Little Brother

Ange. One night as we were doing the dishes, she dried her hands and said, conversationally, "You know, you seem like a nice guy, Marcus. My sister's just crazy about you and I like you too. But I have to tell you something: if you break her heart, I will track you down and pull your scrotum over your head. It's not a pretty sight."
    I assured her that I would sooner pull my own scrotum over my head than break Ange's heart and she nodded. "So long as we're clear on that."
    "Your sister is a nut," I said as we lay on Ange's bed again, looking at Xnet blogs. That is pretty much all we did: fool around and read Xnet.
    "Did she use the scrotum line on you? I hate it when she does that. She just loves the word 'scrotum,' you know. It's nothing personal."
    I kissed her. We read some more.
    "Listen to this," she said. "Police project four to six hundred arrests this weekend in what they say will be the largest coordinated raid on Xnet dissidents to date."
    I felt like throwing up.
    "We've got to stop this," I said. "You know there are people who are doing more jamming to show that they're not intimidated? Isn't that just crazy ?"
    "I think it's brave," she said. "We can't let them scare us into submission."
    "What? No, Ange, no. We can't let hundreds of people go to jail . You haven't been there. I have. It's worse than you think. It's worse than you can imagine."
    "I have a pretty fertile imagination," she said.
    "Stop it, OK? Be serious for a second. I won't do this. I won't send those people to jail. If I do, I'm the guy that Van thinks I am."
    "Marcus, I'm being serious. You think that these people don't know they could go to jail? They believe in the cause. You believe in it too. Give them the credit to know what they're getting into. It's not up to you to decide what risks they can or can't take."
    "It's my responsibility because if I tell them to stop, they'll stop."
    "I thought you weren't the leader?"
    "I'm not, of course I'm not. But I can't help it if they look to me for guidance. And so long as they do, I have a responsibility to help them stay safe. You see that, right?"
    "All I see is you getting ready to cut and run at the first sign of trouble. I think you're afraid they're going to figure out who you are. I think you're afraid for you ."
    "That's not fair," I said, sitting up, pulling away from her.
    "Really? Who's the guy who nearly had a heart attack when he thought that his secret identity was out?"
    "That was different," I said. "This isn't about me. You know it isn't. Why are you being like this?"
    "Why are you like this?" she said. "Why aren't you willing to be the guy who was brave enough to get all this started?"
    "This isn't brave, it's suicide."
    "Cheap teenage melodrama, M1k3y."
    "Don't call me that!"
    "What, 'M1k3y'? Why not, M1k3y ?"
    I put my shoes on. I picked up my bag. I walked home.

    > Why I'm not jamming
    > I won't tell anyone else what to do, because I'm not anyone's leader, no matter what Fox News thinks.
    > But I am going to tell you what I plan on doing. If you think that's the right thing to do, maybe you'll do it too.
    > I'm not jamming. Not this week. Maybe not next. It's not because I'm scared. It's because I'm smart enough to know that I'm better free than in prison. They figured out how to stop our tactic, so we need to come up with a new tactic. I don't care what the tactic is, but I want it to work. It's stupid to get arrested. It's only jamming if you get away with it.
    > There's another reason not to jam. If you get caught, they might use you to catch your friends, and their friends, and their friends. They might bust your friends even if they're not on Xnet, because the DHS is like a maddened bull and they don't exactly worry if they've got the right guy.
    > I'm not telling you what to do.
    > But the DHS is dumb and we're smart. Jamming proves that they can't fight terrorism because it proves that they can't even stop a bunch of kids. If you get caught, it makes them look like they're smarter than us.
    > THEY AREN'T SMARTER THAN US! We are smarter than them. Let's be smart. Let's figure out how to jam them, no matter how many goons they put on the streets of our city.
    I posted it. I went to bed.
    I missed Ange.

    Ange and I didn't speak for the next four days, including the weekend, and then it was time to go back to school. I'd almost called her a million times, written a thousand unsent emails and IMs.
    Now I was back in Social Studies class, and Mrs Andersen greeted me