“Zed doesn’t get it,” Eliza says with a groan. “He’s too caught up in being human to get that humans don’t want us here. Like, on a fundamental level. He just… doesn’t see it.”
Willa sits back up—lying down on bleachers is uncomfortable, she doesn’t know why she thought it wouldn’t be—and says, “Yeah, well, if he wants to be one of the ‘good’ ones so bad, what’s the point in getting him to see? You know?” She huffs, bracing her head with her hands under her chin and her elbows on her thighs. “He has a human girlfriend, popularity, a football team… he’s not gonna give that up, Eliza. He’s too invested. Better to let him go. He’s only gonna take you so far.”
Eliza’s not sure. Zed’s still her friend, as misguided as he is, and she wants him to understand. She needs him to. A revolution without him would feel empty. Incomplete.
She must’ve been quiet for longer than she’d thought. Willa nudges her with a knee, and when Eliza looks, she sees that her grin is simultaneously compassionate and mischievous.
“Hey,” Willa says softly. “Let’s start a revolution of our own, huh?”
Their first target is the locker rooms. They sneak in, grab as many uniforms as they can, and dump them in the middle of the football field. Willa says the pile is meant to symbolize the fundamental emptiness and vapidness of Western sports, but Eliza thinks she just wanted to do that anyway. And, well, it’s a lot more enjoyable than Eliza expected.
Their next target is the principal’s office. Eliza breaks into Lee’s computer—the password is M!ghtyShr!mp, which she immediately changes to CAPITALISMKILLS—and tweaks a few things. Nothing major—a new desktop wallpaper here, a couple grades changed there. The script for tomorrow morning’s announcements becomes the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto, and the language on every computer in the school becomes Zombie. Just small things. No one will notice.
And their final target—the gaudy pictures of Prawn Kings and Queens past, updated to include Zed and Addison. They tear them down one by one, cackling, watch them crumple to nothing on the floor—until they reach Zed’s portrait.
Eliza hesitates. Her friends look happy, their grins wide and bright forever, in that sort of half-embrace the other couples had. Zed would call it a symbol of progress. She sees betrayal. Desperation.
Willa’s next to her then, and she gently pushes her side into Eliza’s. “Are you gonna do it?”
“I,” Eliza says, and pauses. Looks at the portrait. Sighs. “No. I can’t.”
Willa sighs, too, the sound a little disappointed, but she says, “All right, I get it. We’ll leave it alone.”
“Thanks,” Eliza hears herself say.
Willa grins at her, puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close as they leave the portraits behind.
“That wasn’t much of a revolution, Willa.”
“Nah, it wasn’t. But it was pretty fun, right?”
Eliza snorts and snakes a hand around Willa’s waist. “Yeah. It was.”