How do the powerful lose their vision of those cowering in the face of inhuman oppression? No doubt, for anyone with a shred of empathic humanity left in them, to be able to see alone should be enough of a reason for one to act. 

The quote on the wall was attributed to nobody. It was just there on a wall, decorating the sterile hallway of the town hall. The PTA meeting was just about to start, the entrance was jostled with adults in various attires ranging from the casual to the ultra-uptight. There were a lot of cops. 

“Wow! I can’t believe you actually show up!” Mark commented with a delighted smile on his face; his voice was certainly distinctive. 

“Didn’t you ask me to come?” Son asked in ever so subtle panic, thinking she might have mistaken his intent and come uninvited. 

“Yeah! Definitely! I’m glad you show! It’s just that, you know, you were tweaking the fuck out yesterday when I asked you.” Mark giggled, “Was that your first time smoking?”

Son almost had the urge to deny it; whether she would deny it because she didn’t want to come out as overly sheltered and uncool, or because she still hadn’t come to terms with the reality she had smoked marijuana the first month studying abroad, even she herself could not tell. “Yeah… it was my first.”

“How was it? Your reaction was very funny. You were screeching in that video, man. The echoes around the meadow were insane!”

Son was disturbed by the idea of her weed-induced manic episode being caught on tape, but Mark’s enthusiastic attitude quickly shook off her concern, “It was ok. Um… what are we doing here? In a PTA meeting?”   

“We are just here supporting our girl! Fluorite is making her first public speech to the PTA as the head of communication of the Student Government, we gotta show up to let her know her homies got her back!”

The meeting hall was packed from wall to wall. Surprisingly, a not-insubstantial amount of students showed up as well; one would assume that no kid would be interested in an event as inane as a PTA meeting. The elderly and the parents naturally occupied all the seats as the students stood by the sides and corners. There was a strange atmosphere in the air Son just couldn’t point her finger to but could feel with every fiber of her being. Ten minutes into the meeting, said intangible atmosphere turned for the worst as the topic of teenage crimes turned up.

“I do have a question for the board.” A white fifty-something-year-old male said into the microphone. His posture held high and proud, clearly someone of erudition and high social class,  “Like many present, I grew up in this town. From my view, the first thirty or so years, there really wasn’t much happening around here. It was a small town, fishermen town, slow life. When this very same schooling district was drawn ten years ago, both the school and the governor himself promised us townspeople that everything would remain exactly the way it was. And now, delinquency runs rampant and unchecked on the street, there are hard drugs, HARD DRUGS!” 

The man practically screamed those two words, drawing a round of nodding approval and applause from the crowds of parents around him. “There are HARD DRUGS sold on the street to our kids! Gangs are running around mugging seniors and convenience stores! And yet the school has refused time and time again to allocate more budget to address these problems! I say enough is enough! Action needs to be taken, at once!” 

The room cheers. The few students present on the scene whispered to each other. 

One of the white men on board responded to the white man’s concern: “Mr. Willard, I can assure you that the school is doing everything in our power to address the problem of delinquency. We are aware that an active gang named The Idahols, mainly composed of dropouts and delinquents, has been causing considerable public distress to the community, and to combat it, we have just recently passed a not insignificant budget bill for the local police force, but please do understand that we also face a lot of political resistance. The police have been a hot-button issue and protesters are not uncommon…”

“How can you let them city people and their ideology mess with the lives of our children?!”A woman at the back spoke out of terms, yet everyone in the room cheered at her question. 

When Fluorite went up, the room was glowing with passionate flares. The parents’ dissatisfaction with the school board manifested itself like the belligerent drunkenness one would expect from the exiting horde at a local pub four in the morning, and all their eyes had now landed on this seventeen-year-old girl. What might she must possess for her to be able to stand in such an upright posture with a smile so resolute and so naturally affixed to her chiseled face under such immense pressure? Son was standing in the back of the room and she could still barely hold herself together. 

Fluorite’s speech was as eloquent as it was concise. She addressed the problem of The Idahols with just enough detachment for the student government to shirk away any further responsibility, but also with enough conviction to promise the writhing masses some good old-fashioned student-on-student discipline.

“Our school is the first in the country to extend such administrative power to a student government.” Fluorite explained patiently to a doubting mother, “It seemed silly to entrust the future of so many on… well, on someone like me. A young, inexperienced lady yet to even file her own taxes.” 

That engendered some laughter from the audience. The sense of humor Fluorite employed there was prototypically boomer-ish, flattering to the elderly.

“But that’s precisely the point. We’ve seen coups, we’ve seen corporate takeovers, we’ve seen democracy falling by the threads in our once great country; democracy! The fundamental building stone of our country! The future generation plays an integral role in its preservation, and as a member of that future generation, I could not shirk from such responsibility. It is not enough to be taught about democracy through inane lectures and turgid textbooks, we must act with it for us to learn about it, and to act democratically is to act with responsibility, and that will always be the main goal of the student government. I hope the mothers and fathers here today can support our endeavor in this upcoming school year, thank you very much.”          

“She is very good at this.” Mark commented amidst the thunderous applause from the parents, “Bullshiting has always been her specialty.”

“I have never been to a PTA meeting before,” Said Son. In fact, she had never even heard of a PTA before she arrived in the country. “Why are there so many cops there?” 

“Because their kids come to school here?” Mark’s tone indicated that the answer should be readily self-evident, “Huh, my uncle is here as well. We probably should bail.” 

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“We will do what we can.” Said Lehmann, seemingly concluding their conversation. “We also know that someone leaked revenge porn on the forum. Do you need any help with that? We have some phone numbers, they could request the forum to wipe the record clean.”

“It wasn’t me in the video.”

“Oh.” Lehmann was genuinely surprised, “Well, in that case, the problem at hand is an entirely different matter now.”

“As in?” 

“As in taking down the video is no longer of our concern.” The black girl behind the desk suddenly voiced, her eyes gleaming in the slanted shadow the lamp cast on her face. “Now we just need to figure out who did it.”

A corpse reanimated itself in the corner, bouncing up from the floor like a jack in the box knocking down books and files. Startled, Son almost jumped out of her chair. A loud yawn bellowed out of that body, it was a boy waking from slumber. Son hadn’t noticed him since she came in here. His lazy eyes glazed over her for a moment. They were of the same ethnicity, perhaps even the same nationality, perhaps even the same home state,  

“Ha. Please wake up like a normal person.” Said the black girl. 

“I think you should leave now.” Said Lehmann, “We will call you with any update.”

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