The Doves that Strut

-21-

Having acclimated to the water temperature, I've lost track of time reminiscing the good times I had with Will. (Gosh, my skin is all soaked wrinkled as if I've grown fifty years older.) I put the tap off, the sound of water dripping off my hair across the changing room. I can no longer hear the demoralizing thoughts of those two girls (even though they were merely describing the truth).

I grab the towel, and softly wipe the moisture off the surface of my skin and expressly refrain myself from rubbing the towel against my neck, afraid that the remaining chemicals would be pressured into the deeper layers of my body as Chrissy has warned.

I walk down the stairs and turn. At the end of the hallway, I see Chrissy holding her elbows with her opposite hands, laying them low before her stomach. She's glancing back and forth from at her shoes to the window next to the medical room, a strung-up frown on her mask-less face.

"Hey!" I say and wave my hand as I brisk up my pace and hurry past the pages of the Scrapbook of Fragranceport's Traumatic Memories.

She notices me, then runs toward me—runs, not hurries. As our distance shrinks, two trails become conspicuous on her face, manifesting from the inner corners of her eyes to ends of her cheeks, the despondency within reflective.

"Hey, why are you crying?" I gently ask her, before the poster of 11th July, when two college girls were raped by six cops by turns after getting arrested, and sling my towel onto my shoulder and clasp her wrists. I only come across how short Chrissy is when I realize I have to bend my back at a certain angle to reach her shuddering hands. "And where's Ken?"

"Ken's still back there looking after the patients," she whimpers, her snot dribbling at her nose. I almost flinch a little. She madly shakes her head. "Things have gone south, Daise, so south!"

"Why, tell me." I force myself to calmly gaze at her watery eyes. I can roughly guess the news by her frightened look, but I mustn't panic. Panicking doesn't help fix Chrissy's meltdown or every other problem. I have to stay strong.

"The cops, they've breached the east front line," she blurts out, her words all clumped together.

My guess is in the ballpark then, bleakly.

I breathe out a sigh. "How long ago?"

"Ten minutes," she sobs. "And they raided the Science Building. One of our allies had his phone streaming when the cops broke into the lab they were hiding in. A cop hit a girl with his truncheon while she screamed and cried for help," she says beneath her breath, almost imperceptible, but her pitch goes only higher and higher, turning her voice into a constant quiet scream. She's scared and looks worse than an eight-year-old sneakily watching It while her parents are asleep.

"It's okay. We're gonna be fine," I answer, stroking her curls on the side. I want to comfort her with a smile, just like what adults do, but then I realize I would need much more than a million smiles to paper over my lie.

"Are you... being upfront," she asks, "that we're gonna be fine, Daise?"

I dither over the white lie I told Will. I soothingly nod, "Yes, you're gonna be fine, Chrissy," the way Mom used to tug me in at night.

"They're discussing our strategy in Room 209," she says, pointing over at the end.

"Strategy?"

"Fight or flight," she explains as helplessness flickers in her eyes, shaded by her long eyelashes.

"Okay," I whisper. "Let's go." She nods and lets me hold her wrist until we are outside Room 209.

I watch through the glass on the medical room's door. Ken's sitting on a small grey plastic chair, which isn't even enough to support the width of his hips, before his three lying patients, his sight scattered listlessly on the floor, hands motionless on his thighs, which have been spread outward, not parallel to the sides of his chair.