It didn’t calm any of us down. We’d all been in riots before. They were always bloody and brutal, and even when we got away, the things we saw in them didn’t leave us for a long, long time.

“Maybe we should just leave,” Sebastian said. “What do we have to win here?”

“I don’t know if we can win,” José said. “And I don’t even know if we’ll make it through the thing alive. But it seems important to stay and fight for all the good we’ve found here.”

“But what’s the point in fighting when we’re just going to lose? What’s the point in leading all these people to their death? Those cops are going to be shooting. They’ll say we rioted, they’ll say they had to use whatever measures they could to stop us. Especially once they find out we have guns. And what about the people who are out there just because they had no other choice? Like all those kids who joined the National Guard because they didn’t want to work at the 24/7 and there weren’t a lot of other options for them? Are we going to kill them?”

I shrugged. “I guess I feel bad for them. But only until they pick up their guns and start shooting. Then they’re the enemy just like the rest of them.”

“It can’t be us versus them, Jesse. Then we’re just like they are.”

“But it is,” I said, getting mad. “It always has been. We figured it out, we evolved past the shit they’re still stuck in. They’re the fucking philistines who promote all the shit we can’t stand—the war machine and capitalism and sexism. You go up to those guys and find out how many of them make fun of mentally challenged people, or sexually assaulted someone who they pretended to be a friend of. You find out how many of them are happy to be holding those rifles, and how many of them wish they could go into other people’s countries and blow their brains out in their own houses. And how many of them would ship you back across the borders they’re dying to defend, and will if they catch you, if they even let you live.”

Sebastian was pacing around the room, picking up things and tossing them back and forth between his hands. “I can’t believe it’s us vs. them like that,” he said. “They don’t know. They didn’t have the chances we had to see things the way we do. Maybe some of them don’t want to, and maybe other would if they had the chance. But I can guarantee you that most of them never got the chance.”