Matthew was still watching me. “I have nothing to add,” I said.
As we were leaving class, Nia looped her arm through mine. How easily I softened when she was near. It was hard for me to harbor bitter feelings toward her.
“Do you think Janine’s really sick?” I asked.
Nia kissed her teeth. “Of course not. It’s bullshit. I read what you sent by the way.”
I’d forgotten I’d sent her my writing. It was before the threesome, before I got fired. I was staring down the barrel of a different life, far away, it felt, from the one recorded in my novels. “All of it?”
“Duh. Why wouldn’t I?”
I made a face.
“Don’t make that face. I have something positive to say!”
“Okay.”
She turned her palm upward the way Janine did when she was about to ruin your life. “It’s interesting.”
I paused. “That’s the positive thing?”
We walked upstairs to the main floor. Students lounged on the sofas, AirPods in, typing on their laptops.
“Yes, but I was wondering, why are they separate projects?”
“What do you mean?”
“It feels obvious that the story about the parents is connected to the love story about the young woman. Why are you forcing them apart?”
The weather was too warm when we stepped outside. Students were sprawled on the lawn, studying for their last final. I stared at my beat-up Converses. Nia’s feedback moved through me like a running river. I was so fervent about separating Amira from her past, her parents, for fear they’d be spun in service of an explanation. But what I’d done was strip her of history.
I hugged Nia, crushing myself to her with relief. She laughed a breathless, surprised laugh, like the wind had been knocked out of her. Forgetting where we were, forgetting the new context of my romantic life, I let my thumb slide over the curved muscle of her neck, and I kissed her on the mouth.
She pulled away, smiling uncomfortably. Watching her wipe her lips with the back of her hand filled me with dread, though it was a dread over what had already happened.
“We actually only do threesomes,” she said gently.
I wanted to laugh. Or cry. I wasn’t even supposed to be kissing anyone but Jay. Already I’d forgotten the rules. “Sorry.”
“It’s cool.”
I took my phone out to text Tristan that things had to be over when a girl in black cargo pants charged toward us across the lawn. “What the fuck, I’ve been calling you,” she shouted. I had no idea who this person was.
“I was in class,” Nia said. “What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t hear what happened?”
“Yeah, they canceled the commencement—
“No.”The girl’s voice cracked. “ICE was here—they took Aisha. They were in the dorms.”
“Fuck, okay, g-get that immigration lawyer on the phone. Here, let me find her…” Nia’s hands trembled, thumbing through her contact list. She seemed totally different to me then, someone capable of the same kind of fear as the rest of us. “Wait.” Nia’s eyes darted across the screen. “Wait, they fired Janine?”
My heart was a fist clenched so tight it was painful to stand. The lawn overflowed with students in shorts, laughing, unchanged by the events. I wanted to shout at them,Don’t you get it! Don’t you get what’s going on here?!But I’d had my laughs too. Not laughing wouldn’t change anything. The problem was I had no clue what would.
The girl in cargo pants said, “They firedsixteenprofessors, mostly from the Middle Eastern, Asian, and African Studies programs. What I was trying to say is the university has agreed to all the administration’s demands. We are under federal oversight.”
The fear that’d been building and building was a tower toppling on me. Janine told us this would happen, yet part of me didn’t believe it. Janine: with her kitten pumps, her weird cat, her lofty lectures. Janine: who thought I had something to say even though I kept squandering the chance to say it, searching for the right words.
