Fuck, are you okay?
The question felt more leaden that she’d expected it to. She thought for a moment.
I don’t know yet, she said.
Slash told her to come back if she needed anything and hugged her goodbye. Upstairs she nodded to Lem and let herself out.
* * *
—
She returned to Colson Children’s to find her mom outside the garage throwing a fit into her phone. Charlie waved once she got close enough and watched her mother’s face shift from worry to anger. She jabbed at the end call button with her ridiculous acrylic nail and crossed the street without even looking for traffic.
Charlie, what in the ever-loving hell! Where were you! You think you can just take off in the middle of the city!
Charlie understood that these weren’t really questions, though she briefly reveled in imagining her mother’s reaction if Charlie were to tell the truth, that she was in the basement with a bunch of drug-addled anarchists and their bomb cookbook.
What is wrong with you?
YOU’RE what’s wrong with me! Charlie shouted. You’re trying to kill me with these fucking—she pointed to her scar—things!
I was just asking about our options.
No more options. Not for you.
Have some respect, Charlie, Jesus.
No more surgery. I will—
Charlie paused. She had learned a word, exactly the right one, recently in Headmistress’s class—but she had no idea how to say it aloud. She took out her phone and typed: i will filibuster you until im 18.
She held the screen up to her, and her mother paused, taken aback, though by what—her defiance? the typing workaround? the fact that Charlie knew a four-syllable word?—it was hard to say.
Get in the car, her mother said.
So Charlie had gotten in the car, but her mind stayed in the city, turning over what she’d seen. It scared her a little, sure, but it hadn’t repelled her like the night at Holden’s, or even on New Year’s. Maybe she was just getting used to it, or maybe she was finally mad enough to see its use.
Her mother dropped her back at her father’s, but Charlie was no less angry with him. He wouldn’t stop her mother when it came down to it—he was either still harboring some romantic allegiance, or totally spineless, or secretly agreed with her, but whatever it was, it all added up to another hole in Charlie’s head.
I wanna go back to school, she said.
O-k, he said. I’ll drive you in the morning.
No, tonight.
Charlie, let’s not fight about this. Go do your homework and get your stuff packed up, and we’ll go first thing tomorrow.
Fine, she said.
Do you want dinner?
I ate, she lied.
All right, well, I’m gonna—he gestured over his shoulder to his office—I have some stuff to wrap up.
Whatever.
Love you.
She went upstairs and shoved what she could in her backpack, pulled on a hat, then stole back down and out the door, hoping the click shut wasn’t loud enough to rouse her father from his blue screen trance.
From Revolutionary Recipes: The Activist’s Guide to Cooking Up Change
Now that you’ve established the container for your explosive and your need for a timed release, you can build a customizable long-fuse detonator. Using an analog watch or clock is a dependable way to set a detonation time. (For short-fuse detonators, see Chapter 8.) A lightbulb squib is one of the easier and more reliable long-fuse detonators you can build with relatively few components.
MATERIALS NEEDED:
Wire strippers
Solder wire
Soldering iron
Incandescent bulb
Battery
Wax sealant
Low explosive powder
Analog clock or travel watch
Optional: Alligator clips, rosin
INSTRUCTIONS:
Solder wires to contacts on lightbulb base. (For a step-by-step guide to soldering, see Chapter 7.) After the connection is complete, ensure contacts are working using a battery. Disconnect from battery before continuing.
Create a small hole in the tip of the incandescent bulb to fill with low explosive. Any low explosive works fine here—black or smokeless powder can be obtained legally in many U.S. states with lenient fireworks laws.
CAUTION: Even low explosive powder can be powerful in this squib. Handle with care.
Reseal bulb opening using wax sealant.
Attach the remaining wire ends to your analog watch or clock device to complete your detonator.
Note: The squib will be most effective when centered in the device.
tuesday evening, February returned to Old Quarters, exhausted. It had been twenty-four hours since the summit where she and Swall delivered the news that River Valley would be shuttered. In return, she had received mostly icy stares it was hard not to read as resentment. She knew sadness and shock were the more likely realities—her teachers were bright, generous people, savvy about the ways in which the system so relentlessly failed them. They wouldn’t scapegoat her, even as she blamed herself.
Now it was only a matter of time before the news spread to the students. She scheduled a schoolwide assembly for Friday, but she wasn’t sure they’d make it that long. It would be difficult to keep the kids from seeing a conversation in the hall not meant for them. She had drawn up a list of action items for what might come after: walk-in hours for Phil, her, and the guidance counselor, literature to send to the families about working with home districts in the fall. It all looked laughably inadequate on a single sheet of paper like that, and of course it was.
It had been three days since she’d spoken to Mel. She was a little frightened by the number. Usually when they were fighting, Mel couldn’t help but message February after a few hours, even if it was just to issue a fresh batch of insults to pierce the silence. Then again, this wasn’t your average spat. And February was so squarely in the wrong; part of her knew she would have to be the first to make a move. She just had no idea how to explain her own deceit.
It had been five hours since she’d last seen Charlie Serrano, a number she was not keeping track of in the moment but would return to calculate later. She had video-chatted with her and gone over the latest slides from her course, a series on the Deaf President Now! protests. Charlie had looked significantly less ill, had spoken of her desire to return to campus soon, and was completely enraptured by the story of the student takeover of their university. This had warmed February—it was an iconic event, a centerpiece in Deaf mythology, and a master class in direct action. When Charlie had asked a string of questions—What does “hot-wiring” mean? How did the students know how to hot-wire? What’s a r-e-p-r-i-s-a-l?—February had even allowed herself a few moments of pride—the girl had come such a long way. The thought of Charlie having to return to Jeff in a few months depressed her.
The front-facing wall of Old Quarters had been left exposed, without plaster, and February turned to it now to feel the familiar freestone, cold and furrowed. She let her finger fall into a gulley of mortar between the stones, followed its path. The grit accumulated beneath her nail and she felt bad, and then foolish—as if deteriorating grout was the source of River Valley’s peril. She wondered what would become of these buildings, vessels that had carried her people through so much. She imagined the city demolishing them and building a strip mall, or turning the dorms into lofts, and couldn’t decide which was worse. She hoped they might be allowed to decay in peace, at least for a while, for the roofs to cave in and the walls to be overrun by thick, woody vines—for the artifacts and stories to be swallowed back into the earth the way it was for all lost civilizations. She patted the wall tenderly, as if to thank it for a job well done, and watched the sun set over the quad.
role shift: become one with your story