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

During another brief period awake, a nurse pulls curtains around me to bathe me. My hair is such a lost cause I ask her to cut most of it off rather than bother trying to clean out all the blood, dirt, and knots.


When the curtains are removed I realize Dawn is still in the bed beside me, eating from a tray, her arm stitched up. She is talking to Max and Paul.


A nurse brings a tray of food to me, and I eat three bites before falling asleep again.


It must be a couple more days before I manage to stay awake longer than a few minutes. Dawn is gone now, but my mom stays by my side almost the whole time, sleeping in an extra bed and braiding my sparse hair tightly against my scalp to encourage its’ healthy re-growth. There are still two people in the room besides me: Malaki’s mom and the other person I’ve never seen, but they now have curtains around their beds all the time.


Chapter 59