In Between Days (28 page)

Meanwhile, Chloe had begun to spend more and more time with Fatima, rekindling a friendship with her, turning to her for advice. She often went there in the evenings after class, before she went to see Raja or sometimes after. Raja had made her swear to him several times that she would never mention any of this stuff to anyone, and especially not to Fatima, but one night, while they were smoking pot at her house, Chloe had blurted it out. Had told her everything. About the signs. About the noose. About how, just the other day, Raja’s tires had been slashed.

“His tires were slashed?” Fatima said, suddenly alarmed, leaning forward now at the kitchen table. They were sitting in the dark, a small candle in the middle of the room casting shadows against the wall, the sounds of the Cure in the background.

Chloe nodded.

“That’s a crime,” Fatima said. “Everything you’re talking about here is a crime.”

“I know that.”

“And he’s not doing anything about it?”

Chloe shook her head. “He’d kill me if he knew I told you.”

“People need to know about this,” Fatima said.

“I know,” Chloe said and stared at her plaintively.

Fatima was silent, and she could see now that she was thinking, turning it over in her head, and suddenly regretted telling her.

“And you don’t know who it was who did this?”

“No,” Chloe said, though just the day before she had seen Tyler Beckwith in his navy-blue peacoat, walking across the quad, his blond hair waving. It had been the same navy-blue peacoat she’d seen that night in Raja’s dorm, the same blond hair she’d seen darting around the corner, and she felt certain now that it was him. Still, when she’d told Raja about
it, he’d simply shrugged and looked away, saying under his breath that he wasn’t at all surprised.

“This has to be known,” Fatima was saying now, leaning forward at the kitchen table adamantly.

“Look, let’s just drop it, okay?”

“How can you tell me to drop it?” Fatima said. “How can you tell me something like this, and then tell me to drop it? I mean, this is maybe the worst thing I’ve heard of since I’ve been here.”

Chloe stared at her, feeling suddenly light-headed from the pot, but also fearful of what might happen now, what Fatima might do with this information.

“I think we should bring this up tomorrow,” Fatima said.

“Bring it up?”

“Yeah, at the Open Forum meeting.”

“At the Open Forum meeting? Come on, Fatima, are you kidding me?”

“I won’t mention his name,” Fatima said. “I’ll keep him out of it. But I think people need to know about this. Seriously. People need to know that this is happening.”

Chloe stared at her. “Please, Fatima,” she said. “If you bring this up—I mean, if he found out that this was brought up at the meeting—you’d essentially be destroying my relationship with him. Seriously. I mean, this is something he just wouldn’t forgive.”

Fatima reached for the bowl and seemed to consider this. “You really think so?” she said finally.

“I know so.”

Fatima shook her head, then lit the bowl.

Chloe could see that she was disappointed, but she also knew that when push came to shove, Fatima would always choose her close personal relationships over a cause. In Fatima’s world, friends came first, social injustice second. In this way, she was fiercely loyal.

“You know, I wish you hadn’t told me,” Fatima said finally, putting the bowl back on the table, shaking her head.

“I know,” Chloe said, touching her hand. “I wish I hadn’t either.”

But, in the end, Fatima kept her promise. The next day at the meeting she didn’t mention it. Nor did she mention it the following night when she met up with Chloe and Raja for drinks. Still, it was probably asking
too much that Fatima wouldn’t tell
anyone
, and within the next couple days Chloe soon found out that she had not only told two of her roommates, both of whom had come up to Chloe on the quad and expressed their sympathy, but that she’d also told Seung. Chloe could understand why she would have told her roommates, she’d even half expected it, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she’d told Seung. Didn’t she realize that Seung would immediately go to Raja and confront him? Didn’t she understand that this was essentially like lighting a fuse beneath a powder keg? That everything that followed would be disaster? In fact, if there was one person in the world who she absolutely should not have told, it was Seung. But maybe that was her point. Maybe this was her own indirect way of bringing the issue to a head, of making it public, without actually having to do so herself.

Whatever her reasoning, by the time Chloe found out that she had done this, by the time she’d discovered that Seung knew, it was already too late. The night it all happened, she had come over to Raja’s dorm room with the intention of giving him a gift, an obscure book on the films of Wim Wenders, which Raja had been looking for on the Internet for months, a book that Chloe had serendipitously found in a small used bookstore in Houston over the winter break and which she’d been secretly hiding away for a special occasion. She had wrapped the book up in newspaper that afternoon, had tied a bow around it, then had gone over to Raja’s room with the intention of giving it to him. In her mind, she had imagined a night spent lying on his bed, listening to music, drinking wine, a night when they might actually make love again, a night when he might actually want to touch her, but when she arrived at his dorm room that night, they were already going at it, Seung and Raja, their voices so loud that she could hear them shouting from the end of the hall. When she got to his door, she stood there for a moment, then knocked tentatively. Nobody answered, so she knocked again, louder. This time the door cracked open, and all of her worst fears were confirmed. Seung stood there, staring at her, and behind him on the bed, she could see Raja, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, his eyes looking down.

“Come in,” Seung said. “We were just talking.”

But when she entered the room, Raja looked away. She walked over to the bed and put down the present and wine, but he ignored her. There was a tension in the room, something she could feel, something that unnerved her. Finally, Raja looked up.

“You know, I wanted to thank you, Chloe,” he said finally. “Really.”

“I didn’t tell him,” she said.

“No, really,” he said. “Thank you.”

“She didn’t actually,” Seung added. “Fatima did.”

“And let me guess who told Fatima,” Raja said, turning to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Look, I just—”

“Whatever,” he said, throwing up his arms. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Don’t get mad at her,” Seung said. “It’s not her fault.”

Raja looked at him, then back at Chloe. “Like I said, forget it. Who cares? It’s all over now. Everyone knows.”

Chloe wanted to point out that not everyone knew, that only a few people knew, and that these people were his friends, but she kept her mouth shut. Instead, after a long silence, she said, “Look, do you want me to leave or something?”

Raja shrugged, then looked away.

“No,” Seung said finally. “You should stay. You should hear this.”

“Hear what?” Chloe asked.

Seung looked at Raja. “You haven’t told her?”

Raja shook his head.

A moment later, Seung walked over to Raja’s desk and pulled out a piece of paper, then held it up to her. It was another sign, this time with a photocopied picture of Raja’s family on it and, beneath it, in bold letters, the words
AMERICA’S MOST WANTED
. Chloe felt her stomach drop, realizing that this was the same picture she’d seen in a small silver frame on Raja’s desk, the same picture she had studied on the first night they kissed.

“How the hell did he get this?” she said, and then she looked at the desk and noticed that all of Raja’s photographs were gone.

“Broke in,” Seung said, then, looking at Raja, added, “When was it?

Last night?”

“I don’t know,” Raja said. “I guess.”

“He broke into your room?” she said. “Jesus.”

“Jimmied the lock,” Seung said. “I mean, these old doors, it’s not that hard.”

She shook her head, then looked away.

“I mean, you hang up some signs on the door, that’s one thing,” Seung continued. “But you break into a dude’s room and you steal his personal shit. You steal pictures of his family, and then you disgrace
them. I mean, that’s taking things to a whole nother level. That’s getting fucking personal.”

She looked back at Raja and she could see that something had changed in his face. The old passivity was gone, replaced by something else, a new anger perhaps, or maybe something else, something deeper than anger, a hatred perhaps. She knew that if there was one thing Raja couldn’t condone, one thing he couldn’t forgive, it was someone disgracing his family. His family was the one thing no one else was allowed to touch.

“Too far,” Seung was saying now. “He’s taken this thing way too fucking far.”

Raja nodded.

“Have you called security?” Chloe asked.

“Security?” Seung laughed. “Really? What the hell is security going to do?”

She looked at him.

“We have a better idea,” Seung said. Then he looked at Raja.

“No we don’t,” Raja said.

“Oh, come on, dude.”

Raja shook his head.

“Look, what I’m talking about here, what I’m talking about is just a little payback. Retribution. You fucked with us, now we’re going to fuck with you. That type of thing.”

“He didn’t fuck with
you
,” Raja said. “He fucked with me.”

“Whatever,” Seung said. “You mess with one of us, you’re messing with all of us.”

And suddenly Chloe could see that for Seung this wasn’t personal at all. It was political. It was the fight he’d been fighting ever since he got here.

“I’m not lowering myself to his level,” Raja said. “Seriously. I’m just not going to do that.”

“Lowering yourself?” Seung said. “You think when people fight in a war they’re lowering themselves? You think when my grandfather fought against the fucking KPA, all those fuckers in the North, he was lowering himself?”

“This isn’t a war,” Raja said.

“No?” Seung said. “Well, you could have fooled me.”

Raja nodded and sipped his beer, and Chloe suddenly noticed that
there was a pile of empty beer cans on the floor behind him, that they’d probably been drinking here for quite a while.

“Look,” Seung continued, “you know as well as me that if you’re a person of color in this country, if you’re not pasty fucking white, then every fucking day of your life is a war. And that’s all I’m talking about. If you let people keep messing with you, they will. That’s all I’m saying.”

Raja looked at him, and Chloe could see that a part of what Seung was saying was starting to sink in, that he was starting to hear something he wanted to hear.

Later, she’d wonder if she should have stopped it, if she should have seen it for what it was—a knee-jerk reaction—if she should have prevented Seung from fueling the fire. But at that moment she was so filled with anger herself, so overcome by it, that she could barely think straight. And the room itself was almost electric with it, with all these crazy emotions flying around, these crazy thoughts, the three of them on tilt, it was hard to know what was right and what was wrong. It was hard not to see the utter simplicity in what Seung was saying.

“So, what are you talking about specifically?” she asked.

“I’m talking about messing with him,” Seung said. “I’m talking about going over there to that dude Tyler’s room and messing with him. Roughing him up a little. Scaring him. I’m talking about letting him know that we’re not gonna lie down over this shit. If you want to play rough, that’s fine with us. Then we’re going to play rough back. But we’re not gonna just sit here and take this shit, you know. That’s not going to be happening anymore.”

Chloe could see in Raja’s eyes that he was starting to get salty, that he was starting to understand the simple logic of it all, but she could also tell that he was drunk, that they both were, and when Raja stood up, she noticed that he needed to use the edge of the windowsill just to keep his balance.

“So what do you say, Raj?” Seung said, raising his beer, smiling this time. “You want to fuck with this guy or what?”

DAYS LATER, WHEN RAJA
was brought in for questioning, when they’d finally gathered enough evidence to bring him in, he’d say nothing of Seung’s involvement. It was only later, when a witness stepped forward, a boy from Chloe’s American Politics class, a boy who had been in the hallway that night and had seen them both leaving Tyler’s room, it was only then, when this boy stepped forward and identified them both, that Seung would eventually be brought in, too. But, even then, it seemed that Seung was simply being looked at as a peripheral figure, a casual bystander, an unwilling accomplice. It was Raja, they believed, who had masterminded it all. It was Raja, they believed, who had a bone to pick with Tyler Beckwith.

The day that Seung was brought in, Chloe was approached herself, though not because they believed that she was involved at this point. They had brought her in for questioning simply because she was close with the suspect, they said, because Seung had told them that they were dating and that she had seen him on the night that everything happened. They had brought her into the station that evening, had given her a soda, and explained that she was not under suspicion herself. They were simply following protocol, they said, trying to cover all the bases. They were actually surprisingly friendly to her, so friendly, in fact, that she let down her guard, so friendly that she didn’t even consider asking for a lawyer. This is what Raja had done, of course, had asked for a lawyer almost as soon as they brought him in, though not before they had gotten him to admit that he had been there that night, in Tyler’s dorm, and that there was a history of bad feelings between the two. Still, she was not feeling overly worried at this point. It had been an accident, after all. An unfortunate accident, but still an accident, and she figured that
Seung would have told them the same, if he had told them anything at all.