—I’m sure we do, he said.
He reached out his arm and drummed on the desk with his fingers, and I remembered the day he introduced himself to me at that exact spot, and I think he was thinking the same thing, how it would make perfect sense if this ended here, too. We both knew I wouldn’t go back to Happy Hours; I’d gotten through finals once without them, and I would do it again. The day his bag triggered the sensors, I’d been mean—I didn’t even give him my name—because I was busy puzzling through my probation letter. He’d been charmed by it then. All these months later, his future was so much closer to what I’d wanted for myself, before accepting my real fate.
—I’m going to go, he said. I better go.
He knocked on the table once. I said, Yeah you better, to keep myself from grabbing his hand, to make myself help him go.
—Have a nice life, I said to the swinging door, and I imagined the quip Ethan could’ve tossed back at me, the meanest, most true reply: I will. Unlike you, I can plan on it.
*
When I showed up for lab the next week, Professor Kaufmann glided by my bench and said, We missed you last Monday. I thought she was about to ask me the same questions Jillian had inevitably ventured—where was I during the raid, did anyone I know get hurt or arrested—but instead she asked me to speak with her after class. This resulted in me mismeasuring and mishandling anything that required measurement and handling during the lab. At the end of class, as I waited for the room to empty, Professor Kaufmann sorted papers on her lab bench, and I thought about how lucky she was to have nothing but her work, her research—how lucky she was to be able to lose herself in project after project. Maybe she’d seen the news, had recognized me in the face of a woman chained to a fence in Miami, knew that that woman being there meant I was chained to something, too. I thought she’d make it easy for me this time by saying not to worry about the internship, that she’d nominated someone else.
—So do you have your forms? she said after the door shut behind the last student.
—Huh? I said. Then I remembered the envelope from California at the apartment, the papers Leidy had kept from me until I showed up there, papers I left in the top drawer of my dresser in Miami after promising to come back for the summer.
—I thought you’d bring the forms, she said. You never mailed them in.
She looked at my bench as if they’d be there, as if I were just as awkward as her when it came to talking to another human.
She said, Your name wasn’t on the list of flights, and when I checked with Santa Barbara they said they never received your paperwork. So you must have it now, yes?
—No, I don’t have it. Are you – have you been watching the news? About what happened, what’s happening down in Miami?
—No, she said, but she smiled and nodded. Oh, she said. You mean the little boy. It’s very sad. It’s very complicated!
—Right, yes. Well I didn’t know until now but it’s not going to work out, I think. I can’t participate this summer. At the internship with you. I need to be in Miami then.
—Oh no! she said, genuinely surprised, but she didn’t ask for details.
After a pause filled solely with her nodding, I said, Because of that boy. My family – well, my mom is sort of involved in the protests, and it’s been tough on my sister and her baby. I have to be there this summer to sort of help deal with that.
She nodded slowly through my whole explanation and stopped just after I stopped. She said, Why?
—Well because. Because it’s my mom, so I should be there.
She blinked. I don’t understand, she said. What will you be doing down there?
—Like, supporting them. Her and my sister.
—Oh! You’ve found something with better funding?
—No, no, I mean like other kinds of support, I guess.
—I see, she said.
She picked up her pen and wrote something; I recognized it as some sort of integral. She scratched it out, wrote something else.
—It’s hard to explain, I said.
And I regret what I said next: It’s like a cultural thing, I said.
—Ooooh, she said. Oh, well, then I’m sorry it won’t work out.
She rested the pen on the pad and smiled again, said, It’s a shame that your family won’t let you participate.
—No, it’s not like that, I said. I just feel obligated to be there for them.
—So ask them! Perhaps they will let you come!
—It’s not them letting me or not letting me, I didn’t even talk to them about it.
—I don’t understand. I had the forms sent weeks ago to your home address.
—It’s just very bad timing, I said. I’m really sorry.
—Bad timing?
She picked up her pen, clicked it closed, returned it to the exact same spot.