Two Heartbeats on One Page

Chapter 27

Jordan was ready to fuck some shit up.

It was the day of the student sit-in at the school near Mandy's house. Normally he'd have just let the kids to it without any interference, but when Terrence told him that those church protesters were going to be there, he was having none of it. These were teenagers, some as young as thirteen, and they didn't need the excess stress of those people screaming bigoted trash at them on top of the lack of support from the adults at their school.

Maybe yelling and throwing glitter wouldn't do much in the big picture of things, but at least on this base level, he could help give some kids the confidence they needed to make their school a little better, and that was just as important.

He hung back, halfway up a tree at the edge of the parking lot. The teenagers were out on the front lawn, sitting peacefully, some with signs that said things like "Gay is not a swear word" and "It's okay to be gay." They weren't making a fuss. Most of them were quiet. A couple started small chants every now and then that they kept up for a minute or two before trailing off.

But one of the church members had a bullhorn and was screaming at the kids that they were going to hell, that they were sinners, that they were disgusting, and it hit Jordan far too close for him to be able to stay out of it. They had their normal signs, "Fags burn in Hell" and "God rejoices for dead soldiers." He sighed. He had yet another reason to hate them now to pile on top of all the others.

Terrence and Mandy were both nearby somewhere. There were at least three others scattered around, too. The collective was loose and didn't always collaborate. They told people where to go and when to be there, and they came, and they left. Sometimes he didn't even learn their names. Sometimes he didn't even see them in the first place.

Jordan was the first to shoot when the one with the megaphone started yelling quotes from Leviticus. He pulled the slingshot back tight, holding it for a moment to set his aim.

The man stumbled forward when the glitter bomb exploded between his shoulders, covering him in pink sparkles. Jordan always used pink, specifically because he knew how much people like that hated being associated with anything feminine. There were some hearts in there for good measure. The man stopped, dropped his hand, and whirled around, but Jordan was well hidden and the homophobe didn't know what he was looking for. Jordan grinned and shot another one right into the man's chest. He was careful to avoid causing any physical injury, because he knew their so called church was mostly funded by lawsuits. But he was going to injure their pride in any way he could.

The look on his face was perfect.

Jordan's glitter bombs gave the teenagers a little extra initiative and two of them jumped up, holding a sign between them above their heads. It read, "If gays are bad, why are we so cute?"

He grinned. Two girls right after his own heart.

Then he saw that they were holding hands and it hit him a little closer. He was not going to let these girls and their friends go through what he had to. Even if all he could do was throw glitter, then dammit, that was what he was going to do.

His two shots inspired the rest of the collective, because glitter started to explode everywhere. Some of the bombs missed their marks and hit the pavement by their feet, but most of them hit, arms and chests and backs. The church members started sputtering, milling around in confusion, yelling at each other instead of the kids. Jordan shot off two more, both at the woman with the dead soldiers sign, getting one in her hair and the other on her shoulder. Fucker. The rest he could mostly brush off after being surrounded by it for so long, but that he took personally.