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 silent but. “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 more me. 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 feels right to 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’t do anything. 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 in an 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 a show. 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 is happening?”
She was panting, wild eyed. “Kiki. I quit the cabinet. Today. You wouldn’t believe the 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?”
Adwoa grabbed my arm. “Kiki, he has been going to the meetings. I’ve been working on this for months. I have a mole. Zack is such an idiot. They’re good to him, so he thinks of course, they can’t be racist. But it’s great PR for them. They’ve been using him this whole time. Did you know that Zack’s dad was a Whitewell Knight too? They always find one so they can keep up the pretense that they ain’t a fucking Klan. He’s a legacy.
“Zack was somehow smart enough to find a way to be in power and also take money. He has president of a society on his CV and he also gets to pocket money and connections from helping out the Whitewell Knights. He’s going to get his pick of fellowships, internships, graduate jobs—whatever he wants.”
I stumbled back. It was clear now that Zack’s brand of dark was layered, any depth he had directed to being the world’s biggest prick.
“Shit, Adwoa. I mean, well done, but shit. You found this out all by yourself?”