CHAPTER 11
1292 Words
CHAPTER 11
She arrived at the student union a few minutes early and made her way to a table in the back where she and Reuben could enjoy some seclusion. She avoided making eye contact with anyone. Why were they all staring at her? How many of them had seen the video clip? Did they recognize her? She opened her used copy of My Side of the Mountain and wondered what it would feel like to run away into the wilderness like Sam Gribley so she could live on her own. Completely alone.
Things had been going so well lately. The panic attacks were finally under control. She had made it through the first half of the semester without any major drama. She was one of the few first-years on campus lucky enough to get along with her roommate. She and Willow had almost nothing in common besides mutual respect, but apparently that was enough for the mismatched pair.
Classes were going well. Even her parents had stopped hovering over her from ten thousand miles away in Yanji. Her mom didn’t cry anymore when they talked on the phone, lamenting that her little girl was so far from home. For a short time, life had been good. Really good. And of course, there was Reuben. Always so kind and encouraging. Such an important part of her first year at Harvard. As excited as she was to go back home to Yanji at the end of the semester, she hated the idea of going all summer without seeing him. She had always imagined romance like what happened to Marius and Cosette in Les Miserables, when two people look at each other across the way, their hearts fluttering, and in that moment they both know they were meant for each other. Her relationship with Reuben, by contrast, had grown slowly. Organically. Whatever they had, be it a friendship or something deeper, it had sneaked up on them quietly while neither one was looking. Was it God who’d brought them together? If it was, then why couldn’t he have kept them away from Officer Burgess last night? Why couldn’t he let them go to Aida together, let the music surround them, let the love story enfold them? Who knew what would have happened next?
“To know what would have happened, child?” Kennedy could almost hear Aslan’s voice in her head. “No. Nobody is ever told that.”
She shut her book. No use studying My Side of the Mountain when her brain was still stuck in the Narnia world. It was just as well. Reuben was coming toward her wearing a tired smile. His step was slower, too.
“Good morning.” She eyed his tray of food.
He slipped into the seat across from her. “Hey. Aren’t you eating?”
“I’m not that hungry.” Kennedy forced a cheerful tone. “How’s your head today?”
He scooped his scrambled eggs up with his fork. She was glad to see him devour his first bite with his usual zeal. “Nothing to worry about.” It didn’t really answer her question.
She nodded toward her book. “Have you caught up on your reading?”
“I was a little busy last night,” he muttered.
Kennedy would have liked to get herself some food, anything to relieve this awkward tension, but she was too nervous to eat. Maybe she should have asked Willow for more information about that protest. What would Dominic think? It wasn’t as though she and Reuben had anything to do with it, but would the police suspect they were involved? Would the chief retaliate like Dominic predicted?
There were so many things she wanted to talk to Reuben about. Not just the protest. Not just the visit from Dominic at her dorm where he all but threatened her into silence. There was so much more they needed to discuss. Like Reuben’s aloof behavior. Was he angry about what they went through, or was there more to it? What did Dominic mean when he said that Reuben had a secret reason to keep their story from the press? How was Kennedy supposed to react to all this confusion?
“I got a visit from the police last night,” Reuben said through a mouthful of sourdough toast.
She lifted her gaze. Tried to read his face. “What did they say?”
“I was so tired, I hardly remember any of it.”
Slowly, the tension she had felt between them lifted, like a cloud of condensation slowly dispersing. She eyed the French toast and strawberry sauce on his plate. Maybe she could find her appetite after all. She also found the courage to ask, “Do you think we should tell someone what happened? File a complaint or something?”
Reuben took a sip of his Coke. She was glad that he at least appeared to consider her question. He swirled his straw around in his cup, staring at the ice shavings and the carbonated bubbles floating to the surface. “We have a saying back home. When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.”
Kennedy appreciated the proverb but wasn’t sure why he would bring it up now. “So are you and I the elephants or the grass?”
Neither of them laughed.
“I love my home.” Reuben wiped his mouth with a napkin before attacking his biscuits and gravy. “But we’ve got some messed up politics. Tribal tensions that go back to colonial times and even earlier. I’m not saying everyone’s corrupted by it. We’ve got our Martin Luther Kings and our Gandhis. But it’s not like in America. Here, you go to a protest or a march, and you assume that makes you some hero. You wave the banner, and then you go home without worrying about your house getting burned down or your family getting death threats. But that’s not how I grew up. That policeman we met last night would fit right into Nairobi, especially during election times. I look at people here in America, and I just see a bunch of the world’s most privileged kids wasting time and chanting in their picket lines.” He finished off his cup of Coke before starting on his second one. “Maybe it’s harder for you, being an American. Maybe it’s harder for you to admit the corruption. But for me, that’s just a fact of life.”
Kennedy didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t the conversation she expected to have. Was this what Reuben had told Dominic last night? Was that why Dominic had pressured her so strongly to keep her complaints to herself, for Reuben’s sake if nothing else? It still didn’t explain what the elephants had to do with anything. Was Reuben saying that regular folks like the two of them were the grass, helpless to stand up against raging elephants? That instead of wasting their energy trying to stop a fight, they should just get themselves out of the way in the name of personal safety or comfort?
“So you want to pretend like last night never happened?” Kennedy stared as Reuben bit into a greasy sausage patty, and her appetite waned just as quickly as it had perked up a few minutes earlier.
“Yes, last night happened. It was wrong.” Reuben let out a little chuckle and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “In fact, there was one point that I thought I might actually wet my pants.”
It really wasn’t all that funny, but Kennedy found herself smiling. This was the Reuben she knew. This was the Reuben she had grown so close to this year.
He smothered his hash browns in ketchup. “Last night’s probably going to be something we remember for the rest of our lives. But things happen, and then you move on.”
Kennedy eyed his bowl of Froot Loops and tried to surreptitiously gauge his reaction. “Did you know they’re staging a protest today? My roommate’s on her way over now.”
Reuben smiled. His eyes were soft. “Yeah, that sounds like something she’d do.”
Another shared laugh.
“So what now?” Kennedy’s insides quivered as she asked the question. “We just hope no one identifies us from that tape?”
Reuben slurped the rest of his second cup of Coke. “I guess so.”
“And what if they do?”
He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Let’s just pray they don’t.”
- Writer
