by Alana Terry
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.”
CHAPTER 29
Ten or fifteen minutes after Willow left, Kennedy still hadn’t moved. She knew pretty soon she would jump online to see if the news covered Reuben’s arraignment. But what if the judge didn’t dismiss the case like everyone was expecting? What if Reuben would have to wait in jail for weeks or months before his trial, or what if the judge decided to deport him right then? She wished her dad had given her the full name of his lawyer friend. She had so many questions for him.
And what would happen if they didn’t let Reuben go? People had been upset enough last night. What would they do today? The thought of anyone else getting hurt made her stomach contents curdle. Maybe she should buy herself some Tums.
She avoided her computer for as long as she could. Willow was probably halfway to the courthouse by the time she finally dragged herself out of bed to sit down at her desk. She waited for everything to start up and wondered if she was doing the right thing. Should she just wait? Willow or one of the Lindgrens would let her know once the decision was made, right?
Instead of jumping on the internet right away, she opened the Excel file that had the results from her most recent lab. She still had to manipulate some of the data before she could graph the results. It was a simple task, really, something she could have done in a minute or two on a good day. She botched it up three different times before she gave up.
She moved her cursor to open up the web but paused before clicking. No. She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t even seen the riot last night, but images of angry protesters clashing with police crept uninvited through her cerebral cortex. She wondered if Dominic had been there when the violence erupted. Did chaplains get involved in things like riots? She didn’t even know if he carried a gun.
She stared at the time. The arraignment wouldn’t start for a few more minutes. She had no idea how long the whole thing would last. She had no idea when the judge would reach a decision. How long would it take for him to dismiss the case and set Reuben free? How long would Kennedy have to wait in the meantime, wondering, fearful?
She turned her phone back on. Maybe she’d regret her decision. Maybe not. She found the contact she was looking for and waited for the call to go through.
“Hello?”
“Hi, I hate to bother you, but I was wondering if you’d come with me to the courthouse downtown.”
“I’m so glad you called, sweetie.”
Kennedy had lost track of how many times Sandy had said the exact same thing since she picked her up from Harvard in the Lindgrens’ maroon Honda.
“I was just telling Carl I hoped you weren’t alone. It can take a lot of courage asking for help. I’m really proud of you.”
Kennedy hadn’t thought about it in those terms. Honestly, she didn’t think courage had much to do with it. She had just been too scared to wait alone to hear the results.
Sandy turned down her praise and worship CD. “I saw your interview, by the way. I was so sorry to hear about Reuben.”
Kennedy already hated the way people like Sandy and Willow tiptoed around the subject. They treated it as though it was so private, so painful to mention, yet Diane Fiddlestein had broadcast the horrible, ugly truth to the entire world.
“I assume you didn’t know before today?” Sandy said with a hint of a question in her tone.
“No.” As soon as she called Sandy to ask her for a ride, she knew this conversation would come up.
“It must have hit you as quite a shock.”
Kennedy hated those kinds of clichés. Quite a shock. What else was it supposed to be wh
en you found out your best friend had contracted one of history’s most horrific viruses?
“I hate to have to ask this, sweetie.” Sandy cleared her throat. “But I know how college students these days are, and I know that even good Christian kids make mistakes.”
Kennedy rolled her eyes when she realized what was coming next.
“You and Reuben weren’t ever ... intimate, were you?”
Kennedy shook her head. Why was that everybody’s first concern? And why was everyone so relieved to find out that Kennedy and Reuben hadn’t been sleeping together? That still didn’t change the fact that one day — whether next month or in five or ten years — he was going to die a hideous, undignified death.
“Well, I’m sorry I had to ask, but you know ...” Her voice died out. “It’s not the kind of thing you catch from kissing as far as I understand.”
“We don’t do any of that,” Kennedy replied sullenly.
“Well, I knew you two are close, so I had to ask.” Sandy patted her hand, and Kennedy guessed that Sandy was the more uncomfortable of the two right now.
“Do you like him?”
Kennedy didn’t want to talk about it. Because if she talked about it, then she had to think about it. The more she thought about it, the more she realized there was no real solution.
“I mean as more than a friend,” Sandy pressed. “You like him like that?”
“I’ve started to,” Kennedy confessed.
Neither of them spoke. Kennedy wondered if Sandy had already examined the different options and found each of them just as impossible as Kennedy had. It was stupid to end a friendship over something like HIV. It’s not like she could catch it standing next to him for too long in the lab. But to continue on in a perfectly platonic relationship with him, Kennedy would have to deny the growing part of her heart that wanted more. That wanted something deeper. But how deep could it ever go? They could date as long as they kept their physical boundaries, but then what? You don’t keep dating someone for the rest of your life. What kind of future did she and Reuben have to look forward to? What kind of ending could their story have besides tragedy and heartache?
“There was a time,” Sandy began, “I was seeing two young men at once. Well, sort of. I’d been going steady with a doctor from Virginia for a few years by the time I met Carl. And well, things got more and more confusing from there. So I asked my grandpa about it. He was blind by then. Senile, too. Didn’t know what a ruckus I’d caused in the family by even thinking about dating a black man. I just told him there were two men, didn’t say anything about their skin color or nothing like that. But I asked him what he thought I should do, and you know what he said? He said the best decision he’d ever made in life was to marry his best friend. So that’s what I did, too.”
It was a nice story, one that a week ago might have given Kennedy a warm, gushy feeling in her gut. “It’s a little different when someone’s so sick, you know.”
Sandy didn’t reply right away, and Kennedy felt guilty. What good was it making Sandy just as depressed as she was?
Sandy hummed along with the worship song for a few bars and then took a deep breath. “We took in a little foster baby once, Carl and I,” she began. “Sweetest little thing you’d ever meet. Had a condition. I forget the name, had to do with amniotic something. A lot of birth defects. A lot. Doctors suspected he had some genetic disorders, too, but they weren’t able to check for those kind of things as well back then. So this little sweetheart, Spencer his name was, he had a lot of physical deformities. Internal problems, too. When he was born, the doctors thought he’d only last a month or two. It was too much for the birth parents to handle. They’re fine people, I’m sure, but it was too heartbreaking for them. That’s how we ended up welcoming little Spencer into our family.
“And you know what? It would have been easier for us if we never brought him home, easier emotionally as well as practically. I don’t think I got a full night’s sleep the entire time he was with us. The doctors told us he was going to die. One doctor even suggested we hold off on some of the medicine that was helping because it was only prolonging the inevitable. But you know what? That precious little child gave us seven months of joy. And when I say joy, I’m not pretending it was perfect and rosy. I’m not saying it was easy. I’m not saying our hearts didn’t break, because they did. Every single day, my spirit just ripped in two when I held little Spencer and knew he only had such a short time with us. But you know what? That’s what made having him in our home and in our lives so special. We didn’t ask to fall in love with a sick little baby with a terminal diagnosis. We didn’t ask to go through that valley of grief that stretched on for seven long months and then beyond that after he was gone. But believe me when I tell you that the time I had with Spencer was worth every second of heartache, and if I had the choice, I’d do it all over again.”
Kennedy knew that only loosely veiled behind Sandy’s words were wisdom and admonitions she could take to heart, but she wasn’t ready to think in those terms yet. Sandy seemed to sense she had said enough, because she squeezed Kennedy’s hand and turned the music back up.
They were closer to the courthouse now. Kennedy’s breath grew shorter with each block they passed. There was some kind of tangible discontent in the air. Fear and anger. Or was that just her imagination?
Police in riot gear had formed perimeters in several locations. Kennedy sat paralyzed in her passenger seat. Sandy held her sweaty hand in hers.
“Don’t worry, hon.” She pointed. “See those people?” She rolled down her window. “Hear that noise? They’re clapping. I think it’s good news.” She glanced from one side of the road to the other. “Now, I just wonder where I can find a place to park.”
At the exact same moment, the victorious roar of the crowd jumped at least twenty or thirty decibels.
“What’s going on?” Sandy asked, but Kennedy didn’t have the breath to answer. When the Honda pulled up to a stop sign, Kennedy jumped out and started sprinting. Her heart, already overworked from anxiety, swelled to near-bursting capacity.
He was there at the top of the courthouse steps, smiling sheepishly at the thunderous crowd.
She didn’t pause as she passed the police line. Hardly slowed down as she maneuvered her way through the congested sidewalks. Raced to the steps of the courthouse and took them two at a time.
She saw the spark in his eyes the moment he recognized her. Saw the joy.
The din on the streets grew even louder when he rushed down the steps to meet her. They hugged. Kennedy was crying, but it wasn’t the suffocating sobs like what gripped her in the worst of her panic attacks.
“I’m so glad to see you.” Reuben held her close.
Kennedy didn’t have the voice to respond. She had spent nearly all semester in agonizing introspection, asking herself if she loved Reuben.
Tonight, she had her answer.
CHAPTER 30
“Ok, so what’s the big surprise?” Kennedy asked. “Are we going to shop for books at Common Treasures?”
As hard as he tried, Reuben couldn’t hide his smile. “Nope. Well, maybe, but we don’t have time for that yet.”
Kennedy glanced around at the lazy Sunday afternoon traffic, searching for clues. She and Reuben had always joked about riding the swan boats in Boston Common, but that was expensive. After her dad paid for Reuben’s lawyer fees, Kennedy wasn’t going to ask for anything extra for at least another month. And Reuben wasn’t the type to have extra cash on hand. So where was he taking her?
Last night after his release, they’d been so tired they ate dinner together in the student union and then returned to their dorms where Kennedy slept for eleven hours straight. Today he’d told her to meet him at the library after lunch, but when she showed up with her calculus text and lab notebook, he made her take it back to her room. That’s when he said he had a surprise for her off campus.
They still hadn’t talked about much else besides school since his release.
In some ways, they were like two kids at the end of summer vacation, not willing to acknowledge the obvious signs of autumn in the air.
They would have to talk. Soon. But neither of them was ready yet.
Once she heard about his diagnosis, Kennedy had been so terrified. So worried that even if Reuben was released from jail, things could never be the same between them. There would be long periods of awkwardness. Painful silences.
She had been wrong.
Delightfully wrong.
Reuben held her hand as they sprinted across the street. Would she ever forget the way his fingers felt interlaced with hers? Somewhere in the back of her head, she felt she was growing to understand Sandy’s story about the little baby Spencer they cared for. She wasn’t willing to admit it, wasn’t willing to use terms like dying yet, but the story implanted itself to a safe spot in her memory banks, ready for her to pull out and examine when the time was right.
They sped by Common Treasures, the antique bookstore where they could lose themselves for hours wandering through old volumes and early editions of their favorite stories. Kennedy was laughing even though she didn’t know what was so funny.
Reuben stopped in front of the Boston Opera House. “Here we are.”
“What’s this?” she asked.
Reuben slipped in line for call waiting. “Mr. Jefferson said your dad overpaid him. Said the case wasn’t as hard as he’d originally planned once you found that video. So he gave me a check, said your dad would want us to do something fun together.” He stepped up to the counter. “Two tickets for Aida. It’s under the name Reuben Murunga.”
“Really?” Kennedy squealed but wasn’t embarrassed.
Reuben grinned and passed her a ticket. “I have a feeling we’ve earned this.”
Kennedy had grown up seeing musicals in Manhattan — Phantom, Les Mis, Cats. Even after her family moved to Yanji, her mom would buy the DVD versions of the most popular shows and watch them with Kennedy on nights when her dad was working late. Kennedy knew musical theater had the power to impact your emotions, take you on a ride of thrills or excitement or joy. But she never knew it could do something like this.