Page 37 of To the Moon and Back

When I didn’t move, Sam gestured at my seat with a slice of pizza.

I sat down.

I could get arrested. Or expelled. Or photographed in a newspaper article that would still be on the internet when my NASA app was being considered.

Any of these options would ruin my career.

The only reason I joined Della at her Iraq War protests was because they’d been pre-authorized by the college.

I stood back up. “What if we wait one day,” I said. “Give it one day, and I volunteer to submit the paperwork with campus security to officially—”

“Steph,” Kayla said, before an overly long pause. The pause involved huffing and puffing. “Should you go outside and cool down?”

If we were children, and if she weren’t constantly out of breath, I would have crossed the room and tackled her. As it was, she did wide, weird hip circles on her birthing ball while Jason pushed on her lower back. Whatever was happening over there felt a little too animalistic.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just worry. We have our whole lives to regret this.”

“All right, Steph, you’ve said your piece,” Sandra said. She looked bored.

“Is this what the world needs from us right now? Us kids in our ivory tower? What about the war in Iraq?”

Sam laughed. “That is literally the first thing you’ve ever said about Iraq.”

Della looked disgusted. “Seriously, you have no sense of moral—”

“Della, please!” I said. “You were raised white .”

Nick stopped typing. Della took one long, heavy breath.

I lowered my voice. “I mean, we all appreciate your situation.” I gestured around the room. No one would meet my eye.

I tried again. “I get where you’re coming from. But you don’t have to prove yourself by getting pissed at some shit that’s brand-new to you.”

“And there it is,” Sam said, his voice low. Like he’d been waiting for something to make Della break up with me. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and stared me down.

Sandra laced her fingers with Della’s. Jess wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

Della looked at me like she was years older than I was, like there were hundreds of moments of hurt in her eyes and now I was one of them. Like no matter what happened next, I would always be one of them.

Della told me once what she was most afraid of. It was the night that I’d first told her I loved her. She said she worried she’d never get back what was taken from her. That she’d never feel known and wanted as all that she was.

She had trusted me to see her.

I sat back, low in my seat, and slowly the air shifted.

People talked about the timing for the protest that night, and who had cardboard for signs. I traced the pattern of the wood grain on the dining table, the stains and scratches, and I wished I were somewhere else. But where could I go?

The meeting ended. I tried to talk to Della.

She nodded, silently, encircled ( protected , I worried) by her friends.

She didn’t get a real apology. Sam reached across Jess to squeeze Della’s shoulder, and he rolled his eyes when I finished.

Della looked at me and hesitated. She was on the edge of something. Maybe giving in?

She stood and took a step toward me, shrugging off the many hands that held her. She lifted her own hands to the space between us—maybe in forgiveness, maybe habit. Then she brought them down, clasped them together behind her back, shook her head, and left the room.

I spent most of that night in the library, avoiding my friends ( if they’re even still my friends , I thought, hunkered down in self-pity). I sat at a long table reading in Russian, not understanding, my finger moving slowly across the page.

I tried not to think about what I had done. I thought about my sister, only two weeks from her due date. If she drew attention to herself with this protest, surely the school would notice she was squatting.

Mostly I thought about Della.

Della had flicked on a light switch inside me.

When I met her, there were suddenly all these things to be aware of that I didn’t want to look at, shirts and pants I had at some point folded into the darkest closet of myself.

The powerlessness I’d felt as a child. The pain.

The striving of my family and nation. The way other people saw me, and the way other people left me, and the way I left other people.

The fear of who I was and the fear of who I was becoming.

All of these, Della saw. She pulled them out, unfolded them, and asked me to help her understand. She hung them on a clothesline in the front yard. She talked about her own life, and mine, openly.

I was ashamed. Della was not. Where I found weakness in my past, she found strength in hers. She found defiance, persistence, absolute confidence in the full story of her life. Even the parts that had been written for her—she felt sure she would write them again.

From my table in the library, I heard faraway shouts. I opened the window to the freezing cold. I heard the banging of sticks on a gate.

Then, around midnight, sirens.