CHAPTER 28
1020 Words
CHAPTER 28
By the time Kennedy got off the T and arrived back to campus, she had ignored calls from Carl and Sandy as well as three other numbers she didn’t recognize before she turned her phone off.
As she walked to her dorm, she felt the stares of the students around her. Did they know? Could they guess?
It didn’t make sense. Reuben with HIV? AIDS was one of those things like malaria — you learned about it, you knew it was bad, but you never expected someone you knew to actually have it.
She thought back to his brooding silences in spite of his otherwise cheerful, steady mood. His reluctance to take their story to the police department or the media. Had he known? Had he guessed the press would dig into his background?
Why hadn’t he told her? Or had he tried? Was that the secret? It didn’t have anything to do with Kennedy or any sort of romantic feelings at all. It was about his diagnosis.
She realized with irony that she wasn’t suffering from even a hint of anxiety. No clammy hands. No racing pulse. No constricting lungs. Just a heaviness, as if someone had replaced her bone marrow with molten lead. Everything seemed to ache, but she wasn’t in pain anywhere.
HIV positive? How had he gotten it? How long had he known? Would things change now that the truth was out? Wouldn’t they have to?
It wasn’t fair. HIV didn’t impact people like Reuben. Did it?
She thought back to all her interactions with him in the lab. She couldn’t have gotten herself contaminated. It wasn’t like catching a cold or anything.
She glanced at her silenced phone, wishing it weren’t the middle of the night in Yanji. Who could she talk to about this? Who could she turn to? She had already spent too much time at the Lindgrens’ this weekend. Besides, Carl had tried to warn her before she appeared on that stupid interview in the first place. Why hadn’t she listened to him?
And what about Dominic the chaplain? Hadn’t he said Reuben had his reasons for wanting to avoid public scrutiny? Had Reuben told him — Dominic, a perfect stranger — before he told his best friend? Had Dominic bewitched him with his powerful prayers as well?
She thought back over every conversation with Reuben, every trip off campus, every late night in the library, every meal together in the student union. Had he ever hinted? Ever come close to telling the truth?
Did she even know him anymore?
She reached her dorm and found her room empty. Good. She didn’t have the energy to deal with Willow. She didn’t even have the energy to deal with her own chaotic emotions. Why couldn’t God have invented a Pensieve like in the J. K. Rowling books, a bowl she could dump her thoughts into and pull them out one by one to examine them until they were organized? Under control.
She slumped onto her bed. Would she ever feel joy again? They had moved Reuben’s arraignment to this afternoon. He could be home by tonight. They could spend tomorrow working on their lab and hand it in first thing Monday. But would it ever be the same? Would it ever feel like it had before?
She squeezed silent tears from the corners of her eyes. Why hadn’t he told her? And what would happen now?
The door opened slowly, and Kennedy wished she had gotten herself under the blankets. If she had to pretend to be asleep, she’d at least rather be comfortable.
“Hey.” Willow’s greeting sounded like an apology. “You ok?”
In all the history of the world, had a dumber question ever been asked? Or was it possible Willow didn’t know? Possible she hadn’t heard.
“I thought you’d be down at the courthouse. Didn’t you get my text? The arraignment’s in less than an hour.”
“I’m not going,” Kennedy mumbled.
Willow loosened her scarf and sat on the edge of Kennedy’s bed. “Did something happen?”
“Reuben has AIDS.” Never in her entire life had Kennedy expected to string those three words together. Why did God create the world to be so full of suffering? So full of horror?
“What?”
“Well, he’s got HIV at least.”
“How do you know? Did he tell you?”
“It was on the news.” She didn’t have the heart to tell Willow about the interview. She wished she could wrap herself up like the Very Hungry Caterpillar in its chrysalis and hide out there until she was ready to face the world with wings.
With hope.
With beauty.
Willow rubbed Kennedy’s back. “Are you worried? Did you forget to use condoms or anything?”
Kennedy shook her head, no longer surprised at Willow’s ingrained belief that it was impossible to be both a college student and a virgin at the same time.
“Well, that’s something to be thankful for.” She got up. “Want some tea?”
No. She didn’t want anything. Except maybe a heavy dose of barbiturates so she could put herself into a medically induced coma until she was thirty and had life figured out.
Willow slipped on some of her hand-designed bangle bracelets. “I’m really sorry. For both of you.”
Kennedy clenched her jaw shut. If Willow kept talking, she’d have to scream to drown the sound out.
“I really think you should come to the arraignment.” Willow squirted some mousse into her palm and scrunched it through her hair. “He’s going to get released, you know.”
Kennedy figured that Willow was right. But what if he didn’t? What if there was another riot? Another hurt kid? No, a world where God allowed those kinds of tragedies to run rampant wasn’t a kind of world Kennedy wanted to live in anymore.
She held her breath, slightly frightened by the intensity of her emotions. Should she call the campus psychologist? Or maybe she was overreacting. It was normal to feel this way. Who wouldn’t be a little down after everything Kennedy’d been through?
Willow slipped on her high-heeled black boots. All Kennedy could think of was how hard it would be for Willow to run away if more violence broke out at the courthouse.
“I’m gonna get my car. If you change your mind in the next few minutes, call me and I’ll swing by and pick you up.”
Kennedy was too exhausted to say thank you and nodded instead.
“It’s going to be all right.” Willow sounded so convinced. Maybe that’s why she was the theater major. “Everything will work itself out in the end.”
- Writer
