Chapter Twenty-Nine
Zoe
Keely finds the rally.
This is the Wednesday after Cap called me into her office and said, "Kimball.
Your probationary period ends Friday. Hayes recommends you for full assignment.
I concur. Effective Monday, you're on the roster.
" She said it the same way she says everything, level, factual, and I stood there and said "Thank you, Captain" and walked out and made it to the locker room before I cried.
Keely's message: we're going. no debate. i already told my supervisor i need saturday off and she said fine because she's afraid of me.
Mia: in. jake can come right?
Keely: jake can come if jake can keep up.
Jordan: already got my sign from last time.
Raquelle: i'll bring sunscreen. last rally i got burned so bad my aunt thought i had a rash.
I read the thread while I'm eating cereal at my parents' kitchen table. Dad is on the porch with the paper. Mom is somewhere upstairs doing something that involves a sewing machine and occasional profanity.
I text back: i'll be there. bringing cookies.
Keely: of course you are.
Saturday is bright and warm and I take the bus downtown with a container of Grandma Eloise's cookies and my second-best sneakers and a feeling in my chest like carbonation, like all the small bubbles of everything good in my life right now are hitting the surface at the same time.
Keely is already at City Hall when I arrive.
She's standing on the bottom step with a handmade sign that says NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL in letters so big you could read them from a helicopter.
She's wearing a tank top and shorts and she's got sunscreen on her nose and she looks like a person who woke up this morning ready to yell about something that matters, which is Keely's default state.
"ZOE!" She sees me and screams my name across thirty feet of sidewalk. "Get up here! Mia's saving us a spot by the speaker stage!"
I get up there. The crowd is building, maybe three hundred people, filling the steps and the plaza in front of City Hall with signs and flags and strollers and dogs and the specific energy of people who got up early on a Saturday to stand in the sun for something they believe in.
There are tables along the far side: community organizations, legal aid, voter registration, a food truck selling empanadas.
Mia is where Keely said she'd be, near the speaker stage, with Jake, who is tall and quiet and holding Mia's extra sign with the careful posture of a man who was told to hold this sign and is holding this sign and not getting in the way.
Jordan arrives next, with her sign from last time, slightly crumpled.
Raquelle brings up the rear with a tube of SPF 50 and a fanny pack.
"Sunscreen," Raquelle announces, holding up the tube. "Nobody's getting a rash today."
We sunscreen. We position. The speakers start at eleven and they're good: a city councilwoman, a community organizer, a high school student whose parents came from Guatemala and who speaks with a clarity that makes three hundred people go quiet and listen.
She talks about her mother working double shifts and her father learning English at night and her little brother being afraid to go to school, and the crowd is still, absorbing, and I think about the lot where Scorched Ordinance plays and how Cal talks between songs about the neighborhood and how this is the same thing.
People standing together because standing alone doesn't change anything.
Keely is filming on her phone. Mia has tears on her face. Jordan is holding her sign so high her arms are shaking. Raquelle is watching the high school student with an expression I've never seen on her, which is fury and love in equal measure.
The march starts at noon. We walk. Three hundred people through downtown, signs up, voices up, the chant building from the front and rolling backward through the crowd like a wave.
I walk between Keely and Jordan and I chant and my voice is one voice in three hundred and that's enough.
One voice in three hundred is exactly enough.
We loop past the federal building. More speeches.
A woman from a legal aid organization talks about the families she works with, the cases, the children, and her voice is steady and professional and underneath it is the same thing that was underneath Cal's screaming: anger that comes from caring about the place you're angry about.
After the speeches, the crowd loosens. People drift toward the tables, the food truck, the small clusters of conversation that form when the formal part ends and the informal part begins.
Keely is trying to get all five of us into a selfie and failing because Raquelle keeps blinking and Jake doesn't understand angles.
"Jake. Jake. Tilt your head. No, the other way. Jake."
"I'm tilting."
"You're leaning. There's a difference."
I drift toward the tables while Keely solves the Jake problem.
The organizations have set up displays: pamphlets, signup sheets, stickers, information about legal rights and community resources.
I stop at a table for a tenant advocacy group and sign up for their mailing list because tenant rights is something Teague cares about and if Teague cares about it then I want to understand it.
The next table has a woman selling patches.
She's set up on a folding table with a cloth spread over it, and on the cloth are rows of embroidered patches in every color: rainbows, fists, flags, slogans, symbols.
They're handmade, each one slightly different, the stitching tight and deliberate.
There's a cardboard sign that says HANDMADE PATCHES, $5 EACH, ALL PROCEEDS TO THE CAUSE.
I stop.
The patches are beautiful. They're small, two or three inches, the right size for a jacket.
I look at them and I think about Teague's jacket, the patches on the leather, each one placed and fraying and real.
BLM. Trans rights. Kids over guns. Eat the rich.
No more billionaires. Each one a position.
Each one a thing she cares about stitched to a thing she wears.
"Take your time," the woman says. She's older, maybe sixties, with reading glasses and nimble fingers. "I make them all myself. The thread's from the garment district."
I look through the rows. There's one that catches me. It's small, rectangular, royal blue with white embroidery. The text reads: NO BORDERS ON COMPASSION.
I pick it up. The stitching is clean and tight and the blue is deep and the words are right.
They sound like something Teague would say if Teague said things like this out loud, which she doesn't, because Teague says things like this with patches and playlists and the way she lets people into her bar and feeds them and plays them music and doesn't ask where they're from.
"This one," I say.
"Good choice." The woman takes my five dollars. "For you?"
"For my girlfriend."
She smiles. "Lucky girlfriend."
Shrugging, I keep looking, seeing if there are any others I want. "I'm the lucky one."
I put the patch in my bag. I keep looking. There's a second one that catches me: small, round, pink embroidery on black. A fist holding a flower. No text. Just the image. A fist and a flower.
I buy that one too.
Not for Teague. For me.
The idea arrives fully formed, the way ideas arrive for me, without preamble or process.
Teague has her jacket. Her patches are her history, her positions, her identity stitched to leather.
I don't have a jacket. I don't have patches.
But I have things I care about and places I've stood and Saturdays I've spent in the sun with my friends chanting and marching and holding signs.
I'm going to start collecting.
Not on a jacket. That's Teague's. I need my own thing, my own system, my own way of keeping track of the places I've been and the things I've stood for. And I know exactly what it's going to be.
The pink zip-up pencil case has been in my desk drawer since high school. I bought it at Target freshman year, used it for markers and gel pens, retired it when I graduated. It's still there. Bright pink, fabric, with a zipper that works and enough room inside for a collection.
I buy three more patches from the woman's table. A rainbow flag. A small square that says PROTECT EACH OTHER. A round one with a flame on it, red and orange, that looks like it belongs on turnout gear and doesn't but could.
"You're building a collection," the woman says.
"I'm starting one."
"Good. Everyone should have a collection. Tells you where you've been."
I put all five patches in my bag. The blue one is Teague's. The other four are mine. The pencil case is at home in my desk drawer waiting.
Keely finds me. "Where'd you go?" she asks.
"Bought some patches."
"Patches? Like for a jacket?"
"Like for a collection."
She looks at me. Keely has known me since seventh grade. She knows when I'm doing something that's about more than the surface, when a purchase is a declaration, when a small pink pencil case is going to become a record of the person I'm turning into.
"This is a Teague thing," she says.
"This is a me thing that Teague inspired."
"Same thing."
"It's not."
"Zoe. You went to a punk show and now you're buying patches at a rally. You're becoming her."
"I'm not becoming her. I'm becoming me with more information."
Keely grins. She hooks her arm through mine and pulls me back toward the group. "You're disgusting. Both of you. Disgustingly in love."
"Raquelle called it."
"Raquelle calls everything. It's annoying."
We regroup. We eat empanadas from the food truck, sitting on the City Hall steps with our signs propped against the railing. Mia and Jake share one. Jordan eats two. Keely eats one and steals half of Raquelle's and Raquelle lets her because that's how they work.
I sit on the steps and eat my empanada and feel the sun on my face and the patches in my bag and I think about tonight.
I'm going to go home and find the pencil case and unzip it and put my patches inside and zip it back up and put it in my bag and carry it with me.
The blue one I'll give to Teague. Tonight. At the bar.
"Hey." Jordan nudges me with her shoulder. "You good?"
"I'm great."
"You look like you're thinking about something."
"I'm thinking about collecting things."
"Like patches?"
"Like proof."
Jordan doesn't ask what I mean. Jordan's good like that. She lets things be what they are without requiring an explanation.
We clean up. Say goodbye. Hugs, promises to text, Keely making everyone commit to brunch next Sunday. Jake waves from a distance because Jake doesn't hug and we respect that.
I take the bus home. The patches are in my bag.
The cookies are gone because I handed the container out during the march and every single cookie was eaten by a stranger who said thank you and one woman who said "these are the best cookies I've ever had at a rally" and I told her about Grandma Eloise and she said Grandma Eloise was a patriot.
At home I go to my room. The glow-in-the-dark stars are on the ceiling. The ceiling fan wobbles. The desk drawer opens and the pink pencil case is right where I left it, under a pile of old pens and a protractor I never used.
I unzip it. I put four patches inside. Rainbow flag. Fist and flower. Protect each other. The flame.
I zip it up. The case is light. Four patches don't weigh much. But they're a start, and everything starts somewhere, and mine starts here, in the bedroom where I counted sirens and stuck stars on the ceiling and decided I was going to be a firefighter.
The blue patch is in my jacket pocket. Teague's. I'll give it to her tonight.
I text the group chat: best rally. best friends. brunch sunday confirmed. keely is buying.
Keely: i never said i was buying!!!
Jordan: you implied it.
Raquelle: you definitely implied it.
Mia: jake says you also implied appetizers.
Keely: jake needs to stop talking.
I put the phone down. Pick up the pencil case. Hold it. It's small and pink and it has a zipper and it's mine.
Teague has her jacket. I have this.
Different object. Same idea. You carry what you stand for, and you add to it every time you stand somewhere new.
I put the pencil case in my bag. Grab the blue patch from my jacket pocket. Head out.
Teague will be behind the counter and the neon will be going blue-pink-blue and I'll walk in with a patch in my pocket and give it to the woman I love and watch her hold it in her hands with her rings and her tattoos and her face that edits everything except the things that matter.
I can already see it.