,” he said, then folded one of the pages back and held it up. There on the paper was a diagram of one of the weapons that had been pointed at Moss and his friends in the science lab.
“That’s it,” Moss said. “That thing made some people throw up!”
“Apparently, there’s a frequency that most adults can’t hear,” Mr. Jacobs explained, handing the document to Afnan, who began to examine it. “We lose the ability to as we get older. Just a natural part of aging I suppose.”
“Okay, but what did that thing do?” Wanda said.
“What is this?” Afnan asked, fear in her voice. “Hishaam, did you see this?” She passed the page to her husband.
“It upsets your inner ear,” Mr. Jacobs said. “It’s kinda cool in a terrifying way, I guess. Messes with your sense of balance, apparently, all through a wave of high-frequency noise that most adults can’t hear. It usually induces nausea in younger folks. The guy who showed it to me said they use it occasionally in protests to temper the crowd.”
Mr. Jacobs spoke like a doctor listing routine symptoms, and Moss shuddered. This can’t be happening, he told himself. He reached down and grabbed his mother’s hand and she squeezed his. Hard.
“Are you telling me they shot that thing at my daughter?” Hishaam said loudly.