Chapter Eleven
“Reports coming in early this morning that late last night Greenham Police Department made two arrests in conjunction with the October 4th bombing of the Greenham City Hall. The suspects, seen here, are twenty-year-old Melanie Wright and twenty-one-year-old Josie Stone. Both women are assumed to be members of the domestic terrorist group Rebel and are confirmed to both be students at Greenham Community College. Given national intelligence telling us that most splinter groups of The Vantez Collective form around colleges, speculation is rampant that our own Greenham Community College could be the recruiting ground for these homegrown terrorists.”
Ms. Akiyama had been watching the news cycle surrounding these arrests all morning, feeling a sense of dread that built every time the news anchor mentioned the connection to Greenham Community College. And everyone knew that these kinds of gender studies classes that Ms. Akiyama had pulled Rei from spoon-fed them all sorts of radical nonsense. Exactly the kind of nonsense that led to your signing up to be a terrorist. Why did they even allow those classes to be taught anymore?
Ms. Akiyama took a breath. That was neither here nor now. She’d made the right choice to pull Rei from that class; but maybe that wasn’t quite enough for a girl like Rei. Especially if they already had their hooks in Rei.
But, of course, Ms. Akiyama was jumping to conclusions. Right? Rei was headstrong and at times stubborn, but she was a good kid, she knew better than to get herself wrapped up in this kind of business, right?
Ms. Akiyama wanted to say that was so, but a knot of anxiety in her chest said otherwise.
“Wait, what’s going on?”
Rei’s voice from behind her shocked her from her internal monologue. “Oh, um, they arrested two girls for the bombing of City Hall.”
“They did?” Rei’s hair was still a mess and her pajamas crumpled on her small frame. “Who? Did they say their names?”
Ms. Akiyama couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. “Why? Worried you know them?”
“Well,” Rei shrugged, “there aren’t a lot of girls at my school, mom…”
Ms. Akiyama frowned at that; Rei had a point. She picked up the TV remote and rewound until she saw the two girl’s pictures pop up on screen.
“year-old Melanie Wright,” the voice on the TV narrated, “and twenty-one-year-old Josie Stone.”
“So?”
“Uh, yeah,” Rei replied, too shocked to even consider whether she should have lied. “I didn’t really know them, though. I had a class with Melanie and um…just saw Josie around.” The instinct to lie kicked before she could blurt out where she really knew Josie from.
“What class?”
“Um, you know, the…gender…class…”
“Oh.” Ms. Akiyama felt that knot of anxiety in her chest tighten. Rei had known these girls. They could have tried to recruit her! These girls could have gotten Rei involved in this whole mess. They hadn’t, had they? She studied her daughter’s face as she stared at the news coverage of the arrests. It wasn’t possible Rei had been involved, was it? She’d come home late that night, Ms. Akiyama remembered that, but she had been with her professor. Her…gender studies…professor…
But, no, that was ridiculous. Those professors might fill these girls’ heads with all sorts of nonsense, but certainly they’d never go so far as to encourage much less participate in these sorts of acts. No, Ms. Akiyama was jumping the gun there, surely.
But Rei had known them. These were the kinds of girls Ms. Akiyama was letting Rei be around if she kept letting her go to college. If she didn’t do something to make Rei understand that Ms. Akiyama knew best. If she didn’t help Rei learn a new way to be happy in this world.
For her part, Rei was glued to the TV, as oblivious to her mother’s stare as she was to her internal dialogue. Was she safe? Were they going to arrest her next? Were they going to arrest Riley next? The truth was, Rei had hardly been involved. She had been in a car with three other girls three blocks away in case something went wrong. She was on the B team. Surely they couldn’t have any evidence against her, right? But what if Melanie or Josie turned on the rest of them? Some kind of plea bargain? They had all promised not to name names or cooperate in any way in the event that this happened, but what would they stick to their word if it meant getting themselves out of trouble?
Rei just had to trust that they wouldn’t.