by Sionna Fox
The guy stalks toward our line, intimidation written on every inch of him, but I refuse to flinch this time. I stare him straight in the eyes, and start the chant we practiced.
"We want change. We want change." The others around me take up the mantra, and it grows and grows.
It morphs.
"Save our kids."
"Not one more."
"Enough is enough."
As the clamor climbs toward a roar, the asshole staffer scowls and heads back to the car. Seconds later, he reappears with Assemblyman Ryker right behind him, and our protest hits a frenzy. The representative's face is stony, his gait tight. Members of his team surround him in a human blockade, but there are more of us than them.
We keep the walkway clear. No one's pressing charges about assault today. But we get in his face, and this time, when he doesn't engage, my heart doesn't sink.
It rises.
This is all being recorded. The camera crews are watching this elected official refuse to listen to peacefully assembled constituents, trying to give him a message. Half a dozen people have their phones out to record his complete and total lack of a response, and we're going to go viral. I can see the Facebook video now.
Maybe this won't get us the change we're looking for. The gun lobby is shameless, and this man is a slave to it. But we're doing exactly what Eli said we needed to. We're changing the narrative.
We're not just a bunch of victims sitting around, helpless to the terror plaguing our lives. We're concerned citizens. We're active participants in this democracy, pulling out every stop to try to save it.
This guy who's ignoring us is a dinosaur.
We're the meteor that's going to take him out.
Our voices continue on, even as Ryker and his entourage quicken their pace. No one so much as glances at as us they disappear inside the building. We only chant louder, until the summer air vibrates with our words.
A part of me is waiting for someone to come back out and offer to bring a few of us inside to talk, but deep down I know it isn't going to happen. I keep on waving my sign. The energy in the crowd changes.
Someone needs to step up.
Winnie nudges me. I look to her in confusion, but then she gestures at the open bit of sidewalk ahead of us and tips her head meaningfully. I stare at her blankly, until slowly her meaning sinks in.
Then it's a fifteen ton anchor landing on my head.
Crap. When I said that someone needed to step up, I was talking about me, wasn't I?
Momentary panic makes my skin flash cold. Leading a movement isn't what I signed up for. I never wanted to be on TV; I'm wearing a Captain America T-shirt and shorts, for Christ's sake. If I'd wanted fifteen minutes of fame, I would have at least put on some mascara.
I started a quiet, solitary protest, and that was the beginning and the end of my ambition. But now here I am, with an angry mob ready to be directed. I assembled them.
Now I have to keep them.
Winnie gives me another nudge, only it's a little bit more of a shove. I step forward, and applause rings out. My pulse echoing in my ears, I turn to face a crowd of hopeful faces. All the voices die down, making room for mine.
So I guess I have to use it.
I clear my throat. "Thank you for coming."
My gaze shifts, scanning the area. I zero in on the cameras, all of them pointed right at me.
For a second, I keep scanning. A lone, sour note of disappointment sounds in my chest.
I guess I had no reason to expect Eli to show up for this. But since it was his idea, I kind of felt like we were in this thing together. He's nowhere to be found right now, though.
I force my disappointment down and away.
Refocusing on the people who are here, I cast back in my memory. The speech I had prepared to rattle off to Ryker at that last, ill-fated confrontation floats toward me like a life raft.
My hands shake, but the words rise to my throat all the same. "Ninety-six Americans are killed by guns every day. America's gun homicide rate is more than twenty-five times that of similar countries." Heads nod. My voice gains strength. "Two thirds of Americans support stricter gun control laws, but Assemblyman Ryker refuses to take action." My chest goes tight. "Seven teenagers and teachers were wounded at Steadman High School's graduation, and the assemblyman has said nothing."
Winnie is standing right in front of me. She's lucky to be alive, but she deserved better.
We all do.
"But we have things to say." I blink, and my eyes sting. My heart is full. "We're not going to be silenced. We refuse to be ignored. And we're not going away anytime soon."
Eli's advice echoes in my ears. Change the narrative.
"Assemblyman Ryker will hear us. We're going to show up here every time he comes to town until he agrees to sit down with us."
Cheers erupt from all around, and my head spins. I was just talking, but I've made a commitment.
Well, it sure seems like I'm not alone.
I shake my head, shouting now. "We can't afford another Sandy Hook. We can't afford another Parkland. We can't afford another Steadman High. Enough is enough."
More applause deafens me. People take up the chant again.
And for the first time since the night of November 8, 2016, I feel like there might be hope.
Things start to break down not long after that. As the crowd disperses, people keep coming over to me, telling me to let them know when and where the next demonstration is going to be; they'll be there. Winnie, bless her eighteen year old heart, sets up a some kind of online group on the spot and shows people how to log into it.
Numb, I get shoved in front of a camera crew or two. I say something—hopefully something intelligent, even, but I can't be sure.
Everything is moving too fast. Before I know it, the news teams are packing up their trucks. Only a handful of people are left.
Smiling, Winnie leans in to give me a hug. "You did great, Ms. Chao.”
"Thanks." I squeeze her back, careful of her arm. I'm pretty sure it's messed up that my former student who's still recovering from getting shot is the one reassuring me, but I’ll take what emotional support I can get.
She and her friends pile into a car, and then it's just me.
Or maybe not just me.
"Hey."
I whip around. I'm dead on my feet, but Eli's smirk is a shot of espresso to my system.
Standing against the red brick wall of the building, he's dressed in another of his impeccable suits. He looks approachable, though. Soft.
Like I could walk right on over to him and fall into his arms.
Instead, I summon what willpower I have left and raise my brows at his empty hands. "What, no coffee?"
"Sorry, didn't have a chance." He glances around pointedly. "There was some massive protest or something outside my building. Weird, huh?"
"Super weird." I'm starting to sag. I gaze up at him plaintively. God, I feel so pathetic asking. But the entire thing was his suggestion, and suddenly, I'm aching for his approval. "How do you think it went?"
He blinks at me from behind the lenses of his glasses, like he can't believe I really have to ask. "It went amazing, Julie. I couldn't have planned it better myself."
"I doubt that."
"Trust me." Something shifts in his voice. "Ryker's staff are shitting themselves right now, you hear?"
"You mean it?"
"They are terrified of you."
I let out a breath that feels like all the air flowing out of my lungs. "Thank God."
"You did a fantastic job. Seriously."
He gazes at me, and the moment feels ripe with possibility. He's still a couple of yards away, but the air between us hums. My skin prickles with awareness, and warmth flows across my skin.
I take a few steps closer. He leans in, too, pushing off from the building to help me close the gap.
The space around us feels even more intimate. It's easy to forget that twenty minutes ago, the whole area wa
s crowded with people and news vans.
His throat bobs. His voice goes quiet, like he recognizes the delicate nature of the moment. "I really admire you, you know? What you're doing here." He gestures at the remnants of our protest.
"Oh?"
Gazing off into the distance, he nods. "Everything I do is behind the scenes. My parents give me shit for that, but I've never wanted the limelight." He tilts his head, looking back at me. "You haven't either, have you?"
How does he know? I laugh, a derisive chuckle in the rear of my throat. "That would be an understatement."
"Then it's all the more incredible that you've stepped into it anyway. I don't think I ever could."
"I don't know about that…"
He's so charismatic, so charming and easy to talk to. I bet he could do whatever he wanted to.
"You have no idea. I was such a nerd back in the day."
Something in me makes me bold. Holding my breath, I step in even closer and reach my hand up. I tweak his glasses with my heart in my throat. "Only back in the day, eh?"
I half expect him to slap my hand away. But instead, he encircles my wrist with his fingers. His thumb rubs at my pulse point, and electricity crackles all the way along my arm.
Staring straight into my eyes, he smiles softly. "Okay, maybe I'm still a little bit of a nerd today."
My heart pounds harder. Why does that make him even more attractive to me? I've always counted myself as kind of a geek. Maybe we have more in common than I realized.
A long moment passes just like that, the two of us gazing at each other, all but holding hands. I lick my lips and imagine his eyes grow darker.
But then he tugs gently at my wrist, nudging my hand away from his face. I drop my arm, and he lets me go. My skin burns where he was touching me.
He takes a step back. Am I crazy to think I see regret in his eyes?
Quietly, he asks, "So what's next?"
I want to believe he's asking about what's next for us, but he glances at our surroundings, reminding me of why I'm here. The flirtatiousness of the past few stolen moments dissipates, the tension in the air between us going slack.
I sigh as exhaustion sweeps over me again. "For our protests? More of the same, I guess. Only bigger. Right?"
He nods. "Keep the pressure on. Ryker is damned if he agrees to sit down with you." His eyes gleam, calculating and bright. One corner of his mouth curls up. "Make sure he's even more damned if he won't."
3
Ryker's next appearance draws an even bigger crowd—and almost all of them are on my side.
There was a part of me that expected the entire protest thing to fizzle out. I don't have the energy to call everyone I know every time the assemblyman announces a PR event on his schedule. But it turns out I don't have to.
The group Winnie set up at the last rally has ballooned to nearly a thousand people. They've started to congregate online to discuss gun control and other issues of the day, and before I know it, I have more online friends than I do real ones. The whole thing makes my head spin.
And we're not just sitting around talking, either.
Ryker visits an old factory, and we line the street. He holds a town hall and we fill the seats. He gives a speech at a ribbon cutting ceremony, and he can hardly even get to the event, we surround it so thoroughly.
Not every time, but most, I end up getting nudged toward the front of the crowd, until I basically expect it. I refuse to wear my teacher clothes during the summer, but I start at least making an effort, swapping out my superhero T-shirts for slightly fancier tops and remembering to wear lipstick. With practice, the speech I used at that first rally gets honed until it's as polished and pithy as a stump speech—as ridiculous as that might sound.
Even when Ryker doesn't have any appearances scheduled, my vigil outside his office stops being me and me alone. First it's Winnie and a few of her friends that join me. Then it's a handful of teachers from my school.
Then it's people I don't even know.
Out of nowhere, I look up one day to realize there are forty people holding signs and chanting slogans, occupying the space outside that building, and my heart feels so big it can hardly fit inside my chest.
Despite his quiet, behind the scenes support, Eli never joins us. I catch glimpses of him now and then, but our daily coffee chats fade away as more and more protesters gather.
When he does come down, he's barely recognizable. He ditches his suit jacket and dons a pair of sunglasses and a hat, and it's weird. I know it's weird. But I'm just so happy to see him. I meet him by the side of the building, away from our high visibility spot by the street, and he tells me what I'm doing is working.
And I have so many freaking questions to ask. How does he know as much as he does? What has he got to lose by being seen with us?
Not that I ever ask. Any time I begin to broach the subject, he changes it, and I'm no fool. He's hiding something. A dozen times, I resolve to go home and really do some digging into who he is and what he does, but I'm so tired after every rally that I never do. A part of me is waiting for him to just tell me already.
I want to get to the bottom of it. I want to pull him away and talk to him someplace far from the crowds. I want the easy intimacy and the teasing banter of our first few weeks, before these rallies took on a life of their own.
I want to push him back against the doorway of this building and kiss him until I can't breathe. I want to thank him, for setting me on this path and helping me find my voice.
I want him to hold me and touch me, and by God, I want to peel away that perfect suit and find out if what lies beneath is as perfect and gorgeous as I imagine.
But I don't do any of that. I keep my quiet and I keep my cool. I respect the boundaries he's set.
Right until he starts pushing on mine.
"We won't be silenced," I shout.
The crowd of protesters assembled outside Assemblyman Ryker's office building raises their signs and cheers.
"We won't take no for an answer," I barrel on. "And we aren't going anywhere. Not until our democratically elected representative agrees to meet with us and take action. Enough is enough."
The chant gets taken up, and I step back.
The calendar has just ticked over to August. The sun beats down on us, the swampy air making my clothes stick to my skin, but the crowds continue to grow.
I stare out over the people assembled to demand change, and I flash them an exhausted smile.
I've never felt more energized in my entire life. More inspired or more encouraged.
I've also never felt more frustrated.
I've officially spent two months of my life on this. The results have simultaneously exceeded my wildest dreams and continued to disappoint. The outpouring of support and the community we've built are amazing.
But Assemblyman Ryker still refuses to cede a single point. He ignores our signs. His goon threatens us if we let a toe slip past a certain line.
No way in hell has he agreed to sit down with us, much less let a bill actually make it to the floor of the state assembly.
In three short weeks, I have to head back to work. Winnie and most of her friends leave for college even sooner. Our ranks are going to dwindle—and then what?
Ours becomes another in a long line of mass shootings that no one does a single thing about. We'll be a footnote.
I'll have to keep on living with the nightmares. I won't be able to set foot in our school's gymnasium without seeing it.
My kids will have to keep living under this shadow. How on earth have we not yet decided, as a people, that enough truly is enough?
Our rally finishes with about as much fanfare as ever. Is it just me, or is the frustration seeping out of me and into others' hearts as well? Winnie shoots me a sad smile and turns toward her car. Her bandages are gone, but who knows how long her scars will last.
When it's just me, I rest the edge of my sign on the ground and lean over it with a heavy heart.
"Hey," Eli says.
"Hey, yourself."
He's sticking to the shadow of the building again, and his distance is one more straw on the back of my activism camel. I'm overburdened and I'm thirsty, and the desert stretches out in front of me, no end in sight.
"Hey," he says again.
I lift my gaze this time, kind of ready to tell him off, honestly.
Only there's something brewing behind his sea glass eyes. I lift my chin in question.
"You look like you could use a drink. Come on."
My eyes widen as he holds the door open for me. I look around, half expecting one of Ryker's staffers to appear and slap me with a restraining order. But I step over the threshold of the building without lightning striking. Eli gazes at me expectantly.
What can I do but follow?
He leads me down a mural-lined corridor, past offices for all sorts of government agencies. I've never actually been in here before. I take in the familiar names on etched glass windows and the images of nostalgic, pre-war, white, working class Americana with interest…and maybe a little skepticism.
But then we're walking right out another door and back into glaring sunshine.
"I—"
He holds his hand over his brow to shade his eyes. "There."
"Oh."
Right. So this is where he's been getting all those iced coffees from.
The cafe behind the office building is a little independently owned one. I probably should have known it was here, but my quiet, pre-dumpster-fire-political-chaos life didn't give me much cause to hang around this part of town.
I follow Eli inside. He tips his head at the lady behind the counter, and she nods. He stuffs a twenty in her tip jar, then heads to a table in the back. The place is more or less deserted, but Eli still keeps his head down until we're seated. I frown at him as I slip into the chair across from his.
But then he grins at me—that same old grin from before he started giving me strategic advice on how to manipulate the media and I accidentally became a minor local gun control activist celebrity. Disarmed, I let the rigidity of my posture go. He seems to relax, too.