Sinner (25 page)

Odd, here Kat was, basking in the light of this new kingdom, and all around her the world was coming apart at the seams.

The back entrance to the lunchroom was around the other side by the gym. She cut across the lawn, rounded the building, surprised to see no students on the greenway. The reason became immediately apparent: someone had rolled a large garbage bin in front of the cafeteria's fire door, blocking any exit.

Whatever was occurring inside had been planned.

She threw her weight against the bin, but it refused to budge. Fists were pounding on the other side of the door. She could hear screams.

“Does this door lead to the lunchroom?” the cameraman demanded, running up behind.

“Yes, push! We have to clear it.”

With three of them pushing, the Dumpster rolled free. The door burst wide open with a bleat from the fire alarm, spilling a stream of students. The screams from the lunch hall weren't all cries of fear. There was as much anger in the voices as panic.

The cameras were already rolling behind her. “We're here at what appears to be an emergency exit at the Boulder City High School lunch-room, where students have been trapped for the last five minutes.” The reporter spoke rapidly. “It appears that the exit was blocked before the riot began. No sources have come forward yet to reveal the nature of this conflict, purportedly a racially instigated conflict between Arab Americans and African Americans within the student body . . .”

Kat saw an opening in the flood of students and ducked inside. The sight that greeted her made her catch her breath.

The new lunchroom was set up food-court style,with hundreds of small round tables situated around a dozen stations that offered everything from pizzas to salads to sandwiches, some for a price, some as part of the school's free-lunch program.

Most of the tables were on their sides, a few broken. The food stations had been destroyed by thrown chairs, which appeared to be the weapon of choice.

A group of roughly fifty blacks were scattered along one end, facing off Hispanics who clutched chairs, shielding themselves from a fusillade of ketchup bottles, mustard tubes, glasses, and silverware. The floor was covered in condiments and bottles.

A line of Arabs headed by Asad and his gang stood along the wall to Kat's left, turned toward both the Hispanics and blacks on either end. It was a three-way face-off.

Of the seven hundred students in this lunch shift, only a hundred seemed to be directly involved. The rest had taken shelter behind stations or had taken up chairs to ward off flying objects.

She'd expected to see the Arabs and blacks going at it after last week's run-in. But Hispanics? Granted, there had always been some rivalry between black and Hispanic gangs, but that rivalry had been limited to a war of words.

She couldn't imagine what had pushed things to this level.

The principal's voice was screeching over the PA, demanding calm. It wasn't working. The camera crew piled in through the exit. The reporter was at her shoulder.

“Can you tell what's going on? You see anyone you know?”

Then Kat saw the fourth group on the far side, opposite the Muslims, mostly Indians huddled behind a makeshift fort made of overturned tables.

A four-way battle, and she could hardly tell who was against whom. Hispanics against blacks,Muslims against Hindus? Watching the projectiles, it looked more like all against all. Chaos.

An older Indian student she recognized as a Hindu was screaming at the Arabs. He cocked his arm back and hurled a bottle at the group.

“Death to Muslims!”

Two of his compatriots stood from behind their tables and hurled the same words, chasing them with a glass saltshaker and some cutlery.

The first projectile slammed into the wall behind Asad and shattered with a loud pop. A large blotch of ketchup splattered on the baby-blue wall, erasing
Is
from the large motto painted on the wall: Tolerance Is Beautiful.

Asad didn't bother ducking. No fewer than ten of the Arabs heaved a volley of condiments and silverware on the ducking Hindus.

“Death to the infidels! The Hindus are warmongers!
Allah akhbar!
”

Kat felt panic welling up in her chest. It didn't take much of an imagination to see how blacks against Hispanics versus Arabs could mutate into Christians against Muslims against Hindus, not when religion and race were so closely connected. Not when they all knew that they all secretly despised each other in spite of the tolerance preached in every classroom.

A small Indian girl suddenly stood from behind the tables, eyes fixed on the Arabs across the room. Kat had seen the dark-haired girl around a few times, a freshman who looked as green as a foreigner who'd just flown in from Calcutta. The wide-eyed girl looked at the open door behind Kat, stepped out from the makeshift fort, and scooted out into the open, angling across the open floor for the exit.

“Stop!” Kat cried, waving the girl back. “Get back, get back!”

The girl did not stop. Instead, she began to cry. She shuffled in fast, short steps with her arms by her sides. Crossfire whizzed past her and she began to run, white dress flapping around her thin tan legs.

Kat broke from her safe corner, holding her arm out to the Arabs. “Don't throw! Stop!”

A single glass ketchup bottle shot from the line to her left, covered the gap to the Indian girl in the space of one breath, and struck her on the side of her head.

The girl dropped to the ground.

Kat sprinted, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Stop! Stop!”

They weren't stopping—she could see that in her peripheral vision—but her eyes were on the young girl who hadn't moved.

She waved her arms over her head and raced into the cross fire. “Stop it, she's hurt, you're gonna kill someone! Stop this!”

A bottle flew past her head as she dropped to her knees beside the girl. The freshman was moaning now, rolling to one side. No sign of blood.

“You okay?”

A spoon struck her on the shoulder and clattered to the floor.

Kat stood up and faced the gang of blacks, knowing that they thought of her as one of their own.

“Stop this!” she screamed. She met their eyes and spun to the Arabs.

“Just stop it!”

They seemed momentarily stalled by her boldness. The decibel level of the cacophony dropped. She seized the opportunity and cried out, facing the Hispanics. The Arabs had fired the ketchup bottle, but she knew that confronting them directly would only inflame Asad, who believed, as others once had, that a bloody crusade was the only way to convince people of anything.

“You've hurt a girl who only wants to be safe with her father!” she cried. “Is that what your mothers taught you?”

No bottles flew. All four sides stared at her. An older Indian girl raced out, weeping. “Hadas,Hadas!” She slid to the fallen girl's side and brushed her hair from her face. Touched the swelling bump on her head. “Speak to me, Hadas.What have they done, what have they done?”

The young girl tried to sit, and her friend helped her. “Are you okay? Are you sure you are okay?” She cradled her, and the young girl began to cry, soft moans.

By the door, the news camera rolled. Otherwise the room was still. She had to keep the focus on race rather than religion, Kat thought.

“Blacks and whites are lynching each other out there, is that what we're here on this earth to do? Hang each other because we're different? You're a black man in a Hispanic neighborhood, they rope you up, is that what you want? You're Hispanic in a black neighborhood, they lynch you, is that what you want?”

A single mustard bottle sailed out. She stepped aside and watched it bounce off the floor, unbroken. It slid to a stop at the feet of a Hispanic student, who picked it up.

“Go ahead, throw it back,” she cried, pointing at the boy. “But throw it at me, not them. I'm black. Or am I Indian? For all you know I'm Hispanic! Go ahead, throw it.”

The student looked at his people and received no encouragement.

Only now did Kat face Asad and his band. “We were made to love each other, not to fight. You think you're throwing ketchup bottles at the enemy, but you're not. You're just giving them more ammunition to throw back at you. Races have been doing that for centuries. The school teaches us to tolerate each other. But I say we should
love
each other! Tolerance is not enough! Blacks,Hispanics,Arabs, whites,Hindus,Muslims, Christians—love each other.”

The Arab boy dropped his stare, and she decided to take her words a step further, right here in front of them all.

“This is my debate, Asad.
Love!
Love your neighbor as yourself;
that
is the teaching of Jesus. It's a narrow way, but it's a simple way and the whole world ought to listen.”

For nearly twenty seconds, no one moved or threw a bottle.

“To hell with your debate,” Asad finally said. “
Inshe'allah.
The will of Allah will be done.”

Then he turned and walked toward the door, followed reluctantly by the others. The last few scrambled after.

A teacher came out from behind a salad kiosk. “Someone, call an ambulance.”

Just like that, the riot at Boulder City High School was over.

And the news coverage of the girl named Katrina Kivi, who'd risked her neck to speak sense into a crowd of angry students, had just begun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Day Seven

DARCY FELT a bit lost. Powerless even.Which to her way of thinking was a bit terrifying. She'd gone from the highest peak of confidence and power to this miserable state of denial in the space of two days.

One day, God's gift to the world, the next day, scum of the earth.

She knew none of her feelings were justified. She hadn't lost any power, and even if she had, since when did she need this gift, this drug, to help her through the day? She'd made a perfectly good life for herself before all of this, thank you very much. And it didn't include performing for others at their whim.

And yet . . .

She'd fully expected the council to demand another meeting on Monday, but they left Billy and Darcy in their glass prison to stew and watch the Net.

Billy had spent Tuesday morning scanning the Net while she finished reading
Birthright
, the Frakes vampire novel. She eventually joined Billy on the couch, scanning the reports and blogs. Johnny's visit seemed to have stirred up fresh concerns about Marsuvees Black in him.

Interesting, yes, but something else had taken charge of Darcy's mind.

She simply could not dislodge the idea of speaking to a million people at once over the Net. A hundred thoughts, some of which might disturb Billy, buzzed through her mind, simple
what ifs
that she immediately rejected as preposterous.

But . . . what if?

It was one o'clock in the afternoon before the badgering thoughts became too much for her. She stood from the couch, intending to do something about it.

“I want to test it,” she announced.

Billy tapped the remote and muted the Net. “Test what?”

“The Net.Me speaking over the Net.”

They'd maintained a rule that at least one of them would wear glasses at all times unless both agreed to bare themselves to each other; at the moment she wore hers.

Billy retrieved his sunglasses from the table, slid them on, and sat back. “You mean your power, over the airwaves.”

“We have to know, right? I'm not saying I would ever expose myself on the Net—it's dangerous, you've already established that.” She walked toward the phone. “But it's stupid not to know.”

“You sure you really
want
to know? I mean, even knowing that you have that kind of power could mess with your mind.”

There, he'd said it. Darcy suppressed an urge to snap at him and picked up the phone.

“I have you to keep me in line, dear Billy.”Maybe a little too much bite in her voice. She sighed. “I need to do this. It's driving me crazy.”

He frowned and nodded. “It would be a trip, wouldn't it?”

There's my Billy
. She smiled and dialed Kinnard.

IT WAS three o'clock before Kinnard broke free, set up a room at CIA headquarters for the test, and arranged secure transportation to Langley.

They stood in a communications room, essentially a small television studio without the sets. A single camera faced a stool from a tripod ten feet away, blinking red. The technicians had been told that Kinnard wanted to do a simple camera test, which he would personally conduct. Billy would be in the adjacent room separated by a glass wall, watching a secured, closed-circuit image of her during the test. Both rooms and the adjacent corridor and technical offices were cleared of all other personnel.

“Okay, Darcy, you ready to do this?”

She'd reconsidered a dozen times since calling Kinnard, but not for the reason Billy had cited. She wasn't afraid of the possibility she had a power that could reach into every home in America. She was afraid the test would fail. Which is why she still wore her glasses and would wear them until Billy was safely out of the room.

They already knew that he couldn't read the thoughts of those on the Net. Which made sense: thoughts didn't travel thousands of miles or through wires, right? But her gift was different. Her voice could travel thousands of miles and be heard by millions. There was no reason she could see that it wouldn't work.

Still, her palms were moist and her heart was racing.

“Billy?”

“Okay.” He headed for the door, then spoke over his shoulder, grinning. “Just don't make me do anything crazy. Like undress.”

Darcy sat on the stool and chuckled nervously. “Scout's honor, dear Billy.” She waited for him to enter the adjacent room, sit with his back to them, and face a black screen on the wall.

Kinnard stood behind the camera, sunglasses safely in place. “Okay, light goes green, you're live.”