Chapter 5: Building the Army

The high school auditorium was booked solid for the next three months.

"Sports events, graduation planning, budget meetings," the secretary explained apologetically. "Nothing available until December."

December was four months away. Four months was too long. People would lose interest. The plant would have time to prepare their counterattack. Amanda had been right—we needed to move fast.

"What about the old movie theater?" Grace suggested as we sat in Beth's living room that evening, surrounded by notebooks and legal documents. "The Starlight's been closed for two years, but the building's still standing."

"No electricity," Beth pointed out. "No heat. Probably rats."

"We could get generators," I said, warming to the idea. "Clean it up ourselves. Make it a symbol—bringing life back to something they let die."

Amanda looked up from her laptop. "I like it. Shows we're not asking permission anymore. We're taking action."

It took us a week to track down the building's owner—a elderly man named Frank Morrison who'd moved to Florida after the theater went bankrupt. When I called him, his voice was bitter.

"That place was my father's dream," he told me. "Forty years he ran movies there. Then the multiplex opened at the mall, and people stopped coming downtown. Now the whole district's dying, just like everything else in that town."

"We want to bring it back to life," I said. "Just for one night. To give people a chance to speak their truth."

Frank was quiet for so long I thought he'd hung up. Then: "You're the girl stirring up trouble about the chemical plant?"

My heart sank. "Yes sir."

"Good. It's about damn time someone did. You can use the theater for free, but you'll need to clean it up yourselves. And if anyone asks, you didn't get permission from me."

The Starlight Theater was worse than we'd expected. Fifty years of neglect had left the roof leaking, the carpet moldy, and the seats torn. Pigeons had nested in the balcony. The old movie screen was stained and sagging.

But the bones were good. High ceilings, good acoustics, and seats for three hundred people.

"It'll take an army to clean this up," Beth said, standing in the aisle with her hands on her hips.

"Then we'll build an army," I replied.

Grace posted about the cleanup on social media, reaching out to college students, environmental groups, and church organizations. I went door-to-door in the neighborhoods most affected by the plant, explaining our plans and asking for help.

The response surprised me. People I'd never spoken to showed up with cleaning supplies and work gloves. Mrs. Anderson came with her husband—the first time he'd participated in anything related to our cause. Tommy stayed home with his grandmother, but he'd drawn us a picture of the theater with "TELL THE TRUTH" written in crayon across the marquee.

Dr. Martinez brought his teenage sons. Grace's college friends drove down from Columbus. Even Amanda rolled up her sleeves, her designer clothes replaced by jeans and an old t-shirt.

But it was Beth who became our general, organizing work crews and delegating tasks with the efficiency of someone used to managing chaos. She'd taken time off from the hospital—unpaid leave she couldn't afford—to focus on the cause.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked her as we scrubbed years of grime off the theater seats. "You could get in trouble at work. You have a daughter to think about."

Beth paused in her scrubbing. "My daughter is eight years old. She's already using an inhaler twice a day, and her doctor can't explain why. That's why I'm doing this."

By the end of the week, the theater was transformed. The floors were clean, the seats repaired, and Grace had rigged up a sound system using equipment borrowed from the university. We'd hung banners reading "COMMUNITY HEALTH FORUM" and set up tables for registration and information packets.

But our biggest breakthrough came when Detective Lisa Park showed up on Friday night.

I was alone in the theater, doing a final check of the microphones, when I heard footsteps in the lobby. My heart jumped—we'd been worried about sabotage, about the plant sending someone to damage our preparations.

Instead, I found a woman in her forties, wearing civilian clothes but carrying herself with the authority of law enforcement.

"Sarah Mitchell?" she asked.

"Yes."

She pulled out a badge. "Detective Lisa Park, Millbrook Police. I need to talk to you."

My first instinct was to run. Had they found some legal way to shut us down? Was I being arrested?

"Am I in trouble?" I asked.

Detective Park looked around the restored theater, taking in our banners and information displays. "That depends. Are you planning to incite violence at this meeting?"

"No. We're planning to tell the truth."

"Good." She closed her badge wallet. "Because I'm here to help you do it."

I stared at her. "You're what?"

"I've been a cop in this town for fifteen years," she said. "I've watched the cancer rates climb. I've responded to emergency calls at houses near the plant. I've written reports that disappear into filing cabinets." Her voice was tight with controlled anger. "I became a police officer to protect people. But it's hard to protect them from the company that pays half the town's salaries."

"So why help us now?"

Detective Park pulled out her phone and showed me a photo of a little girl, maybe six years old, with bright eyes and pigtails.

"My niece Emma. She was diagnosed with leukemia last month. She lives two blocks from Mill Creek." Her voice cracked slightly. "The doctors say it's treatable, but she's six years old. She should be worried about losing teeth, not losing her hair to chemotherapy."

I felt that familiar anger building in my chest, but this time it wasn't just for Mom or myself. It was for Emma, for Tommy Anderson, for all the children who were paying the price for adults' silence.

"What kind of help?" I asked.

"Information. Documentation. Police reports that might have been overlooked." She paused. "And security for your meeting. Off the record, but present."

The night before our town hall meeting, I couldn't sleep. I walked through the empty theater one last time, checking that everything was ready. Three hundred chairs arranged in neat rows. Registration tables with volunteer sign-up sheets. A poster board covered with photographs—Mom's smiling face next to dozens of other neighbors who'd died too young.

Grace had created a timeline showing the plant's expansion alongside rising illness rates. Amanda had prepared legal documents outlining environmental violations. Dr. Martinez had compiled health statistics that would make any reasonable person demand immediate action.

But would anyone come? And if they did, would they listen?

I sat in the front row, looking up at the old movie screen where Grace had hung a banner reading "FOR THOSE WHO CAN NO LONGER SPEAK." In a few hours, this space would either be filled with voices demanding justice or empty like so many other attempts to challenge the powerful.

My phone buzzed with a text from Beth: "Just drove past the theater. There are people waiting outside. It's only 9 PM and the meeting's not until tomorrow night."

I smiled in the darkness. Maybe we'd built something bigger than I'd imagined. Maybe all those people who'd been keeping quiet were finally ready to speak.

The revolution was starting, and it was starting right here in a broken-down movie theater in a dying town. Just like Mom always said—the truth doesn't care if it's convenient. It just is.

Tomorrow night, the truth would have its moment in the spotlight.