She Will Persist

28

Adira

Jinx put her hands over her mouth. "You mean I can come?" She whispered from beneath the cage of fingers.

Owen snuffed a breath out his nose in laughter. "Yes, you can come."

She leapt off her bed and clambered down the ladder. "Oh my god! Yes!" She pumped a fist in the air and almost hit Cal in the nose. "Yes! Holy shit this is the dream! I get to go to a fancy party and sway men into revealing dark secrets oh my fucking god it's like a movie holy shit!" She cried again.

Harrison grabbed her waving hands and forced them back down to her sides. "Pump the brakes fangirl, there's a little more to it than that."

She yanked her hands out of his. "I don't care anymore! I just finally get to be a part of something that matters!" She raised her arms up in the air and jumped up and down on her tiptoes.

Harrison cracked up and watched her bounce up and down. "Going to college to arm yourself with the knowledge needed to change the world doesn't matter?"

Jinx kept bouncing, her brown braid thumping against her back and the bracelets on her left wrist getting all tangled up. "Well, yeah, but taking down a fucking terrorist is slightly more riveting than studying the long-term environmental effects of oil spills on Native American land."

"Do you have anything to wear?" I asked her.

She stopped bouncing. "I mean, I have one dress. It's not particularly spectacular or anything fit for a gala, but like... yeah no I don't have anything." She adjusted her glasses and looked down at her feet.

"I guess we'll have to fix that," Zach sighed. He snuck a glance at me, and after another couple seconds I realized that all the boys were looking at me too.

I raised my hands. "I don't know shit about fashion guys, come on, don't use the girl excuse."

"It's not like any of us can really go out in public anyway," Owen said. "So Jinx I guess you're on your own."

Jinx's face turned miserable. "Great," her voice was shallow. "Love that for me."

-

The abandoned building was dank and cold. The faint but distinctly sour smell of weed and urine clouded the air inside, filling up my lungs with its thick and heavy waves, almost misting my vision. It was crumbling to bits, large chunks of cement from the walls and ceiling were scattered about the place. The flooring was probably once a light grey but now was permanently ingrained with rain and moss and was endlessly caked in small sharp pebbles that pricked you everywhere you sat down. It was one-story and sat on the outskirts of Boston so it was a strategic spot to make camp as wanted runaways, and there was plenty of space to set up the equipment we were using to plan the mission in Tunisia, but the building's dismal atmosphere was reflecting onto us.

Beside me Blitz was diligently crafting the chemical bombs we were going to use to break down Basilone's factory. With laser-focused attention he was slowly trickling some kind of reactive substance into empty soup cans with an eyedropper. Quinn was on his other side doing the same thing, both of them with bashed up safety glasses on because "safety first" as Quinn so gleefully asserted. The Iraqi was pretty much the only one to be optimistic and cheerful during this arduous time as wanted by the national government.

It was just the two chemists, Owen, James, and I in the hideout right now. Everyone else was out gathering what they could for the mission, or out somewhere for a refreshing escape from this dispiriting hole.

James had gone and sat away from the rest of our group. He had his back leaning against the opposite wall from where we all were. Like the rest of us he was bundled up in a dark coat, the thick layers engulfing his smaller form as he fumbled with some device in his hands. He was clearly tense and contemplative. I got up and joined him.