The Wings Of A Caged Bird | First Draft

chapter 35: the ygbtm movement

"Holy shit, it really is all over the internet," I say, my jaw hanging open.

Beside me, July has a look on his face that shows how he doesn't know what to think of this. His biggest secret has been exposed. Not to one or two people, but to the whole world.

As soon as July and I came back to the Emmens' wooden cabin, I handed the packet to Tiara, then went to the kitchen to make her some coffee. She was a bit surprised at my act of kindness, both for the heating pads and the coffee. I then asked her to lend me her laptop because I needed to check the internet for some things, and she readily gave it to me. I came back to my room, where July was pacing from one corner to the other. Together, we sat down on the bed and typed the words "YGBTM movement" in the Google search bar.

What popped up was a number of articles with various titles, and neither of us could figure out which one to check out first. We ended up clicking the second result, titled "YGBTM movement: Youths flood the streets following the shocking reveal behind Rain Castleton's suicide." It was the only article out of all the top ones that used the word Rain instead of Hale.

We start reading in silence. YGBTM stands for You Gave Birth To Me, a sentence that Hale had written in his letter. It was initially just a Twitter hashtag used to raise awareness about academic pressure and parental abuse by showing Rain Castleton as an example, but it soon became much more than that once more people started to share their own stories. It turned into a movement, with peaceful protests sparking first at Rain's hometown Heilbur, then all over the country. The first ever protest was started by July's classmates.

I did hear about the movement from Alex, but I didn't realize the extent it had spread to, and neither had July. Apparently last week, the prime minister announced that preparations are being taken to provide free mental health counselling services in every major school of the country. Which is crazy considering the fact that none of our school textbooks has ever talked about anything related to mental health in details, and therapy is expensive. Yesterday, two suicide hotlines were launched specifically for those under 18, while another for abused children to seek help. Took our country this long to do that.

"I can't believe the government actually gave a crap about this," I say, kind of taken aback at the impact that has been created within such a short time. "They usually ignore protests like this. Remember the one by bus drivers a few years back? About the fare and the oil price. None of their demands were accepted."

"The number of bus drivers is way less than students," July says. "It's much easier to subdue a low-income group of people than a whole mob of hot-blooded youths who've finally had enough."

"Hmm, that's true."

We continue reading, desperate to get the answer about how the truth came out. We get to know that it was some of the biggest online activism pages of our country that first put out this information to the world just a few days back. They had been messaged by an unanimous individual who claimed to be Rain and Hale's classmate and a close friend of Rain. They had sent way too many proofs for there to be any doubt about this. I was much surprised to discover that one of the activism pages listed is the one Alex and Ayesha run together: voiceoftheoppressed. So they got involved in this too.

"A classmate," I repeat. "Who could it be?"

"I have a guess," he replies, eyes still on the screen.

The article with the proofs is linked there, and I was about to click it. But July tells me to finish reading the whole article first before going there.

After this came out, it was like a whole storm had sweeped over the internet and the media. Everyone was and still is talking about this everywhere, the mass public shaken up by such a major twist in the story. Like the cashier girl at the convenience store said, the movement flared up right after the news came out. The protests became more vehement, and a wider range of demands were put out. Many of them are about how there needs to be more changes in the education system of our country, like the inclusion of mental health education in the curriculum.