Sparrow's Story - A Girl Defiant

Chapter 21

Sparrow and her father are late for the flight back to LA.  Damon runs interference as they dash through the terminal to the gate.

Gate attendants escort them past the line at the gangway and into the cabin. Sparrow collapses into her roomy Guardian Class seat. Damon settles in next to her while Dad shoves his briefcase under the seat across the aisle.

The attendant secures the privacy screen, and a girl bagged in a burka steps into the aisle and begins to peel it off. Her stilettos flash red, so Sparrow expects a gorgeous Muslim to emerge, but when she’s free and shakes out her hair, she’s as blonde, American and apple pie as a Laker’s girl. 

Sparrow’s mouth drops.  She’d heard a rumor about Chaste Wear hitting the east coast, and now she knows it’s true. 

The girl’s eyes meet hers. What are you looking at?  

Sparrow ducks behind the seat in front of her, because she doesn’t need any more drama today. If that girl chooses to wear a bag over her head, that’s none of Sparrow’s business. 

The girl slips into her seat and for a second, Sparrow is embarrassed at how harsh she sounds. Maybe this girl chose between bad and worse...like she did. 

The plane pulls away from the gate, the cabin lights dim and suddenly, Sparrow’s back at the photographer’s loft, bent over his computer, feeling that bastard’s hand... 

Her mouth tastes like acid, and she reaches for the sick bag. 

She feel his hand sliding between her -- and her stomach seizes. Sparrow coughs into the bag, but nothing comes up. Damon taps her on the arm with a water bottle, but she waves it away and he leaves it on her lap.

Length times width. Pi times radius squared. One half base times height. She breathes into the sick bag, repeating the formulas for area of a trapezoid, the area of an ellipse and the area of a sector. She calculates the volume of a cube with sides of 37.3 inches and a sphere with a radius of 22.9 meters.

The plane lifts off the tarmac and the lights come back on. “Why don’t you watch TV and take your mind off the flight?” Damon suggests.

There’s a screen for every seat so Sparrow puts in her earphones, and clicks through the channels, but half are blacked out. Damon’s watching the Patriot’s game and the guy ahead of her is watching the news, but she’s stuck with National Geographic, Animal Planet or an old Martha Stewart rerun.

Sparrow darkens her screen, and peeks at the news through the gap between the seats. The camera pans in on the bloody face of a boy pleading with the camera. COPS SHOOT STUDENT PROTESTOR IN SACRAMENTO rolls across the bottom of the screen. 

Sweet Jesus. She presses the water bottle to her cheek, knowing her friend Yates was there with a group from Oxy. 

The video is almost impossible to make out, but Yates can’t have been the one who got shot. Fifty thousand students were supposed to show up at that protest. The odds are 49,999 to 1 that Yates is fine.

Can this day get any more horrible?

Sparrow sips her water, waiting and willing Damon to crash. Finally, the Packers make it to the five yard line, and Damon’s head falls back. 

Dad’s across the aisle, clicking through docs on his tablet, and for once she’s glad he’s trying to catch up on all the billable hours he lost taking her to New York.

She loops a finger around Damon’s earphones and plugs one in her ear. She slides her hand over the screen controls and clicks through the unrestricted stations. 

The Fox News team is doing in depth coverage. The video pans over a crowd that stretches for blocks. The newscaster’s voice rumbles with indignation. 

“Legislators locked themselves in the Capital building today, fearing for their lives as fifty-thousand students took to Sacramento streets today to protest California’s likely ratification of the Twenty-Eighth Amendment that will raise the age of majority to twenty-five.”

 Fearing for their lives?  That’s bull. The students are marching in orderly rows and decked out in their school colors.  

 They halt before the Capitol steps. The camera switches to the officials facing off with the crowd. The camera’s trained on the speaker at the podium, but three rows of shiny black helmets back him up. 

There was no reason to have all that firepower. It’s as if the politicians wanted the protest to turn violent. 

“Lieutenant Governor John Ramos warned the protestors that they lacked proper permits for the march and ordered them to disburse. The crowd defied the order to leave.”

Like a wave, fifty thousand guys sit down and link their arms.

The cops bang their acrylic shields with their batons in unison until they sound like war drums. National Guardsmen wall in the protestors on both sides.  

She checks. Dad’s still engrossed in his work.

“Ramos repeated his warning that the protestors must leave the Capitol grounds, but the student leaders defied his instructions. Police and the National Guard were left no option but to respond with force.” 

No option?!  When the cops could have waited them out? When Ramos could have ordered the news media to turn off the cameras and walk away?

But instead the cops fire streams of pepper spray over the crowd. Guys scramble to get out of the way, falling over each other, and banging into cops who slam them to the ground and cuff them with plastic ties. Dust blinds the cameras. 

“The scene turned to chaos and law enforcement officers struggled to maintain order. Shots rang out after a student grabbed an officer’s gun and waved it at the crowd.” 

Sparrow doesn’t believe the newscaster. He’s lying about the kid taking the gun. She’s sure of it. The Paternalists practically own this news station and they’re serving up this story so everyone will vote to ratify the new Amendment. 

She needs to know what really happened, but she’s not going to learn anything from watching this man spin the story. Sparrow eases Damon’s mini-tablet out of his seat back pocket and wedges it between them.

The WIFI’s working and she searches for videos of the protest online until she finds one that proves she’s right. 

 The student who got shot grabbed the officer’s gun, but it was after it was pressed up against his chest. The finger on the trigger belonged to the officer trying to cover his uniformed ass.

A few minutes later, she sees the police haul Yates into a bus, his hands tied behind his back. He’s bleeding, but conscious. Sparrow keeps searching for two of her brother Nate’s friends who supposedly went until Damon wakes up over Denver.  

The ride home from LAX is silent, thank God, and she drags herself upstairs and throws herself down on the bed.  

As she tucks her phone under her pillow, she realizes there’s a message from Imran. Two asterisks. A goodnight kiss. 

There’s a end to this insanity, a way out of this hell and to be with Imran, she intends to find it.

 I won’t be some rich man’s pet. I won’t ever let another man use me the way that photographer did.