THE WORLD WE LIVE IN
Everything started to move faster than expected after Tatiana and Ana gave their statements the following morning. The public arrest of their perpetrator was casted around not just Cambridge, but the nation. They held him for twenty-four hours and then released him which sparked outrage.
It took a day for me to gather all the Kappa sisters past and present as well as sisters form other sororities to march across Cambridge and through Boston. The news and paparazzi caught the attention of this and followed us all the way to liberty bell. Though, we all knew what was causing such a panic was me. Each headline that came printed our way read: PRINCE LOUIS'S NEW GIRLFRIEND THE ACTIVIST, or something along those lines.
"How are you two?" Tatiana had asked right before the march as she put another magazine down.
"Fine."
"Just fine?" she probed. "You two have been all over the papers and social media for weeks. They've already started to speculate when your wedding date is going to be and what your children are going to look like."
I hummed at her excitement explicitly aware that the large diamond engagement ring was sitting upstairs in my bag of school textbooks and my mother's journals. Since I arrived back in the states I'd been ignoring Louis's phone calls and text messages to me. I didn't want to face him I couldn't and there was some part of me that wished he would forget me and vice versa because ever since I landed back on American soil I realized how much better I could breathe. I was free here. To speak. The protest. To march. To live my life the way I wanted to. "Yeah," I released. "We're just fine."
The march took us four hours to complete from Cambridge all the way to some park and by the time we reached the crowd had grown exponentially; a crowd of men and women who wanted to all hear what we wanted to say. "Thank you all for joining us today," I shouted until a microphone was placed in my hand. "This year has been terrifying, especially for women. We've been confined to our rooms and houses. Dependent on others to get us from point a to point b. We have been victimized and have had our liberties stripped from us even more than usual and now it's time for us to take it back. It is time for us to demand justice for Alice and Bethany and Noel and Ana and Tatiana," I looked back at the girls beside me and smile. "It's time we all got justice for that they've taken from us!"
The crowd around us roared to life and Ana stepped forward to speak. "Hello everyone, my name is Prathana Balakrishna and I was attacked a few days ago and almost raped, by someone I thought I knew. Someone I trusted and for a while I was conflicted whether to not to go to the police because rarely do we have women who are believed and rarely do we as women get justice for the horrors that is brought onto us," she swallowed and looked beside me. I took her hand and her breathing seemed to steady. "But I was told by my friend here, that there are women who are hurting and that I could help just by speaking up. So, for everyone out there and everyone watching. You know his name and you know what he's done. Stand with us as we reclaim our space and our bodies."
The crowd roared through the television screen and I swallowed the heaviness inside my throat. Our march had been broadcasted on every major news station and as we neared the trial date which had been set the anxiety in the house had been raised. "So what happens next?"
"Nothing," Olivia Thompson said. The high-profile attorney had come to our defense out of a favor to Professor Aude, but also because the case was so sought after. "The trial has been set so all we need to do is prepare to go to war. My crisis management team will be contacting you all in a few days listen to them. They'll be your life jacket because the questions they'll be asking you all on the stand will be brutal and evasive and meant to break you, but you can't break. If you show too much emotion your lying and not enough well... your lying, so don't lie. And carry on with life as normal, but just for the sake of everything stay inside please."
Sending a quick email Olivia was out the door carrying a heavy perfume with her.
"Is anyone else nervous?" Tatiana asked breaking the silence among the seven of us.
My eyes scattered amongst us until Ana exhaled, "I'm more pissed that I'm going to have to see his face in court. Smug piece of shit."
"I heard he has an army of lawyers."
"Well we have each other," I pointed out as the door bell rang and I sprang up to get it. "So, it doesn't really matter who he has." Opening the door my breathing stopped at the sight of Louis standing in front of me. "Hi."
"Hello," he swallowed.
"Do you want to..." I pointed inside and he nodded. As I led him upstairs to the room I was occupying I could feel all the girls whispering and staring at us. And as soon as I closed the door behind us the word vomit spewed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for leaving without telling you and ignoring your calls. I was just—I got the call about Tatiana and I panic and ran and I'm sorry."
Louis shook his head. "It's fine," he said. "I mean you should've told me I was worried sick about you until I saw you on the news yesterday. Couldn't answered a phone call or something."
"I know."
He sat down on my bed and exhaled. "Look I know this isn't going to be easy and we don't have all the details worked out, but I've talked to some people in Cambridge and they'd be willing to take you for your last year of undergrad along with law school."
"What?"
"Well you can't do another year in America," he pointed out. "It's thousands of miles away from each other."
"Long distance."
Louis groaned and started pacing the floor. I know long distance wasn't something I wanted either, but neither was me giving up my entire life. We were both going to have to make sacrifices for each other. I had a year of school left then two years of law school, then I'd be free to do whatever. "Canada is a commonwealth and they have amazing law schools," he said. "Maybe you could finished your year at Harvard and I can ask grandmother if I could spend the next few years there."
I shook my head. "Canada isn't apart of my plan Lou."
"Screw the plan," he laughed. "If you haven't noticed none of this has been according to any of our plans and yet here we are." Louis neared me and held my shoulders together as his green eyes watched me. "I love you Harriet, there has to be a way for this to work."
My breath hitched in my throat at hearing his words for the first time and as I stood before him his eyes waiting for me to repeat the words to him. "Louis," I breathe. "I—I thought that I could do this. I thought I was ready, but I'm not." Louis's arms released me and slowly he stepped away. "I just—I have so much to do, to finish, to see and I'm not ready to make the sacrifices committing myself to you would take."
"I don't understand."
"Louis—"
He released my hand and took a step away from. "No, because a week ago you told me that you wanted this. That you wanted me and now you're telling me that you can't do it."
"I do want you," I said. "I do, but I'm just not ready."
The prince watched me with heavy eyes before something went off in his mind. "Did my mother talk to you?" I groaned. "Edward? Candice?"
"Nobody told me anything I didn't already know."
"So somebody did put this in your head."
"Nobody put—" I stopped and exhaled, pinching the beige of my nose. "Louis, I am very fond of you, but love isn't always enough for two people to stay together. I'm not ready. And if we do this now, if we go into that spotlight with all the world watching us picking and scrubbing and stretching us in every direction we will never make it. If we go into this, unprepared and with rose tinted glasses we will never get out together. They will destroy us. That's reality Louis!"
The silence between us was almost unbearable, though I knew this was the right thing for us. Lady Caroline hadn't told me anything that I hadn't already knew but had been trying to keep at bay. The reality of our situation was that unlike many some my entire life wasn't to be a wife and mother—honestly, the thought of obtaining such titled hadn't even occurred to me until I started dating Louis—I wanted more and if I gave all that up for our relationship I would resent him.
Going into my bag I pulled the ring out and handed it back to him. Louis scoffed and pocketed the jewel. "You know what your problem is Harriet?" he said. "You're scared. You're scared to stick out your neck and just let life take you were it needs to. You think if you plan everything out—that if you could just get it all down perfect then it'll make up for the years of crap that's happened to you, but your wrong. Only love can do that, and it baffles me that someone as smart as you can't see that."
Louis walked out the room and I took a second before leaving my room and joining the other girls downstairs. As I reached the ground floor, everybody turned to look at me and said nothing. "I'm fine you guys," I said feeling the constraints in my throat. "I'm fine it's just—"
The door bell interrupted me and my heart lifted thinking for a moment that Louis had come back. I dashed over to the door and pull it open to see a poised looking couple with shadowed faced and jet black here. "We're here for our daughter," the overbearing made said.
My mouth fixed itself ask who exactly he was looking for until Ana's voice chimed in the back. "Mom? Dad?"