Policed

by Alana Terry

  Sandy stretched out her arms and wrapped her in a hug. “It’s not your fault, honey. Nobody would ever wish something like that to happen to a little baby. It’s not your fault,” she repeated, but Kennedy had a hard time listening through her tears.

  CHAPTER 26

  Kennedy texted Willow as soon as Sandy left. She doubted her roommate would be awake at nine on a Saturday morning, but she had to make sure her friend was safe. Willow replied right away, apologizing for the video leak.

  I only shared it with Othello so he could see what was happening. I didn’t know he was going to pass it on.

  Kennedy was just glad to know Willow was safe. According to her text, Willow had sensed the tensions rising and left before the real violence erupted. Othello had stuck around with his friends, and Willow hadn’t heard from him yet.

  I’m sure he’s fine, Kennedy assured her. After all, the only reported injury was that little baby.

  The Lindgrens spent the morning keeping Kennedy distracted. As soon as Kennedy got out of bed, Sandy put her to work making a hearty brunch. Saturday morning brunch had been a regular custom in Kennedy’s family for as long as she could remember, and she wondered if Sandy knew about their tradition. It took over an hour and a half to get everything baked and cooked. Then while Sandy set the table, Kennedy taught Carl how to use the timer on his camera properly so they could take their pictures for Woong more easily.

  Breakfast at the Lindgrens’ involved more than just sitting around the table, sipping fresh coffee, and stuffing yourself into a gluttonous stupor. Carl started each day with morning devotions, which he read from a Charles Spurgeon book Kennedy had never heard of before meeting the Lindgrens. Then, Sandy pulled out her prayer box, a cutely painted recipe holder with index cards arranged by category. Kennedy still hadn’t figured the system out entirely, but there were certain people the Lindgrens prayed for every day, and others they prayed for on a weekly or monthly basis. After prayers, Carl passed Kennedy his old Bible so she could participate in the reading for the day. He and Sandy made their way through the Bible once a year, and Kennedy read a chapter from Joshua before passing it back to Carl to finish.

  After Sandy refilled the coffee mugs and set another round of blueberry pancakes on the table, she took out a journal with a bright tulip pattern on the front.

  “So last year at this time,” she said, slipping on her pair of reading glasses, “we were praying for Blessing to have favor in her job situation at the bank, and we were asking God for a better daycare situation for Tyson that would be closer to her work.” She took a pencil and drew two lines across the page. “God certainly took care of both of those worries, didn’t he?”

  Carl nodded back with a smile.

  Sandy read through the rest of that page, striking out the requests that had already been answered and stopping to pray for those that hadn’t yet come to pass. She flowed ceaselessly from her conversation with Carl and Kennedy into prayer and back again, so Kennedy half expected to see Jesus sitting in one of the empty chairs around the table. When she was finished, Sandy flipped ahead in her journal and wrote the day’s date in her flowing cursive handwriting. “So of course, we’re praying for Reuben’s release and that poor little baby who was hurt. What else?”

  By the time they finished breakfast devotions, Carl excused himself to get some work done at the church office. “Do you want me to give you a ride back to your dorm?” he asked Kennedy.

  “If you don’t mind.” As restful as her time at the Lindgrens’ had been, she knew she had to go back. If Reuben wasn’t released over the weekend, he would definitely be freed after his arraignment Monday morning. Until then, Kennedy had to work on their lab report on her own. She also needed to start some research for a Roald Dahl paper for her children’s literature class.

  Sandy packed the brunch leftovers into various sized Tupperware and set them in a canvas bag for Kennedy to take back to campus. Sandy was clearing the table and Carl was hunting for his missing sermon notes when Kennedy’s phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number but wasn’t about to miss a chance to talk to Reuben. Did he even know about the video? Did he know he was going to be released? Had he heard about the riots and the price paid for justice?

  “Hello?” Kennedy made her way into the Lindgrens’ guest bedroom for privacy.

  “I’m looking for a Miss Kennedy Stern.”

  Kennedy shut the door behind her. “This is she. What can I do for you?”

  “So where is this interview you’re going to?” Carl asked as he drove Kennedy back to Harvard.

  “Somewhere off the Orange Line.” Kennedy fidgeted with her seatbelt and glanced at the dashboard clock. If she got back to her dorm in fifteen minutes, she’d have a little less than half an hour to change her clothes and get ready before she had to catch the T to Tufts.

  “And who is this woman who called you?”

  “Her name’s Diane Fil-something. She’s got a show on Channel 2.”

  Carl frowned. “Have you researched her background or anything?”

  Kennedy wasn’t surprised that her dad and Carl had been such good friends in college. In many ways, they were exactly like each other.

  “She just said she wanted to talk to me about the video, get my side of the story.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what she said,” Carl muttered as he exited off the freeway. “I just want you to be careful. These news anchors, they don’t care about you. In most cases, they don’t even care about victims or civil liberties. You know what they care about? Ratings. So the more they can shock the audience, the better.”

  “This should be pretty straightforward.” Kennedy didn’t know why she should have to defend herself or her choices all of a sudden. “She said they’ll play the video clip, I’ll answer a few questions about when we got pulled over, and they’ll cut to a commercial or something. I don’t think it will be too hard.”

  “That’s because you’re a decent kid with nothing to hide,” Carl explained. “But you better believe me, if you had a skeleton in your closet, it’s people like this Diane What’s-Her-Name who’d gamble away their grandmother’s soul to be the first to break the story.” He patted her knee. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so negative. I hope you have a really good interview. Just be careful, ok?”

  “Thanks.”

  They drove a while in silence. Carl tuned his car radio to some conservative talk show but punched it off as soon as the host mentioned the riot at the courthouse. So far, Kennedy had resisted the morbid urge to look up footage from the event. She didn’t know how much damage had been done, but the streets seemed relatively calm for the middle of a Saturday. Were people staying home? Did the police think the riots would get worse?

  Carl pulled his Honda up to a curb near Harvard Square. “See you at church tomorrow?”

  “If I get this lab report done by then,” Kennedy answered. She slung her new canvas bag laden with leftovers on her shoulder, waved goodbye, and shut the door. She pulled her phone out of her pocket to glance at the time as Carl pulled away. If she hurried, she might even have time to wash her hair before she went on TV.

  CHAPTER 27

  Kennedy would have never guessed how much work went into preparing for a television interview. She arrived at the Channel 2 building ten minutes late and was immediately whisked into a makeup chair. While two different attendants muttered and frowned and fawned over her, Diane Fiddlestein’s assistant barraged Kennedy with questions on every topic, from her time in China to her parents’ missionary work, which Kennedy had to explain was a taboo subject due to her parents’ sensitive relationship with the Chinese government. He asked her about her abduction last fall, and Kennedy’s cheeks burned when she explained to him she still had flashbacks from the event and would prefer not to discuss it on live television. He assured her he would pass the message on to Miss Fiddlestein and then interrogated her about Reuben, the nature of their relationship, what part of Kenya he was from, what kind of grade
s he got.

  “Is she really going to ask all this during the interview?” Kennedy had lost track of the time but was pretty sure they’d been talking for over half an hour when the interview was only scheduled to last about five minutes.

  The assistant explained that this was common procedure. While a hair designer slathered Kennedy with hairspray, the assistant told her where to find bottled water or tea while she waited for the interview.

  Apparently, she hadn’t needed to be so preoccupied with being late, since she ended up with about forty-five minutes to wait behind the set for her turn. She was glad she had brought a book with her and found that The Trumpet of the Swan, which was on the suggested reading list for her children’s literature course, was the perfect way to calm her nerves. Carl’s warning about television anchors buzzed in the back of her head like an annoying mosquito, so she focused instead on the world of Louis, a swan who longed to share his voice with the world.

  During a commercial break, while Diane Fiddlestein yelled at the teleprompter operator for some error he insisted he had no control over, her assistant led Kennedy to a beige loveseat.

  “Your interview starts in two minutes. Can I get you one last drink of water?”

  Kennedy shook her head, and he went on to summarize all the rules he’d already gone over before: speak clearly, ignore the camera, maintain eye contact with Diane, and stay completely on topic. Kennedy figured if she could multitask the procedure for a spectrophotometric determination experiment in the lab, she could make it through a five-minute interview.

  “All right,” someone in a headset called out. “We’re up.”

  Kennedy found it a little strange that this would actually be her first conversation with Diane, but she was more concerned about proving Reuben’s innocence than about how forced and contrived their meeting felt.

  The man in the headphones held up his fingers and yelled out the countdown. They were on live TV.

  The segment started with a few short snippets from Kennedy’s encounter with Bow Legs. She was glad they showed it off-screen so she didn’t have to watch it herself. She rubbed her clammy hands on her fitted wool slacks and tried to focus on long, controlled breathing. Five minutes. That’s all this was. Five minutes for Reuben. She could do this.

  She was so focused on stuffing her anxiety into one small enclosed place in the center of her gut that she wasn’t paying attention to Diane Fiddlestein’s smiley introduction. Fortunately, after Diane thanked her for being on the show, Kennedy’s brain automatically kicked in with the expected exchange of pleasantries.

  “So, Kennedy.” Diane folded her hands in her lap. Kennedy wondered if there was a metal rod surgically plastered against her spine that allowed her to sit up so tall. Diane’s smile was dazzlingly pretty, the dark red of her lips accentuating the perfect whiteness of her enamel, but there was a snakelike quality to her look that reminded Kennedy of the serpent witch in The Silver Chair. “Tell me,” Diane began, “how did you feel when you learned that Reuben had been arrested last night?”

  Kennedy was glad she hadn’t asked about her encounter with the police. This was all about Reuben, after all. That’s why she was here.

  “I was upset, obviously. I knew Reuben hadn’t done anything wrong, so I felt it was unfair when they took him away.”

  Took him away? Maybe she’d been spending too much time reading children’s literature. It sounded like she had the vocabulary of a fourth grader.

  “So tell us about the video we just watched,” Diane went on. “I’m told the camera was hidden in your pocket?”

  “Right. I turned it on when it looked like there might be some sort of confrontation. If things escalated, I wanted to have it on tape.”

  Diane nodded encouragingly, but her next question was far blunter than the previous. “And why did you wait a whole day to bring the truth to light?”

  “I thought my camera had malfunctioned. I got a message after the incident that said it was out of memory, so I ...”

  “But obviously it wasn’t if you had the recording after all.”

  “I only got the first few minutes,” Kennedy explained. “The rest was ...”

  Diane didn’t let her finish. “And how did you feel when you learned that your video resulted in a riot that injured a seven-month-old baby?”

  “I was devastated. I never wanted anything like that to ...”

  “So, you’ll be happy to learn the baby was released from Providence this afternoon?”

  Kennedy felt like she was in one of Professor Adell’s lab lectures, unable to keep up with the pace. “That’s great.”

  Diane jumped in as soon as Kennedy paused for breath. “And Reuben, the young man who was arrested, how would you describe him?”

  The only reason Kennedy agreed to this interview in the first place was for the chance to clear Reuben’s name. She told Diane about how good of a student he was, how encouraging, how he always had kind words, how he loved his family back in Kenya.

  The whole time she talked, Diane busied her fingers unfolding a piece of paper that seemed to have materialized from nowhere. She frowned. “It says here that your friend’s father was involved in the administration of former Kenyan dictator Daniel arap Moi. What can you tell me about that?”

  Kennedy knew hardly anything about Kenya’s history or politics. She’d never heard the name Diane mentioned. Reuben’s conversation about his family was almost entirely limited to his numerous sisters and their dozens of children. “I really couldn’t say,” she stammered.

  “I also find myself wondering why Reuben was sent overseas for his college education?” Diane’s perfect smile chilled Kennedy’s spine like the White Witch’s winter curse in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

  “Well, Harvard’s a good school with a great international reputation ...”

  Diane was frowning at the piece of paper, not listening to Kennedy at all. “Is it possible that Reuben was sent to the States because people with his condition get better medical treatment here than they would in a Nairobi hospital?”

  Kennedy wondered if something even as warm as Aslan’s breath would be enough to melt the icicles that had attached themselves to her nerve endings. “What medical condition?”

  Diane pointed at her piece of paper, even though it was too far away for Kennedy to read. “It says here that your friend was diagnosed as HIV-positive.”

  Kennedy’s throat tightened. She threw a pleading look at Diane, who sat cold and frigid like Empress Jadis on her throne.

  “I’m not sure that ... I don’t think ...”

  “So I guess he didn’t tell you before you started dating him.” Diane frowned in false sympathy, pouting at the camera. “Well, when you see him again, please wish him the best. You’ll be happy to hear I just got word that his arraignment has been rescheduled for this afternoon. If all goes well for his case, you’ll be together again tonight. Thanks so much for joining us today, and I wish you both well.”

  Kennedy was too stunned to leave her chair once they turned the cameras off. Somewhere in a different part of the studio, a weatherman cracked jokes about an early spring heat wave, but his words flowed past Kennedy like time and space zooming past Meg in A Wrinkle in Time.

  Nobody, not a single one of the dozens of backstage assistants noticed her. She stood herself up, trying to find something to settle her thoughts on, a focal point to pull her out of her daze.

  The next commercial break ushered in a cacophony of noise and movement, and Kennedy half expected Diane Fiddlestein to reappear and apologize for making such a heinous joke on live television, but she was already behind her desk, sharing whispers with her co-host. Kennedy was surprised her legs could hold her weight, surprised her brain could still function.

  Shouldn’t the world have stopped turning? Shouldn’t her entire nervous system have shut down?

  She let herself out of the backstage area and followed the exit signs until she found the elevators that took her to the
main level. She walked out of the lobby and found herself alone on the Boston curbside in a world that in a single instant had lost all sense of beauty, justice, or hope.

  CHAPTER 28

  By the time Kennedy got off the T and arrived back to campus, she had ignored calls from Carl and Sandy as well as three other numbers she didn’t recognize before she turned her phone off.

  As she walked to her dorm, she felt the stares of the students around her. Did they know? Could they guess?

  It didn’t make sense. Reuben with HIV? AIDS was one of those things like malaria — you learned about it, you knew it was bad, but you never expected someone you knew to actually have it.

  She thought back to his brooding silences in spite of his otherwise cheerful, steady mood. His reluctance to take their story to the police department or the media. Had he known? Had he guessed the press would dig into his background?

  Why hadn’t he told her? Or had he tried? Was that the secret? It didn’t have anything to do with Kennedy or any sort of romantic feelings at all. It was about his diagnosis.

  She realized with irony that she wasn’t suffering from even a hint of anxiety. No clammy hands. No racing pulse. No constricting lungs. Just a heaviness, as if someone had replaced her bone marrow with molten lead. Everything seemed to ache, but she wasn’t in pain anywhere.

  HIV positive? How had he gotten it? How long had he known? Would things change now that the truth was out? Wouldn’t they have to?

  It wasn’t fair. HIV didn’t impact people like Reuben. Did it?

  She thought back to all her interactions with him in the lab. She couldn’t have gotten herself contaminated. It wasn’t like catching a cold or anything.

  She glanced at her silenced phone, wishing it weren’t the middle of the night in Yanji. Who could she talk to about this? Who could she turn to? She had already spent too much time at the Lindgrens’ this weekend. Besides, Carl had tried to warn her before she appeared on that stupid interview in the first place. Why hadn’t she listened to him?