The fur coat's first march

Turn 3 of 51

Keep listening quietly and take mental notes. they to talking about the fired professors that are not white for talking about their problems dealing with rasicm. you sit there as they plan to join the blm protest tomorrow and be there all day. this keeps going until Cleo says meeting is over and to be at the protest by 7 tomorrow morning. you leave and return to your single room.

You keep still and keep score, a ledger building behind your eyes. The talk moves from students to faculty: Professor Okafor, denied tenure after twenty years; Professor Reyes, pushed into early retirement after the open letter; the adjunct who taught a course on race and policing and didn't get her contract renewed. 'They speak the truth about racism and they're gone,' the septum-ring girl says, and it comes out low this time, no shouting, which somehow makes it heavier. Around the circle heads nod, and someone passes a folder of printed emails, dog-eared and highlighted, like scripture.

Then Cleo writes tomorrow's date on the whiteboard and the room sharpens. 'BLM march. Downtown, starting at the courthouse. We're there at seven and we stay all day.' She assigns pairs for the banner, someone for water, someone to livestream, someone to bail fund phone duty. 'All day, comrades. The administration watches these things. Let them watch us.' The cyber-goth girl whoops, and the chant starts low and rolls through the basement like a wave finding shore.

You sit through it with your hands in your lap and your mental notes filling up — the names, the times, the folder, the way they say comrades without irony. The fur coat stays silent on your shoulders. You are the only person in this room who doesn't know what side of a police line she'll be standing on tomorrow, and the thought has a taste to it you can't name yet.

'Meeting's over,' Cleo says finally, slapping the marker cap on. 'Seven a.m., courthouse steps. Bring boots, bring water, bring somebody.' Chairs fold, the whiteboard erases to a gray smear, and fifteen bodies squeeze past you up the narrow stairs. The septum-ring girl goes last and doesn't look at you.

Outside, dusk has gone fully dark, and the quad lamps make little islands of yellow on the brick paths. You cross to your dorm, badge through the door of your single room — the one you paid a premium for, the one with the private bathroom — and shut the door on the quiet. The coat comes off. The flyer is still in its pocket, crease gone soft as cloth, and the room holds you in its expensive silence while tomorrow, seven a.m., sits there waiting.