Chapter 2: pre: prologue

[ ━━ ❝ ✧˚⋆｡☾✩˚⋆｡࿐❞ ━━ ]

MAYA

(2014)

SOME OBSCURE RELATIVE of Callie's was dying, but Maya didn't think that the bitch was any more goddamn special than the rest of 'em. Those days everybody was either dying or knew someone who was.

But, as it goes, Callie had a thing for the dramatic, and Maya had a thing for her.

So, like the complete dumbasses they were, they drove the three hours from Berlin to Manchester with the weird kid Mo passed out in the backseat just to visit her obscure dying relative for ten minutes. Callie cried; the relative told her that she loved her and kissed her on the cheek, passionate and wet. Maya and Mo got rock candy from the sweet little blonde secretary, and it wasn't that Maya was jealous or anything, but the secretary gave him blue raspberry and her grape. (Who even liked grape rock candy? It tasted like sugary medicine.) After the ten minutes were up, they climbed back into Callie's Jeep and pointed her GPS to home three hours north.

Maya couldn't stand Mo; he made her want to rip her hair out. He was fourteen, only three years younger than she was, but he acted like a nine-year-old. Plus, he looked like a school shooter.

But, as it goes, Callie had a thing for him, and Maya had a thing for her.

Not that Callie's thing for Mo was Like That. The girl was gayer than Dumbledore's beard and, besides, Mo was, well, Mo. He was the still green sky before a tornado struck: strange, quiet, full of terrifying potential. The kid that set lightning bugs on fire instead of catching them.

Traffic in the city was bad that day. There was a protest going on, one of the many that had sprouted up after the Proposed Bombing. Sitting in a standstill jam, the trio watched with an apathetic, detached sort of interest as the protest inched closer to them. They rolled their windows down, feeling the crisp fall air rush in. Using a camera she'd got from her dad for Chanukah, Callie photographed the movement—people of every age and every race peacefully marching, clutching each other and holding picket signs. WHO ARE U SAVING - US OR URSELVES? HUMAN LIVES / MONEY and Maya's personal favorite, a quote from The Hunger Games: IF WE BURN, YOU BURN WITH US.

Eventually, traffic started thinning. Their speed picked up. Maya lounged back in her seat, sucking on her rock candy. Mo was still watching the protest as it faded from view, his expression as blank and as intense  as it was the day they freed him from the hellish institute he'd been trapped in all his life. He was sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce, unbuckled, barefoot. Callie tossed Maya her camera, and she started snapping polaroids: selfies with a purple tongue, Mo seeing the world through the eyes of a child and the body of a teenager, the red and gold leaves, Callie laughing into her steering wheel.

And then a boy jumped in front of their car.

Callie screamed and slammed on the breaks. The airbags burst, slamming into Maya's head with the force of a concrete wall. Without a seatbelt to protect him, Mo was thrown to the floor of the car. He sat there, eerily silent, his eyes slammed shut, digging his hands so hard into his ears blood stained his nails. Little tufts of his black hair sparked, burning, smoking. His blue raspberry rock candy was stuck to his forehead with spit.

The boy, a young black guy in a hoodie, was fine. Callie'd acted quick enough and missed him by inches. He stood in front of their car, his hands splayed on the hood, breathing heavy.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Maya called to him through the open window. "You could have gotten yourself killed, dumbass!"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he yelled back, digging his pointer finger into the windshield. "Photographing a protest you don't take part in, really? What are you gonna do, post them to Snapchat or Instagram to show how #Woke you are? Turn our movement into some hipster aesthetic? We're fighting for our lives while you sit behind the safety of a camera lense!"

Callie was a gentle soul; Maya had never really seen her get angry before. Upset, sure. Frustrated? Absolutely. But never angry, especially not when it was targeted at a specific person. Today was something different entirely. The girl's lips curled over, baring her teeth like fangs. Her eyes narrowed to slits. The airbag had split the skin under her eyes open. "I am not complacent," she growled into the airbag.

She pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked it, much to the annoyance of the car behind them, who honked their horn at them, loud and deep. As they drove past them, the woman in the passenger seat flipped them off. Calmly, Callie shoved the door open and jumped out, her knees buckling underneath her before she got the chance to right herself. So much for being a dancer; offstage, she was about as graceful as she was tall.

The boy was staring at her. "That's what I thought."

"Callie," Maya called from the passenger seat. "CALLIE. Get back in the fucking car. I'm going to count to ten. One . . ."

Wordlessly, Mo climbed out of the backseat. He gave Maya a blank look, one eyebrow expectantly raised. What was he trying to tell her? She couldn't read minds. She didn't have any kind of power at all, actually. She wasn't like him and Callie—shit, what did they call them, again? It was some Italian word. But that didn't matter. They still were what they were, even if Maya couldn't remember what, exactly, it was called. Mo could set the world ablaze without a drop of gasoline and Callie could kill a man without even touching him. Maya could . . . well, Maya could occasionally do her calculus homework without crying.

And then the black-haired bastard pulled Maya's wheelchair out of the backseat, unfolding it and setting it on the ground beside the passenger-side car door, his eyebrow still expectantly arched. The message was clear: he wanted her to join them.

"Goddamn sons of bitches wanting me to do things and shit," Maya grumbled. But she pushed the door open and lowered herself down into the chair.

Mo didn't smile, but he looked vaguely pleased. He nodded curtly at her, then trotted over to join Callie and the boy, who'd started to march down the sidewalk. Maya followed the three of them, wheeling herself along, still grumbling.

Three streets down, they rounded a corner and came to a little city square where the protest was in full swing. The boy elbowed his way through the crowd, the trio blindly following him. In the center of the square was a fountain as dry as the Sahara desert. As in, there wasn't any water in it. As in, the fountain was on fire.

Mo mumbled something unintelligible.

"I'M SORRY." Callie leaned in closer to him; she had to yell to be heard over the din of the crowd. "WHAT WAS THAT?"

"Bright."

A young black man stood on the edge of the fountain, balanced precariously between the crowd in front of him and the fire behind him. His dark eyes reflected in the light of the fire like sunlight reflecting on oil. He was screaming a chant into a bright blue megaphone: "BURN THE WALL! BURN THE WALL! BURN THE WALL!"

Around him, the crowd repeated his words, their fists pounding the air.

"Ooh, drama," said Maya, suddenly intrigued.

"NO MORE UNNECESSARY DEATHS," the man continued. "NO MORE PAIN, NO MORE TROUBLE, NO MORE RICH OVERPOWERING THE POOR. BURN. THE. WALL!"

The crowd cheered, his last three words echoing back at him.

It would be the last thing he ever said.

A stream of officers in full-on riot gear flooded past Maya, separating her from her friends. Lost in a sea of unfamiliar faces and sitting at nearly half the height of everyone around her, Maya felt panic begin to beat at her chest. The only semi-familiar face left around her was the boy that jumped in front of their car.

"CALLIE?" she screamed into the chaos. "CALLIE? CALLIE, WHERE ARE YOU? MO? MO!"

The boy grabbed onto her chair's push handles. "DON'T WORRY, I—"

His words were cut off by an electric hum. His eyes stilled, his mouth wide-open, his body violently convulsing. Then, quite anticlimactically, he fell to the earth, his eyes staring at the clouds of smoke in the sky.

He'd been tased.

The officer pointed her taser at Maya. "YOU GOT ANYTHING TO SAY?"

"NO, MA'AM."

A shot rang out. Maya instinctively jumped, craning her neck, frantically searching for the gun, for the culprit.  She could hardly see anything, but . . . she could see the victim. The boy from the fountain crumpled to the ground, dead. For a second, Maya watched on in horror as blood dripped from a bullet wound in his head, and then his body disappeared, trampled by the crowd.

But his chant didn't die with his body. Even as his heart stilled in his chest, those three little words carried throughout the crowd and Maya's heart, a plea for justice, a call to action, a battle cry.

Burn the wall.

Burn the wall.

Burn the wall.

[ ━━ ❝ ✧˚⋆｡☾✩˚⋆｡࿐❞ ━━ ]

ps if this prologue was confusing, it's supposed to be. everything will be revealed and/or explained in due time.

but what do y'all think so far?? do you like maya and callie??? what about mo??? do you have any inferences about who they are or what the dealios with the wall and the bombings and the protest are??? im interested in hearing y'all's thoughts, even if you have no idea what the fuck is gonna happen :)))))