“What’s your last name?” he asked without looking up, still typing.
I told him. “Yours?” I asked.
And he told me, so we were done. But we both stood there for a minute, updating each other’s contact information probably more slowly than the task merited.
When we were done, it was Kai who finally broke the silence.
“I promise, I’ma make this up to you,” he said. “A classier joint, no arrests … And I’ll hopefully have a wallet with cards in it and everything.”
Cops were exiting the carryout in pairs, skirting around us, until Kai held my arm and pulled me out of their path.
“Anyways …” I let the word drag, shifting my weight from one leg to the other.
“Yeah. It was cool,” Kai said. “Hanging out. Eating breakfast … and having you pay, that was not so cool, but …”
His geek-lite thing was growing on me more each second. I thought about the tasks ahead of me – finding Tianna, calling my dad, getting back home. I wasn’t sure how much of Center City was blocked off now, and where I might have to go to meet him, likely on foot.
“Actually,” I said. “Did you … do you have your keys to get back into your house and everything, or … I mean, since you don’t have your wallet, are you going to be okay?”
Kai’s face brightened a little and I saw the moment he reined it in.
“I was planning on going over to my building and seeing whether anyone was there to let me in. Like the maintenance guy or whatever,” he said. “But if you need me to …”
“I’m going to call my dad,” I said. “But I don’t know how long it’ll take him to come or anything, so maybe I could go with you to your place. I mean … just your building lobby or whatever and call him from there?”
I didn’t even know where he lived, so it was a very thin excuse for wanting to spend more time in his company. But he didn’t call me on it. He just smiled and nodded.
“Cool,” he said.
Chapter Five
Kai
Once we got our bearings, we thought about calling Uber to get to the north side of City Hall where my apartment is, but with all the unexpected street closures, we finally decided it would be way quicker to hoof it. We didn’t talk much at first. Everything around us seemed changed and so we were both just taking it all in.
The city seemed to have split into parts. Some blocks were eerily quiet, and on others, people were out walking dogs, plastic bags in hand to pick up and dispose of their excrement, like nothing had changed about their world. And still other blocks had clusters of folks like us, dressed in black, still wearing their face-coverings, protesters who had somehow become displaced from the main event.
As we moved farther north, the sound of voices and sirens and a general air of unrest became thicker. By the time we were two blocks from my building, we could hear the sound of hundreds of voices, carrying from maybe as far as ten blocks away.
I stopped outside the door leading into the lobby and looked at Lila and she looked at me.
Without another word, we turned, and walking past my building headed toward the sound of the other protesters.
“Is this crazy?” she asked me, her voice sounding a little jittery and excitable.
“Yup,” I answered.
“Because … I mean, we already got picked up today and we were probably lucky to get out as quickly as we did …”
“Yeah.”
“And if they pick us up again, especially if it’s late, we might be in lockup overnight.”
“Probably,” I said.
She looked at me, and I noticed for the first time just how slight she is. She had taken off the sweatshirt that had been around her waist and stuffed it into her backpack halfway through our walk to my apartment, so I saw how delicate she was. Like a lily, probably easily bruised.
“When we get down there,” I said. “Let’s not split up, okay? Stay close.”
She didn’t answer right away so I looked at her, worried that she might think I was trying to boss her around or something, but she nodded.
“Look in the bottom pocket of my bag,” she said stopping for a moment and turning her back to me. “Open it.”
I unzipped the compartment she told me to and inside found a length of cord, about twice as thick as a shoelace. On either end were loops with snaps that allowed you to open and close the loop. I looked at it, confused.
“Here,” Lila said, taking it from me.
She attached one end of the cord to a loop on her backpack, and handed me the other.
“Wait,” I said. “Is this like protest chic or what?”
She laughed. “Tianna made it. Isn’t that cool?”
“Who’s Tianna, and why …?”
“Not that we remembered to use it, but it helps you not to lose your buddy. It’s a tether. You’ll feel the tug when you’re getting separated, but it isn’t so secure that it won’t release you if one of you falls, or has to run.”
“And what happens if someone steps between you?”
Lila shrugged. “It’ll snap apart, easy-peasy.”
“So, it’s basically …”
“Useless. Yes.” She laughed again. “But Tianna thought … I’ve never … this is my first …” She caught herself and blushed.
“Okay, I gotcha. She decided to treat you like a toddler for your first big march,” I said nodding and hooking my end of the tether to my belt loop.
It gave us about two-and-a-half feet of slack, so that I naturally walked closer alongside her, and our shoulders and arms occasionally brushed.
“If you think it’s … weird, or stupid …”
“Nah, it’s a cool idea,” I lied.
But when I looked at her, she was wearing a cute little sad face.
“It’s cool,” I said, again. “‘Cause I definitely
