Picture Us In The Light(31)
“We just wanted to see how you were doing,” Mina says now. “We haven’t seen you at church in so long.”
Regina puts up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, squinting up at them. “That’s nice of you. I’ve been good, just busy.”
Grace and Mina glance at each other. Mina says, “Do you think you’ll come out on Friday night?”
“I think I actually might have some things I need to work on.”
“Right,” Grace says, like she expected that answer. “What about Sunday? We’re probably going to start planning Brothers Appreciation Night. We want to do a progressive dinner. We thought maybe your house could be one station since you live right by the Chiens.”
“Sunday I have SAT tutoring, actually.”
“Oh.” Grace looks at Mina again, maybe for some sort of confirmation. They’re uncomfortable in a way that makes it clear if there was any way they could’ve managed to have this conversation with just her, and not in front of us, they would’ve. “So, um, how’s your walk with God been going?”
Lauren Kao and Maurice Wong, who’d been talking with us, both kind of edge away, drifting toward where Abishek Batra is laughing about something I can’t make out. Regina says, “It’s fine.”
“It’s just really been on our hearts to see how everything’s been going for you.”
Regina smiles. “Things are fine.”
“When my mom was in the hospital freshman year it really helped when I was good about doing my quiet times,” Grace says, and it comes out in a rush like maybe she’s been rehearsing it. “I went through this one book—I can lend it to you if—”
“Sure, thanks.”
She’s sitting very still, holding the same smile on her face, and you can see them feeling themselves deflect off her. Harry says, “You guys want to sit down?”
“No, we just wanted to say hi,” Mina says quickly. She turns a little red. “Regina, let us know if there’s anything we can lift up for you, okay? Or let us know if you want to be part of the progressive dinner or anything. And I’ll get you that book.”
“Great. Thanks.”
When they’re out of earshot, Harry says, “It sounds kind of nice to have something like that to go to.” He says it with a careful, practiced mildness that makes me think he worries about her more than he lets on. “Your church, I mean. It meant a lot to you, right?”
“Sure.”
I say, “Sometimes I wish I believed something like that.”
She shrugs. “You can.”
Is that what people think, that you can just decide what to believe that way? That’s not how believing in anything works—you can’t always buy in when you want to, even if you know it would be better if you did. It’s why leaving Texas was so hard for me as a kid, even as much as I wanted it to be true what my parents told me that it was fine, that we’d be happier.
Harry watches her. He finishes his lunch, some kind of Paleo bowl from one of those meal-delivery services, then crumples up the (compostable) bowl. “Are you annoyed?”
“No.”
I can’t tell if she means it or not. I also can’t tell if she’d answer differently if I weren’t here—if she’d open up with just Harry and no one else.
“You were kind of acting like it,” Harry says.
“I mean—” She sighs. “No. I wasn’t. I don’t know.”
She’s quiet the last few minutes of lunch, and I think she’s maybe a little relieved when the bell rings. All day I think about that. Honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of Mina Lee, but coming and finding Regina when she’s with all her friends, pressing to make sure she’s actually okay according to the terms they always cared about most—when have I done that for her? I should try harder, put myself out there more. I owe her at least that much.
This is the thing I keep coming back to: the ASB elections last year. Because of what happened with Sandra, mostly, and because I keep going back again and again to try to figure out how much blame I hold and what it all means.
Harry, of course, was running for senior class president. Harry has been class president every single year since first grade (and I think it says something that I know this, even though I didn’t go to first through sixth grade with him).
“You should run for vice president,” he said earnestly. “Or like—secretary, or something.”
“I’ll pass.”
“It would be cool if you won and then we were on it together.”
“Assuming you win.”
“Yeah, assuming I do.” He wrapped his fingers into a fist and thumped it gently, pinkie side down, against his palm. “You think I will?”
“Probably.” Since I first met him, I’m not sure Harry has lost anything more significant than a tennis match.
“I’ve tried to do a decent job with it before.”
I knew he was fishing, but I also knew he meant it, that it really mattered to him. I’ve seen how hard he’s worked on ASB stuff, how he’ll send out memos to everyone in Leadership about inclusiveness and campus culture and peer connectedness. When we have rallies, he spends hours trying to get a good cross section of the student body to call up to participate in front of everyone, and he’s always proposing stuff like Tell Someone You Care week or things like that. Every class has its own particular personality, and the class above us was kind of shallow and cruel, the sort of social ecosystem where girls would regularly cry at lunch and if one of the popular kids was talking to you the odds were good it was some kind of joke, and we aren’t like that (thank God) in part because of him. I should’ve just told him that, that I think caring as much as he does and working as hard as he has is something to be proud of, and that if I had to say who the most influential person is on campus it’s him, easily, and I think he’s actually tried to use that in a positive way because in the truest, most non-throwaway sense of the word, Harry’s nice. He is. He’s a nice guy.