Love is the Drug

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “Yeah, we’ve talked,” he says. Whatever else follows is swallowed in the slam of the exit door.

  * * *

  Bird is in religion class, checking the commercial real estate listings on the Washington Post website while occasionally alt-tabbing to make some notes on the Eightfold Path (detachment, enlightenment, she knows she’ll never find either), when the drill bell rings loud enough to make Charlotte shriek. Mrs. Parker sets down her PowerPoint remote, her wandering right eye nearly pointing at her nose in distress.

  “All right, girls, you hear the alarm. Get up, to the door, single file. Remember your face masks! I’m sure this is just a drill, but …”

  The dangling conjunction does more than the bell to get them out of their seats. Bird hastily stuffs her computer in her backpack and then waits for Charlotte, who has to pack away the twenty different colored pens she brings out for each class. Charlotte likes writing her notes, she says it relaxes her and helps her focus. Charlotte has a note from her doctor that gives her extra time during exams — ADD, the note says, though clearly thumbed-over copies of Martha Stewart Weddings and Ebony inspire more concentrated attention. Charlotte knows the going rate of an ounce of jewelry-grade platinum the way an aspiring senator knows the price of a gallon of milk. By the time Charlotte has finished her careful-hasty rearrangements, the front of the line has already filed out of the classroom.

  Mrs. Parker pulls her gray-and-green knit cardigan tightly over her wide belly, though the heat hisses through ancient steam radiators. “Hurry, girls,” she says again, but faintly, and she’s looking out the window to the stream of lower school students across the lawn heading into their basement. Armored cars and tanks clog streets around the school — she remembers seeing tow trucks drag the last of the residential cars away a few days ago. She counts dozens of soldiers and Secret Service agents, alien invaders in rubber gloves and black gas masks.

  “That’s a lot of security for a drill,” Bird says, walking to the window.

  Charlotte gives her a panicked, wide-eyed glance, but Mrs. Parker just sighs and looks, for a moment, older than usual. Behind her, a green-and-gold mandala glows like a halo on the projection screen.

  “The vice president has insisted on maximum security for his daughter, as you can imagine.”

  But there’s something else in the way her fingers grip her elbows. Like she’s just as disturbed by the reflected glare off tinted car windows and tank guns. Is Roosevelt down there, in one of those anonymous boxes?

  “What do they think is going to happen?” She is hardly aware of having spoken aloud, until Mrs. Parker gives her a sharp shake of her head.

  “We’ll see soon enough, Emily. And Charlotte, perhaps you could take this opportunity to work on your extra-credit project.”

  Religion is not Charlotte’s best subject, but Bird suspects that Mrs. Parker mentioned it as a perverse reassurance: The world could not possibly be ending so long as the matron of the senior locker hall hounds you about religion assignments.

  So they hurry to their designated drill rendezvous, the fifties-era bomb shelter in the basement of Nagler. It’s just barely large enough to hold the upper grades of Devonshire and Bradley. A team of gas-masked soldiers guards them in relays. Four tanks idle on the street, two helicopters whir overhead, for what purpose she can’t imagine. Charlotte looks up from her cell as they start down the metal stairs to the basement.

  “It’s a mess down there, but Felice says she’s saved us a spot. She’s with Trevor.”

  “And Paul?” Bird asks, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.

  Charlotte stops abruptly on the step below her and looks up. She reaches, as though to touch Bird’s arm, but draws back when Bird flinches. She hasn’t asked about him since Bird came back. “It’s okay,” Charlotte says quietly. “Felice says he went somewhere with one of the medics.”

  “Okay” is all Bird can trust herself to say.

  On the landing above them, an unmasked soldier glares down and waves his gun. “You girls, hurry —”

  Sirens drown out the rest of his words. Harmonious, simultaneous wails from a dozen different mouths, sweeping across the empty city.

  “What the hell?” she says, but she only knows she spoke from the vibration in her throat.

  “Terror alert!” the soldier shouts into a walkie-talkie. A few others join him up there and they slam the doors shut. Bird would have stood paralyzed with fear and the strangest, bleakest sort of curiosity if Charlotte didn’t push her forward. The shelter opens up at the end of a short, claustrophobic hallway that smells like cockroach bait and lemon-scented floor cleaner.

  It’s a room about the size of a gymnasium, with folding chairs set up in what must have been neat rows. Now, her classmates sit on the floor and against the walls, backpacks disgorged and media devices glowing. It feels like every upperclassman from Devonshire and Bradley turns to look at them when they come bursting through the door. The silence deepens and Bird thinks she ought to be used to notoriety. Charlotte blushes to the roots of her braids.

  From the center of the room, Mrs. Early, Devonshire headmistress, turns her helmet-gray head and raises her eyebrows.

  “Thanks for joining us, ladies. Next time, I expect you all to respond to our early-warning bell promptly and quietly. The situation is too serious for anything else.”

  Mrs. Early has dismissed them, but they still don’t have a place to sit. The floor is packed, and Charlotte finally sees Felice fluttering her fingers from the far back of the hall. They’re still climbing over chairs and bodies when Mrs. Early resumes her speech.

  “I want you all to understand that this is just a precaution. We have no word of any actual attack, but in this environment we must take these threats seriously, and that’s why you’re down here until we get the all clear. I want you all to take the opportunity to study, not socialize. The noise should be kept to a minimum.”

  The ensuing rush of conversation echoes in the musty shelter like an avalanche. Charlotte and Felice start talking over each other and Bird, who normally would try to pretend like she’s part of the conversation, sighs and looks around. Marella sits by herself in a corner of the room, near some juniors. She catches Bird’s eye and smiles slightly. Bird remembers what Marella said that awful day Bird came back to school: Just when I thought I’d escape. Marella doesn’t belong here, Bird knows. She should be in Paris or Berlin, smoking in a café and arguing about art and the sort of radical politics that Coffee likes. Bird tried to belong, for a long time she felt like she almost did. Now she feels her grown-out roots and wonders how she ever fooled herself. Nearby, she hears Coffee’s name at least three times, and tries not to jump. Trevor is telling a wide-eyed Charlotte about anthrax spores and fatality rates — he glances at Bird while he speaks, a look heavy with indecipherable meaning. What could he tell her about that party, if not for his loyalty to Paul? She closes her eyes, torn between screaming and sleeping.

  She’s saved from either by Roosevelt.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” says a man she recognizes after a beat as the headmaster of Bradley Hall. “We have someone from the security services who are helping us out who would like to speak to you for a moment. Please give him your full attention.”

  But Bird’s already noticed Roosevelt, and Roosevelt has sure as hell already noticed her, though he hides the smile he gives her inside a broad one directed at the group of wary, wide-eyed teenagers.

  “As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, we’re looking for one of your classmates, Alonso Oliveira.”

  Bird has braced herself, but still she flinches against the considering heat of three hundred pairs of eyes. In her peripheral vision, she sees Felice blush and scoot closer to Charlotte. But Bird forces herself to look straight ahead, to keep all the heat and fury of her pounding heart trained on Roosevelt, whom she now hates more than anyone in the world.

  “If any of you have had any communication from him, or know anything about his whereabouts, I
need to know about it. Just talk to Mr. Levenson here or Mrs. Early and they’ll let me know. This is for his own safety, guys. The situation out there is dangerous, and he’s much safer with us than he is on the run in a quarantine zone.”

  He doesn’t even look at her, the balding asshole with his gray blazer and his jeans, that sort of California look that Coffee would tease her for wanting at Stanford and, God, how could she give this guy anything, let alone a creation as unprecedented and unique as her patron iconoclast? Even if she should, even if it’s right?

  She looks down at the bracelet, which she has worn for the last three days on her right wrist. The appropriate people dutifully admired it, Charlotte most genuinely; Bird could practically see the bridesmaid dreams drifting across her gaze like organza cataracts.

  “Emily?”

  It’s Charlotte, tugging on her sleeve, whispering in her ear.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t seen Coffee, have you?”

  For a moment, Bird almost tells her: about their conversation on the pay phone, about her obligation to turn him in, and her doubts. About the silence that has stretched since that moment, how every night she falls asleep with her phone by her ear, praying that he’ll never call her.

  “No,” Bird says.

  Charlotte looks back at Felice and bites her lip. “Are you going to break up with Paul?”

  I wish, she thinks. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Felice said something. I know he gave you that bracelet, but no one’s seen you with him lately. I don’t think we should care one way or another, but Felice …”

  Bird understands: Paul has been her social passport for almost two years. And she’s about to see it revoked. Bird sighs.

  Cindy de la Vega squats down beside the two of them, surprising because she normally hangs with the sportier girls.

  “Hey, guys,” she says to Bird’s shoes. The last she saw Cindy, she was buying prescription drugs to cram for exams. Did she rat on Coffee to get out of trouble? “You guys have any tampons? Left mine in my locker.”

  “Oh, you know, I might. Hold on….” As Charlotte rummages through her giant backpack and Bird shakes her head, Mrs. Early raises her voice above the din of the shelter —

  “Just to be clear, not cooperating with the authorities about Alonso will be a matter for the honor board, ladies.”

  Charlotte shakes her head. “I used my last one, I guess. Sorry, Cindy.”

  Roosevelt whispers something in Mrs. Early’s ear. The folds of her neck quiver as she shakes her head, and her pencil-lined lips collapse to a straight pink-and-brown smear on a pale face. Bird has never thought much about Mrs. Early one way or another, but she is sick with dread in the long moment that follows, watching the headmistress of the school walk through a sea of girls to where Bird huddles beside friends who don’t want her anymore.

  “Emily?” she says. “Come with me for a moment?”

  And there’s nothing for it but to brave the stares and the whispers, to collect her things and avoid Cindy’s gape-mouthed squeak, Charlotte’s awkward wave. Only Marella looks at her like she gives a fuck — a tensed jaw, a flash of rage, one lost outcast to another — we’ll make it through.

  Bird follows Mrs. Early silently. She wishes she could be as strong as Marella. But she can only be as strong as Bird.

  * * *

  “I’ll take it from here, Molly.”

  Roosevelt stops at the base of the steps. Mrs. Early has replaced her face mask, as though there’s more danger from a door to the outside than three hundred crowded kids and teachers. The skin at the corners of her eyes is crumpled paper, powder concealer following the crevasses like drifted snow. She seems far too old to have ever been the sort of person you could call “Molly,” but she just nods sharply at Roosevelt and turns to Bird, arched eyebrows denoting some sort of false smile spreading beneath the mask.

  “Mr. David would like to speak with you about Alonso, Emily. Your mother has assured me you’ll give your full cooperation, but …”

  “Honor code violation, yes, I heard,” Bird says, even as she feels a spike of bile beneath her breastbone at the thought of her mother speaking with Mrs. Early. What did she say? In ninth grade, when she overslept one too many mornings, her mother parked the car instead of dropping her off, put her fist into the small of Bird’s back, and marched her up the stairs to the administrative offices. Back then Mrs. Early had been the upper school director, and she maintained her eyebrows at a careful angle of sympathetic concern for the entire agonizing encounter. As Mrs. Early listened to Carol Bird number the sins of her ungrateful, lazy daughter who did not fully appreciate the opportunities rained upon her, only the slightest tremor of her lower jaw indicated that she found anything awkward about this impromptu public shaming.

  But today a mask hides that telltale jaw muscle, perhaps by design. Perhaps Bird imagines the sympathetic slow blink as the headmistress turns away from them both.

  “Well, Emily,” Roosevelt says. “Come on up.”

  He doesn’t wear a mask, and so Bird leaves hers in her pocket.

  “What is this about?” she asks when they push through the gymnasium, away from the exit closest to the upper school.

  He pulls out a key ring instead of answering, though he gives her a considering look, as if her hostility were an object of potential utility. He smiles.

  “I don’t know if you understand the stakes,” he says. “I thought I might explain them to you.”

  They exit into a garbage alley. A few soldiers guard the opening to the street; he exchanges quick greetings as he goes to one of four sleek black cars with tinted windows. This one is a Beemer, the others are Audis.

  “The stakes? Like, incarceration and death by pandemic disease? I got that, thanks,” she says, and bares her teeth at him.

  He rests an elbow on the top of the car. “Do you know how many people have died in Haiti?” he asks, strangely intent.

  “A lot?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  Bird’s pulse skitters. She feels as if she should have known this, but the numbers scrolling across the bottom of the news channels have blurred into an almost uniform horror. Or, at least, she has allowed them to blur. “That’s awful,” she says. “But what …”

  “I’m just saying that you should be grateful for this country. You people always complain about what was done to you, but you never acknowledge everything we gave you. Well, just think about what would happen if you caught this flu in Haiti, or Zimbabwe, or —”

  “Some other scary place with Black people?” she says, facing him over the hood of the car. He thinks she should be grateful her ancestors were slaves? That people of color in other countries have to continue to deal with the toxic residue of colonialism? Her stitches start to throb, but she’s getting used to that, even feels grateful for it sometimes. At least it means she’s alive. At least it means she survived.

  “Get in the car,” he says. For a moment, his shoe-polish blandness falls aside. There’s something dark beneath it all, something sharp and angry. Terror shoots through her so strong she has to lean against the door to stay upright.

  “No.” Her throat is dry; her voice scratchy and soft.

  He glances sidelong at the soldiers, facing away from them. “I really think you should.” His calm has returned, but she’s seen the threat beneath it. She fumbles for her cell phone and dials Nicky’s number. Whatever’s going to happen she needs witnesses; she’s done with going along willingly.

  “Are you taking me to one of those black sites? Where you torture people?” It’s a shot in the dark, a vague memory of a conversation with Coffee, but it makes his eyes go wide for a moment.

  “We don’t torture people.”

  “You just pay other countries to do it.”

  “Terrorists who want to hurt America don’t deserve your pity. The people they hurt do. You have no idea how much our operatives sacrifice to keep you safe. Now, get in the car.”

>   She gets in the car, but she texts Nicky: If you don’t get a message from me in forty minutes, call Mom ASAP. Mention Roosevelt. Love you, Em.

  Roosevelt watches this precaution with no discernible reaction except a fleeting smile. He starts the car.

  “So how are things with you and Paul?” he asks, pulling out of the alley.

  “Why, you’ll have to ditch me if we break up?”

  He turns smoothly onto Connecticut Avenue, one of the busiest streets in the District turned into a ghost town by quarantine and terror alerts. The only people on the sidewalk are soldiers. A few faces peek out from behind shopwindows, and Bird slouches in the leather seat, irrationally worried that someone might assume she’s working with Roosevelt.

  “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?” she asks. “What about the terror alert?”

  “There’s no threat,” he says. “False alarm. The all clear will go out in a few minutes. In the meantime …”

  He switches into a higher gear and the engine drowns any conversation as they tear down the road, traffic lights blinking a stream of forlorn red behind them. The tires squeal when he makes the turn onto Military Road, and she wonders why her knuckles ache before she sees her hand gripping the handle above her head like she’s hanging from a cliff.

  “Could you slow down?” she says, clipping each word hard against the back of her teeth, not quite a scream but close enough.

  He knows what he’s doing. He sees her stitches. He visited her in the hospital, for God’s sake. He’s doing this to intimidate her, to show off, because he’s a rich white dude who can, and —

  He downshifts and glances at her. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “What the hell do you want?” He’s still driving too fast, both hands on the wheel, every movement perfectly controlled and perfectly terrifying.

  “I was wondering if you remembered any more about what you did that night of the party.”

  “Slower?”

  “Because there was a period of time when no one knew where you were, Emily. You ran away from Paul while intoxicated, with a head injury. And next thing we know, Alonso is fleeing the authorities. It’s very important that we find him.”