Suzie Troll's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Suzie stood outside the booth and watched the crew watch her. The red light was off. Mic was gone. On the console, a torn page lay where his journal had been. She picked it up. It was a address scrawled in his hand, and one word underlined twice: tonight. Mollie read it over her shoulder. The punk club across town. Mic's old stomping ground. He would have a stage, a mic, and a room full of people ready to believe the loudest voice. Suzie's stomach went cold. He would speak first, and she would spend a year cleaning it up. She drove. Mollie rode shotgun. Two blocks from the club, traffic stopped. People were standing in the street. Someone had nailed a hand-painted board to a post: DOWN WITH MIC. Then another. Then a row of them, taped to windows and pressed into fists. A woman stepped off the curb and put a hand on Suzie's hood. Orange hair. Six months pregnant. She didn't knock. She just waited until Suzie rolled the window down. "I'm Amber," she said. "He owes me. He owes you more." She held up a folded newspaper. The headline screamed about Suzie's uncle. Lies, top to bottom. "He printed a thousand. He's handing them out at the door right now. Trying to sell them. Trying to sell me a story too." Suzie took the paper. Amber's hand stayed on the hood a second longer. "I loved him," Amber said, quieter. "I'm not asking you to care. I'm asking if you're listening." Suzie nodded. She was. Down the block, a kid ripped a copy of the paper in half and dropped it. Then another. The crowd wasn't buying. The signs kept going up. Suzie got out. She walked past the protest boards, past the torn papers in the gutter, straight to the club door. She didn't go in to fight him. She went in to stand where he was standing and tell the room what was already on her phone — the recording, the names, the truth. By the time she reached the stage, Mic was talking to an empty half of the room. The other half had already turned to look at her. He had moved first. He had lost anyway.