7 – The Protest (3)

Maple, Carter, Walker, and two policemen stood at the scene of the protest. Everyone else had either ran away, or been taken away.

“He almost kidnapped her,” Carter said to a blond-haired police officer. His name tag read “Neil McNeil.” What a stupid name, Maple thought. Then, she remembered Jake’s father’s name was Will Williams. She wondered which was worse.

Another officer, Richard Baum, wrote something down on his tablet. “Do you want to press charges?”

“Yes,” Walker said.

At the same time, Maple said, “No.”

“Okay,” officer Baum said to Walker. “I need you to fill out some forms first.”

“I said I don’t want to press charges,” Maple raised her voice. “Nobody kidnapped me. I went willingly. Can we go now?”

Everyone ignored her. Baum tapped at his tablet, and handed it over to Walker. “I just need you to read through and answer those questions.”

“Did you not hear what I said?” Maple said, nearly yelling. “I don’t want to press charges against Jake!”

“You might want to get your sister checked out for hysteria,” Baum said to Walker and Carter.

“She’ll be better when we find someone willing to marry her,” Carter said. “A good husband will get her behaving.”

“I don’t need a husband.”

McNeil perked up at Carter’s words. “She needs a husband?”

“Definitely.”

“You know, I’ve been trying to find a wife.” McNeil finally looked at Maple, but in a way Maple did not want to be looked at. He grinned, revealing his teeth, which were in surprisingly good condition. “You’re really pretty.”

But his nice teeth did nothing to change Maple's mind. “I am not marrying you.”

“Come off it, Maple,” Carter said, annoyed. He looked to McNeil. “If you’re willing to take her out, we’ll let you.”

“I am. How about this weekend?” McNeil asked.

“How about, never,” Maple responded.

When they finally got home, her brothers sat Maple on the couch, and yelled at her. Maple pretended to listen. She knew they’d eventually find out she had left the counter-protest group for the gay rights group. But she didn’t care. Her crush on Jake had gotten too big. Besides, she didn't have anything against gay people. They were no weirder than straight people, who forced romance on everyone and into everything. Jake called it "amatonormativity."

Though now that Maple had been hit with the romance bug, she felt like a hypocrite.

“You are never hanging around with that boy again!” Carter shouted. “He’s obviously gay anyway, so you can stop wasting your time swooning over him.”

“I rarely see him as it is.” Another reason why Maple snuck over to the protesters. She wanted to spend time with him.

“Now you’ll never see him.” Walker scowled at Maple’s pink watch, and pointed at it. “Give me that, and your phone. I want to see what you’ve been texting each other.”

“I don’t have his number.”

“If that’s true, then you won’t mind me searching it.”

Thankfully, Maple and Jake hadn’t said anything that would upset her brothers. There was the text where Jake invited her to join his protest. Other than that, everything else was innocent “what are you doing?” type of texts. Maple made sure of that. She knew it was only a matter of time before her brothers decided to snoop through her phone. Again.

“Well?” Walker asked.

“I left my phone in my room.” Maple threw her watch at Walker, and he caught it.

“Go get it. And then, stay in there! You can come out when it’s time for your date. And you better be on your best behavior for it.”

~~~~~

Stellaluna wandered over to the private sitting room. Barry sat on a couch, with the evening news on. There were large words at the bottom of the screen Stellaluna couldn’t read. The books she had bought were still hidden in the back of her bedroom closet. She had pulled them out a few times to look at them, but learned nothing.

Video clips of people marching with signs played while news anchor, Dave Asher, spoke.

“The gay-rights protesters then kidnapped a teenage girl from the counter-protest group. A fight broke out, and police swarmed the area to arrest those responsible.”

The footage cut to Sebastian, with a young woman Stellaluna didn’t recognize.

“Sebastian was with us counter-protesters,” the young woman told the interviewer. “I swear it.”

“Yeah.” Sebastian chuckled, rubbing his elbow. “I’d never march with those freaks.”

Stellaluna didn’t find his argument very convincing.

“Good old Sebastian, going against those queers,” Barry said cheerfully. “I keep telling everyone that camp worked.”

“The man who started the gay rights protest,” Dave Asher continued, “was Jake Williams. Son of the owner of Pieway.” A picture of Jake flashed on the screen.

“Jake started this!” Barry sputtered. “I’ll have to call Will later.”

The picture cut to a second news anchor, Jimmy Rodgers. “What a twist! Right now, police have him in custody. They also arrested four other protesters. One was a man who threw a water bottle at an officer.”

The news flashed to a clip of someone doing just that. Stellaluna covered her mouth as the water bottle hit the officer in the head. Such madness!

“You really shouldn’t be watching this, darling,” Barry said. “It’s too inappropriate for a lady. Why don’t you go to our theater and pick out a nice movie that contains absolutely no violence?”

“But I want to know what’s going on in the world,” Stellaluna said.

“Why does a woman need to know such things?”

“Because I like knowing things! I want to know things!”

“Don’t raise your voice at me!” Barry pointed to the door. “Go!”

Fists clenched, Stellaluna stormed out of the room.

At the end of the hallway, she bumped into Yannick.

“All is okay?” Yannick asked.

“Not really.” Stellaluna folded her arms tight, grinding her teeth. “I saw five minutes of the news, and Barry is upset about it. He says I don’t need to know what’s going on in the world.”

Yannick leaned against the wall with his head tilted.

“I watched news. Barry was there. Barry mad. He does not want me to see news.”

“What news see you?”

“The gay rights protest." Stellaluna shook her head. "I never thought I’d see people protesting for such nonsense.”

“You think that is… nonsense?” Yannick furrowed his brow. “Bad?”

“Yes. Very bad. It’s sick.”

“You think gay is wrong?”

“Yes.” Stellaluna frowned back at him. “You don’t?”

Yannick shrugged. “They try to live. Not different than us. Nobody cares in Germany.”

“There’s places where people are okay with that?” The thought hadn't occurred to Stellaluna. She never even realized that opinion was an option.

“Of course.” Yannick studied her. “You think it wrong is? Or your man think it wrong is, so think also you?”

Stellaluna rubbed her jaw. What on earth was he trying to say. “I don’t understand.”

Yannick looked down with a sharp frown, as though trying to figure out how to communicate his thoughts with what little English and its rules he knew. He looked back up at her. “Your man think it wrong?”

“Yes.”

“You think wrong, because your man think it wrong?”

“Absolutely not. I think it’s wrong, because it is wrong!”

“Why is it wrong?”

“It’s not natural. Love is only between a man and a woman.”

“Why?”

Stellaluna struggled to come up with an answer for that. She'd heard the words from everyone around her, and so parroted the views without putting any thought behind them.

Yannick nodded. “You think it wrong, because your man think it wrong. What think you? Really?”

It was wrong. Everyone said it was wrong. But now that she thought about it, no one was being harmed. What other people did behind closed doors didn’t affect her life. So was it really wrong? It still sounded wrong to her. But was that because she truly believed it was wrong, or because everyone thought that way, so it was strange to think differently?

“I don’t know,” Stellaluna finally admitted.

“Think for you, not for others.” With a final nod, Yannick walked away.

Wise words for someone with terrible English skills. Stellaluna had much to think about.