Picture Us In The Light(11)
“You ever been to Northwestern?” Harry says to me. “It’s like—rich white kid central. It’s different from Cupertino, sure, but maybe it’s not better. Most places aren’t. Everywhere’s just different.”
“You’ve been there?” she says. She knows he hasn’t.
“I’ve looked it up.”
“You’d live here forever, wouldn’t you?”
“I mean, yeah, it’s a nice place to live.”
“Nice like what? Nice like easy?”
“Sure.” He tries to mask it with a smile, but there’s a tightness in his voice. “It makes sense. You know what’s expected. I like people to tell me what they want from me, sue me. It’s fine here.”
We’re meeting everyone outside the International Hall on Larkin. I was maybe 30 percent nervous everyone would bail at the last minute, but nearly everyone’s there already by the time we show up. Regina slips into what I think of as her Editor Mode—circling the crowds with a smile for everyone and this certain, ardent way of listening to people, even just in throwaway conversation, that makes you feel like she’s incredibly glad you’re there.
Reemu Kapoor turns around and lights up when she sees me. “Danny! You got into RISD!” She gives me a hug. “That’s so awesome.”
Harry grins. “I, uh, maybe told people.”
And then a crush of people all surround me, jostling and high-fiving and hugging. Harry wasn’t kidding. I think literally everyone comes up to me to say congratulations, weaving me into their net of goodwill. I can feel my face going all red, my smile stretching wide enough that it starts to hurt.
I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that this whole universe we’ve inhabited nearly all our lives is going to dissolve itself in just six months, all of us flung to the far reaches of the world. I’m not like Regina—I love Cupertino. I love the trees and the quiet streets and the way the hills glow behind everything in the late afternoon; I love how contained it all is, how you can spend your whole life in a two-or three-mile radius and not feel like you’re missing very much. I love the people at school. I even love the hundred percent rule.
Maybe Regina blames Cupertino, though. You can play what-ifs forever. Maybe everything would’ve been different in a different place, with different people, with different pressures. I can’t fault her for wondering. I wonder too.
The talk is behind schedule; the doors still haven’t opened. There are maybe a few dozen other people here, not exactly the crowd that screams must-see event!! Behind me Chris Young and Andrew Hatmaker are getting bored.
“This talk better blow my mind,” Chris says. “It better change—”
“Why?” Harry says sharply, whirling around to stare at Chris. His eyebrows go up and stay there.
“Come on, there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing with your Saturday?” Chris says. In middle school Chris was in love with Regina. He used to corner me in the locker room sometimes and demand to know whether I was dating her.
“I’m in this great city with a lot of friends, so yeah, I’d say this is pretty good.”
“I wanted to sleep in.”
“Sucks to your assmar, then, doesn’t it?” Harry’s tone is friendly, but his expression is hard. “I thought it was a really good idea Regina came up with.”
Chris backs down. “Right,” he says. “Yeah, okay.” He offers Harry a smile. Harry doesn’t return it, and stares him down a few more seconds before turning back around. That’s new since March with Harry, that hair-trigger protectiveness at the slightest hint anyone might be somehow in opposition to something, anything, Regina wants.
The doors open then, and we go in. At the front of the room there’s a thirtyish white guy in a blazer writing something behind a podium. The only three sophomores in Journalism, Esther Rhee and Lori Choi and Maureen Chong, sit in front of me. Esther has a fashion blog, and every now and then I glance at it—she has a good eye, lots of clean text and white space, whimsical outfits with Bible verses Photoshopped along the borders and sale alerts and every now and then posts about fighting child trafficking. She always writes feature stories, usually about people she knows going on missions trips or spearheading volunteering orgs.
I see Esther’s expression change when the first slide goes up, the ACLU logo, and she leans over and whispers something to Lori and Maureen. They’re all close friends, insular in a way that feels familiar to me. (Also, I’m like 95 percent sure they all have a thing for Harry.) The three of them squint at the screen and duck their heads together, conferring in the way you do when you don’t want anyone else to hear what you’re saying. I can’t tell if Regina notices.
The guy speaking, to put it delicately, is full of crap. Basic slides, mansplanations about legal implications of the First Amendment, and then a long, smug humblebrag about how he represented some school that challenged free speech rules and text message records. I let my mind wander to RISD instead. Regina’s watching sharply, a notebook ready, but I never see her actually write anything down.
“Great talk,” I tell her as we’re filtering out of the theater. “Did you like it?”
She looks around, then drops her voice. “I can’t believe I made everyone come watch this.”