It makes no sense. The urge to race toward the tanks. To run up on them, denting them with your cleats. Stabbing the metal with the spiked heels you imagine yourself to have. You would be a superhero. The picture paints itself across the back of your eyes and you emerge heroic.

There are no handcuffs. You eat no cement. The knee in your back is a badge of honor, a ghost of the hardest punch you ever threw.

TINA

I do not like the sound of tanks.

It is worse than chewing.

It is worse than the garbage disposal.

No one calls out noise, noise

like Mommy does before she runs the vacuum.

It is worse than sirens.

It is worse than snow shovels scraping.

Light it up! comes the shouting. Light it up!

I cannot plug my ears hard enough.

Mommy says put on your headphones.

My headphones block the outside noise.

My headphones make their own noise

inside me. I am not sure

which noise is worse.

BRICK

It’s on now. Fuck all the signs, all the marching. The crowd explodes with ungodly fury, and I won’t step away from the center of it.

Light it up!

They can come for me tonight, if they want to. I am one cog in the machine of the 8-5 Kings. These pigs got nothing on me. They’ve been trying for a decade to tear down what we’ve built. They haven’t yet. I take pride in that. We’re untouchable.

Light it up!

There is no such thing as peace tonight.

ZEKE

From the precinct steps, we have full view of the moment when the protest turns. Light it up! chants the crowd. Light it up! I did not tell them to say it. The suits moved me away from the microphone to make the official announcement. I’m no longer in control.

The district attorney drops his bomb and then retreats up the steps, flanked by his little team of men. They move like they think they’re so important. It makes me want to claw at things. They move with a carelessness, too, like what happens next has nothing to do with them or what they have done.

It’s impossible to see what force—save unbridled rage, save desperation—turns the tide. It seems to happen all at once, from the fringes, moving in. Down the block, a storefront goes up in flames. Across the street, the police in their helmets and shields charge forward, as one, like a wave. The shouting and chanting loosens. All rhythm is lost and chaos takes over.

The microphone is still right there, but I don’t know what else to say into it. The tide has turned. What can I say to get them back? What can I say to make it all right that we are dying? There is nothing I can promise—clearly not justice. Clearly not peace.

Kimberly appears at my side. “What do we do?” she says.