Cindy stopped at the door and sighed again. “We agree on that.” She turned to me. “Easton, set up a meeting with Day. We need to at least hear from him about what the fuck he’s planning to do with these assholes in his department.”

Ron cracked a smile at that, and I waved her off. “I’ll call Day, and this time he’s going to have to talk to me.” With that Cindy walked out. I turned to look at Ron who had his phone screen practically pressed to his face.

“Oh shit.”

“What?” I asked, as I moved over to see what he was looking at with a weird mix of dread and delight.

“Look at this.”

He handed me his phone. I wasn’t really on social media, so when I saw Patrice’s face in the tiny circle on the left side of the screen my heart started pounding. His handle was @AyitienProf and his tweet with a timestamp from ten minutes ago was incendiary.

Fuck.

Young black and brown men continue to be harassed on the roads of this county as they try to work and study.

Those of you who are responsible for putting a stop to this: do your jobs. We’re waiting.

“What is this?”

Ron looked at me like I needed to get with the program.

“That’s Patrice Denis, he’s—”

“I know who he is, Ron! I’m just asking what that tweet is about. I mean obviously it’s about the stops, but—You know what? Never mind. I get it.”

Ron seemed a bit put off by my outburst, but he just talked over me.

“You need to get on Twitter. Denis is pretty well known on Black Twitter.”

“What?”

Ron sighed and I couldn’t tell if he was losing his patience or just felt sorry for my lack of social media prowess.

“It is not a separate Twitter, it’s just there are a lot of writers, journalists, academics or just people who tweet about racial justice and Denis has been pretty active in the past couple of years. He has a big following, and he does not mince words. He was pretty vocal about some of the stuff happening in New York City when he was down there, and it looks like he’s not shutting down his account now that he’s up here.” He sounded a little bit too giddy at that prospect as my own mood sank some more.

Excellent.

Looked like this would put even the possibility of friendship out the window.

And how unprofessional was that? I needed to be thinking about how to deal with a situation that was escalating, not how I would stay friends with Patrice.

I handed Ron his phone back and went to my desk.