The clip made the rounds fast—protesters being cuffed, pushed into vans. My phone buzzed before I could even finish my sandwich. Text from my aunt: “Is that Zivah??”

It was.

Sweaty, hair stuck to her face, wrists zip-tied. But what made my chest go hollow wasn’t the sirens or the shouting. It was the sweatshirt an officer was holding—gray, frayed at the cuffs, tiny bleach stain on the left sleeve.

It was my sweatshirt.

The one I lost last year. The one that went missing the same week Zivah stayed over “just to get out of the house.”

I rewound the clip. Froze it. Zoomed.

And that’s when I saw what was scrawled inside the hood lining in black ink:
Tues 9PM – L.B.

I didn’t write that.

She was supposed to be “just organizing snacks” for her campus activist group. She told her mom it was “a voter reg thing.”

But I started searching. Hashtags. Flyers. Photo threads. That’s how I found it:
A Reddit post titled “Leak: Drop Locations + Burner Codes” with her username listed under GROUP C: BACKLINE RIDERS.

I clicked the folder link. Password protected.

Then my phone buzzed again. Unknown number.
“Your name’s in the doc too. You want it down?”

I froze. I didn’t know whether to laugh or call the cops. Was this some kind of mistake? A prank?

I texted back:
“Who is this?”

Three dots. Then:
“You were tagged on one of the backlogs. You shared a location pic last March, remember?”

My stomach dropped. I had posted something from the empty factory near Lyndale Bridge. I’d captioned it: “ghost town vibes.” Never imagined anyone actually used it for anything shady.

I texted again:
“I didn’t know. I wasn’t part of anything.”

Another pause.
“I can delete it. But I need something in return.”

I didn’t answer.

Instead, I opened a new tab. Searched Zivah + protest. More clips were popping up. Threads speculating who she was. Someone found her LinkedIn. Others were sharing a Google Drive with photos of the arrested. Some of them had been charged with vandalism. Others with “civil disruption.”

I knew Zivah was intense. Passionate. But this was something else.

Then a new message came in.
“Don’t trust everyone in her group. One of them’s already flipped.”

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Because deep down, I wasn’t just scared for Zivah. I was scared for me.

She’d slept on our couch. She’d borrowed my laptop. Used our printer. Left behind flyers and USB sticks. And now my name was floating in a folder tied to “GROUP C.”

I called her mom. My aunt picked up mid-cry.

“They won’t tell me anything,” she sobbed. “Just that she’s being held for questioning. What happened? You’ve seen her, right?”

I lied.
“Yeah. Just now. She looked okay.”

Then I hung up and opened the Reddit folder again. The password field blinked back at me.

I typed in: Tues9PMLB
Access granted.

The folder had six files. Three were spreadsheets. One was a map with pins and weird color codes. Another was a scanned ID. The last one was a video file.

I clicked the video.

It was a dark room. Just a voice. A girl’s voice.

“If you’re watching this, I probably got caught. Or worse, one of us did.”

My throat tightened.

Zivah kept talking.

“I didn’t mean for anyone else to get involved. Not like this. If your name’s on the list, it doesn’t mean you’re guilty. It just means you were near enough. Close enough. And I’m sorry.”

I shut the laptop. I couldn’t breathe.

The sweatshirt. The code in the hood. The burner codes.

She’d dragged me into something, even if by accident.

I grabbed my keys and drove to her dorm. I still had her spare key from last summer when she house-sat for me.

Her room was a disaster. Posters half-torn. A whiteboard covered in dates and arrows. In the trash, I found a ziplock bag with SIM cards. A phone without a back cover. A notebook labeled “AGIT-PROP” in bold marker.

I flipped through the pages.

Flyer drafts. Slogans. Meeting notes. Some of it was idealistic. But some crossed a line. Like the page that read:
“Diversion Strategy – Lyndale 9PM – burn signal = move west.”

Was that the night from the video?

I took photos of everything. Then I paused at one torn piece of paper shoved between her mattress and wall.

It just had three words.

Don’t trust Rafi.

I blinked. Rafi was her ex. Or, I thought, ex. He was older, lived in a warehouse he claimed was a “co-op art space.” He used to rant about surveillance and corporate media. I met him once—he offered me tea, then lectured me for twenty minutes on “ethical sabotage.”

And now his name was in her secret notebook under a warning.

I left the dorm with a pit in my stomach.

By the time I got home, the unknown number had texted again.

“Your cousin made mistakes. Don’t make the same ones.”

I replied.

“Why are you warning me?”

No response.

Just a link.

I clicked it.

It was a livestream. A press conference.

A stern-faced man in a gray suit stood at the podium. FBI seal behind him.

“Today we arrested nine individuals connected to a coordinated campaign targeting critical infrastructure. Evidence suggests the use of online platforms for organizing. We are reviewing data from linked devices. If you or someone you know was involved, we urge you to come forward voluntarily.”

Nine.

Zivah was one of them.

But who were the other eight?

I searched again. Found a blog post from a campus reporter. It listed names. Ages.

One of them was Rafi.

I exhaled.

Then noticed something strange.

Next to Rafi’s name, someone had commented:
“Didn’t he leak the doc himself? Playing both sides?”

I messaged the commenter. Waited.

An hour later, I got a reply.

“He flipped. Gave up the folder. Probably trying to cut a deal.”

My hands clenched.

Zivah had written Don’t trust Rafi for a reason. She knew.

But if he flipped, and he gave them everything, then he gave them me, too.

I had two choices. Pretend I never opened the folder. Hope my name was too minor to matter. Or… come clean.

The thought made me sick.

I needed someone to talk to. Someone outside all this.

So I called Raj.

Raj wasn’t involved in anything. Just a TA I met at a student mixer last year. Kind. Quiet. Thoughtful.

I hadn’t spoken to him in months.

But when he picked up, I almost cried.

“I think I’m in trouble,” I said.

He listened. Didn’t interrupt once.

When I finished, he asked just one question.

“Did you do anything?”

“No,” I whispered. “I just… I was near things.”

“Then you need to prove that. Before someone else defines your story.”

He was right.

So I wrote it all down. Everything I remembered. The sweatshirt. The timeline. The post I made. The Reddit folder. The burner message.

Then I saved it as a PDF and sent it to a lawyer listed on one of those “know your rights” sites.

Three days later, she called.

“I’m not gonna lie,” she said. “This could get messy. But it’s good you reached out first.”

Zivah was still being held. I couldn’t visit her yet, but the lawyer said they were working on a release.

A week passed. I kept my head down. Stopped scrolling. Deleted old posts.

Then I got a knock on my door.

Zivah.

Hair tied back, clothes wrinkled, eyes hollow.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

I nodded.

She sat on the couch, the same one she’d slept on last year.

“I didn’t mean to drag you in,” she said softly. “But I was scared. And stupid. And I trusted the wrong people.”

“Rafi?”

She nodded.

“I thought he was loyal. He was the one who said we needed ‘evidence redundancy’—so we made that folder. He knew the password. He promised he’d protect it.”

I felt anger and relief all at once.

“But you didn’t even tell me,” I said. “You just let me be part of it by accident.”

“I know,” she whispered. “That’s on me.”

We sat in silence.

Then she reached into her bag and pulled out the sweatshirt.

My old one.

“I kept it because it reminded me of you,” she said. “Of being safe.”

I took it. The fabric was thinner now. But familiar.

We talked for hours that night. About mistakes. About fear. About trying to fight for something without becoming the very thing you hate.

Eventually, she said she might plead down to a lesser charge. Community service, maybe. She was cooperating. But not flipping. Not like Rafi.

And me?

My name got cleared. I wasn’t charged. But I’d learned something important.

About the ripple effects of silence. Of not asking questions. Of lending things—sweatshirts, laptops, even trust—without understanding what they’d be used for.

And about how the lines between right and wrong aren’t always drawn with markers. Sometimes, they’re written in ink inside a hoodie. Or tucked inside a notebook no one was supposed to find.

Zivah and I grew closer after that.

Not because everything was perfect.

But because we’d finally told each other the truth.

And in the end, that was the only thing that really protected us.

Life lesson?

Speak up before someone else writes your name in their story. And if you’ve made a mistake—own it before it owns you.

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