During the Second Civil War, a new U.S. political party called the Family Protection Movement established The Divide, which separates Normal people from those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Seventeen-year old Serenity Blackwater lives in the normal Midwestern town of Mapleville, but she is not normal. She hacks into an illegal gay chat room and meets Dawn, a lesbian who lives in a gay community less than a mile away. Serenity discovers normal people can bribe their way inside the walls and decides to go, both to meet Dawn and check out what may be her future home. Dawn is even more beautiful than Serenity hoped, and the two soon become a couple. But Serenity only has a few months before she must take the Normal Verification Test, and then she’ll be separated from her family forever. So she joins the Human Equality Organization, an underground group working to end The Divide. Dawn thinks the rebellion is too dangerous, and since Dawn’s ex-girlfriend Malaki is also a member, Serenity doesn’t tell Dawn about her involvement. Serenity reveals to the HEO that her parents are leading a campaign to organize attacks on all Gay Communities. With her help, the HEO creates Project Jericho, in which all Gay Communities walls will implode at once. But after too many delays, and when Dawn discovers Serenity has been spending more time with Malaki than her, Serenity knows she has to start the revolution herself. She heads to D.C. to contact a group of senators secretly against The Divide ... or straight into a trap set by the Family Protection Movement.

Uprising

I knew they also had Lifestyle Chips implanted near the ink. The chips contained all their personal information and tracked their whereabouts. That was what should have beeped when the guard scanned my arm.


“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Paul asked.


“Oh,” he said. “Well, I’ll leave you two girls to talk.”


“You could have been killed!” Dawn said sternly, sitting on a chair next to mine. Then she got that mischievous grin on her face, familiar to me now from pictures and video, but even more charismatic in person. “I’m still glad you came over.”


I smiled. “Me too.” I forced myself to look at Dawn boldly, instead of sneaking glances like I usually did whenever I saw a cute girl. I tried to figure out where the gold ended and the brown began in her eyes.


“Do you always wear clothes like that?” Dawn asked, wide-eyed.


I looked down at myself and laughed. “I forgot I was in my waitress uniform.”


Chapter 10