it’s very inspiring. I feel like this will be in history.”
She was missing her mom right now, thinking about going back to find her. I offered to sneak her into the interview tent instead. Her eyes widened. Could I do that? I explained the goofy system they had rigged, pasting a tiny red dot to my badge for interview access, red for the riser, but they were barely noticeable, and the guard was mainly going by face. Just stick close, avoid eye contact, and move with a purpose, I said. If anyone asks, you’re with me.
She looked terrified but exhilarated. I said we should head over early and brainstorm some questions, did she want help? Of course, she said. But as I nodded toward the tent, I noticed activity. “They’re early,” I said. “Let’s go!”
She froze there, on the verge of tears. “I don’t have any questions!”
“That’s OK,” I said. I didn’t have mine ready either. “Come on!”
I nodded at the guard, he opened the gate, and she whisked in behind me without eye contact or incident. She was an unexpected asset, because I’m terrible with names and hadn’t met some of the MFOL kids, and she seemed to know them all by sight. She gasped as each one entered, and whispered their names. Sometimes she was overcome, and shouted: “That’s Delaney Tarr!”
The kids came through fast, and the goofy system the PR team had organized disintegrated immediately. They had taped a piece of letter paper with each media outlet’s name on the concrete floor, which grew invisible beneath us once the tent filled. They made two rows, with cameras in front to get the shots and reporters behind to ask questions. But many of the kids had not been briefed, and answered the camera operators’ questions along the front line and moved on. We started jostling up to the front to get to them, and I lost Julia briefly in the chaos. I spotted her panicking, waved her over, and nudged her to jump in with a question.
“How are you coming up with them?” she whispered.
“Just wing it. What have you been wondering?”
Julia was starting to scribble some ideas when Emma González bounced in. She chatted effortlessly with reporters while mouthing the lyrics to the song pulsing in. A distraught PR person felt the surge around Emma, and the gravitational thrust of everybody in that direction, and suddenly took control. “Organize yourself into small groups!” she ordered, which was a welcome idea, and we quickly grouped up. I landed with three other reporters—lost Julia again—and the PR person allotted us three minutes. As we squeezed in, Emma was finishing up with the last group, answering whether politicians had seemed receptive to them the past month.
“Not really. Some really, really small baby steps. Someone said it was like they tried to take a giant leap forward and then tripped and fell really bad. This was stuff that should’ve just been there already.”
I asked her about Jackie’s assessment, that it would take years, like the civil rights movement.
“Probably. Probably going to be years. And like at this point, I don’t know if I mind, because like nothing that’s worth it is easy. So why would this be easy? We’re going against the largest gun lobby in America. We could very well die trying to do this, but we could very well die not trying to do this, so why not die for something rather than for nothing?”
Die trying? That unnerved me, and I asked what she meant.
“We could get shot by someone who’s like, ‘Don’t take away my guns!’ Which is not what we’re trying to do. We’re not trying to take away anybody’s guns, but they misconstrue our message because they’re afraid of this becoming a slippery slope. They’re afraid of us because we have a voice now.”
A reporter asked about Emma’s expectations, and the PR person got angry that we were over quota and shouted as she tried to move Emma along: “Everyone back up!” But Emma was suddenly distracted, gliding over the concrete, sliding her hips to a Latin rhythm starting up on the massive sound system. She giggled that she and Sarah Chadwick had added Celia Cruz to the playlist, and what a bolt of joy for it to fill the air. She was eighteen—the right song could change everything. She danced back to the reporter who had asked about expectations, looked her right in the eye, and said, “My expectations just shot up!”