Internment(38)

“Don’t you think I’m scared, too?” I take a few steps to the door.

“Layla, I’m sorry. Please. I’m staying in town. I’m not going home. I’ll figure out another way. I’m not leaving here without you.”

The door opens. Jake is standing there. I can’t imagine what the two of us look like. What I look like. Face wet with tears, eyes swollen.

“David, stay here, like I instructed you. I’ll drive you out under the tarp, same as the way we came in. Don’t make a sound.”

David nods at Jake’s instructions, then looks at me and says, “I love you. I’m sorry.” He steps back into the darkness, and Jake closes the door.

Jake and I hurry across the Midway. I let him guide me, pulling me away from the light beams and into the shadows. Tears run down my face, too fast for me to wipe them away. I thought David would be able to help me somehow, and instead he wants us to become informers? I swipe my sleeve across my nose. My entire world is upside down.

Jake produces a tissue from his pocket and hands it to me. “I don’t think…” He pauses and rubs his hand across the back of his neck. “He’s trying to help your family.”

I ball my hands into fists. Anger wells inside me. “Don’t you think I know that? And were you listening in on us?”

“I heard most of it. It was hard not to. It’s a flimsy toolshed; it’s not soundproof. He’s desperate, that’s all.”

“I’m desperate, too. But what he’s suggesting—that’s not an option. We can’t do that. If we do, we’ll be as bad as—” I look up at Jake and then stop myself and turn away.

“Go ahead. Finish your sentence. You’ll be as bad as me?” He winces as he says this.

My mouth goes dry. What I said might’ve been terribly stupid or dangerous. I can’t speak.

Jake’s eyes scan the area with each step. He’s cautious, always observing and adjusting his behavior to the situation. He never speaks if anyone could possibly overhear. “Layla, listen to me. I told you before. It’s not cut and dried. On the outside or in here. Things are happening. People are organizing. They’re making their way down here. That little town, Independence? It’s filling up with media and protestors—Occupy Mobius, they’re calling themselves. The secretary of war got doxed by Anonymous—you know, the hactivist group?”

I stop and look at Jake, my eyes wide, and nod. My stomach churns. We were getting dribs and drabs of news from the outside, but nothing like this. Inside here we’re frozen in time. Stuck. But outside, the world is still moving. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because what I think David wanted to tell you—what he might’ve told you if he weren’t so terrified of losing you—is don’t give up.”

We arrive back at my trailer door. “So maybe there’s still hope?” I whisper.

Jake takes a half step toward me. “Insha’Allah,” he whispers.





Insha’Allah.

Jake’s voice rings in my ears. I’m not sure what it means that he said that. God willing. Everything and nothing? Like so much of life inside here, where you have to read into the tiniest gestures—whether they are dangerous, whether a wave means to hide or to say hello.

I slide my hand under my pillow and pull out the note Jake passed to me this morning when I was getting some of our food rations—a note from David, which I guess he scribbled and gave to Jake after he’d driven him out of here. The note is an apology. It’s a promise to help me in whatever way I think is best. Before seeing David, I thought our getting out was the most important thing, but when David came up with this ridiculous collaborator scheme, I realized I couldn’t leave everyone behind. There are too many people who could get hurt. Perhaps I’m stupid and too short-sighted to see what the real fallout could be. Maybe this pain in my stomach is remorse; maybe it’s fear because I’m starting to understand what I have to do.


“You should consider it,” Ayesha says when I tell her about David’s proposition. We’re at the rock garden. She doesn’t say it, but she keeps glancing across the Midway, looking for Soheil, I’m assuming.

“How can you even suggest that?”

“It might be your only way out. We keep talking about escaping, but how? Even if we got ourselves and our families out, where would we go? Try to get to Mexico? With all the border security? If we didn’t die trying to get through the fence or smuggling ourselves out in a supply truck, we’d get shot trying to climb the border wall, even though we were going into Mexico.”

I grab Ayesha’s hand. “I’m not leaving you behind. I didn’t even tell my parents about it. I don’t want them to be tempted. They might do it for me, but I can’t imagine them being able to live with themselves if they made that choice.”

“They’re scared. Parents will do anything to protect their kids. If I had that offer, I don’t know if I could say no.” Ayesha’s voice cracks.

“Remember what your dad said to you about fear when you were in the spelling bee? Soheil, too? About how we should be scared, about how we can use that?” Ayesha looks up at me, and it doesn’t escape my notice that her eyes brighten every time Soheil’s name comes up. Small blessings—I’m increasingly aware of and thankful for them. “We can’t fight back in here—not by ourselves. Jake told me there’s stuff happening on the outside. We need to make those people see what is happening on the inside.”