Free Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis Page B

feel the hair on my arms prickling as my stomach tightens with dread.“Don’t go screaming at him, Tali. You don’t know what those people can do.”
    Mare sighs. “Miss Talitha, put on your seat belt, will you please,” she says calmly. “A lady does not
shout
at strangers, no matter how piss-poor their driving skills.”
    Tali says something particularly unladylike and slouches sullenly.
    “And, Octavia,” my grandmother adds after a moment, “for your information, the red Saint Andrew’s cross on a field of white is the state flag of
Alabama
, not the Confederate flag.”
    I shrug.
Your point?
    “Folks mistake the state flag for the Confederate flag since we had a narrow-minded governor of Alabama who ran the Confederate up the pole at the capitol for years, but the Confederate flag is actually a blue Saint Andrew’s cross with white stars on a red field.”
    “Okay, so it was the wrong flag. Whatever,” I say, bumping my foot against the door. We’re not even in Alabama, and the truck is long gone. I’m embarrassed to have been so scared, and I wish Mare hadn’t decided I need a history lesson right now.
    “So, tell me,” Mare goes on, “if this fool driving
was
flying a Confederate flag, how would that make a difference with Tali hollering out the window at him?”
    “Well, duh,” I say before I can stop and think it through. “People who fly that flag are skinhead neo-Nazis and white supremacists.”
    Mare’s penciled-in brows are high, thin arcs. “
All
of them? Really?”
    I know what Mare is objecting to, and I scowl. “Fine. Some of them,” I say. “
A lot
of them.”
    “And?” Mare continues to peer at me from over her sun-glasses.
    “And what?”
    “How does that make a difference to your sister?”
    “It doesn’t,” Tali interrupts angrily. “Anybody who drives like that—”
    “Well, it should.” I bite my bottom lip. “People have to be … careful.”
    Mare looks at me and nods slowly. “I see.”
    For a while, we drive in silence, just letting the music from Tali’s CD slide between us and allowing our heartbeats to slow. I have slouched back and have just leaned my foot against the glove compartment when Mare speaks again.
    “Octavia …”
    I quickly straighten. “Huh?”
    Mare sighs, and I change my response. “Yes?”
    “Do you know anything about Claudette Colvin?”
    “Who?” I ask, thinking she’s another character from Mare’s history.
    “Oh, I’ve heard of Claudette Colvin,” Tali volunteers. “She’s the girl who wouldn’t give up her bus seat in Alabama—before Rosa Parks.”
    Mare glances at me, and I shrug. “Well, I’ve heard of her now. What about her?”
    My grandmother looks at me over the frame of her sun-glasses. “She was fifteen, the same as you are, but she wasn’t about to let anyone push her around.”
    I thump my foot against the door, wishing that Mare would come to the point.
    “The people who dragged her kicking and screaming off of that bus certainly were what you could call white supremacists,” Mare continues. “She had to have known that something was going to happen if she kept sitting where she wasn’t wanted. But she stayed seated,” Mare goes on, flicking a glance over her left shoulder and smoothly changing lanes. “Sometimes you just have to act on the strength of your convictions, no matter what someone else might think.”
    I curl my toes in my sandals. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Skinheads, neo-Nazis, white supremacists—they believe what they please, but don’t let that change
you.”
    I open my mouth, but Mare keeps going. “Granted, I’d better not catch you
ever
rolling down your window and shouting like you don’t have some kind of common sense, but you can’t let people control how you act. Don’t let them make you afraid.”
    “I’m not afraid,” I insist. “I just don’t want to get killed because stupid Tali gets all road-rage-y and yells at some skinhead.”
    “Shut