Hazard held up a hand, and Colt cut off. He looked like he was going to be sick, and tears shone in his eyes. The slice of pizza folded under the pressure of his grip as he curled in on himself again.

  “Did you already call this in?” Somers asked.

  In his peripheral vision, Hazard could see Theo shaking his head. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Somers nodded. “I’ll call out a couple of officers.”

  “J-H!” Colt stood awkwardly, the couch too low for him to do it smoothly. “No, please, Ash’s parents will be so mad. Please, we’ll do whatever you want—”

  “Stop talking,” Hazard.

  “It was one dumb mistake! Ash’s parents—”

  “I said stop talking!” The shout echoed through the room. On the other side of the wall of windows, the leaves of the silver maples along the bank trembled, and Hazard had the disorienting feeling that he had done that. “I don’t want to hear another word out of any of you.”

  “Bubs, I’m sorry,” Somers said as he placed the call. “This is serious.”

  “No, please, J-H—”

  “What the fuck don’t you understand about stop talking?” Hazard asked.

  Colt’s face was bloodless. He worked his jaw a few times. He’d forgotten about the pizza slice, and it hung limply in his hand, the cheese and toppings sliding toward the ground.

  “Sit down,” Hazard barked.

  Colt sat. His face screwed up, and he ducked his head.

  “Bruh, it’s ok,” Ashley said softly.

  That, of course, only made it worse, and Colt bent at the waist, his free hand covering his eyes.

  “Yes, I need an officer to take a vandalism report.” Somers’s voice faded as he moved toward the front door, rattling off Theo’s address.

  “Could I talk to you?” Theo asked in a low voice.

  Hazard set his jaw. He was still staring at Colt, still trying to win a war he didn’t understand, only aware of the feeling that anything—even something as little as looking away—might turn the tide, and he’d lose. Lose his son. Lose his son’s future. Lose everything.

  “Emery,” Theo said with a surprising firmness that still managed to be kind. “Come outside and talk to me.”

  Or maybe not so surprising, Hazard thought as he stepped out onto the deck, and the smell of the river met him. Theo was, after all, a teacher.

  In that same voice, Theo said, “What’s going on?”

  And maybe it was years of public-school conditioning. Maybe it was the hurt and fear, which in that moment were too much to bear alone. Maybe it was the uncomfortable reality that Theo had become more of a friend than Hazard had been willing to admit, leaving aside his appalling agglomeration of style manuals. He told him about Ramona. And then he couldn’t tell anymore; he had to stop, clutching the rail until the pressure-treated wood creaked. He took deep breaths and kept his gaze soft. Below them, the silver-backed leaves of the maples turned like foil in the light.

  “He’s not a bad kid,” Theo said. “He did something dumb.”

  Hazard shook his head. He still didn’t trust himself to speak. He didn’t trust himself with anything right then, and he had to look up at the piercing blue of the sky and blink.

  “Which, come to think of it,” Theo said with a smile that Hazard caught in his voice, “this is kind of where we started, isn’t it?”

  That surprised a laugh out of Hazard. He nodded.

  “If he says he didn’t know it was my mailbox, I believe him.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “Well, partially. Maybe. Honest to God? When I heard that boom, I thought it was those psychopaths again. And then I saw that it was the kids, and I felt—well, I like Colt and Ash. I mean, they’re annoying as hell in class because they won’t stop talking and no matter where I sit them, they get up and go over to each other every five minutes—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh my God,” Theo said under his breath. “The point, Emery, is that it felt pretty shitty to see some kids I have a connection with and realize they blew up my mailbox. So, maybe it doesn’t matter to you that Colt didn’t know this was my house, but it matters to me. It’s about the best news I’ve had in the last week.”

  Hazard grunted. Then his brain worked through what Theo had said. “If that’s true, then one of the others had to have picked your house.”

  Shifting his weight, Theo gave a half-shrug that suggested discomfort with the idea more than anything else. “I suppose.”

  “Ashley has many disappointing qualities—among them, he has a bewildering preference for investing in cryptocurrencies even after I showed him my charts on Vanguard ETFs—but he’s not a bully. He is, as far as I can tell, a surprisingly sweet kid.”

  “What’s happening?” Somers asked as he let himself out onto the deck. “What’s wrong? I could have sworn I just heard you say something nice about Ash. Is hell freezing over?”

  Theo’s mouth quirked into a grin that he quickly smothered.

  Hazard turned on his husband. “Do you have something else to say, John? Some drollery or witticism without which we would be eternally bereft?”

  “Drollery,” Theo coughed into his fist.

  “Bereft,” Somers muttered under his breath. Then, in a louder voice, he said, “Peterson is coming over. I’ll let him scare the hell out of them before we take them down to the station and process them.”

  “Good,” Hazard said, because his interactions with Lieutenant Peterson, who had made it as a patrol officer for close to twenty years as a black man in the hillbilly asshole of Missouri before his promotion, suggested that Peterson would put the fear of the Lord in those teenagers without ever raising his voice. Hazard was so pleased by the idea that he added, “Very good.”

  “Oh my God,” Somers said.

  Theo smiled again, but it softened and turned thoughtful. “I would agree with you about Ash; that boy doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

  “Which leaves Gwen,” Hazard said. “Whom I suspected from the beginning.”

  “Ok,” Somers said, “let’s take a step back. I understand that you feel protective of Colt, but she’s not a bad person just because Ashley’s dating her.”

  “I don’t understand the logic in that statement. Colt and Ashley are friends. Ashley, of course, can date whomever he wants. I don’t see how my feelings for Colt have any bearing on my opinion about whom Ashley chooses to date.”

  “Actually, Emery, I think what John-Henry is saying is that sometimes it seems like Colt and Ashley—”

  “Don’t,” Somers said wearily. “He knows what I mean; he just likes playing dumb when it’s convenient.”

  “I do not play dumb.”

  “All right, genius detective. Why did you suspect Gwen from the beginning?”

  “Because I had previously excluded Colt and Ashley.”

  “They’re pretty dumb, Ree. And they’re even dumber when they’re together.”

  “But they’re not malicious. I could see them blowing up a mailbox, for which particular idiocy Colt will now lose driving privileges until he’s thirty. But I can’t see them coming after Theo.”

  Sourly, Somers said, “And what are the odds they would randomly pick that mailbox?”

  “I’d need a population density map—”

  He stopped because Somers was rubbing that spot on his forehead.

  “I know I’ve asked before…” Theo let the fragment trail.

  “No,” Somers said, sounding even more tired than before. “He’s not joking.”

  “Look,” Theo said, “I don’t know Gwen. I’ve never had her in class. I certainly don’t know why she’d do something like this, especially why she’d come after me and Auggie.”

  “But we know why,” Hazard said. “Or, we know the most likely reason. If it’s not personal, meaning, if it’s not a vendetta about being written up or a letter of rec or an essay on The Great Gatsby in which an absurd number of points were deducted because the author of said paper had used the term meiosis instead of litotes, even though meiosis is correct in cases of euphemism—”

  “It was one and a half points,” Theo said with a growly hint of frayed patience. “And I gave them back.”

  “If it’s not any of those things,” Somers cut in, “then it’s probably about Loretta Ames’s visit.”

  Theo frowned. “But would they send a kid to do that? I mean, I know they’re cowards, but I wouldn’t expect them to put a child in danger.”

  “I don’t think they would,” Hazard said. “But I don’t think they need to. Parents weaponizing their children in culture wars isn’t anything new. The conditioning happens at home, based on the news channel that’s running in the background, the conversations at the dinner table, the offhand racist or homophobic comments that a parent makes. The weaponization happens when the message, whether implicit or explicit, shifts—when parents start telling their kids, in one way or another, that they’re soldiers in the culture war, and that this is their fight. It’s become a regular part of the rhetoric these days; it’s not surprising that a girl who hears enough of that at home would want to blow up the mailbox of her queer teacher who made kids read a queer book.”

  “Jesus,” Somers breathed. “That’s…nuts. Not you, Ree, so don’t make that face. That parents would do that to their kids.”

  “That’s unfortunately close to the truth,” Theo said. “We see it a lot right now. I had some boys come by my room and tear down a progress flag that I had near the door. One of the little shits looked me right in the eye and told me that I wasn’t allowed to have political signs in my classroom. I went to the principal. I told her, what’s the political message here? That we should treat everyone with kindness and respect? And she nodded and smiled and said she supported me, but the school’s lawyer had said that I couldn’t put up another flag, and oh, by the way, no punishment for those kids because the parents are likely to sue.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Hazard said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Somers’s expression was thoughtful. “We just came from talking to Joyce Sturgis.”

  The door to the house clicked; Auggie raised his eyebrows as he joined them. “Queen of the Crazies? What about her?” Then, to Theo, he said, “Ash and Colt are playing with Lana.”

  It wasn’t exactly a question, but it had the shape of one, and Theo rolled his eyes and nodded.

  “Well, I guess the first thing I’m wondering,” Somers said slowly, “is what’s going on there? I mean, she genuinely hates the gays, I guess, but this level of fanaticism seems…unprecedented? I know that’s not the right word. I’m trying to say I haven’t seen it before, not about an author visit, not about a book read in schools.”

  “Oh, it’s happened before,” Theo said. “We’re coming out of a lull, is all. Parents go nuts about this stuff every so often. Right now, there’s a lot of pressure from some political figures, we’re talking at the national level, and the message that’s coming down is that you take control of the school boards first, then you take control of the state legislature, and then the federal government. That’s how you get your country back.”

  “It’s not their country,” Hazard said.

  “Try telling them that,” Auggie said. “This guy told me to go back to Mexico the other day. This is why I miss California.” Theo’s expression shifted slightly, and Auggie hurried to add, “Sometimes.”

  “California is the perfect example of an unsustainable—” Hazard began.

  “Do you think Joyce was the one who tried to get you arrested?” Somers asked.

  Theo shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Her or one of her Prayer Warrior buddies. She’s got the reasonable, concerned parent act down, but when I told her flat out I wasn’t going to cancel Loretta Ames’s visit and that we’d still be using Katabasis in my classroom, she lost her mind. I finally had to hang up the phone. After that, it went to the school board. You know the rest.”

  “Prayer Warriors?” Hazard asked.

  Auggie and Theo shared a laugh. “It sounds nuts, right?” Auggie took out his phone. “I mean, I wasn’t exactly a church kid—”

  “To put it mildly,” Theo murmured.

  “I never had a chance,” Auggie said with a smirk. “This hot TILF ravished me.”

  Cheeks reddening, Theo turned a dark look on him.

  “Anyway,” Auggie said, the smirk getting even bigger, “that’s the name of their Facebook group—the Prayer Warriors.” After a few taps, he displayed his screen, and Hazard studied the contents. He read aloud, “Wahredua Parent Prayer Warriors. Protect our children, no matter the cost.” He took the phone, ignoring Auggie’s attempt to keep hold of it, and scrolled. Still reading, he said, “They should bring in the National Guard to teach our students until we can get some real teachers. This is a violation of my child’s constitutional rights. Whatever happened to free speech? Why can’t they teach both sides of every issue? My daughter came home and told me she wishes she weren’t white because white people are bad.”

  Theo snorted.

  “White people are bad,” Auggie said with that wicked grin. “The things this TILF did to me—”

  “Go back inside and play with your friends,” Theo said, giving him a shove. Somehow, Auggie ended up under his arm instead, and as he got settled, Theo said to Hazard, “I’ve heard versions of those complaints from time to time since I’ve been teaching high school, but they’ve gotten a lot…”

  “Crazier?” Auggie suggested.

  “Yeah, they’ve gotten a lot crazier recently. The thing about telling kids they’re bad because they’re white—give me a break.” Theo shook his head. “I’m sure there’s some nutjob somewhere doing that, but the rest of us are just trying to teach our curriculum. How are you supposed to teach A Raisin in the Sun without explaining systemic racism?”

  “We ought to make an example,” Hazard read another post. And then he stopped because the next post, dated from less than a week before, had been made by Joyce Sturgis. “People like Loretta Ames, people who are grooming our children for sexual predators, don’t deserve to live. It’s as simple as that.” He looked up. “Holy shit, how did that not get reported as a death threat?”

  “And how do you have access to this?” Somers asked.

  “Oh, dummy account. My name is Ryan. Ryan Jones. I went to Mizzou and graduated ’05. Go Tigers!” That last bit was delivered in a bro-y shout that made Theo cover his eyes. Grinning, Auggie said in a normal voice, “Theo basically has to live this stuff in real time, so as soon as it got started, I made another account and joined up. That was before they started getting really suspicious and vetting all the new requests to join.”

  “Smart.”

  Auggie shrugged. “It’s what I do. Although usually I do it for people with a lot more money.”

  “About the death threat, Emery,” Theo said, “you’ve kind of put your finger on the whole problem. That got reported to the sheriff, I happen to know. And to the FBI because it’s a borderline civil rights issue. You know what happened?”

  “Jack shit. But why?”

  “Because Joyce Sturgis is a middle-class white lady,” Auggie said. Hazard opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Auggie added, “I know that sounds like I’m playing the race card just like them, but there are some pretty well researched white papers on this. White women are the fastest-growing demographic in domestic terrorism. They’re overlooked by law enforcement because they’ve got that intersection of race and privilege; a lot of police genuinely don’t believe white women are capable of that kind of violence, and it means they get a pass that even white men don’t get.”

  Hazard frowned. He opened his mouth again, glanced at Somers, and shut it.

  “Auggie and I did a lot of reading about this after things got going,” Theo said. “It’s not just that they get overlooked by law enforcement. They’re militarizing and radicalizing each other, and they’re doing it in places that traditional approaches to domestic terrorism totally ignore. Under the radar, you know? Kind of literally, in this case.”

  “Soccer games?” Hazard asked drily.

  “Actually, you’re not far off,” Auggie said. “What we read? It says that this radicalization happens through the social channels that white women favor. So, yeah, things like the PTA, or sports teams.”

  “Or mommy blogs,” Theo said, “lifestyle blogs, social media influencers. It’s unreal when you hear it out loud, but it’s happening.”

  “Why?” Somers asked. “Usually, radicalization is linked to discontent, dissatisfaction, feeling marginalized. These women are the opposite of marginalized.”

  “Well, maybe.” Auggie gave them a look and shrugged. “I mean, in some circles, there’s this ongoing narrative about white people becoming marginalized. The browning of America. That kind of thing.” He held up a hand and wiggled his fingers. “Exhibit A.”

  “For God’s sake, you were born in Orange County,” Theo said, pushing his hand down.

  “And there’s another element to this,” Auggie said. “It’s not just a racial or a cultural imperative for the women. Want to guess the most common motive that these women give?”

  For a moment, Hazard’s brain was blank; he was trying to catch up with everything they’d just unloaded on him. Then he grimaced and shook his head. “Protect the children.”

  “Bingo,” Auggie said. “In fact, it’s even more specific: protect the children from pedophiles.”

  “Which means we’re looking at a textbook case,” Somers said slowly. “That’s what they’ve been spouting about Loretta—”

  “And Theo,” Auggie put in.

  “—from the beginning.”

  “Well, Joyce might have some personal motivation as well,” Auggie said.

  He held out his hand for the phone, but Hazard ignored the gesture; he was still scrolling through posts in the group, staring at the names of people he knew, seeing the hateful, frightened things they said. They were people he had known growing up. People he had met since coming back. People who took their children to Evie’s preschool, people who took their kids to the same park, people who waved and said hello when they passed each other in the Piggly Wiggly. Without looking up, Hazard asked, “What kind of personal motivation?”