Jo screaming through a bullhorn for ten minutes before it started to rain. They’d stood there for two hours, silent except for the occasional FUCK YOU from Jo whenever someone called them idiots or freaks or told them to go home. Xie suggested maybe no cursing. She told him to fuck off. Leni rubbed Jo’s shoulder. Jo told her to fuck off, too. Only one person, a teenage girl with a lisp, had stopped to talk. What are you guys protesting? Leni tried to answer but Jo cut in, saying, Those clothes in there, they’re made from animals killed in factories, do you get it? Not to mention sweatshop labor in third world countries where kids work twelve hours a day in shitty conditions for a dollar a day to make your sneakers. The girl looked down at her shoes. Leni said, Here, take a flyer. Trying to smile. The signs bled in the rain. Little river of dye into the gutter. They tossed everything in a dumpster behind the Gap. I thought it would feel good, you know, to do something, Xie says. Like, I thought it would feel like it mattered. But it didn’t. Karen shakes her head. That sounds kind of depressing, she says. Yeah. It was. They eat for a while in silence. Karen finishes her sandwich, rubbing peanut butter from her thumb onto the thigh of her jeans. Would you do it again? she asks. He squints. Go to a protest? No, she says, gesturing, what you did. On the farm. Xie tugs a piece of loose skin from his lip. The ants work a piece of the seed loose, carry it away. He nods. Yeah, why? You don’t think I should have? Karen shrugs. I’m not saying that, I just think it made a lot of trouble for you. Xie taking a sip of air. Face hot. At least they got to run. For a little while. Silence. Karen’s eyes on the side of his face. He pours some crumbs into the dirt beside the step. The ants make new lines. Quiet. He sniffs. Thanks for the sandwich, he says. Karen swallows. You’re welcome.

On the way home he goes again to the broken tree, its leaves browning; detached from its crown the birch has no way to digest the light, leaving the trunk to starve. He strokes its sides. A beautiful thing, still. He lies beside the tree, head on the root, and sleeps.