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Chapter 23
“You look... chirpy.” Dr. Miller’s red lips curved wryly as I placed a coffee cup on her desk. Her room smelled of the bergamot-and-tea-tree-oil-scented steam emanating from the diffuser she had in the corner of her chicly decorated office, all Swedish ergonomics, wooden imitation Bantu sculptures, and succulents.
“Oh, you must be mistaken, Dr. M. This is my usual look of urbane insouciance. You know what it must be?” I plopped myself down in the seat in front of her. “I switched up my nude lip gloss.”
Her lips twitched as she raised the cup to me in thanks and surreptitiously pushed a brown paper bag of mini flapjacks toward me.
I grinned and popped one into mouth as she said, “Well the new lip gloss suits you. I like it.” She clicked on the keyboard of her laptop so it whirred to life and brought up the documents she needed for our catch-up.
“How are you finding your partnership with young Mr. Korede?”
I tried to eat my smile but I felt it spilling out of me, just like the warmth emanating from my chest, almost keeping me as snug as Malakai’s hoodie, which I was currently wearing over tights; I’d taken it from his room, where I’d spent the night tangled up with him in his bed.
It’d been a fortnight since Ty’s country house and I’d been walkingaround like I’d swallowed a star: fiery, celestial, delightfully volatile, and beaming everywhere. It felt like we were supposed to be this way, like our connection had been prepped for this progression. Spending our days together held new pleasure, liberated to do all the things we had to do to keep up the pretense without the souring tinge of pretense—and with the addition of other things that weren’t allowed under the stipulated rules—like his hand squeezing my knee during lectures, like kissing in the quad, like him calling me baby, like me liking it. We were also, to our mutual delight, discovering themanycreative ways we could enjoy each other before I was ready for sex.
I couldn’t articulate this to Dr. Miller for obvious reasons so I cleared my throat and hoped to push back the heat in my face. “The partnership is going well, I think.”
Dr. Miller nodded briskly—I thought I caught a glint in her eye, but it might have been wintery sunlight beaming through her office blinds.
“Good. I believe your partner thinks so too—his film is coming along very nicely. You two work well together. I can see that your voice adds something special to his film and I’m pleased by the progress you’re making with your application project. The audio reality show was a novel conceit. It’s warm, it’s engaging, and your listeners have more than doubled.”
The clip of Malakai and Zack’s scuffle had been almost definitely recorded and leaked by Simi, with evident glee in seeing me in the midst of the mess. Mercifully, it had backfired, with the hashtag#MMAMalakaispinning around campus alongside GIFs of Zack stumbling comically, slow and impotent. Our subscribers had gone up. As I allowed the warmth of the praise to sink in, a sound coming from the window threatened to distract me completely. If I listened closely, I could detect the words “Whitewell Knights.”
I blocked the noise out and focused on Dr. Miller’s inscrutable expression.
“This is all perfect for your application.” Dr. Miller paused and I heard the loudly silentbut.“Kiki, what would the internship mean to you?”
I opened and shut my mouth. It was supposed to be an easy question but it rolled heavier in my mind than anticipated. “Freedom?... It’s hard to explain but I had the opportunity to do something like this before and I missed out on it because I was a—a smaller version of myself. Now I feel more confident. Ready. I feel moreme. Like I’m hiding less.”
Dr. Miller sipped her coffee and nodded, with a glimmer of a smile. “People connect to authenticity. Make sure, whatever you do, you center what feelsrightto you. That’s where integrity in media comes in. It’s not always pretty but that’s what connection is about.”
The sound coming from the window got louder.
“The truth.”
“We don’t debate with hate! We don’t debate with hate! Good night, Whitewell Knights!”
There was a chain in front of the student union building where the studio was. Or rather, a human blockade, holding up placards and headed by Adwoa and some renegades from Blackwell. I spotted Chioma and Shanti. Other students slowed down to take pictures and videos, join in the chant or taunt. A group of white boys, in pastel oxford shirts and sweaters with little riding horses embroidered at the top right corner, crowded around. The Whitewell Knights. They looked stressed, cheeks red, periodically running their fingers through their hair, standing with their hands on their hips and occasionally saying things like “This is just savage,” “Ridiculous,” “Preposterous,” “This is why we need the debate.” Campus security were encircling the premises menacingly, but technically they couldn’tdoanything. Protest was our right.
Malakai, Aminah, and I slowed down as we approached the building, working our way through the crowd—it was show day, we were on inan hour and had planning to do. Aminah swore under her breath as she shoved a James or a Spencer out of the way.
“I get why we need to do this but we have ashow.How long are they gonna be here for?”
Malakai had been holding my hand. He aimed a hard warning look at a Francis who tried to get in my way. The Francis slinked off. Malakai shrugged. “As long as they need to, probably. I dunno, I think this is really cool. They’re not listening so we make them listen. We gotta disrupt them.”
I moved so I was slightly ahead of them. “Let me get at Adwoa, see what’s up.”
Adwoa caught my eye and dropped her protest arm, face softening from the grim determination it had previously been positioned in. She passed her megaphone to someone and took us both from the furor, pulling me round the side of the building.
“Adwoa, what ishappening?”
She was panting, wild eyed. “Kiki. I quit the cabinet.Today.You wouldn’tbelievethe shit that went down since we last spoke. I went snooping. Found that Zack is getting sent money to hold this debate. None of which, of course, will go back to Blackwell.”
My breath hitched. “Wait, what?”
“Zack’s been having meetings with the Whitewell Knights. Remember last year, when we booked the main hall for Reni Eddo-Lodge and when she came to speak, it weirdly, coincidentally, turned out that there was an administrative fuckup and the Whitewell Knights had booked it for that pseudo-intellectual nationalist guy? Zack got paid off to cancel it.”
“Hold up.” I blinked, trying to process this. “Zack has been sabotaging us the whole time?”
