Policed

by Alana Terry

  “My driver’s license is in my purse.” She nodded toward it and noted the cop’s whole body tense when she moved.

  “Where’s the registration?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. This is my roommate’s car.” She didn’t bother to tell him she wasn’t sure what exactly a registration looked like or how she’d recognize one if she saw it.

  “Does she know you’re driving it?”

  Kennedy thought he was trying to make a joke until she saw his deep-set scowl. She answered with a simple, “Yes.”

  “But you don’t know where her registration is?”

  “No,” Kennedy answered. “Is that why you pulled us over?”

  He jerked his head toward Reuben without answering. “Who’s that?”

  Kennedy glanced at Reuben to see if he would answer for himself.

  He didn’t.

  “This is my friend from school.”

  The officer glared. “And what’s the name of your friend?” He made the word sound filthy. Impure.

  Reuben lifted his head. “I am Reuben Murunga. I’m a student from Kenya.”

  “I didn’t ask what boat you got off.” The cop jerked his head. “All right. Get out of the car.”

  Kennedy tried to catch Reuben’s eye, but he was staring at his lap as he unbuckled his seatbelt. All of Kennedy’s questions, all her protests froze in her throat. Her mind taunted her with memories of a trip she took when she was a little girl visiting her grandmother in upstate New York. Someone had burgled the house across the street, and the police were knocking on doors warning the residents to be extra vigilant locking up. Kennedy’s dad had called her downstairs, footie pajamas and all, and forced her to shake the officer’s hand. “Police are our friends,” he told her. “They’re here to help us.”

  Her dad’s words replayed in her mind. Here to help us. Well, if she had done something wrong, she would have to accept whatever citation he wrote up for her. That’s all there was to it. Her dad would chide her for being careless, but he’d take care of the ticket and that would be that. She just wished she knew what she’d done. Had she forgotten to signal before switching lanes? Is that what this was about?

  Here to help us. So why were her insides reeling as fast as a centrifuge machine?

  She reached for the car handle when Bow Legs barked, “Just him. You stay put.”

  She wished Reuben would look at her. What was he thinking? Was he scared? If he was, he was doing a good job hiding it. He opened his door and got out slowly. Methodically. Bow Legs warned him to keep his hands visible, and Reuben held them up by his shoulders the entire time.

  Once Reuben was out of the car, the police officer planted one foot behind him. Kennedy recognized the stance from her self-defense course. What did he think, that Reuben was about to attack him?

  “All right,” he ordered. “Now lace your fingers behind your head. Keep your back to me and take slow steps around the front of the car.”

  Kennedy kept her fingers on the door handle. “Listen, he wasn’t the one driving. I was. If I did something wrong, just let me know so I don’t do it again. I already told you, this is my roommate’s car, and ...”

  “Shut up.” The words weren’t even a snarl, more like an afterthought. All of Bow Legs’ attention was on Reuben. Kennedy probably could have confessed to planting a bomb in Logan Airport and he wouldn’t pay any attention.

  When Reuben reached the driver’s side headlight, the officer planted his hand on his holster. “Stop right there. Don’t move.”

  “Wait, do you really think ...”

  Bow Legs wasn’t listening to her. He left his post at Kennedy’s window and stepped forward. Kennedy tried to pass Reuben some encouraging thought or positive message by sheer will power as the officer lowered Reuben’s hands and cuffed them behind his back.

  She jumped out of the car. “What are you doing?” Commuter vehicles whizzed up and down Arlington, never slowing down. Didn’t anybody see what was happening? Didn’t anybody care?

  The officer snapped his head around toward Kennedy. “Miss, you need to get back in that car right now.”

  “No.” For once, she was thankful her dad had forced her to role play through so many ridiculous and embarrassing situations. Of course, he hadn’t thought to include a scenario in which Kennedy and her best friend get pulled over and handcuffed without any explanation, but if her dad had taught her anything, it was how to stand up for herself. “You can’t just pull someone out of their car like this. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” She struggled to keep the invasive tinge of hysteria out of her voice but wasn’t sure she pulled it off successfully.

  “I told you to get back in.” Bow Legs’ hand was still on his holster. It was enough to dim Kennedy’s newfound courage. She shot a desperate glance at the stream of traffic, the blissfully ignorant drivers who didn’t even see her. Those who did notice probably assumed she was a drug dealer or some other sort of criminal. The entire situation might be humorous if it weren’t so terrifyingly real.

  She inched her way backward. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.” She hadn’t tried to sound so whiny. She was thankful her body hadn’t given in to a panic attack. Maybe she really had made some progress since last semester. But if she wasn’t careful, she was going to start to cry. She refused to be associated with those girls who got out of tickets by summoning the fake tears. Except her tears wouldn’t be fake. Fear and confusion coalesced in her gut, washed down by copious volumes of scorching humiliation. She touched the door handle but didn’t open it. “What are you going to do?”

  Bow Legs’ icy scowl could have frozen mercury. He ignored the question and slammed Reuben down against the hood of the car.

  “Stop!” Kennedy couldn’t even guess what Reuben was feeling right now. His cheek was pressed against Willow’s car, his face blocked from view. The only thing that stopped Kennedy from charging the officer was the way one hand still hovered over his holster as he patted Reuben down with his other.

  Maybe Professor Hill’s course hadn’t been as big of a waste of time as Kennedy initially assumed. How many times had the class watched those videos of police officers who overstepped their bounds? Of course, Kennedy had never been able to shake the nagging suspicion that somewhere off the screen, the victims must have done something to aggravate the situation, but what about Reuben? What could he have possibly done to antagonize Bow Legs or deserve any of this?

  With a renewed surge of confidence, Kennedy knew what she had to do. She got into the car just like Bow Legs had ordered and pulled out her phone. She would record the whole encounter. That should get the cop to lay off. She started the camera up and set the phone in the pocket of her blouse, hoping it would get the entire scene without the cop noticing.

  When she was sure it was recording, she leaned out the window, reminding herself how the people in those police videos had stood up for their rights. “Hey, don’t you need some kind of warrant to search somebody?” She wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but she remembered her dad saying something about it while they were watching an action movie together.

  “Listen, I’ve heard about enough from you little —.” Here the officer let out a string of epithets that insulted both Kennedy and Reuben as well as their ancestry. If this whole incident were racially motivated, at least Bow Legs had offended them both with equal opportunity.

  Kennedy licked her lips. Things like this didn’t happen to people like her. She had always been at the top of her class. Even after everything she went through last fall, she finished her first semester at Harvard with straight A’s except for a single A minus. Bow Legs had no idea what he was doing. This was all some terrible mistake. She stretched her spine as tall as she could manage. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, and you need to let us go. Now.” Her voice only shook once. “You have no business bothering us like this. We’re students at Harvard.”

  Bow Legs turned to her for the first time. “Yeah, right.” He spat out another
string of profanities.

  “We’re going to a show.” Kennedy didn’t know why she was telling him that. What would he care?

  “You’re not going to any show, girlie. As soon as I finish searching your car, you and your baboon buddy are coming with me.”

  “Search us for what?” she demanded. The cars were slowing down now when they passed, and she saw several commuters straining their necks to get a better look. How in the world could anyone mistake people like her and Reuben for criminals?

  Bow Legs took a step toward her. “Any more lip out of you, and you’ll end up in cuffs too. Got that?” He eyed her up and down. “And just so we’re clear, I have no problem giving you a full body search right here on the side of the road if you don’t shut up and let me do my job.”

  Kennedy shot an imploring look at Reuben through the dashboard. Other than a slight twitch in his jaw, he kept himself bent over the hood of the car and didn’t move.

  The cop opened the door and yanked her out of her seat. She was too surprised to try to free herself from his hold. She bit her lip. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner he’d take those cuffs off Reuben. Right?

  He started rummaging under the seats and in the crannies of Willow’s car. Kennedy’s stomach sank faster than a lead ball. What if he found something Willow or one of her partying friends left behind? What if they thought it belonged to Kennedy and Reuben? More than anything, she wanted to call her dad. He would know what to do.

  “There’s nothing in there.” She knew her voice sounded scared. It probably made her appear even guiltier.

  Bow Legs straightened up and slammed the door shut. Good. He hadn’t found anything. Her phone was still in her blouse pocket. How much of this encounter would the camera pick up? He stomped to the other side of the car, giving Reuben a harsh nudge when he passed. Kennedy opened her mouth to protest, but Reuben shot her an imploring look that silenced her complaint.

  She thought through the similar events she had heard about in Professor Hill’s class. Young men getting pulled over and arrested for no reason other than being black. Kennedy had read the accounts, felt sorry for some of the victims, but in the back of her mind had always wondered if they were reading too much into it. Sometimes police pulled people over. They had their reasons. Just because the victim was black didn’t mean it was racially motivated. But this ... What had either of them done?

  Bow Legs jerked open the passenger door so hard the entire car shook. Seconds later, he let out a self-satisfied grunt and pulled out a Ziploc bag from the glove compartment. “Not hiding anything, huh?” He was glaring over the top of the car at Kennedy.

  “That’s my roommate’s. It’s her loose-leaf tea.”

  “Nice try.” Bow Legs pocketed the baggie and pulled out another pair of cuffs. “Come on. You better hope your eggplant friend has more brains than he looks. You’re both in a world of hurt right about now.”

  A dozen fears and protests charged through Kennedy’s mind. Were they under arrest? Did they need a lawyer? What would happen to Reuben? Did he even have the same rights as an American citizen, or were laws different for international students? She had gone through enough in the past year to recognize the surge of adrenaline flooding her nervous system, but she wasn’t sure if it was time for a fight or flight. Or should she let the cop take them in and trust the justice system to sort everything out in the end? She was innocent. Both of them were innocent. So why did it feel like going with the policeman was tantamount to admitting guilt? She was even more scared than she’d been when the Chinese police stopped by her parents’ house to question her father about his printing business, his legal front for staying in Yanji as a missionary.

  The officer swaggered over to Kennedy. “Come on, Barbie doll. Time to take a little ride.”

  There’s nothing to be scared of, she reminded herself, but she knew it was a lie. There was plenty to be scared of.

  “You better start thinking how you’re gonna explain that weed.”

  “It’s tea,” she insisted again. Kennedy watched Willow prepare it every single morning and had never questioned what was in it. Willow took more supplements than a hypochondriac chiropractor. There was no way Kennedy could keep track of which ingredients were in what concoction. She eyed the bag. Maybe there really was some illegal substance in there. Then what would happen to her? What would happen to Reuben?

  Police are our friends. Kennedy could hear her father’s voice mentally coaxing her. She wondered if this was the adult equivalent to finding out Santa Claus was a lie your parents perpetuated in a spirit of fun and holiday cheer.

  Bow Legs stepped behind Kennedy and waved the bag in her face. “What do you say? Is this worth a night behind bars?” He leaned into her, pressing her body against the car. She clenched her jaw shut to keep from screaming. Tears of humiliation and hatred stung the corners of her eyes. She held her breath, trying to make her body as small as possible, but the farther she pressed into the car, the more heavily he dug into her.

  “Looks like I’ve got a right to pat you down, don’t I?” His breath was hot. Acrid. Kennedy could almost taste it. She fought her gag reflex.

  Police are our friends. It was still her father’s voice she heard, but now it was taunting. Mocking.

  His hands started at her shoulders and lingered as they slid down to her hips. He felt in each of her pants pockets, his pace painstakingly methodical. His hands traveled back up her body slowly, his fingers probing each rib as he worked his way toward her chest. “Nice girl like you wouldn’t be hiding anything in here, would you?” he hissed in her ear.

  She froze. What did he think he was doing? And how much angrier would he grow when he saw the phone in her pocket? Kennedy recalled a similar simulation from her self-defense course. She could head butt him if she wanted or bring up her heel for a swift kick to his groin. She clenched her eyes shut, unsure which reflex his touch would trigger. But before his groping hands could complete their circuit, Reuben barged between them.

  “Leave her alone.”

  Without warning, the officer punched Reuben in the gut. Reuben doubled over as Bow Legs brought his knee up to his face. Reuben staggered.

  “You dirty n—.” Without warning, the cop whipped out his pistol and smashed its butt against Reuben’s head. He crumpled to the ground, where the officer’s boots were ready to meet him with several well-placed kicks.

  Throwing all rational thoughts aside, Kennedy jumped on his back. Anything to get him to stop beating Reuben. The officer swore and swatted at her. Kennedy heard herself screaming but had no idea what she was saying. Her brain zoned in on Bow Legs, the object of all her hatred and disdain. She couldn’t see anything else, nor could she understand how it was that when her normal vision returned, she was lying on her back staring at a vaguely familiar face, but the officer and Reuben were nowhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER 2

  “JUST HOLD STEADY.”

  She recognized the man. She knew if it weren’t for her splitting headache, she would be able to place him.

  “We’ve met before. It’s Ian McAlister.” The Good Samaritan held out a bottle of water. “Are you thirsty? I don’t want to move your head right now, not until the ambulance gets here, but I could try to get you a small sip.”

  Ian? Pulses of pain shot through Kennedy’s gray matter as she tried to connect his face to the name. She squinted up at his head of red hair, which she recognized from their few encounters last semester. “You’re a journalist, right?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. You feel ok? Any dizziness? How’s your head?”

  “It hurts.”

  “I’m not surprised. Try not to move too much before the paramedics get here. I’m sure they’ll want to check you out.”

  “Where’s Reuben?” She struggled to sit up, but Ian and a wave of dizziness both prevented her.

  “Someone’s with him right now.”

  Kennedy wished she could see what was happening.

  “Don’t
touch me.” It was Reuben’s voice. She’d never heard him sound so angry. They weren’t arresting him, were they?

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Ian frowned. “He’s pretty agitated. There’s some nurse who pulled over, but he won’t let her near him.”

  “Leave me alone!” Reuben yelled.

  Kennedy had to get to him. Had to see what the problem was.

  “Sir, I’m trying to help. The back of your head is bleeding. I just want to ...”

  “Stay back. All of you.” Reuben’s voice was tense, almost as if he were trying not to cry.

  “Is he ok?” Kennedy asked.

  “I don’t know.” Ian glanced at his watch. “The ambulance will be here soon. You’ll both get all the attention you need.”

  “There was a cop,” she tried to explain. “He was ...”

  Ian frowned.

  “Did you see anything?” she asked.

  “Just you and your friend lying on the asphalt.”

  It didn’t make sense. Where had Bow Legs gone? She shut her eyes and did what she could to assess her injuries. She could breathe normally. None of her limbs hurt. Aside from the headache and a general achy feel all over, nothing deviated too far from baseline. She took a deep breath and worked through the dizziness until she could sit up. Ian held out his hands as if he wanted to catch her if she fell. “Are you sure you want to be doing that?” he asked.

  Kennedy was too focused on keeping her balance to answer. She gritted her teeth and reminded herself she had been through worse pain than this.

  Much worse.

  She didn’t shrug off the journalist, who wrapped his arm around her while she attempted to stand. She let him support her as she worked out her tight muscles and made her way over to Reuben. He was lying on the rocky pavement, no longer cuffed, his head resting in a small puddle of blood. Kennedy untangled herself from Ian’s hold.

  “Get away from me,” Reuben snapped when he saw her.