The minute Ester walked through the door she was hit with the smell of poster paint. Rayanne and Tommy had cleared a corner of the room and spread poster boards across the floor.
Ester groaned. "We're really doing a protest?"
"With signs and everything." Rayanne didn't look up, her face scrunched into a furious scowl. She thrust her brush into a tub of red paint and then dragged it across the board. Ester walked around to see what slogan she'd come up with.
"Raisins out?" Ester said.
"I hate raisins," Rayanne said. "Squishy gross bits ruining delicious cookies and muffins. More people should protest raisins."
Tommy had a streak of black paint down one forearm. His said, Tired of Making Signs. He looked like his normal self: shaggy hair, a pair of black athletic pants with a red stripe down each leg, bemused smile as if remembering something funny that happened earlier. She couldn't shake the image of him in the office late at night, by himself, staring at a computer screen, his chin bouncing off his chest while he struggled to stay awake. She wanted to bring it up, but every occasion felt intrusive. She'd spied on him without meaning to.
Ester got down on the floor to join them. "She couldn't talk him out of it?"
"She tried," Tommy said. He went back over the letters again. The paint built up thick and shiny on the sign.
Rayanne said, "The board asked us to do things to attract support for the center. Arnie has decided the center needs a film and that that filmmaker lady is the one to do it. You were out there with her doing her thing. What did you think of her?"
Ester's mind leapt back, the time spent with Professor Stone muddled by the memory of what happened later…Theo pressed against her and the rise and fall of his breath in the dark. Not snoring, exactly, but an audible hum when he exhaled. A warm flush crept into her face. She shuffled the blank poster boards in front of her. "She's a good filmmaker, but I don't think we should protest city hall for the purpose of film drama."
"He's the boss." Rayanne stood up and held up her sign and waited for a response.
"You honor the unheard voices of raisin-haters everywhere. What did Linda say?"
Rayanne flung the sign to the floor. "She clings to the hope she will convince him to drop it, but for now our job is to make signs and recruit suckers to go down there with us tomorrow."
Tomorrow.
As much as she dreaded the idea of marching on city hall and waving a stupid sign, if Professor Stone was involved, there was a good chance Theo would be there too. Something equally happy and sad stabbed at her heart. In the week since they'd gone to Warm Springs, he'd disappeared. She shouldn't have been disappointed since he was up front about having zero time, but he could text or stop by when he was on campus.
She'd wandered by the computer lab once a day, hoping to run into him. The radio silence hurt her heart every time she thought about it.
"Nice glum face. Once you get past the disbelief and dread, you'll settle into resignation like the rest of us." Rayanne tried to pull Tommy's sign away and waved a fresh poster board at him.
"Linda's going to get mad if there aren't serious signs," Ester said.
"Like what?" Tommy said. "‘These are Ind'n lands’?"
"‘Protect Sacred Lands’?" Rayanne said. "‘Something something colonialism’?"
"Maybe the last one, if it were clever," Ester said.
"You see our problem." Rayanne handed over a wrinkled piece of paper. "Linda gave us a list. We haven't gotten around to it yet."
"I didn't know we had a list," Tommy said. He viewed his sign with renewed dismay.
"She knew without help we'd make a pile of signs that say things like: Cake v. Pie, You Decide."
"That makes no sense," Ester said.
"None of this does," Rayanne said.
Linda's list had over thirty ideas on it. She’d once joked she majored in protests at college. If nothing else, she must have excelled at sign-making. Ester found a pencil and a ruler. After considering the list, she measured out the words: Our voices deserve to be heard.
"That's a good one," Tommy said. He'd taken Rayanne's offered blank board and kept it in front of him but didn't even pretend to work. When Ester finished penciling, she traded boards with him. He grabbed his paintbrush.
On the fresh board, she lettered: City Hall ignores urban Natives. They settled into a rhythm. Ester mapped out the lettering while Rayanne and Tommy filled in with paint. Tommy stuck with the black paint but Rayanne rotated through all the colors they had.
"What ever happened with your roommate's girlfriend?" Tommy asked.
"Situation continues. She's a mild annoyance. It could be worse."
"It could always be worse," Rayanne said. "Talk to Dennis."
"It's not that bad. I stay out of their way," Ester said. She stored her food in her room now, too. She got home from work, heated something in the kitchen, then hid in her room while watching TV on her tablet.
"It's his girlfriend, not him, though, right?" Tommy said.
"I guess. He doesn't have a clue she's a pain to be around," Ester said. "This weird thing happened last weekend where food was missing, but I could've misremembered what I bought."
"Sweetie, I'm worried about this," Rayanne said. "You're talking about your home."
"We don't know for sure. I don't want to accuse her. Theo thought I should put a lock on the door. That seems so confrontational."
Rayanne stuck her brush into the paint and sat up. Oops. Rayanne knew Theo had gone out to Warm Springs, but none of the rest of it.
Tommy, clueless as ever, said, "Locking up the room you pay rent for is not confrontational. In this case, confrontation is what the situation calls for."
"How did it come about that Theo weighed in on this problem?" Rayanne asked.
Ester's face grew hot. "Don't make a big deal about it." She had a hard time finding the right words. "We were out at the rez a whole day. It was a long ride in the car. It came up."
"You rode in the same car?" Rayanne said.
Tommy had a sense for the best time to duck out. "It's almost time for youth basketball so I'm gonna run. The four signs I made are drying."
Nothing could deflect Rayanne from this line of questioning. She smiled and waved him off.
Tommy said, "Ester, call me if you want. I can bring a lock by tonight after work and help you install it." He put on his coat and headed out the door.
Ester took her time rearranging his signs so they could dry properly. She pretended to wipe a smudge of paint from the corner of one board.
Rayanne hadn't moved.
"I can finish if you're done," Ester said.
"You've been mooning around here all week but I didn't connect it with your guy. What's going on?"
Ester was tempted to deny it but she was tired of holding it all in. "He's not my guy. He works a million jobs. He told me he didn't have much time but I thought I would at least hear something."
"Did you contact him?"
"I thought about it but I don't want to bug him."
"How did you leave it?"
"Vague. It's becoming a problem. I can't stop thinking about him. You know, like the sound of his voice and going over all our conversations. And…I don't know…his pants. The way they fit. The way he moves in them. The part at the top where the fabric ends and you can see his skin—"
Rayanne laughed. "I thought you said there was a problem."
It was a problem. Ester didn't have the same social ease Rayanne did. Even when uncertain, Rayanne could cover it up with a witty remark or a funny gesture. Ester forgot to smile. She forgot to talk. She couldn't use words to express what she intended.
"I'm not good at this. I thought he would find me."
"You might have to meet him in the middle."
"How do I know where the middle is when nothing is happening? What if I'm being the clueless girl with the crush on the guy who is too nice to say ‘I'm not interested’ to her face but is conveying that message by not calling?" Something in Ester's heart tightened saying those words out loud.
"That's a risk," Rayanne agreed. "But you're unhappy now. Wouldn't you feel better if you knew the truth?"
"I'd rather be unhappy with hope than unhappy without." Ester gathered the brushes together so she could take them to the restroom and rinse them out. She took her time closing up the paint containers and wiping paint drips from the sides.
"Whatever you do, don't invite him to the protest. That's going to be an exercise in humiliation."
Ester nodded, another worry added to the list.