Kyrie McCauley - We Can Be Heroes

For girls who are told that theyre too much for this world.Too loud, too opinionated, too sensitive, too angry.You are exactly the right amount for the right people.Find them and let them love all too much of you.And for Andrew, Rowan & Theo.Thank you for loving all too much of me.MERIT LOGAN: Welcome, listeners, to We Can Be Heroes, a podcast made for survivors of violence in the tradition of the Take Back the Night rallies that began in the 1970s and continue to this day. Im your host, Merit Logan. This season, we will be aiming our lens at gun violence as it relates to gender-based violence. Really, though, our series begins with the story of one young woman, Cassandra Queen. [Audio clip] 911 Dispatcher: 911. Whats your emergency? Caller: Someone has a gun. 911 Dispatcher: Can you tell me where you are calling from? Caller: The high school. 911 Dispatcher: Can you tell me where you are calling from? Caller: The high school.

Were at school. Theres someone shooting. SHERIFF THOMAS: It was the worst day of my career, bar none. Its the kind of call were all dreading these days. Active shooter. Calls coming from Bell High School.

Our operators got overwhelmed in seconds, with all those kids and their cells. Then the panicked parent calls started coming in, too. MERIT LOGAN: You just heard from the sheriff of Bell, a town that has been called the heart of American gun cultureit happens to be my hometown, and its going to serve as a case study for us to look at gun violence these next few weeks. This is the town where Bell Firearms has been owned and operated from for nearly two hundred years. Bell is also the place where just five months ago, Nicolas Bell, heir to Bell Firearms and fortune, took his fathers guns to school and murdered his ex-girlfriend, seventeen-year-old Cassandra Queen. MERIT: Sheriff Thomas, do you know how many women are shot to death by current or former intimate partners each month in this country? SHERIFF THOMAS: I dont have those statistics in front of MERIT: Okay, fair enough. In your personal knowledge, then, when you train your officers on responding to domestic disputesmainly incidents of domestic violencewhat do you tell them? SHERIFF THOMAS: To never go alone.

Be prepared for that violence to turn on them. Domestics are some of the deadliest calls officers can respond to. MERIT: Yes, they are. That lines up with national data... but you didnt think Cassie was in imminent danger? SHERIFF THOMAS: I had no reason to believe she was in danger. Logan. Logan.

I didnt know Cassandra Queen. Or Nicolas Bell, for that matter. MERIT: But you know his father, Steven Bell. SHERIFF THOMAS: No comment, Ms. Logan. [Long pause] MERIT: Okay, then, can you speak to his access to weapons? SHERIFF THOMAS: Nico? Everyone has access to guns in this town. [Long pause] MERIT: Okay, then, can you speak to his access to weapons? SHERIFF THOMAS: Nico? Everyone has access to guns in this town.

Its not a problem. MERIT: Not a problem? When a girl is dead? SHERIFF THOMAS: Girls are killed every day, Ms. Logan. MERIT: But, Sheriff SHERIFF THOMAS: Its a terrible tragedy, what happened to Cassie Queen MERIT: What did happen to Cassie? Did she come to you for help SHERIFF THOMAS: But its hardly the guns fault. MERIT: Whose fault is it, sir?

TITLE: CASSANDRA LOCATION: THE BILLBOARD ON ROUTE 90 BECK USED TO LIE AWAKE AT night and wish aliens would abduct her. She would fall asleep on the fire escape, watching the night sky.

She was desperate for a break in the smoggy clouds over the city. Eager for a glimpse of the stars. Beck thought that maybe, if she could see the stars, they could see her, too. She used to imagine them beaming her up to their ship. Their lights too bright. Their huge glossy eyes staring at her.

And she would be the one human. The only one in the entire world they were looking for. Theyd comb long fingers through her hair and ask to examine her crooked teeth. They would look past all of the broken parts of her and see one whole and spectacular creature. And in that moment, as she imagined it when she was six, shed be special. Not just here on Earth, but in a cosmic way.

Theyd pick her, not despite being forgotten, but because of it. Who better to explain an entire species than the young it has abandoned? Who better to seek a new home among the stars? A drop of sweat reached her eye and Beck blinked at the sting. When that didnt help, she released one hand from the rusted rung of the ladder she was climbing and wiped her forehead, letting her curling hair catch at the wetness and soak it up. Her other hand slipped on the rung, and she reached back again quickly, steadying her grip on the ladder. Halfway there. And dont look down. And dont look down.

Beck looked down. If there had been another surface to work on, one closer to the ground, Beck would have picked that instead. But Bell only has one billboard on Route 90. And twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, plus one in a leap year, that sign advertises the only thing this town is known for: Bell Firearms. Unless you count Cassie. But no one wants to talk about that.

Beck shifted her backpack, heard the clink of metal on metal as the paint canisters inside fell against each other. When she got to the top she paused, dropping the bag and sitting with her back against the image of the billboard, facing the highway. It was empty. Silent this early in the morning. Beck looked up at the night sky. No clouds. No clouds.

There were a trillion stars above her, and all of a sudden Beck felt six years old again, small and insignificant. Back before Grandpa pulled her into his universe and gave her a soft place to land. Before Cassie lent her a pencil, and a soft smile, on her first day in a new school. Beck felt she was back where she had begun. Sitting on a rusty metal grate, staring at the night sky, wondering if there was somethingor someoneout there waiting for her. Maybe someday theyll come for me. Maybe someday theyll come for me.

And she couldnt help but wonder if Cassie was out there somewhere now, too. Tonights plan was a stupid one, even for Beck. She knew that. She would probably end up arrested, to the surprise of absolutely no one. But the billboard was the last thing you saw leaving Bell, and what was covering it now was a travesty. Beck craned her neck, taking in the familiar sign with its old typeset font.

Bell Firearms, Established 1824. Her mask fit snugly against her face, and she pinched the nose to secure it. That was Grandpas only rule about painting: Be safe. Protect your lungs. Advice that felt like a dagger after his diagnosis. Beck could feel the expanse of darkness at her back.

Her fear of heights was like a hollowness in the balls of her feet. It was the sensation of falling even though she knew she was still standing there, safe, eighteen inches from the edge. Thats the thing about fear, though. You cant convince yourself it doesnt make sense. Its instinct. Its survival.

Cassie should have been more afraid. The thought tugged Becks finger on the paint cans trigger, and she started to cover the Bell advertisement with white paint, until it was just a blank canvas. Then she exchanged one can of paint for another, and in bold black lines she outlined the shape of a jaw, a nose, tracing the darkness of her curling hair. She added a bit of blue for her eyes. A pink smudge of her cheeks. Beck painted her as the Greek prophetess, CassandraCassies namesakewith gold foil leaves feathered in her hair.