The Terrorist (11 page)

But it didn’t matter, because Jehran couldn’t travel as an eleven-year-old by herself—or himself, if she were Billy. Laura outlined the problem.

Jehran shrugged. “You’ll have to come with me, then.”

“
Come with you?
”

“Ssssshh!”

“What are you talking about, Jehran? I can’t just get on a plane and fly back to America. My mother and father would never agree to that.”

“You won’t ask them. You’ll just come. When we land in New York, you’ll turn around and take the very next flight back to England. You won’t be gone twenty-four hours.”

“Impossible,” said Laura.

“This will be better, anyway,” said Jehran. “You’ll be my big sister, Laura, and you’re sixteen, so you’ll be my adult. I won’t be an unaccompanied minor, and there will be no paperwork. Besides, when I’m pretending to be Billy, my British accent would betray me. They’d know I’m not a boy from Massachusetts. This way, you will do the talking.”

“Jehran, it won’t work. My parents would never let us do it.”

Jehran was too excited to allow problems. “With this cash, you will buy us both tickets. Then all I have to do is get out of my house and away from my brother. I am confident I can accomplish that. With you, Laura, I can land in America without having to answer questions!”

That was what crossing a border was all about.

Questions.

You’d show your passport in England, and go through the electronic weapons-search gate, and now show both your plane ticket and your passport, and then do it again before actually boarding the plane.

At landing, you had to tell what you’d been doing abroad. Business travel? Vacation? What were your reasons? How much money were you bringing?

Everywhere in airports were doors and guards and gates to ensure that only authorized people moved on.

“Come back to earth, Jehran,” said Laura. “How could I be away from home for twenty-four hours? What would I tell my parents?”

Jehran brushed this away with a flip of her scarf. “American girls are allowed to do anything. You have no morals.”

“If that’s what you think of Americans, go to Brazil!”

The bathroom door opened. Girls swarmed in, shrieking and giggling. Doors slammed, makeup was shared. It was enough noise so that the whispering could continue.

Laura planned to call Jehran names, and end their friendship, and never speak to her again, but Jehran began to cry. “I’m so sorry, Laura. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I have great respect for American families.” The tears silvered her cheeks.

How quickly I was going to abandon her, thought Laura, ashamed. “Don’t you see, Jehran, if I were gone twenty-four hours, my parents wouldn’t just telephone Mr. Evans. They’d telephone every police department in England. In Europe! In the world!” In fact, thought Laura, they would be scared to death. Could such a thing really happen? Could fear for Laura explode in her mother’s face as the bomb had exploded in Billy’s, and kill her mother?

“You cannot let me down,” begged Jehran. “Laura, I have nobody else to ask. Any day, my brother may say it has been arranged, and I am to leave. I will beg him to let me finish the school year, but a woman does not require education, so that will not matter.”

But Laura could not vanish overnight. And no girlfriend, certainly not Con, would support her in a lie that involved an overnight absence. She started to hand the package of money back, but Jehran held up her hand, and her eyes were fire, sending off sparks. “I know what we can do!” breathed Jehran.

Laura didn’t.

“The London Walk Club,” said Jehran. “We’ll pretend we’re going to Edinburgh.”

Regardless of Laura’s emotions toward Mr. Hollober, she had been forced to continue attending current events. She made a point of not listening, and then remembered she was trying to be less ignorant, so she listened after all. She made sure her hostile attitude stayed on her face for Mr. Hollober to see.

Mr. Hollober discussed social customs around the world. In what country, and why, did people shake hands instead of bowing? In what country, and why, did well-to-do females wear ragged torn clothes (America) or drape cloth over their noses (Saudi Arabia)?

Laura tuned in.

“If a girl from an observant Muslim family were to fell in love with a Christian,” said Mr. Hollober, “or flirt, or expose her face or limbs or hair in front of men except her father and brothers, she would taint her family’s honor. She would be punished because honor of the family matters more than she does.”

“What kind of punishment?” said Tiffany.

Mr. Hollober said the family might shoot her.

“Come on,” said Tiffany, not believing a word of that.

Mr. Hollober insisted he was telling the truth. “Girls who tempt men are criminals. Girls who disobey their fathers and brothers are criminals. And criminals in Islamic countries pay with their lives.”

So if Jehran disobeyed her brother, he would not yell at her. He would execute her.

Laura kept her shudder inside. Trapping the shudder nauseated her. She was afraid of throwing up.

“Some of us,” said Samira, “feel this shows great love from our families. Our families
care
what we do, as opposed to American families, who don’t care what their daughters do.”

“You wanna get shot for falling in love?” said Tiffany.

“I will marry the husband my parents choose,” said Samira. “Love will come afterward.”

“Mohammed,” said Tiffany, “is that true? You know any situations like that? Guys who shoot their sisters and it isn’t murder, it’s civic duty?”

“Tiffany,” said Con, “try to be civilized, okay?”

“Watch who you’re accusing of being uncivilized,” said Tiffany. “I wanna know, then, Samira, what you’re doing in a Western school, where kids date, and some of them sleep around, and some of them do drugs, and some of them drink and swear? How come your loving family lets you in the door of a sick place like this?”

Laura thought that was a good question—it certainly applied to Jehran—but Mr. Hollober joined Con’s team, which never answered difficult questions, or better yet, didn’t allow anybody to ask them. This was called diplomacy.

They were wrong when they said if you went overseas, you would better understand other nations and people and religions. The more Laura heard, the less she understood. The less she wanted to understand. She usually wanted to give American lessons so people would see that the American way was best.

But even Laura knew that you never said that out loud. Not in an international school. Not if you wanted to live.

Billy had said everything out loud. And everybody had reacted like the Jamaican bus driver: they liked him, anyhow.

She was no closer to Billy’s killer. There was no real way to get closer. Would it give his death meaning to use his passport? If Laura said no, and Jehran had to obey her brother, she would have a terrible life, a life she did not choose. But if Laura said yes, and Jehran tried to escape and got caught—she would not have a life.

Laura’s mother was studying Billy’s chair.

The table sat four. It would look funny without his chair. But she could not bear the sight of the chair Billy liked to tip backward, and she would have to yell at him not to do that, and he would say, “Mom, have you ever actually known a person who fell backward and cracked his skull? It’s a myth, like alligators in the sewers of New York. Real people can balance their chairs on two legs.”

She put her hands on the top slat of the chair back, to shift it out of sight, but she thought: if I take away the chair, how can Billy have supper with us again?

Then she thought: he’s not going to. You know he’s not. There is no resurrection in this world.

She could not move the chair. It would always be Billy’s, and would always be empty. She staggered away from it.

Nicole found the kitchen on the first try. It looked alien, the way it had the day they arrived in London, and nothing about the kitchen was shaped, or opened, or worked, the way it did back home.

Nicole remembered the first time she did dishes. It felt weird. You didn’t go to London to do dishes. You went to London to see Windsor Castle or catch a glimpse of the royal family.

BBC Radio played a cathedral choir. Thin melancholy Christmas music.

Nicole Williams could not believe that a mother was expected to face Christmas without her child.

Christmas, the holiday of giving.

Children aren’t old enough to give, thought Nicole. They take. Taking is the beginning of love. Nobody ever received as joyfully as Billy. And I can give him nothing now. Not one toy. Not one more minute on earth.

At the end of the day, Nicole was still in the kitchen, staring at the cans of SpaghettiOs that were still waiting for Billy.

Con trapped Laura at their lockers. “I asked my father,” said Con, “about your idea that terrorists are country specific. I said could you really get a good combination of person and country and religion, and zero in on your terrorist?”

Con’s father might actually know things like that, so Laura listened.

“Dad says Libya, Syria, Iran, and Iraq are the biggies in terrorism. I told him you were going for Northern Ireland, but he pooh-poohed that. The Irish raise so much money in America, they’re not about to murder a sweet little American kid.”

Laura was hard inside, waiting, needing the fact that would take her forward.

“You’re imagining a conspiracy,” Con said. “You’re picturing a whole country and spies and bombers and demented expatriates gathering together to exterminate Billy. But there’s no logic to that.”

“Where is the logic?” Laura tried to dial the combination on her lock.

“My father says terrorists are plain old bad guys. Instead of expecting them to be brilliant and complex, you should go for the quick and ugly.”

“Oh, Con, that’s stupid. That’s just another dial-a-horoscope answer!
Today you will find something ugly.
Leave me alone, Con.”

Laura walked away without getting what she needed from the locker, sick of her best friend, sick of all friends and friendly things. Laura could not bear the possibility of talking to anybody else. Jimmy, Kyrene, Mohammed, Tiffany, Andrew, Bethany—she could not stand the sight or the sound of them. As for waiting on the corner with Eddie, she would never do that again.

Laura crossed the street instead. When she glanced back at the school, she saw Mohammed. From so far away, she could not tell that he was handsome, only that he stood very still and stared back. Next to the holly trees was Andrew. How American he seemed, team jacket hanging open, huge expensive sneakers untied. Jimmy was waving to her, and his wave seemed to curl, as if summoning her. Con had pressed herself against the side of the building, head low, pretending she was not there, but looking at Laura from beneath her falling hair.

Why were they looking at her?

Didn’t they have anything better to do?

Laura strode down the block as if she had plans, and it began to pour, which she should have known it would do, but she still wasn’t conditioned to England’s constant rain. She had no umbrella.

A few blocks away lay Regent’s Park.

Regent’s Park was much bigger than the Boston Common Laura knew. On sunny days, there were soccer balls and Frisbees, black children and white children, dogs on leashes, and many more dogs not on leashes. Even today, in such cold, sloppy weather, there were two soccer games.

A sense of evil enveloped Laura. The sum of her thoughts was dark glass behind which anything could hide: Billy, the escalator, the police, Mr. Evans, the mumbled funeral in a strange church, the stares of sixth graders, the vanishing of classmates, the anger of Mr. Frankel, the horror of Eddie, the awful situation of Jehran, and the awful thing that Jehran wanted from Laura.

And eyes, eyes everywhere.

She was being followed.

She jerked behind a closed-for-winter restaurant, ducked around a thick hedge, and waited.

But nobody came.

And when she edged out, no one was there.

Oh you terrorist! thought Laura Williams. What have you done to me? All my friends have to do is stand on a corner and I’m afraid of them.

Con Vikary’s father was picking her up at school because she had a dentist appointment. Con huddled beneath an overhang to stay dry, and she could see Andrew and Mohammed and Eddie watching Laura. Con tried to brush off Laura yelling at her, but she couldn’t. It hurt.

Con moved every year. It was so hard to make friends! And she had to make them continually, in different countries, and if she had to find another best friend only halfway into the year … Con felt weak and lonely and awful.

“We’re all watching Laura, aren’t we?” said Jimmy Hopkins.

She jumped a foot. “You scared me, Jimmy.”

“We’re terrorist bombing groupies. Laura is drama and tragedy and we want to be part of the action.”

“That’s sick, Jimmy.” Con was so relieved when her father pulled up. She didn’t look back at Jimmy and she didn’t look over at Mohammed and Andrew.

Dad kissed her. “Have a good day, Con?”

There seemed no way to talk about the kind of day she had had. Con was beginning to fear that she would always mean well, and always screw up. “Daddy, let’s not go to the dentist. Let’s go to the patisserie.”

Her father grinned at her, and his grin was so normal, so American, that she felt safe for a minute, and she was surprised. I didn’t know I felt unsafe.

But after Billy, we’re all unsafe.

Forever.

It was a hike across Regent’s Park, but eventually Laura would come out close to Heathfold Gardens. The wind felt as if it had come from the Siberian steppes, but the soccer teams kept playing, bare legs in icy mud. Laura trudged on. The thin tower of the mosque rose above the treetops, and the cages of the London Zoo were half visible beyond the playground.

At last she was on Finchley Road. A service at the mosque had just ended. The worshippers were distinctive: bold African prints, delicate Indian elegance, and the tentlike black envelopes of rule-abiding Middle Eastern women. Laura wondered if she would have anything to say to such women, or they to her.