CHAPTER 19 #3
Eventually, the day of the rally dawned and he was up at seven am, adding the final touches to the eat shit or die plan, hoping today wasn’t about dying.
But he had a huge spoon and was ready to shovel in as much shit as he could.
He met Liz and Anna for coffee, then the PopBuzz team to finalise the coverage of the day, and then he and his friends hit the street, heading to the square beside the town hall, where Sam’s rally would be taking place.
He was nervous, he was excited, but most of all he was tired.
The dice were about to stop tumbling, and he didn’t know if he wanted them to.
As they got closer, Jeremy started to see other people clearly headed to the march too, with climate shirts and megaphones and placards.
‘Shit … I forgot something,’ Jeremy said, stopping Liz and Anna. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
An hour later, Jeremy stood in the crowd, a huge placard resting against his shoulder.
The gang, including a bunch of his PopBuzz team, were at the square, and Jeremy was anxiously loitering close to the stage, trying to catch a glimpse of Sam among the buzzing swarm of organisers and volunteers, when he caught sight of Patsie chatting to an annoyed-looking police sergeant.
He pushed his way through the crowd, trying to get close enough to say hello to her.
‘Look, you’re going to have to delay everything by another half hour,’ the police sergeant drawled, shaking his head.
‘We have a schedule,’ answered Patricia politely.
‘Yeah, well, you told us you were expecting hundreds,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’m going to have to call in some backup. It’s just public safety.’
Jeremy looked at where the sergeant was gesturing and felt his heart stop.
The streets around the town hall were a seething mass of people and placards, and he could see more in the distance, pushing their way in.
There were thousands of people, this protest already bigger than some Jeremy had joined around the bushfires a few years earlier.
‘Holy crap,’ he breathed. He was so happy for Sam, thrilled for him.
But he felt proud of himself too – he’d worked incredibly hard over the last couple of weeks, and it felt good to know it had led to this spectacular turnout.
It also felt good to do something objectively good for the world.
Sure, he’d done it as part of a grand romantic gesture rather than pure altruism, but as the old saying went, it was about the destination not the journey.
‘Ah yeah, sure, we can … we can delay,’ he heard Patsie say, before she ran off in the opposite direction, her phone already held up to her ear.
The people continued piling in, the back of the crowd stretching out of Jeremy’s view.
He could see movement and frantic organisation happening behind and around the stage.
He caught sight of a pop star named Apricot XPX puffing on a vape and nodding coolly as Patsie handed her a matcha – it had been Sarah-Jessica’s idea to reach out to the star after interviewing her for PopBuzz.
Apricot XPX was massive on TikTok, and very outspoken on social issues.
Jeremy also watched as a local politician tried to bring some corflutes for his own party on stage with him.
Suddenly, it all began, the crowd now streaming through the roadblocks and around the town hall, stretching down both sides of the street.
Her voice booming over the speaker, an Indigenous elder welcomed them to Country, talking about the effect of colonisation on the land and how the traditional custodians had cared for it for tens of thousands of years.
The leader of the Greens stood up, talking about the hope she felt at the sight of all these people, and the work they needed to do.
She managed to make it sound like their party was responsible for the rally, which Jeremy bristled about on Sam’s behalf.
Apricot got up to speak before she sang a song, looking beautiful and effortlessly cool. She also spoke about what the protest and this rally meant for her.
‘It’s easy to get cynical,’ she admitted.
‘It’s easy to assume the worst – about what’s happening to our planet, about people, about our lives.
But seeing everyone here makes me feel like if we work hard, we can overcome this together, use our numbers to stop companies and individuals who are determined to profit from destruction, to force our governments to work for the future, and to make amazing things happen.
It’s easy to be alone and scared and pessimistic.
It’s harder to believe in other people, believe in change, believe in happiness. ’
After she sang, she gestured to someone offstage, and, with an almost painful beat of his heart, Jeremy recognised Sam, standing quietly to the side, looking handsome and perfect.
Sam waved his hands in front of his face bashfully, and then kind of half stepped out.
Part of the plan had involved telling Apricot all about him.
‘I want to thank my friend Sam,’ Apricot said, ‘who organised this whole event, and who I’m told rarely gets the credit he deserves. Let’s all thank Sam.’ The crowd didn’t really change the tone and volume of its applause, but Jeremy watched proudly as Sam managed an embarrassed little wave.
Jeremy was standing at the front, staring intently up at the stage, separated by a crowd barrier and a couple of security guards.
He was far enough away that he could only just make out Sam’s face, but he felt a wash of panicked warmth when he realised Sam was looking down into the crowd directly at him.
He could tell they were making eye contact – thank god Jeremy was so stupidly tall.
He took a deep breath, and raised his placard up high and made sure Sam could see it.
It was a crudely but colourfully drawn picture of a world on fire. Above it, it just said: I’m sorry.
Jeremy saw Sam looking at the sign, and he pointed up at it, and yelled, ‘I’m really sorry.’ The crowd was so loud – he knew Sam couldn’t hear him – but around him his friends and the PopBuzz team had created a little island of silence. He could feel them all waiting to see Sam’s response.
When Jeremy saw that Sam was looking again, he flipped the sign around. In clear, bold writing, it said: I love you, Sam.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jeremy yelled over the roar. ‘I love you!’
Sam vaulted off the stage, landing awkwardly and moving past the security guards, pushing up against the blockade. And then he was there, and for the first time in weeks they were close, face to face.
Reaching across the barrier, Sam grabbed Jeremy’s arms, looking at him.
Jeremy stared back, feeling like a deer in headlights, like he’d just been hit in the face with a big stick, and found himself cupping Sam’s face in his hands, feeling the smoothness of his skin, the curve of his cheekbones, the warmth of his bottom lip, briefly, before they were kissing and kissing and the roar of the crowd around them faded into static and then to no sound at all.