Leila Gainde

          We are removed. That is what I am sure of and that is what I tell you. We are removed and sent to the Blue Region. Yes, my parents said we were going, decided we were going, packed for it with leisure, smiling at one another at the idea of pressing some furniture into the bags. But they had to send people in uniforms with weaponry to make sure that we had gone. Because some people stop and stare, like they’re on drugs. They take too long. And, in the process, they may decide that it was all way too fast. They may rescind their statements. But now, there is no freedom to rescind. Beyond original statements, we did as we were told. They removed us in case we found ourselves saying no.

          After that, in the summer of 2027, there are stories. We on the Blue Region are telling a story of those of the Red Region, someone, a teenage boy, who was alive and now isn’t. A boy found dead in his backyard about around seven in sunset, a few feet or so away from his fence. His parents, his grandmother, and sisters heard nothing, nothing at all. He'd look like that college student back in 2020, killed by another student, allegedly over a girlfriend dispute, and since quarantine had just begun to enrage people, they cried foreign conspiracy; he had been researching a cure for COVID. But this boy looked maybe a bit younger, and he was definitely not as stout. The governor keeps insisting that the police are investigating hard but find no such evidence that the family did it. Here on the Blue Region, people pull up allegations on these possibly abusive parents, with cords and knifes and punches. Plenty of suspicious criminals being investigated by the police in that neighborhood, but it whispers to you – did anyone really come in? Seriously?

          I wonder – if anything, anything at all, happened to me here, right now – perhaps, if I made something happen, maybe a fall, a mad request, risking my safety, would my parents regret it? Regret coming to the Blue Region? Maybe, would they take any steps at all?

          I sit more properly, both thighs properly rested on the car seat, running my nails down my fingers, sliding my tongue from in between my heavyset, thin teeth. I feel myself warm, feel the lights of the cars begin to lift, and my mother gives a relieved, satisfied nod, and looks back forward. Before us, the wall stood, seeming all purple and dawn blue at the same time. It was surely brick and stone, and I thought it looked as warm as the walls possessed by the nethers. But the way it stood, the way it had nothing, no drops of rain, no birds, no vines, no leaves or firs that had blows against it, I could see the words, as if already graffitied on it, on the Red Region instead of the Blue Region, saying, “Never Again. Not There. This is the end.”

          I wonder if we really are running away. Because nobody is saying that this is patriotism, though extremists on both sides of this decision’s passing like to think of it that way. All for a crisis that seems to be COVID all over again. I fold my hands together on my chest as we see the top of the wall, and sure enough, there’s only piping. The barbed wire is nowhere to be found. It wasn’t gone in the winking lights of early morning or the remaining darkness. They weren’t what made me think of trees. They must look so dirty, so bad, so uncomfortable for the birds.

Mona Gainde

          Now I know what everyone here is squeezing one another’s hands for without looking at one another. They want to eliminate regret. They want to remind one another why we came here, why we all uprooted and came here, following this insane, outlandish system of a wall. They want to send little eggs of the shock we all felt when the riots more than a year ago happened, when blue voters taunted and snapped their fingers mockingly and maliciously at the proud demonstrators of the current red office, when they charged into one another, tore each other’s limbs and teeth and hair, got their knives and their bats and used their shoes, those loving their guns firing them in the air, accidentally killing plenty of adults, a quarter of them young. When the Capitol was stormed yet again, but this time coinciding with Michigan’s capital buildings as well. How people stood here, in front of the blue capital in this strange state, holding hands and batting off the protesters trying to lean out the rails once again, until a car came and ran the lined defenders holding hands down, ripping off legs, suspending their bodies like pillow sacks, and the protesters in the capitol angry about the actions of the House, looking for anyone there, perhaps anyone leftover in the government who did nothing for election fraud two elections ago. How the world just waited for America to surrender to the fact that each half of its population wants the other dead, wants them to cry as they are nailed to death. The feelings of claimed shock about the Michigan Blue & Red Plan the same as the very first Capitol riot. And so it happened, so we are here, feeling like we are safe.

          Leila’s graffities stand clean and even, polished in the brightness, darkness, running of their colors, like good, fancy houses for models and sport stars. There are so many eyes, though not all of them are big. But there are so many tears. Like a whole extended family of mourning, with the words nearest to them like floating aromas. They're lost in a misty purple grassed Gallows’ Hill of their haunted nature. The first series of words say Not Doing Science Notes.

          I know which ones are Leila’s by the rough outlines and standing out colors I could see from the window. The first thing I notice is actually a portrait, and it seems a three-dimensional image of a girl maybe a few years older than Leila, pushing her upper body away from her thighs, knees on the ground that is the line underneath her, and the smile she grins at me seems a smirk, also not pure greeting of me. Now this one seems to be someone alive. It does not look the way humans look, but we all know what animations look like to make fictional colorings of ourselves walk out. What does she want? Now, this one is asking me to come closer. She wants to press her nose onto mine. I feel like a child and an old man offering some musty beans, and she seems an image, a premonition of a person, which I believe must be what Leila intended. What did I think she was from afar by the window? A head folded into jeans? My God.

          I go down closer towards home, and that’s when what I see next takes me aback; it’s a miracle that I don’t at least take a step back. That's Leila, I know. She's looking up from the ground, her eyebrows apart, confused, surprised, asking me softer than the previous girl why I'm here. Am I trespassing. You're the one who decided to go missing. Do you think I’m not aware how much these graffities mean to you? That I don’t know that you weren’t kidnapped?

          It's the look she sometimes gives me. Muttering under her breath, agreeing to disagree most strongly, barely satisfying me, making me walk away, trying in vain to make me regret what I have done. Now she’s trying to guilt me. Leila, I don’t know how to make you happy. But what does abandoning me fix? Now, tell me where you’ve gone. What do you think you’re doing? What have you come to see this life as? Are you even aware what you are doing? Why do you proceed to traumatize me? Why deny me my sleep? Why deny me you? What happened about me and all our times together? What has gone so empty? Tell me, Leila, tell me.

          The reason why I couldn’t make out that this painting was Leila from afar is because she’s made the mist of lined up houses on a street pass through her, the different angles of a diamond carat. There's trees, there’s rain, and she’s added sprinkles making up the blue of such coldness – oh, wait! That's our old home . . . Why in the world are you so hung up on that place?

          Then it dawns onto me. The air moans with the recognition as my skin begins to crawl. There's thorns tearing through my skin, and I feel hurt, burned all over, sore, looking at my shoes, like I thought I could take control of everything.

Leila's gone back there. She's gone back to the Red Region. Of course.

Leila Gainde

          It's just another tree, I try telling myself, the machine of the well-known tactic of self-deception and completed manipulation, self-illusion to the mind, rolls out well, the satisfying, geeky shaking of a copying machine. I can’t help burning with humiliation at what I am doing, glad the tree is sturdy and strong and does not shake as I shift my weight off my two planted sneakers and up it. I worry that my fear is going to take away my strength, but I'm up with the snapping of fingers repetitively. On my feet, ducking, I need to go to the next level. I know the next branch to take, as high as my mother would let me go without breaking my neck. I need to test the other branches gently. But the tree is tall enough, and I must hope that my palms are magnets on the trunk, that no bugs or animals or tree leaves get into my eyes. They’re already burning by how surrounded I am, in the roof of a cave inhabited by bats. My hair snags, like hands, onto the wrong things, like it can carry me. That will be an obstacle, rustle the tree more than it should.

          It's agonizing and such a bummer. I'm hugging the damn tree, as scared as I would be if a live normal sized doll climbed up me and gave me a hug in its raggedy plush arms around my neck. I stick out my foot, a bit too hard, but only my toe gets the pain. I muffle my cry, but I must ignore it. I force the ticking feeling away, try to heal it by propping my ankle onto the branch, pull myself over. It's a failed idea, much to my devastation, and I need to press that stupid foot of mine against the trunk again, come closer. Just a little closer now. The leaves are rustling like crazy, and though I cannot stop moving, I must wonder if there are any critters that will bite my fingers on the other side of the trunk. That only makes me go quicker, and feel my chest about to explode. Something will surely be wrong with my heart after this. Something will make its beat slower. Maybe this is what the wall is meant to do. Not keep people from crossing, but hurting them so hard they do not survive on the other side. I puff my cheeks and will the ether of darkness around me to get darker. Let all animals and humans step back in fear of me. Let it call on all of them to melt and surrender. Let them finally give me what no one has given myself, what I have long wanted to inflict on another. Let this tree leave a pressed red mark that gives Mama the satisfaction of knowing that she had indeed raised a monster.

          I know by now I’m about to make it. I know I have scared the guard. Nobody is going to dare to shoot me. I could bully them – they would be too scared for their lives to be afraid.

Mona Gainde

          “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to get off the tree. By proceeding or staying, you are posing yourself as a risk to this state’s security. Ma'am, if you don’t get off quickly, proceeding to do so immediately, even if you are just ignoring me, I will shoot you. I advise you to land off.”

          It suddenly comes upon me, what I need to do so he doesn’t shoot again, and I may cross. My heart screams at the idea. No, no, no. I can’t do it. I hug the branch, look at how much my toes need to go to lift myself up again. My whole body is clenched in fear. Still, if he wants to remove me, he’s going to have to call security detail. But that he won’t do. Here, there is no leniency, no chances, no forgiveness. They told us all that they are simply ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross, no regards to where. After all, they are so high up in that watchtower. They probably can’t tell our heads from our hands.

          “Ma’am . . .” he says. I press my lips together and prepare. I imagine, I burn it within myself, I ask for it, imagine it, prompt it on, bully myself to get tougher and forget what I am. I am a monster. He won’t believe it unless I act it out. I blink, go beyond myself, and imagine a blackout. I shift up further. “Ma’am! Ma’am! Miss – understand what you are doing and retreat this instant! I will shoot you! I have it on you!”

How will I move? How will I move? How will I move, if he has it on me already? He will shoot right at me unless . . . I frighten him with a jerk.

          I stick a hand out immediately, hoping the tree trembles like the crunch of an enormous squirrel on an acorn, and give him the finger, the rest of them parted to make a triangle of my palm open for him if he has superhuman eyesight. The gunshot tears through the air, through my hand, and nearly sends me toppling if my skull wasn’t so pressed onto the branch above me. And my eyes are shut, thinking of paleness, nothing at all on the deathly white pale hand of mine, of no blood, protected by the ether no human can kill.