Julie looked skeptical. “A disguise?”
“Not like a mustache and a trench coat. Something subtle.”
Val settled for trading ball caps with a rival coach at the Thursday-night track meet. With a new sweatshirt and her ponytail tucked under a cap in Grover High purple, she didn’t think Sophie would spot her.
She stood on the fringe, trying to blend in. At least there was one way she fit in here better than she had anywhere else of late: this was the first place she’d been in two years where no blue Pilots glowed on the heads around her. She had started searching crowds for the others without. Only last week she’d noticed a teenager eyeing her as she ran. It looked to her like the guy was trying to figure out her damage.
“Personal choice!” she’d shouted, and then increased her pace, immediately ashamed. Personal choice couldn’t be a mark of pride. It kicked Sophie into the gutter of “other,” something she never meant to do.
She should be one of these people. They believed the same thing she believed, that Pilots were a slippery slope to a quarry whose depths had not yet been plumbed, where anything could be lurking. Everything seemed so rushed, fast-tracked for a future she wanted time to get used to, at the very least. Slow down, she wanted to say to the schools and the Army and the news outlets. What’s the end result of all this? Maybe these things would usher in a new age of humanity; until they did, it looked premature to her eyes.
“Our young people are being used as guinea pigs!” shouted an orator with the cadence of an experienced preacher. “We are letting them cut open our children, and put machinery in their heads, and sew them up again as if they are the same, but they are not the same.”
“No!” shouted someone in the crowd.
“They are not the same, nor are they better. Nor should it matter. Who are we to mess with these beautiful creations, these beautiful children? Who are we to corrupt? To ‘improve’ in the name of ‘progress’? Why do we trust this company with our children’s perfect brains?” He gestured at the building behind him, and the crowd erupted in boos.
“This experiment is being conducted in our schools, on children whose parents think they have no choice. They do have a choice. My son is in public school. He’s a bright boy, but they put him in special classes now. He understands. He understands he’s better off in a classroom of struggling children, learning at their own pace, than being mocked by teachers who have already forgotten they are there to teach, not to enable.”
Val craned to see, and confirmed what she’d just realized. The boy he gestured to, standing near the front and off to the side of his father, was Gabe. Sophie was at his side. Val couldn’t read her daughter’s expression from so far away, but judging from her posture, the studious tilt of her head, Sophie was entranced.
The speaker motioned with both hands for the crowd to settle. “We won’t change their minds today, but we’ll come back, again and again. We’ll speak out, and we’ll reach people one at a time.”
Gabe’s father stepped aside, and a beatboxer began to perform. Val knew she should leave, but she lingered, thinking about what she’d heard. It could have come from inside her own head. She wished she had said it sooner, much sooner, before David had ever convinced them he needed to fit in with his class. They should have said no, should have said wait.
She started to run. Away from the Balkenhol compound, away from the preacher speaking her own truths, away from the sudden realization that she had failed David. A parent protects a child. A parent doesn’t give in just because the child wants something, just because everyone else has one. A parent doesn’t take a teacher’s word above her own common sense. They had failed him.
She sprinted until her lungs burned and the sweatshirt disguise was soaked in sweat. Head bowed, hands on knees, she heaved. When she had her breath again, she headed back to her car.
She saw the three figures by her car from a long way off, and groaned. Of course if Gabe’s father was a speaker he probably stayed until the end. Of course Sophie would notice her mother’s car in the nearly empty parking lot. She steeled herself for confrontation, but Sophie didn’t look upset.
“Were you here for the rally?” she asked when Val neared.
“I was running.”
“I see that. In those clothes?” Sophie waved a finger at Val’s attire. “And a Grover cap?”
Val shifted from one foot to the other. How strange for the roles to reverse like this, with Sophie playing interrogator and her playing the child caught out.
It didn’t need to be that way. Not if she told the truth. “I checked out the rally first.”
“What did you think?”
Truth. “I only heard part, but I thought it raised some good points. I thought you raised some good points.” She directed the second sentence to Gabe’s father, who looked amused at the whole conversation.
She held out her hand. “I’m Val Bradley, one of Sophie’s mothers.”
“Tony Clary. Gabe’s father.” His handshake was firm.
“You’re an excellent speaker, Tony. I hope your group here appreciates that they have such a good leader.”
He shook his head. “I’m not the leader, but they know I can deliver a good speech when they need it.”
“It’s a people’s movement,” said Gabe. Sophie nodded in agreement with her friend, leaving Val to wonder when her daughter had learned what a people’s movement was.
“I should get going. I told Julie I’d be back ages ago. Do you want a ride home, Soph?”
“Can I go with Gabe? We were going to stop for dinner.” Sophie’s eyes were full of pleading, though she tried to keep her
