“Not a good idea,” he said. “Destructive without demonstrating anything new.”
“But it would look cool,” protested a guy whose name Sophie couldn’t recall.
“Looking cool is not part of our mission. Only actions that further the cause.”
After them came a hippie white girl who was either on speed or one too many cups of coffee.
“Flagpole sitting,” she said. “It was a fad in the 1920s. Good publicity stunt. People did hunger strikes on top of flagpoles, like, for days at a time. I’ve been practicing. I could totally do it.”
Gabe cocked his head. “Believe it or not, I’m not entirely opposed to the idea. Nobody gets hurt and it’d be so weird you’d probably get coverage. Have you been through our media training?”
The girl shook her head.
“Chat with Lucinda over there”—he pointed to Lucinda Scott, their media guru, doling out bowls of chili—“and tell her you want in on the next training. If you’re trained, if you show us you can speak eloquently on topic and stick to the talking points, I think we could support it.”
The girl smiled and walked off in the direction he had pointed. He turned back to the other group, still gathered nearby. “Did you hear her? That’s how we get things done.”
They variously nodded and shrugged. Sophie hoped they weren’t one of those subgroups so hopped up on the idea of action that they went ahead with their silly plan. They’d get arrested for vandalism and give the cause a bad name.
The crowd finally dwindled around eleven, though a few people lingered. Lucinda was on her computer, Dominic swept, and others were variously washing dishes or wiping counters or playing some handheld game all in a circle.
“We’re going to need to figure out a plan for the ID soon,” she said to Gabe, glad to finally have a chance to chat.
“Didn’t they tell you?” He frowned, clearly surprised. “The plan’s in action already.”
The surprise was mutual. “Didn’t who tell me?”
“Lana Robinson.”
Lana Robinson was their contact at national headquarters. “Why the hell would Lana Robinson tell you something she didn’t tell me? Co-leaders.”
“Co-leaders, yeah, but she called and I was here and you weren’t, and she said she’d try to reach you, too. I would have told you if she hadn’t said she was going to.”
Sophie fought back angry tears. “Tell me what?”
“She sent someone by to get your brother’s ID.”
“What? What are they doing with it? I need to be involved. He’s my brother.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with your brother anymore, I don’t think.”
“It does. What if they botch it and he gets blamed?”
“They won’t botch it. We’d mess up, not them. We’re not spies; we’re community activists. We do legal stuff and civil disobedience.”
“But I thought—” She stopped.
“You thought you’d get to play James Bond?”
“Well, yeah, that it’d be us. BNL headquarters are right here. I thought we’d be the ones to take them down, not National.”
“How far do you think your brother’s ID gets us? He’s not exactly high-ranking. They have some bigger plan, probably. Your brother’s ID will be part of it, but it’s not the whole plan. We couldn’t have done this, Soph.”
He put a hand on her arm, and she told herself he was her friend and the gesture wasn’t meant to be condescending. She forced her face into a smile. “You’re right.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
DAVID
No, David did not want to go to a party. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted less than to go to a party. It was a terrible idea.
Sure, he said in the return text. When and where?
And then he was at Karina and Milo’s apartment, standing on the landing outside their third-floor walk-up, standing on the edge of the city, standing outside a door that was the only barrier between him and more noise more noise it was already spilling out under the door and through the windows. Noise to add to his noise noise on noise on noise. If it was locked and nobody heard him knock he could walk away and say he’d tried to come and maybe Milo wouldn’t point out that he could’ve texted to say he was there and open the goddamn door.
A car door slammed, voices on the stairs below him, a couple arriving at the landing where he still stood outside the door, both white-appearing and tan in an outdoorsy way, not a tanning bed way, the girl with freckles under light makeup and a scab down one shin, the guy with a slight sunburn on his nose, and maybe they did those tough mud races together or played beach volleyball on a fake beach in some pickup league and that was how they’d met. Karina did those races and had been trying to get Milo to do them, but he said he’d had enough obstacle courses already for his life, thank you very much. The girl looked more like she might be Karina’s friend than the guy looked like he might be Milo’s, which stood to reason since Karina had way more friends than Milo did. The guy carried two cases of cheap beer, one in each hand. The girl carried two bags of ice. One bag had leaked a trail of water up the stairs behind them.
The guy nodded at the door. “Locked?”
David shook his head and made an ineffectual gesture with his empty hands that nobody in the history of humanity had ever made, seriously, how would it even translate, making that gesture at a guy with two cases of beer in his hands, when clearly the unspoken question was Can you take care of this problem?
David turned the handle again and the noise got louder. Pushed the door wide so the guy and girl could walk past him into the apartment. He needed another minute or two.
“David! You came!” Milo threw his arms around David
