“I can’t believe it.” I close my eyes and lean my head into her shoulder. The movement makes me wince. “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”
“I was going to come back anyway.” Diane runs her hand over my hair. “I didn’t know there was going to be a riot, though.”
“I can’t believe you tried to reason with that cop.” I laugh. “And it actually worked.”
She smiles. “I can’t believe it either.”
“You saved me,” I say.
“Yeah, well. I wanted to keep you around.” Her smile gets wider.
“Even after what I said?”
Diane shrugs, the light in her eyes fading slightly.
“I’ll tell them,” I say.
I think about Floyd, running off into the trees. I think about Diane, standing in front of that cop who would have been just as happy to bring his club down on her as on me.
“You don’t have to do that.” She looks away. “This doesn’t have to be a trade.”
“It’s not about that.” I shake my head and lay my hand on her chin. “It’s about this.”
I kiss her.
I kiss her right there, on the street, in front of the other protesters. In front of the cops. In front of everyone.
She kisses me back. We’re both laughing, our faces filthy with dirt and tear gas, but it’s the sweetest kiss of my life.
My body still aches, and the world around us is still nothing but chaos, but for that second, it doesn’t seem to matter. It took something awful to make me realize it, but Diane means more to me than I ever wanted to admit.
And this isn’t just about Diane. It’s about me. It’s about not always looking over my shoulder to see who might be watching. Not always thinking about who everyone else expects me to be. What I think of myself is what matters.
I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. All I know is, in this moment, it feels like the whole world is watching me. And that’s exactly what I want it to do.
The summer of 1968 was a tense period even before the Democratic National Convention got under way in Chicago. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated just a few months earlier. So had presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. In Chicago, the riots following Dr. King’s murder had resulted in numerous deaths. When protesters announced their plans to hold demonstrations against the Vietnam War during the convention that August, Chicago mayor Richard Daley and other leaders called in extra police officers and the National Guard, trained them in riot-control techniques, and equipped them with Mace and tear gas in addition to their standard guns and billy clubs. The ten thousand protesters who gathered in the city were met with more than twenty thousand police officers and National Guardsmen.
Clashes between police and demonstrators were common throughout the weeklong convention. More than a thousand demonstrators and about two hundred police officers were reported injured, and nearly seven hundred protesters were arrested. Some plainclothes officers were later accused of inciting violence while disguised as protesters. Although police attacks against protesters took place throughout the convention week, the violence on the night of August 28 was broadcast on network TV, and it was that night’s brutality that incited a national outcry. It became known as the “Battle of Michigan Avenue,” and a government report later called it a “police riot.”
Chilling video of what happened that night is available on YouTube. For a firsthand account of the entire week of protests, read John Schultz’s book No One Was Killed: The Democratic National Convention, August 1968.
J. ANDERSON COATS is the author of The Wicked and the Just, a 2013 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick and the winner of the 2013 Washington State Book Award for Young Adults. She lives near Puget Sound.
ANDREA CREMER is the New York Times and international best-selling author of the Nightshade series and The Inventor’s Secret. Andrea has always loved writing, but it took a horse and a broken foot to prompt her to finally write the novel she’d always dreamed of writing. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Andrea resided in the academic world, where she taught early modern history.
Y. S. LEE is the author of the award-winning Agency novels, a quartet of mysteries featuring a mixed-race girl detective in Victorian London. After earning a PhD in English literature, Ying realized that her true love was gritty historical detail — something she tries to make the most of in her fiction. She lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario.
KATHERINE LONGSHORE is the author of four historical novels for young adults, including Gilt, a story of friendship and betrayal in the court of Henry VIII, and the “Downton-esque” Manor of Secrets. Writing allows her to indulge her twin passions for history and travel while remaining at home with her husband and kids.
MARIE LU is the New York Times best-selling author of the Legend trilogy and The Young Elites. Before writing full-time, she worked as an art director in the game industry. She lives with her husband and dogs in Los Angeles, where she spends her time writing and getting stuck in traffic.
KEKLA MAGOON is the Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe Award–winning author of more than a dozen novels and nonfiction books for young readers, including How It Went Down; The Rock and the River; and X: A Novel (with Ilyasah Shabazz). Her books have been selected as ALA Notables, YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, and more. Kekla conducts school and library visits nationwide and teaches writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
MARISSA MEYER is the New York Times best-selling author of the Lunar Chronicles, a series of classic fairy-tale retellings set in the distant future (a long, long time after the Black Hills gold rush).
SAUNDRA MITCHELL is a great lover of history. She enjoys manipulating it in fiction like The Vespertine and celebrating it in nonfiction like her new series, They Did What? She lives in Indiana and thinks more people should write stories set there.
BETH REVIS is the New York Times best-selling author of the Across the Universe trilogy, as well as The Body Electric and several forthcoming YA books. She credits her father with fostering her knowledge and love of the Wild West and thanks him for fact-checking this story.
CAROLINE TUNG RICHMOND is the author of The Only Thing to Fear and the forthcoming The Darkest Hour, a YA novel set in Occupied France during World War II. A self-proclaimed history nerd, Caroline lives with her husband and daughter in the Washington, D.C., area — not far from several Civil War battlefields.
LINDSAY SMITH is the author of the Sekret series of paranormal spy thrillers set in Soviet Russia, and Dreamstrider, a high-fantasy adventure. She grew up watching far too many movies from the 1940s — from Abbott and Costello comedies to musicals to anything dazzling with old Hollywood glamour. Not one for California weather, however, she lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and dog, and writes on foreign affairs.
JESSICA SPOTSWOOD is the author of the Cahill Witch Chronicles, a historical-fantasy trilogy, as well as the contemporary novel Wild Swans. She grew up near the Gettysburg battlefield but now lives in Washington, D.C., where she works for the D.C. Public Library system as a children’s library associate.
ROBIN TALLEY is the author of Lies We Tell Ourselves, a finalist for the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children’s/Young Adult, as well as the contemporary novel What We Left Behind and the upcoming thriller As I Descended. Robin lives in Washington, D.C., where she enjoys being surrounded by history, though she’s glad to be living in the twenty-first century.
LESLYE WALTON is the author of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, which was a 2015 Pacific Northwest Book Award winner, as well as a 2015 YALSA William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist. She lives in the Pacific Northwest but has recently been finding her dreams filled with vast desert skies and the gorgeous pink flowers of the prickly pear cactus. Her short story is the result of those dreams.
ELIZABETH WEIN is the New York Times best-selling author of Code Name Verity, Rose Under Fire, and, most recently, Bl
ack Dove, White Raven. All three feature women as pilots in the early twentieth century — such rare birds in their own right that a black woman among them is a veritable phoenix. “The Color of the Sky” is a closer look at one of the real pilots whose life inspired a character in Black Dove, White Raven.
Putting a book out into the world is always a team effort, but even more so with an anthology. I am enormously grateful to the following people:
Hilary Van Dusen, for her wonderful enthusiasm and guidance throughout this process. Miriam Newman, for her insightful line edits. Betsy Uhrig, for her brilliant copyediting. Nathan Pyritz, for the lovely interior design. James Weinberg, for the stunning cover design. Jamie Tan, for helping the book to find its readers. Jim McCarthy, for his stalwart support and excellent editorial matchmaking. April Genevieve Tucholke, for suggesting that I should try editing an anthology in the first place. Andrea, Beth, and Marie, for immediately saying yes, for title brainstorming, and for believing in me. Dhonielle Clayton, for her helpful notes on my story. Jill, for answering my random midnight copyediting questions and the occasional flailmail. Jenn, for being the best friend a girl could ask for. Steve, for fielding countless “Come read this — which sounds better?” editorial questions and for loving me even when I’m on multiple deadlines. My parents and grandparents, for instilling in me a love of history and for buying me all the books I wanted.
And especially: Jillian, Marie, Leslye, Andrea, Caroline, Beth, Marissa, Ying, Elizabeth, Saundra, Katy, Lindsay, Kekla, and Robin, for writing me such wonderful stories and then trusting me to edit them. It’s been such a pleasure to work with all of you.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Compilation and introduction copyright © 2015 by Jessica Spotswood
“Mother Carey’s Table” copyright © 2015 by J. Anderson Coats
“The Journey” copyright © 2015 by Marie Lu
“Madeleine’s Choice” copyright © 2015 by Jessica Spotswood
“El Destinos” copyright © 2015 by Leslye Walton
“High Stakes” copyright © 2015 by Andrea Cremer
“The Red Raven Ball” copyright © 2015 by Caroline Tung Richmond
“Pearls” copyright © 2015 by Beth Revis
“Gold in the Roots of the Grass” copyright © 2015 by Marissa Meyer
“The Legendary Garrett Girls” copyright © 2015 by Y. S. Lee
“The Color of the Sky” copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Gatland
“Bonnie and Clyde” copyright © 2015 by Saundra Mitchell
“Hard Times” copyright © 2015 by Katherine Longshore
“City of Angels” copyright © 2015 by Lindsay Smith
“Pulse of the Panthers” copyright © 2015 by Kekla Magoon
“The Whole World Is Watching” copyright © 2015 by Robin Talley
Cover illustration copyright © 2016 by James Weinberg
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electonic edition 2016
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2015942989
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