“I feel weird putting on my sweaty, dirty clothes,” she said. “D’you have anything I could borrow? A t-shirt, and maybe sweatpants?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, realizing that I was staring.
I found her a t-shirt and boxer shorts that had a drawstring in the front, so Lila disappeared into the bathroom again for a few moments, emerging looking much more composed, her hair pulled up into a large bun at the top of her head.
“The pizza’s ready,” I told her. “You want to get started without me, that’s fine. I wanna jump in and wash some of this stink off, too.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll just grab some plates and stuff and wait for you.”
I showered as thoroughly as I could as quickly as I could, the whole time wondering whether she might pull a disappearing act on me. Stupid, and probably close to impossible given that the city was still basically in lockdown mode; but I didn’t want to take any chances. When I turned off the water and heard movement in the kitchen, I was relieved and moved a little more deliberately, grabbing all the crap off my bathroom floor that I hadn’t thought to grab before I let her use it, and wiping the edges of the sink and bathroom mirror which was spattered with toothpaste slobber.
Stashing everything into the hamper in my bedroom, I changed into basketball shorts and a t-shirt and went out to join Lila.
She had moved the pizza into the living room, and with it a couple bottles of water from the fridge, and a beer. I guessed the beer was for me. She even put paper towels under smaller plates for us and cut the pizza into slices. Sitting with her legs folded beneath her in front of my coffee table, she looked up as I entered and put two slices of pizza on our plates.
“Wasn’t that like the best shower you ever had in your life?” she asked.
“Close to it,” I said.
Lila laughed. “I feel stupid now for crying. I don’t know why …”
“Don’t apologize,” I said. “It’s okay.”
I sat on the floor like she did, just across the coffee table and was reaching for my slice of pizza when she took my hand.
“You want to say grace first?” she asked.
“Oh. Yeah …”
Lila smiled. And I knew she knew that that hadn’t been my intention. She closed her eyes and so I did the same.
She didn’t just thank God for the food. She thanked him for the day, for the lessons, for the chance to use our voices in a cry for justice. I legit felt a lump in my throat by the time she was done, and almost forgot to release her hand.
“I called my dad while you were in the shower,” she said.
“I did the same,” I told her.
“What’d you say to yours?” she asked
“Told him I was out protesting.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. It just seemed like … he would want to know. That that was something about me, I would want him to know. Not guess at, but know.”
Lila nodded. “That’s cool.”
“What’d you tell your dad?”
“That I was safe, that I didn’t think it would make sense for him to come get me tonight because it’s crazy down here. And that I would be staying with a friend.” She looked up from her pizza after saying that last part. “Is that okay? Me staying here?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
We ate in almost complete silence, and when we were done laughed when we realized that we were both still hungry. So I put in another pizza, and while that one cooked, Lila and I sat together on my sofa and I turned on the television. Outside, it was full dark now, and the city had lit up, the dome of City Hall glowing in the distance.
CNN and other news networks were covering protests all around the country, and replaying images of resistance from coast to coast, and now, even around the globe. When an image of protestors in London, and then Germany flashed across the screen, Lila closed the distance between us, and leaned against me. First just her body pressed into my side, and then her head against my shoulder.
I sat there, almost rigid and not wanting to move in case I scared her off until suddenly she remembered our pizza and leapt up to get it. Only then did I exhale.
Lila and I watched television all night. There was no re-run of previous images because there were new developments every hour. We were still awake around eleven p.m. when the news hit, of store windows being broken, and shops being looted in Center City. We saw the very same blocks where earlier people had walked dogs and jogged as though the world hadn’t changed one iota. Shards of glass lay on sidewalks, and expensive boutiques, once impermeable to the majority of people, lay open and bare. Now, their world too, had changed. I felt a small but definite sense of satisfaction.
“She … sometimes she bullies me a little bit,” Lila said out of nowhere. Her voice was hoarse, and small.
“Who?” I asked, though I knew, of course.
“Tianna.”
I said nothing.
The apartment was dark except for the television because Lila and I scarcely moved except to get things from the kitchen and hadn’t bothered turning on the lights as it got darker. The blinds were drawn open, so we had only the glow of city lights as illumination and the flickering of the television.
“I don’t know why I let her. I think it’s because she’s so … sure. Y’know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“She seems to know herself so well. Who she is, what she wants to be, what she wants to say. Sometimes it’s easier
