Edgar was on the big stairs, a sign limp in his hand. I went to join him. “What do you think’s going to happen?” I asked.
He said, “I think we’re gonna win.”
Uniformed arms reached through the broken windows, a loud and agonized cracking sound wailed through the hallway, and then, as if I were watching a tape being fast-forwarded, the doors fell down and at least a hundred officers swarmed inside, faces covered by plastic shieldslike a Zombie apocalypse movie. They marched down the halls, yelling and grabbing people. Despite our instructions not to resist, people resisted and got Tasered. First you heard that awful electric buzz, crackling like artificial lightning, then you’d see someone flipping around on the floor in handcuffs, vacant-eyed. It was like the apex of power, making a person convulse against their will with the press of a button.
Edgar and I exchanged alarmed glances but didn’t move. I thought maybe if we stood still enough, they wouldn’t see us. Sounds bled together: shouting officers, protestors chanting outside, people jostling in the crowd. A protestor above us threw a chair over the railing, aiming at a cop, but it hit another protestor. A few feet away, an officer slammed a female professor to the ground, and I screamed before I even understood it, how easily she folded to the floor. The expansive feeling I’d had breaking the windows last night atrophied into a small animal fear. Everything had felt inextricably bound to the future then, but this moment held only the blunt question of survival.
A guy a few steps down from us had been elbowed in the nose and was bleeding all over the floor. Edgar said, “We should help him,” but suddenly there was no helping. My arms were pulled behind my back until my shoulders popped. I lost my balance. It took a second for me to understand I was being dragged. My heart thundered so hard the blood pumping in my ear drowned out all sound until it was white noise. My hair had come loose from its ponytail and was spilling behind me like a curtain getting trampled. The officer holding my wrists tightened plastic zip ties around them and yanked me up. My feet stumbled over each other as we were led to a police van.
On the way out, a girl I’d seen around campus many times but whose name I didn’t know was out cold on the floor as several officers stepped over her until two came to carry her away. I peed in my shorts and felt like a dog.
The sunlight was blinding. It felt like emerging from a bunker. Protestors cheered for us outside, but the sound reached me muffled. I struggledto put my arms around the situation; my brain was too busy sorting through senses. Even as we were being pushed into a police van, I failed to register that we were being arrested.
There were eight seats in total, four already filled. When I looked over at Edgar, he was clearly trying to manage his excitement. “At least we got to stay together,” he said. I realized he was one of those white guys who jumped out of airplanes, and all this was just a different version of that. I thought my life was over, and I had nothing to show for it.
The top of Nia’s head appeared in the van door, and a flash of joy broke through my otherwise confused senses. I went cold whenRyenentered behind her.
Nia was cussing at an officer, kicking her booted feet in his face. I was scared he was going to Taser her, but he just pushed her in and slammed the door. It was quiet save for the low hum outside. Strangely, I felt better knowing where we were going, what was happening. Back at Heathrow, when the cops busted down the doors, anything was possible, but now the only possibility was jail.
As the van rolled forward,Ryen’s eyes landed on me like a grenade. He leaned over to say something in Nia’s ear. She laughed uncomfortably, the way women laugh when men approach them in public. But he gave her a serious look. Slowly, she turned around to study me. The space between her eyebrows collapsed like she was tinkering out an important problem, one whose answer would upend everything. But then, calmly, she turned around, staring out the window with a tight mouth.
As campus shrunk from view and we curved around the congested roundabout, I tried to get her attention. She ignored me.
There was only one thing he could’ve told her.
Chapter 73
The precinct was a brick building that resembled a gingerbread house, an American flag rippling out front. Nia was staring out the window still. My emotions rotated between terror, fury, and numbness.Ryenhad fallen asleep. I wanted to spit in his face, have him wake up with my saliva sliding down his cheek.
Inside: speckled linoleum floors, beige administrative feel, bright overhead lights. Because this was the nearest precinct, most of the people brought in were students. We waited to be booked and processed. I was worried about being arrested, but I also needed to know what had happened with Nia.
As we were ushered down a hallway, I strained to get close to her. When I was near enough for her to hear me, I said, fighting to sound calm, “What didRyensay to you?”
She didn’t look at me. “That you’re fucking Tristan.”
I opened my mouth to explain, but only an ugly silence left me.
“I-I’m sorry.” It came out so weak and meaningless that I longed for the ugly silence.
In a cool, trembling voice, she spat, “Just stay the fuck away from me.”
It was the last thing she said before an officer pulled us into separate rooms.
I turned in a circle for my mug shot. My mind cast back to Nia’s words, her anger so honed and efficient. I let them settle and harden inside me until they formed an unmoving pit in my stomach.
Ryenwas walking in for his mug shot as I was leaving. His hand on my breast, him swaggering out of the actress’s bedroom, his mouth to Nia’sear in the van. Throwing the threesome in my face when I would never get to have that again, when I had relinquished my right to that kind of love. So much suffering because of men likeRyen, roping the whole world into their loserdom, punishing everyone over bruised egos, killing, raping, robbing, bombing, making a violent point out of people, laughing with their spit flying in your face, leaving you to wipe it off, owning whatever can be owned, stealing what can’t, taking everything but responsibility.
As we passed each other, I stopped in the doorway. He didn’t spare me a glance. I took my zip-tied wrists and clobbered him over the head with the sides of my fists like I was an ax coming down on it, a hammer knocking down that damn door. It was close to meditation, my mind so clear, his hard head coming up short against my knuckle bone. He called me a crazy bitch when I drove my head into his stomach like a hornless rhino, offloading months of bottled rage. I screamed, “I’m not a crazy bitch, but Iamthe wrong one.” The release was better than an orgasm. Several officers pulled me off, and I was taken away. In a separate room, a female officer told me to remove everything from my pockets. I dumped out a crushed dollar bill, a hair tie, my phone, an old receipt, to be bagged and numbered. I waited to feel remorse for attackingRyen, but it never came.
“Come with me,” the officer said.
“Where?”
“You’re being detained until your arraignment.” She was saying a bunch of things I didn’t understand. “Anything you say can be used against you in court.”
She gripped my arm and led me to a concrete square the size of a small gas station bathroom. The “bed” was one of those thin waterproof mattresses you used during nap time in kindergarten. No blanket. I sat under the ridiculously bright light. Why would they put that shit right over where you were supposed to sleep? I had no phone, nothing, not even a hair tie to stretch and release, just my bored body and no idea when anyone was coming back for it. Remorse didn’t come. But terror came crashing as soon as that door shut.
Miraculously, I fell asleep. I couldn’t tell what time it was when I woke up. I was hungry. I thought it might be dinnertime, but I didn’t have a clock or a window to help me sort this out. I attempted to distract myself with daydreams—Jay, Nia, Tristan, and I eating sweet, crunchy cookies on the beach—but the dreams ached with falseness. I didn’t deserve to dream about what I had destroyed. I bit my nails, free of bandages, grime and all, telling myself to breathe, breathe, breathe, but it was as if my body couldn’t remember what that meant.
