“THE PEOPLE, UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DIVIDED!” Lainey got chills as the megaphone crackled to life and the chant rippled across the crowd. Everywhere she looked, up and down the intersection, people waved flags and held up signs, just like she and her mom were doing.
The white vans with tinted windows had started showing up not long after the election. They came early in the morning, when people were on their way to work or school. They had taken the dad of one of Lainey’s friends right from the school drop-off line.
As cars drove by many honked their car horns or cheered in support. Others ignored them, and one person flipped them the bird. Lainey wanted to do it back, but her mother hadn’t let her. “When they go low, we go high,” she said.
The white vans had taken many people since those first frightening weeks. They were sending people to camps, or to prisons in other countries. Some claimed it was because they had broken the law, but the laws kept changing, becoming harder and harder to comply with.
The atmosphere crackled with energy as the crowd continued to grow, eventually spilling off the sidewalk and into the street. Lainey’s pulse thrummed in her ears as traffic came to a halt. Not far away from where Lainey and her mom stood, someone dressed as the Statue of Liberty was trying to reason with an irate motorist.
The crowd began a slow surge down the street in the direction of the Statehouse. An unfamiliar sensation percolated in Lainey’s gut. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t excitement. It was something new, something she didn’t have a name for.
A police line was forming ahead, officers in riot gear standing shoulder to shoulder behind heavy shields. Some held tear gas or batons, ready to use them on the crowd. Behind them, scores of white vans stood waiting.
Lainey looked around her, perplexed. Everyone was chanting in time with the drumming that was coming from somewhere at the back of the crowd, shaking their signs. She didn’t see anything bad happening.
Lainey’s mom saw the police line, too. She looked at Lainey with a worried frown. “Maybe we should go.”
”No, I want to stay,” Lainey pleaded. She took her mother’s hand in hers and squeezed. “We need to stay. Please. For Brisa, and her dad.” Their eyes met as Lainey’s mom searched her face for fear or uncertainty. Finding only determination, she nodded. “Ok. We’ll stay.”
The chanting got louder, everyone’s voices rising together in sync with the drums. The eerie wail of a lone bagpiper coiled around the beat of the drums, tying it to the voices of the people. Lainey felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to rise as a new surge of energy moved through the crowd.
The first street light to bend was almost over Lainey's head. She gasped at the pop of sparks as the metal gave way and the wiring within twisted too. All along the street light poles were bending into new shapes.
Up ahead, the men in riot gear looked at one another in surprise as their shields began lifting into the air and taking flight.
Throughout the crowd people began dropping their signs to grasp one another’s hands as they continued to chant.
One by one, the white vans began to sink slowly into the street as if the asphalt were hot lava. A cheer went up from the crowd as the drivers of the vans stumbled out of their vehicles and took off running across the sticky pavement.
The police line fell apart, with some of the officers blending in with the crowd as they, too, joined the march.
Hand-in-hand, the community pushed past the abandoned vans and surged up the steps into the Statehouse to demand change.
Lainey squeezed her mom’s hand, the strange energy fizzing all around her. Tears prickled in the corners of her eyes. For Brisa. For her own family. For everyone. As they climbed the steps, their voices rose together, “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!”
