12: The Aftermath
Wow, Chapter 11 was a long one, wasn't it? Word says it was…11 pages. Writing about protests/riots is fun, especially with a soundtrack of Rage Against the Machine. They're great protest music.
Also: I've set up camp at heroesfiction. Come on over and check out some more good Heroes stuff!
Angie and I sat on the sidewalk, gazing down at the protest scene. A lot of people had already dispersed. As some people were being hauled away in police vans, screaming like banshees, I noticed other people writhing around on the ground helplessly.
"Crap," I muttered. "I have to go help them." I leapt up off the sidewalk and took off running back downhill towards Clifton Road.
"Feebs! Wait up!" Angie left her spot and ran down after me.
"Hope the tear gas has dispersed by now," I said when we got back down. A woman who looked like Connie Chung was interviewing that Mohawked guy from earlier in front of a news camera. Another woman was having her hair trained down just moments before going on her own camera. A newsman was walking slowly through the scene, describing everything in detail to his camera. I knelt down before the lanky guy Angie saw getting beaten. He was groaning in pain, something about maybe having a broken rib.
"Hey, that's that guy from earlier," Angie noted.
"Are you okay?" I asked him. He groaned and turned to face me, moving strands of jet-black hair from his face. When he managed to open his eyes just a bit to look at me, I realized I was looking at Todd. "Todd!"
"Phoebe," he said weakly. Awkward!
"What happened to you?" I asked. He had on a black shirt advertising some obscure punk band, but it was stained deep maroon with blood.
"Pigs got to me," he spat.
"Can I have a better look?" I asked.
"Have at it."
I gingerly pulled up Todd's shirt until I was greeted by a horrifyingly large pool of blood stemming from one of his ribs. Indeed, he did have a broken rib. Angie and I gasped at the same time.
"Oh my God," I said, my voice shaking. "I'll do my best to fix it here, but if I can't, Emory Hospital is just down the street." I put both of my hands on his right arm, squeezed my eyes shut, and sent off another prayer asking for my powers to work. Thankfully, my hands started tingling. Hallelujah! I opened my eyes and watched in horror and amazement as the pool of blood disappeared, followed by an odd cracking noise that must have been the rib bone resetting itself.
"Jesus God, that's police brutality," Angie remarked. "What were you doing wrong?"
"I was all up in their faces, saying my First Amendment rights and all of that," Todd replied. "The pig said he didn't like my attitude."
"Sorry to hear that." I helped Todd up to his feet. "I need to help some of the other people. Can you stand okay?"
"I guess."
"Angie, can you help Todd out if he needs it?" I asked. Angie nodded. "Good." I went off on my healing mission, helping all sorts of people. There was a girl who had broken her arm when she took a hard fall during the chaos. I fixed it for her and she gave me a big hug in return. Another man had a nasty, Texas-shaped bruise that was a lot of fun to watch as it disappeared. There were a lot of bumps and bruises, a few other broken limbs, and then there was Mariposa, who was hyperventilating. That was a lot of fun to deal with.
"Maybe we should be leaving now," Angie suggested. Todd nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, good idea." I started back down Clifton, in the direction of my car, with Angie and Todd following behind. The problem is that we didn't get very far. We were just about to reach the police barricade when, all of a sudden, we were told to freeze where we were and put our hands up.
Am I going to get arrested?
I'm sure we had that deer-in-headlights look as we complied because we seriously wanted to know what the hell was going on. A few seconds later, what looked like the entire riot police force was on us (and some other stragglers), cuffing us with those weird plastic tag handcuffs they use sometimes.
"What's going on here?" Angie demanded.
"Shut up!" one of the policemen commanded.
"No, seriously, what's going on?" she continued, her voice rising in pitch to a scarily high level. "We weren't doing anything wrong."
"Just shut up."
"Angie, they'll beat you too if you keep talking," Todd pointed out.
"But why are we being arrested?" Angie shouted at a level about an octave higher than her normal voice. "I don't understand what we were doing wrong! We were just exercising our First Amendment rights!"
"Don't bother with talking about that. These pigs obviously skipped the time in fourth-grade social studies when the teacher talked about the Constitution," Todd spat angrily.
I decided to keep silent because a) though we didn't hear our Miranda rights, I assumed they still applied and b) I was freaking the fuck out. When I freak out, I don't make much sense if I choose to talk. So, naturally, I decided not to. The police herded us into a giant van that's probably only brought out for situations like this. The van was already close to full with other people from the protest when we got in and there were even more people coming after us. The resulting drive to the police station reminded me of how sardines must feel in their little can.
"Todd," I said, waving my bound arms in an attempt to catch his attention. He looked lost in thought. "Todd!" He turned to me. "Hey, you okay?"
"No."
"Me neither. Hey, one of my friends is a lawyer or something. Maybe he can tell us about this stuff, whether it's constitutional or whatnot," I said, trying to provide some reassurance.
"Hold your horses there, Lash LaRue," Angie said. "Don't you remember what Julia said about talking to Robbie again?"
"FUCK JULIA!" I screamed, causing many heads to turn. I simply smiled awkwardly at them. "This is more important. Robbie knows the lay of the law, right?"
"Well, probably," Angie said with a shrug.
"And we are presently in a bit of a pickle with the law, aren't we?" I asked. The van hit a pothole and all of our butts left our benches for a moment.
"You have a point."
"So, he can help us."
"I'm not using my one phone call to holla at your ex-boyfriend for legal advice," Angie said bitterly.
"Oh hell no! I'm using my phone call to call Mom. I'm saying after we get out of the station, we call him."
"Who's this Robbie guy?" Todd asked, wanting to jump in to the conversation.
"He's a paralegal for some big law firm downtown," I explained.
"But wait, wasn't he here today?" Angie asked.
"I think so."
"Then…" Angie trailed off and her eyes widened in horror. "Was he arrested too?"
---
Say what you will about the Atlanta Police Department, but they sure do get the booking process done quickly. They had each of us in and out, even with the mug shot and fingerprinting, in two minutes or less. Oh God, I have a mug shot. What if I get famous someday and they plaster it all over The Smoking Gun and all those other sites? Even Bill Gates has a mug shot out there. That hasn't been detrimental to him, but mug shots have been to other celebrities like James Brown.
After we were all booked, we had to sit in the holding cells, separated by gender, for a while as the overlords (I guess you cold call them that) decided our fate. Surely they couldn't ask all of us to appear in court. I mean, I still don't know what I did wrong. In fact, I don't think I did anything wrong at all.
Oh yeah, don't call me Shirley.
During this time, because all our stuff was taken away from us during booking, nobody had any cell phone games for distractions or anything like that. We all had to sit, chill, and talk to each other. It was actually pretty fun. All of us introduced ourselves and showed off our different powers (if we had them). I wonder what was happening at the guys' cell.
Just after all of us finished our roundtable introductions, there was a deafening buzz and the cell door opened up to show a policeman standing there with a grim look on his face. Some of us stood up in anticipation while others sat still, choked by nervousness.
"You're all free to go," the policeman said gruffly. "All charges have been dropped." The cell erupted in applause that the policeman simply wrinkled his nose in disgust at. We all got our stuff back in the same condition we surrendered it in. In the suddenly too-small lobby of the station, girls were reunited with guys. I noticed the absence of Dylan and Mariposa—perhaps after I healed her, he came by and flew them away before the police could get to them. When I saw Todd, I called him over to me.
"Where are you headed?" I asked.
"Back home," he replied.
"Back home? Your parents took you back in?"
"Yeah, over Thanksgiving."
"Well, that's good to hear, Todd. You take care of yourself, okay?"
"Okay." Todd walked outside and left my line of sight. I assume he turned into his crow form and flew home. Damn, now I wish I could fly too!
"Can you believe we had mug shots made?" Angie asked as she looked through her purse to make sure everything was intact.
"I can't," I replied honestly. "I hope I didn't look bad in mine."
"Dude, are you going to tell your mom about this?" Angie asked.
"Definitely. She used to go to civil rights protests back in the day."
"I didn't know that."
"Now you do." I looked around and realized two things: 1) we were far away from the school and 2) we lacked motor transport. "SHIT!"
"What?"
"How are we supposed to get back?" I shut my eyes and concentrated for a moment before an idea suddenly leapt into my head. "I know!" I tore open my purse and searched for my phone. When I found it, I brought it out like a treasured relic.
"Who are you calling?"
"Robbie," I answered innocently.
"Are you insane?! What if Julia's with him?"
"Once again, my friend, fuck Julia." I found Robbie's number in my received calls list and commanded my phone to call him up. It rang three times before he answered.
"Hello?" he asked.
"Robbie? It's Phoebe. Listen up, man. Me and my homegirl are in—were in—some serious fucking shit. We're far away from my car with no method of returning."
"Phoebe? Where are you?"
"Hell if I know…" I looked around for any semblance of an address. "Angie! Help me look for an address." She nodded and looked around until she saw one.
"We're on Hosea Williams Drive!" she reported.
"We're on Hosea Williams Drive," I told Robbie. "We're at the…Zone 6 station."
"You're at the police station?" Robbie asked.
"Yeah, we got arrested. It was pretty scary."
"Wait, you two were arrested?"
"Yep! And we don't really know why! But they let us go free, so it's all cool again. We had mug shots taken!"
"Jesus, I'm glad I got out of there."
"Yeah, where did you go?"
"I went invisible and went back to my car. Then I drove back to work."
"Oh, speaking of driving—which I sincerely hope you do to pick our sad asses up—your girlfriend almost killed me today."
"What? Why?"
"She almost ran me over. We were hiding at that bank by the CDC and she came to get a fat stack of twenties. Then, I yelled at her and she threatened to kill me if she finds out I'm talking to you. Or that I see you. Or e-mail you."
"Bitch…" I heard Robbie mutter.
"You're telling me," I said with a chuckle.
"I'll come pick you two up. Then I'm going to talk to Julia about this. This is really disturbing to me."
"Me too. Don't forget to delete my call from your call history."
"Why should I? Julia won't follow through."
"She scratched my face."
"Okay, maybe she will follow through. I'll delete the call."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome."
"'Bye." By now, Angie was sitting on the curb, tracing shapes in the pavement. "Robbie's coming to get us."
"I guess I should start writing your obituary, then," Angie said gravely.
"No need to. Robbie said he was going to have a talk with Julia about that."
"Who knows if that'll mean anything, though?"
"I don't know anything anymore, man. I mean, come on, we were just arrested without any real probable cause. I have a reason to be a little cynical."
"Maybe you're right." Angie sighed. I sat down next to her and started to play Tetris on my phone. When Angie heard the familiar Tetris music, she immediately perked up and leaned over my screen, shouting out helpful advice such as "Move that thingy! Not that thingy, that thingy!" and "Flip it! FLIP IT!! Shit, you didn't flip it!" until Robbie pulled up in his little BMW. At least he drives a sensible car.
I went up to the passenger side, but it was chock-full of lawyer crap like papers and manila folders, so I sat in the back and Angie followed my lead.
"Leather," she remarked. I have cloth seats, so leather is like a big deal to her.
"Thanks for picking us up," I told Robbie as he shifted into gear and drove off.
"It's no problem. So, you two got arrested?"
"Hells yeah. Like I said, our mug shots are now on file," I reported. "The weirdest part about the whole thing was that the police never said why we were getting arrested. When Angie asked, they told her to shut up. I didn't talk at all."
"Well, during protests, the police tend to get a little crazy. My theory is that they booked you on disturbing the peace."
"Disturbing the peace? What a bullshit charge."
"You're telling me." He glanced up at us through his rearview mirror and I noticed that he had his hair up in a ponytail again. "Is it OK if I turn on NPR?"
"NPR! Only liberal granola-eating hippies listen to NPR!" I joked. "Yeah, sure, it's fine." See, I know for a fact that all three of us are liberals, so that joke is just a self-defacing one.
"Sure," Angie echoed. Robbie fiddled with some buttons and switches on his XM radio receiver until NPR came in. A woman was talking about local news.
"In other news, a protest at the Centers for Disease Control descended into chaos after Molotov cocktails were thrown onto the CDC campus. Police are working to find suspects. The protest, organized by a certain Dr. Mohinder Suresh and intended to be an example of nonviolent resistance, was attended by thousands of people from all walks of life. All were protesting a proposed vaccination that would negate special abilities such as flight in people that have them. For National Public Radio, I'm Rae Johnson."
"That's the watered-down version," I commented. "The real, gritty version is going to be all over the evening news."
"It'll be the main headline tomorrow in the AJC," Angie added.
---
Robbie managed to get into the packed student parking lot to drop us off, although he did fear for his car a few times during the whole maneuver.
"Thanks again for picking us up," I said. "Don't forget to talk to Julia about how my head will apparently roll for even seeing you!"
"I won't," he said with a look of steely resolve on his face that kind of scared me. He rolled up his window and drove away.
"Well, now that that's all over…" Angie began, walking towards my car. "Wanna go get some ice cream?"
"That sounds like a great idea," I said exasperatedly. "Is Muriel and Sebastian's OK?"
"When is it not OK?" Angie countered.
"Well played, my friend."
We hopped into my car and mulled over our thoughts about the day with the help of some ice cream. I wondered many things: if Mohinder was OK, if Julia was going to go psycho-killer on me (or Robbie), and if this protest had done anything good for our cause. At least now I have a good story to tell the kids someday—if I have any.
