The New American Dream

Part One: Before | Chapter Four

I still didn't have my clothes back but I was wearing some plain black skinny jeans and the black and white striped shirt from the week before, a black sweatjacket on top to cover up my arm and the scars on it. At least I didn't have to wear my sister's ridiculous clothes anymore. Nonetheless I felt naked. No jewelry, no merch, no makeup. It was awful.

"Actually, I think we can all spare something, here," Mark answered my complaint, handing me a necklace of his own. It was a silver one with a cross on it. While I didn't agree with the message of the cross I was honored that he gave it to me, it meant a lot to him I knew that.

"Oh, great idea, here take this," Cassie said, handing me two of her bracelets.

Everyone gave me some jewelry of theirs.

"Aw, you guys are amazing, thank you so much!"

"Here, take this too," Mark said, pulling off his Homesick Soldiers sweater and tossing it to me.
Careful not to show my cuts, I pulled off my jacket and put the sweater on. My friends knew about my self-harming, I wasn't the only one in the group that did it, but they didn't need to know about any and all new cuts. The sweater was nice and warm and made me feel calmer, it smelled of him and that always calmed me, a reaction from the time we had still been dating.

I smiled at Mark. "Thank you so much."

"What are friends for?" Nate laughed and put one arm around my shoulder. Easy for him, as he was so much taller than me.

"So guys, I have this plan, but I need more information first," I announced.

The attention of all my friends was on me.

"What do we know about that gun speech in a few weeks?"

Nate groaned and took his arm away. "No Allie. I told you not to get into more trouble it's just not worth it."

"Nate," I said seriously "there is a man coming that wants to tell us how good guns are. This isn't about me, this is about the safety of all of these easily impressionable idiots around here."

"And what do you think you can do against it? Do you want to boycott the speech?"

I smirked and when Nate realized that was exactly what I had planned he only sighed, knowing that once I had set my mind to do something and had already figured something out there was no stopping me. Better help me and make sure the plan was successful.

They filled me in on everything they knew about it so far so I had all the information that I needed. When they had finished I opened my bag and took out the paintings I had done.

_____

"I don't know about this, this isn't going to be easy," Nate complained as he stood guard outside the door.

The printer room always smelled weird and musty but I endured it for the sake of pulling the plan off successfully. There wasn't much natural light in here, the only light source was a high window on one wall and then the lamp overhead that only really gave off sparse lightning. Being in here was always rather unreal.

I was busy photocopying my paintings. Multiple stacks of paper already waited on the floor. The plan was to hand them up as posters to firstly stir up some trouble, get people talking about the subject and see their reactions.

"I never said it was going to. This is only part one, the easy part. Let's follow through with that first and then we can lose sleep over part two. First we need to see people's reaction to see if it would even be worth the trouble."

Nate sighed, he apparently liked to do that a lot lately. I didn't see his face because he was standing on the other side of the slightly cracked open door but I was sure he wasn't happy about it.