The Measure(52)

“Shit!” Jack shouted.

His own uncle was the reason why Jack and Javi had to look inside their boxes. The reason they had to switch their strings and lie to everyone around them. The reason Jack had to sign his name, willfully perjuring himself, under the pitying gaze of Major Riggs.

Jack grabbed his water bottle from the cushion next to him and hurled it toward Anthony’s face. “Shit! Shit!”

The plastic bottle bounced loudly off the screen, spraying its remaining droplets into the air just as the baseball game resumed.

Thank god Javi wasn’t around to see this ad, Jack thought, to realize just how culpable Anthony was—along with the rest of Jack’s family, who stood behind him.

And now Anthony wanted Jack to join him in New York, to stand there stupidly onstage, while his uncle bragged about drafting the very decree that had fucked up Jack’s and Javi’s lives forever.

Families support each other, Jack heard his father’s voice. Especially ones like ours.





Anthony




Anthony was ready.

His speech sat in bulleted form on a series of note cards in his lap, and he leaned back in his cushioned beige seat as his campaign bus, with “Rollins for America” splayed across its side paneling, steadily made its way from D.C. to a park in downtown Manhattan, where a sizable crowd was gathering to hear Anthony speak and an equally sizable crowd was gathering in protest.

Anthony’s campaign manager had warned them about the demonstrators.

“Should we be worried?” Katherine asked.

“There’ll be plenty of security,” said the manager. “And the bomb dogs have already sniffed the place.”

“I meant about the optics.” Katherine frowned.

“Well, we knew this was a possibility when we decided to use the strings as a talking point,” said the manager. “But honestly, I take it as a sign that your husband’s star is rising. People wouldn’t show up for just anybody.”

“Maybe we’ll even get lucky and some crazy protesters will throw a few punches,” Anthony mused. “Nobody likes an angry mob.”

And as the bus rolled up to the congested park, it was indeed difficult for Anthony and Katherine to discern which of the clamorous hordes comprised their supporters and which might be there to cause trouble.





Hank




Hank was ready.

He was about to meet some friends from the support group at the protest downtown, where Anthony Rollins was due to speak, and he felt like he was finally doing something, for the first time since leaving the hospital.

As he finished his coffee, he turned on the news, where reporters were still covering the past week of demonstrations in China.

“For any viewers just tuning in, we’re following the fourth day of protests under way in Beijing,” the anchor announced. Video footage showed several thousand people blockading the streets in the city’s central business district.

“A few months ago, the Chinese government called upon all citizens to report their string length as part of a national data registry, claiming it was for the public’s protection and official recordkeeping,” the anchor explained. “And while there was some international outcry surrounding the ambiguity of those motives, most notably within the EU and the U.S., it was the sudden arrests, earlier this month, of three Beijing residents who refused to comply with the order that inspired these larger protests we’re seeing now.”

Hank assumed that the ongoing coverage of Beijing had partly inspired the crowds expected today in New York. It was hard to hear Anthony Rollins’s speeches and not worry that America was treading closer and closer to China’s sweeping mandates.

It was rumored that Anthony Rollins was among the key forces behind the government’s latest policies, and his stunt at the June debate was viewed by many as the spark that ignited the current discrimination against short-stringers, spreading from Congress into nearly every community. According to the event page on Facebook, nearly twelve thousand participants planned to converge on the small Manhattan park where Anthony’s rally was being held, bearing posters and megaphones and flags to voice their outrage.

Hank remembered when Anika had dragged him to the March for Science. He hadn’t wanted to go at first. He wasn’t convinced it would have any impact.

“Maybe it won’t,” Anika said. “But I’ll tell you the same thing I told my friends at the Women’s March. We don’t just march because we hope it will trigger change. We march to remind them of our numbers. To remind them that they can’t forget about us.”

Hank turned off the TV and set out.



Inside the park, Hank was surrounded by signs. “Short-Stringers Stand Together!” “A Long String Is Overcompensating.” “Equality for All.” “We Are More Than Our Strings!”

He was surprised by how overwhelmed he felt. It was a beautiful sight, this kaleidoscope of neon posters, of words both snarky and sincere.

The feeling that overtook Hank in that moment transported him to another time and place, some two decades ago, when his old girlfriend Lucy took him by the hand and led him to the maternity ward during their first week of training at the hospital, and the two of them gazed through the glass at the rows of newborns—sleeping, squirming, yawning, crying. Lucy’s eyes grew teary, but Hank didn’t want to cry in front of the girl he was still trying to impress. So he just stood there, staring at the future. At a dozen blank canvases in bassinets, still unmarred by the world outside the ward. A dozen reasons to have hope.