“We won’t take to foot yet,” Virgil told us, “but I hope for your sakes that you wore comfortable shoes.”

  The governor of Kansas was still insisting on his recount, and all the old Decents were rallying around him. They said the future of the country was at stake—something we knew all too well.

  For his part, Stein held multiple news conferences a day, encouraging more and more people to take part in the protest. For people who couldn’t travel, Kansas Protests were being set up on the lawns of every state capitol in the nation. When I called my parents to check in, my mother didn’t mention whether or not she’d go to the one in our state.

  I was pretty sure Jimmy’s parents were already at our capitol, setting up amps. When I told him this, he laughed.

  “It’s not so far from the truth,” he told me. “They’ve set up a station to make banners.”

  We didn’t talk about the conversation we’d had last night. It wasn’t exactly like it hadn’t happened—there was an added ounce of caution in our comfort, and there wasn’t anywhere else it could have come from. But we seemed to have wordlessly agreed to let it go. I needed to believe he wasn’t thinking about it, and he needed to believe I wouldn’t make him talk about it anymore. We added it to the list of invisible truces that made up a living relationship.

  “I bet my grandparents are locking their doors and barricading themselves inside,” Jimmy went on. “They live in Tallahassee, only about ten minutes from the capitol building. They must be treating this like the eleventh plague.”

  I knew immediately which grandparents Jimmy was talking about. While his mother’s side was a mix of almost every race and background imaginable, his father’s parents hadn’t been too happy to have their son marry someone who wasn’t as Black as they were.

  “They never got it,” Jimmy told me now, shaking his head. “What my parents did—that’s what all of America should be doing. Love who you want to love. Have children who are such a mix that it blurs everything. Make us all a mix, you know? You can’t hate someone so much for being different when their blood contains some of yours. It’s so simple. But my grandparents—they don’t get that at all. They wouldn’t get us at all.”

  It felt good to be part of an “us,” even if it was being defined by the people who wouldn’t understand.

  I could only imagine what Jimmy’s grandparents thought of Alice Martinez, Stein’s vice president. I remembered sitting next to Jimmy on the day she accepted her nomination, watching awestruck from Jimmy’s couch as she said:

  * * *

  —

  “I am proud that I defy your categories. I am proud that I don’t fit easily into any box. I am proud of all the things I am and all the things I can be. Question yourself every time you think you only see one thing in me. If you’re seeing me only as a woman, think again. If you’re seeing me only as Latina, think again. If you’re seeing me only as Black, think again. If you’re seeing me only as straight, think again. If you’re seeing me only as a politician or a mother or a daughter or a sister or a citizen of my town, my state, my country, my world—think again. I am all these things at once, and I am going to put every last one of them to use.”

  * * *

  —

  I knew Keisha had also been moved by Martinez’s words; she often told us that she was as much a Martinez supporter as she was a Steinhead. It was hard to see much of that spirit now, though. She, Mira, and Sara had stayed as far away as possible from one another since the dimensions of their triangle had been revealed.

  The bus didn’t seem big enough to contain all the tension. Even though it was cold out, we opened windows wherever we could. We wanted air—any air that hadn’t been sitting with us for hours.

  Finally, Clive needed to stop for fuel, so we were all released into a rest station a few miles short of Lawrence. Virgil told us to be back in twenty minutes and swore he’d leave without us if we straggled.

  “Gonna make you sweat,” he said, chuckling. Flora hit him in the arm.

  This was our first waking break since the previous night, so when we walked out of the bus we were hit momentarily by the shock of daylight, air, freedom, and time. It didn’t take me long to notice that the rest area had divided itself roughly into two factions—with Steinheads keeping to one part and the opposition keeping to another, with only the restrooms and the food counters witnessing a tense intermingling of the sides.

  I lost track of everybody while I used one of the bathroom mirrors to aid me in reconstructing my hair into something that looked like a style and not a follicular homicide. Once I managed to product myself into presentability and razor through the rubble of my stubble, I emerged to find Gus surrounded by three guys whose hotness made my thermometer spike to feverish heights.

  “Duncan!” he called out to me. “Come meet the triplets!”

  It was soon explained that Glen, Gary, and Ross had hitchhiked from Greenfield, Ohio, to get to Topeka in time for the march. Glen and Gary were both gay; Ross was not. But they were identical in all sorts of other ways, including their dimples, their bright-sky eyes, and their willowy light blond hair.

  “We have room aplenty for them, don’t we, Dunc?” Gus asked.

  “I’m sure we can find a way for them to squeeze in,” I replied.

  “Super awesome!” Gus cheered, then grabbed Glen’s hand to lead the brothers back to the bus.

  Gus wasn’t the only one of us making new friends. Mandy had met an elderly woman named Mrs. Everett on the line for the loo. Mrs. Everett was a choir director from Chattanooga who’d come up with her church to march for Stein. When Mandy mentioned where they were from, Mrs. Everett said, “Why, you must know Virgil, then!” Mandy promised a reunion once their wait was over.

  Jimmy met a guy named Elwood, who was from Tonganoxie, a town a few miles away. He said he’d escaped his parents to take his stand in Topeka. He was eighteen but still in high school, and determined to get there, no matter how many people forbade him from going. Watching him was like seeing a match starting to burn, and Jimmy promised him space on the bus if there was any left to be had. He told us he’d never been so far from home before.

  On the other side of the rest stop there were people who clearly would’ve preferred to slash our tires. One woman wore a shirt that said The Oval Office Is No Place for a Sodomite, while another guy wore a cap that said This Is My Country…don’t Mess with It. One mother stopped her children from playing with a kid with a Stein sticker on his backpack, as if he were contaminated. It was so sad to me, that politics could get in the way of kids playing. But it wasn’t a surprise. It felt like at some point, a whole lot of politicians had lost their desire to collaborate. Government is supposed to be collaborative by its nature, but the competition had drowned that out and spread into the cracks of families and friendships. It made me really afraid, because if divide was successful, then conquer couldn’t be that far behind.

  I walked over to where Janna and Mira were feasting on fries and taking a good look around. The two of them had been inseparable since last night’s fallout moment, as if Mira had subbed in a friend to make up for the absence of a girlfriend.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, as innocently as possible.

  “Did you have any idea? Was I that blind?” Mira wanted to know.

  “Don’t ask him that,” Janna said. “I’m sure he was as surprised as everyone else.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said, which wasn’t exactly an untruth. “What’re you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Mira said. “I honestly have no idea. Just be hurt for a while, I guess. The anger passed pretty fast.”

  When I got back to the bus, I discovered that we’d found room not only for the triplets but also for Mrs. Everett, Elwood, and a boy our age named Sue, whose story I didn’t know yet.

  Gus pulled me aside and said, “Hombre, I’m totally triple-crushing on Glen!”

  “How do you know he’s the one you’re crushing on?” I had to ask.

  “Oh, it’s so ultraclear,” Gus confided. “With Ross, I’m groin-crushing. With Gary, it’s groin-crushing and a little mind-crushing. But with Glen—whew!—it’s groin-crushing, mind-crushing, and heart-crushing. The triple, you see? I’m feelin’ all bursty! Is it more obvious than obvious?”

  I assured him it wasn’t, then told him his hair looked really good, which made him feel much better.

  “Thanks, Dunc,” he said. “Now I gotta go get me a window next to his aisle.”

  True to Virgil’s word, we were back on the road twenty minutes after we’d arrived. Traffic was moving at the speed of syrup now, but at least it was still moving. We were skipping Lawrence and heading straight to Topeka, worried that any detour might mean missing the big event.

  I was sitting a little more toward the front than I had been before, since Jimmy had asked Elwood to sit by him so they could talk. I could’ve gone back and sat with Keisha or Sara, but decided that would be too fraught. So instead I paired up with Mandy, who was checking their phone every two minutes for a new traffic report.

  About ten minutes into the ride, a figure stepped into the front of the aisle, right by the driver. It was Mrs. Everett, and since we weren’t moving very fast, it was easy for her to keep her old frame steady as we went.

  In a voice forceful with conviction, she said to us all, “I would like to tell you how I came to be here.”

  A few conversations in the back shifted to murmuring, but for the most part we all fell silent.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Everett continued. “My name is Ida Mae Perkins Everett, and the Lord is the reason I am here today. I am an old woman, and I have to tell you, old women like me usually like to stay home. Every time I take a step, I can feel parts of my body that I’m sure none of you except my good friends Virgil and Flora ever notice. Like your hip. How many of you ever feel your hip?

  “All’s to say, this is not an easy journey for me to make. If I didn’t think I was doing the Lord’s work, I don’t know that it would be enough to get me out of bed. I’m not saying the Lord Almighty has talked to me directly. I’m not saying He came down from the heavens and said, ‘Ida Mae, I want you to get yourself to Kansas to help that Stein.’ The Lord’s got more important things to do than planning my schedule for the week. No, He ain’t gonna tell you what to do. You just have to read the Lord inside of you. You gotta know what you know, and then you have to act on it. I voted for Stein because I believe in the things he believes. But I know from the Lord that believing isn’t always enough. Sometimes you gotta take your body and put it on the line. Jesus could’ve just stayed at home, you know. He didn’t have to do a blessed thing. But he headed out into the people. He wanted to inspire lives besides his own. He knew to work for something greater, and that’s the greatest thing of all.

  “So I came here with my church. And, lo and behold, who do I find at a rest stop but the man who taught me how to dance? I know you won’t necessarily believe this, but it wasn’t too long ago that Virgil and I were kids like yourselves. Hard to picture, I’m sure. I wish I could say we were as smart as we are now, but back then we still had many miles to go before we got to total sense. We thought the best thing in life was enjoying ourselves, and, Lord, we enjoyed ourselves! If you needed a dance floor cleaned, you didn’t need to pick up no mop. All you had to do was invite Virgil to the party and he would shine it all with his body, breakin’ and groovin’ and getting all the rest of us to sweat it out. He’d make me dance ’til I didn’t have any dance left, I tell you, and even then I’d keep going ’til the sun came up. It was fun—and I’m not one to knock fun. But there was one thing missing, and that was the everything else. The greater. We were so into ourselves that we didn’t realize the changes that were happening around us. We were—if you pardon the phrase—screwed over and screwed over and screwed over without recognizing who was screwing us. Finally, though, we saw the light, and we realized that fun is fun, but you also need to pay your dues. And I don’t mean to the guy at the door.

  “I’m an old woman, and I’m still paying those dues. Still trying to have fun, too, which is why I ditched on my lady friends to be here with you. Not just because of Virgil, although he’s as foxy as ever. It’s easy to think that everything’s gone to H-E-L-L when you get to be as old as I am. But let me tell you—the ‘good old days’ were much worse for a lot of us. People aren’t the only things that get better with age.”

  She turned to look at Elwood, who was almost vibrating with excitement.

  “You,” she said. “How old are you?”

  “Just eighteen,” he answered, trying to sound tough, like a puppy barking loud.

  “And what’s your story?”

  Elwood stepped into the aisle, facing Mrs. Everett. The silver studs in his black jacket shone in the daylight coming through the windows, crowned by his silver belt buckle, which he definitely needed in order to keep his pants on his line-straight body.

  “I’m from Tonganoxie,” he began, his soft-spoken voice returning. “I doubt any of you have ever heard of it or been there. No reason to, really. I’m here because my parents suck. I mean, they massively suck. When the history of suckdom is written, their faces are going to be on the cover. Suck is their home page.”

  “And why do they suck?” Mrs. Everett asked, looking amused.

  “They suck because they won’t let me be myself. They won’t let me be…Jewish!”

  “What, child?”

  That was all Mrs. Everett needed to ask. Suddenly the words came pouring out of Elwood.

  “They won’t let me be Jewish! They say it’s just a phase, but it’s not a phase—it’s something I’ve always wanted. And even though they’re not religious they say that I can’t be Jewish because they’re not Jewish and they think Stein is the only reason I want to be Jewish, but I wanted to be Jewish ever since I was seven and I was watching Saturday services online and it just seemed so holy, and I thought if Jesus was a Jew why can’t I be a Jew because I love the prayers and the Hebrew and the way they’ve triumphed over all this massive hate for so many centuries, and I don’t know if I can be strong like that, but if the oil in the lamp in the temple—you know, during Hanukkah—if that lasted for eight days—just one drop—then clearly miracles happen and me being Jewish isn’t anything close to being a miracle, it’s just something I want to do. I was perfectly happy keeping it a secret and learning Hebrew online and seeing the services and giving myself a Hebrew name, but the thing is that even though I’m long past thirteen I really want to become a bar mitzvah. There’s no synagogue anywhere near me, so I figured the time had come to tell my parents, and even though I knew they sucked, I had no idea that they ultra, ultra sucked, because they wouldn’t even hear what I was saying when I told them I had emailed with the rabbi at a shul in Kansas City, and he was willing to help me prepare. I told them I would pay for it with my own money. I told them, yes, I’d met other Jews online, but, no, they didn’t convert me, this was something I wanted to do all on my own. Plus, Jews don’t do the whole missionary thing. But my parents—well, they went through the roof in about sixteen different places and said that while they put up with the way I dress and the music I listen to, they could not put up with me being Jewish and having a bar mitzvah, and I told them it’s becoming a bar mitzvah, not having a bar mitzvah, and that was the last thing they wanted, me correcting them on how to say things, so they got ultra mad and I realized part of what Stein has to put up with every day, and I realized if no one was going to support me, the least I could do was go and support someone else—a fellow Jew, who maybe as President can make all the people who suck have less power. So I left. I mean, even though it was Sunday I pretended I was going to school, and my parents suck so much they didn’t even notice. I hiked my way to the rest area and that’s where I met Jimmy, and he says it’s cool for me to be Jewish, and I think that’s just the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I hope he’s right because I’m going to do it one way or the other because that’s who I am and that’s what I want and I don’t see what the big deal is, either. Which is, I guess, why I’m here.”

  Quickly, he sat back down in his seat, with Jimmy giving him a big thumbs-up sign. Mandy and I started to applaud, and soon everyone was doing it, Mrs. Everett loudest of all. Elwood blushed a traffic-light red and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes for the next few minutes.

  When the applause had died down, Mrs. Everett looked at the triplets and asked, “How about you?”

  Ross stood first.

  “I’m here for my brothers.”

  He sat down and Gary stood up.

  “I want to be where the action is.”

  Then Gary sat down and Glen stood up, sending a look loaded with sweetness Gus’s way.

  “I’m going to Topeka because I want to make sure nobody steals this election from under my nose,” he said. “And I’m here on this bus because I was totally hitting on Gus at the rest area, and he was totally hitting on me. I knew right away that he was rainbow sprinkles, and he hasn’t proven me wrong yet.”

  Gus beamed like a thousand stars piled in a bus seat. The rest of us tried not to be skeptical.

  Finally, Mrs. Everett looked at the boy named Sue and asked him what his story was. His hair fell in his eyes as he talked.

  “Well, my daddy left my ma right after I was born,” he began. “But before he did, he named me Sue. My ma loved him, so she said, ‘All right.’ It sure was hard on me at first. The other kids would make fun, and the guys Ma brought home would laugh and laugh and say I needed to get a new name. Oh, I hated it for sure. But I had a secret, too: Deep down, it felt right. Deep down, I felt like a Sue. I don’t know how to describe it. There are some things you just know, and one of them is whether your name is right or not. Everybody else thought I had the wrong name. They said my daddy was a drunk and this was his last big joke. But I started to think maybe he had an ounce of the sight to him, even if he had a strange way of showing it. I just needed to find out—did he know something or was he kidding? I vowed I’d track him down and ask him.