Red Sky: Chapter 11
“I got you a present,” Aya said.
“Why?”
She laughed. “Your birthday is in a week.”
“Oh, I forgot.”
“How can you forget your own birthday, I guess that’s what happens when you get old.”
She laughed again.
“I’m not old.”
“You’re almost 30.”
“I still have a couple years.”
“That’s old.”
“You’re only a few years younger than me.”
“Yeah, but I will always be younger than you. When you’re 30, I’ll still be younger than you, and when you’re 40, I’ll still be younger than you, and when you’re 60, I’ll definitely be younger than you.”
“And when I’m 70.”
“I’ll be in the prime of my life.”
The library at the Academy overlooked a two-block patch of grass that separated various administrative and educational buildings. Early on in my time there, I began to sit in the third story window watching the movement of my fellow students below as I pretended to work on various assignments or study for various exams.
Eventually, Aya joined me during the mild winter months, as we sat across from each other at one of the tables, our feet touching beneath that table as she studied and I still pretended to study, happy in her presence. We had survived a half a year together, her fiancée still absent at flight training, Aya juggling her family responsibilities and our secret relationship. I never allowed myself to think thoughts of growing old together because they were more fantasies than planning for the future, but the conversation made such thoughts inevitable.
Aya could tell I drifted away, and tried to bring me back, her foot nudging against mine
“Don’t you want to know what it is.”
“Nope.”
“You don’t want to know what I got you.”
“I’ll find out when you give it to me.”
“How can you not be at least a little curious?”
“I guess I’m not very good with presents.”
“Apparently.”
“I feel like I owe something to the other person when I get a present.”
“You know that’s not the way presents work. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do.”
She looked at me with sharpened eyes. They narrowed. I wasn’t even sure what I meant by it. It just came out in the way conversation sometimes does, especially does, when you are comfortable with the other person.
“It’s like you’ve never been in a real relationship,” she said to me. I had inadvertently rejected her gift before she gave it to me.
“I wasn’t always like this. When you lose a lot of money, you become more aware of its value.” I tried to explain, only burying myself deeper. Her sharpened eyes stayed like blades.
“My last relationship didn’t end well. Maybe that’s why I’m not good with presents.” I tried again.
“What did you do to her?”
“I wasn’t honest.”
“Oh, you cheated.”
“I didn’t cheat.”
“Then how?”
“I tried not to hurt her, I thought by lying to her I wouldn’t hurt her, that I would save her from being hurt, but by leading her on, by letting the relationship go on longer than it should, I ended up hurting her more than I could have ever imagined.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing, I didn’t mean anything, it’s just what happened.”
Aya’s eyes flickered like the flame in a candle right before it goes out.
“You think this is easy for me. You think I want to be in this situation. That I….. God, I was trying to be nice.”
She grabbed her bag and got up from the table. She left the library. We didn’t talk to each other for a week after that. I suppose we should have ended it then and we would have avoided all that was to come. But I didn’t want to let go. She didn’t want to let go.
A week later, I was back at my perch in the library. This time alone. I followed a speck of orange and blue as it crossed the campus. Aya, in her familiar winter jacket moved against the current of brown and gray coats. There was a group of students protesting. One of the more popular teachers at the Academy had been removed and a small group of students was protesting the removal. There was a counter protest facing off against them in favor of the teacher’s removal. The orange and blue of Aya cut in between the two groups. She made it to the edge of the protests when the Guardians showed up with their clubs and batons. They went straight for the protesters, the counter protesters surging behind them. One large mass of people enveloping a smaller mass. Aya was still on the edge of the confrontation. From my vantage point I couldn’t tell if she had been caught up in the mass of bodies. The orange and blue vanished amidst the sea of the black and white uniforms of the Guardians.
I ran down to find her. I was caught up in the middle of dozens of bodies unable to see above the crowd. Waves of students pushed me forward, then waves pushed me back again. The Guardians showed no mercy. The crack of bones could be heard as clubs and batons crushed faces and arms and legs. There was a young kid next to me, couldn’t be older than 19. A Guardian’s club was raised, ready to come down on his head. I jumped in between to shield him. The club swung down. It glanced off my cheekbone. The Guardian raised his club again. I struck him in the helmet, smashing his darkened visor and my hand in the process. He recoiled and looked at me. I could see one of his eyes through the cracked visor. He reared back for another blow. A hand grabbed me by the collar. I spun and saw orange and blue. Aya pulled me away. The mass of bodies continued to surge against each other. Sirens filled the air.
She took me by the hand and led me to the nearest building. I kept ahold of that hand like it was oxygen, like it was the only thing that would allow me to continue to breathe, to survive. I didn’t let go and neither did she. We found a storage closet. The sirens were loud screams now. Aya pulled me into the closet and shut the door, locking it, our bodies tight against each other in the small space, my hand still in hers as we listened to the world fighting each other outside.
Students ran into the building. They were being chased. We heard the hard boots of the Guardians and then the harder sound of clubs against skin. The screams of sirens were now screams of students. Overwhelming force had won. The screaming stopped and we could hear people being rounded up, collected to be taken to jails, to prisons, their lives forever changed. Aya and I stayed against each other, both holding our breath, our hands still holding tightly, barely able to move in the cramped storage room.
We heard the sound of doors opening and closing. Then a voice. “I’m going to find that one.” I don’t know who he was looking for, maybe me. Door after door opened and closed. The doors to all of the classrooms leading down the hallway. They got closer, Aya exhaled, I could feel her breath on my neck. Her breathing stopped again when they were one door away. My heart beat faster. Feet stomped right outside our door. The door handle of the storage closet moved. The closet wouldn’t open. It jiggled again. It was a weak lock. It wouldn’t take much to break it.
“Come on. There’s no one here. They got everybody. Let’s get back outside before they take off.”
The door handle jiggled one last time. The boots stomped away. I could feel Aya’s breath on my neck once again. Maybe I was breathing again as well. We stayed in that storage closet for the next two hours, standing against each other, holding each other’s hand.
By the time we left, the middle of the campus had been cleared as if there had never been anybody there, as if there had never been a protest, as if nothing ever happened. My hand was bloodied, my cheek had a large bruise. Aya’s hand had my blood on it. We went to her place to hide for the next three days.
I couldn’t go back to class until the swelling in my hand and my cheek went down. We spent that time under her covers. We made up an excuse I can’t even remember of why we couldn’t go to our classes. Separate excuses. Not just because of her fiancé and her family but because we were students. Students at the Academy weren’t allowed to be in relationships with each other. It was forbidden by the Federation. We were violating two of the most sacred laws by being together. So we stayed under the covers and hid. I wanted to stay there forever.