All We Have Left (13 page)

I check the clock on my father’s desk and see that I’m going to be late as heck for school, and I don’t have a thing to show for it.

The pep rally is in full swing, pumped-up teenagers screaming and yelling at the cheerleaders who are doing a dance that honestly looks like they should have some sort of pole to go with their shake.

“She was putting them up earlier,” Dave is saying. “You wouldn’t believe this crap …”

I can’t really hear what Dave and Nick are talking about, though I’m sitting on the bleacher row just below them, leaning back between Nick’s legs. His hand is twined in my hair, his fingers rubbing the base of my neck. Every once in a while, he pulls my head back and leans down to give me a kiss, as if saying,
See, she’s mine.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we almost got caught by the cops, and if anything Nick has gotten even more reckless. More and more lately, I’ve
wanted to call Emi, or Teeny, or Myra, and say:
Help. I’m in too deep
. But it’s too late. I made my choice and now I’m on my own.

Even with Nick’s fingers warm on the back of my neck, I find my thoughts wandering a well-worn path to Adam. I’ve seen him a couple of times in the halls—a nod, a flicker of dimple—but we haven’t talked again. I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I felt when I was on the mountain with him.

“See, she’s putting up another one,” Dave is saying as the pep rally roars around us. Hailey is all over him, her hands under his army jacket. They’d started going out soon after Nick and I hooked up. I think she did it to make Nick jealous, not that he seemed to notice.

I finally look around to see what Dave is talking about. Jade Grimsky and Hal Jones are busy putting up fliers. Jade and Hal are big into good works, and I assume it’s another bake sale to raise money for some cause or another. Why does Dave care so much about two-dollar brownies?

The pep rally finishes, and we get up, everyone jostling and yelling as we stream toward the doors. Nick has his arm wrapped around my shoulders, and even then, with my boyfriend’s arm encircling me, I find myself looking for Adam. Dave is in front of us, and slows as we near the blue flier that Jade and Hal were putting up. It says: Islam Peace Center, and there is a date for a grand opening this Saturday, and an address in town.

My stomach turns, and before I can help myself, I think:
It was Muslims who hijacked those planes and drove them into
the towers of the World Trade Center and killed all those people. It was Muslims who killed my brother.

“See?” Dave says. “Can you believe this crap? My brother got his leg blown off over there, and they want to open up a freaking
peace center
?”

Nick reaches out and rips the flier off the wall. Dave follows suit and rips down another sign nearby. As we head down the hall, they tear down every blue sign they see.

The four of us walk a long, circuitous route home. We usually take Nick’s car, but it’s in the shop, so we’re walking today. I’m not paying much attention where we are going, because my thoughts are spinning like car tires caught in the snow. My dad has gotten worse, and, as promised, Grill has quit, leaving me and a few newbies to run the store. Mom has never had much to do with the shop—as far as I know, she’s only climbed once in her life, right after my parents moved here, and she swore she’d never do it again—so she keeps zipping along like a deranged bumblebee pretending everything is peachy, while I try to keep things together.

We’ve stopped on the sidewalk, and Nick, Dave, and Hailey are staring up at a building. We’re at the bottom of a stretch of antique shops just off Main Street, and the last building in the row, which used to be a chocolate shop, has a new sign reading: Islam Peace Center.

“You’d have to tag it up high,” Nick is saying, and I finally
tune into the conversation. “If you didn’t get up there”—he gestures to the top of the wall of the brick building, up on the second floor—“no one would see it.”

It takes me a minute to figure out what they are talking about: tagging the Peace Center. But there’s a fence running along the side of the building on the corner, and unless you got up high, the tag wouldn’t really be noticeable.

“A ladder?” Hailey suggests.

“Nah,” Nick says. “You’d have to move it every letter and it would make too much noise. We need a climber.”

They all turn to look at me.

“Uh … What? Me?” I squeak. Nick is the one who does the tagging. Though I’ve practiced our tag on paper, I’ve never painted it on the side of a building.

“You’re the only one who can get up there and do it,” Nick says.

I check out the old wall, with bricks jutting out here and there. Lots of cracks to place gear. It would be a breeze.

“I don’t know,” I say uneasily.
I don’t want to!
I’m thinking.

“We have to tell them,” Dave says furiously. “We have to tell them that they should go the hell back to where they came from.”

“Chill for a minute,” Nick says to him and turns to me. “Jesse?”

He stares at me seriously, ignoring Hailey and Dave, who are grumbling and throwing what-the-hell? looks at me. Nick shakes his head a little to clear the hair from his eyes. “Look,
I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to. Just think about it, okay?”

Before I can answer, a girl comes out of the Peace Center with a handful of blue fliers. She’s wearing jeans and boots, and a green head scarf tucked into her thick jacket.

The girl stops at a car with a “Just Dua It” bumper sticker and grabs a staple gun out of the trunk.

“Come on,” Nick says, and we trail after the girl as she starts up the street, putting up the blue fliers with a brisk
thump-thump
of the staple gun as she goes.

The girl in the scarf meets up with Jade and Hal, and they continue along the street, laughing and talking as they continue putting up the blue fliers.

“What the hell?” Dave yells at them as we get closer. His face is red, and he’s breathing hard. For a moment, he reminds me of my dad. It’s not the first time. When he gets going about the “freaking A-rabs” that cost his brother his leg, I keep my mouth shut. I know from experience the slightest word will set him off even more. Nick thinks it’s funny, and will egg him on into a frothing frenzy, but it scares me.

The girl in the scarf looks at Dave, and then her gaze travels to the rest of us, and I realize that I’m carrying some of the blue fliers that Nick crumpled up and handed to me at school. I want to shrink back against Nick, but he steps up so he’s standing next to Dave.

“No one wants you here!” Dave spits.

“Dave Tucker,” Jade says severely. “We most certainly want Sabeen here. You, on the other hand, can go take a flying leap.”

Jade, tall and redheaded in a gypsy skirt, jangles the bangles on her wrists angrily.

“It’s okay, Jade.” Sabeen, the girl in the scarf, looks at us. “What do you want to say to me?” she asks Dave directly. She is pretty, with dark eyeliner accenting her flashing eyes, and tiny diamond studs glimmering in her ears. A few people have gathered around, attracted by the confrontation.

“Go
back
!” Dave shouts. “If you don’t like it here, go the hell back to your
own country!
”

“I’m an American,” she says evenly. “I was born here, just like you.” I can’t help but admire her composure, but her words seem to set Dave off even more.

“
You are not like me.
You will
never
be like me.”

People begin murmuring in disapproval. Someone pushes through the crowd, and I feel sick when I see it’s Adam. He’s out of breath, his hair damp with sweat and curling crazily over his forehead, and the dimple is nowhere to be seen.

“Everything all right?” he asks, and his tone is neutral, but his blue eyes are not as he stares at Dave and Nick.

“No problem, man,” Nick says between his teeth, his breath hissing out.

“I didn’t think so.” Adam’s gaze lands on me, cool and appraising. I duck my head, flushing.

A group of college kids come by, and in the roiling crowd of people, Sabeen cries out. Her scarf lies in a puddle on the
ground, the beautiful green silk slowly turning dark as the muddy water bleeds into it.

Adam is yelling something at Dave and Nick, while people mill around in confusion. I quickly stoop and pick up Sabeen’s scarf. I hand it to her, avoiding her eyes as my heart crumples.

Nick grabs my hand, and we walk away quickly. I feel like I want to throw up.

I know it’s all so wrong, but I can’t seem to find the words to say anything.

I try not to think about what I saw.

I try not to think about Nick grabbing the end of Sabeen’s scarf and yanking it off her head as she cried out in pain.

“You should hate them more than any of us,” Nick says later as we walk alone under a sky of clouds full and fat with snow, crowded close to the ground.

Hailey and Dave went back to her place to hook up, and Nick wanted me to come back to his house, but I told him I had a lot of homework. Suddenly I want to tell him I have plans every day and night for the foreseeable future. But I don’t know how.

“What?” I look over at him, at his handsome face, the silver ring in his eyebrow gleaming dully.

“I’m just saying they killed your brother. You should want them to pay for that,” he says.

I can’t stop thinking of him yanking off Sabeen’s scarf, but a part of me understands what he’s saying, that it’s hard when you feel like there’s nothing you can do or say to change anything. That someone should pay for making you feel like that.

“I don’t think about it,” I say finally, but it’s not true, because lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

I go into our apartment. Mom is gone; there is an uneaten casserole on the stove with a sticky note that reads: “At prayer meeting, back at 9:30!” punctuated with a smiley face. There are eight beer bottles lined up on the counter, and I glance reflexively at Dad’s recliner, but it’s empty.

I move down the hallway like a ghost. My parents’ bedroom door is cracked open, and as I pass, I see Dad on top of the covers, asleep. He’s snoring loudly, and there’s a book on his chest. I go to move past, but something makes me stop.