Internment(48)

“It’s never easy to lose what you love. No matter how much order you have in your life.” My voice cracks a little when I say this, and it surprises me.

Jake finally turns to look at me, wearing that same sad smile, but a part of him is still focusing on something in the distance.


I’m lying on my bed. My parents are still at “work.” I’ll meet them in the Mess for dinner. Normally I use up my shower minutes at night, right before bed, but my body is coated with the salt from my dried sweat, and a dull ache has settled into my bones, and I want to rinse it all away. I close my eyes for a moment and imagine my deliciously soft bed and the worn kantha quilt. That bed, that home, feels like another lifetime. Like I was a different person, and now I have these memories of a life that is not my own.

There’s a knock on our door. Ayesha said she’d stop by to give me the most-likely-chaste details about her lunch with Soheil. I whip off my towel turban and let the wet strands of my hair fall down my back and hurry to the door.

Pulling it open, I say, “So how’s Soh—”

It’s not Ayesha.

It’s Jake. “Let me in, quick,” he says, then pulls his lips together in a sort of grimace.

I freeze for a moment. Unsure what this means. Why he’s here. I feel the dampness of my hair soak through the back of my T-shirt, making me shiver. I look up and down the block. No one is around. I step aside, allowing him in. Hoping, praying, this is the right decision.

We stand in the common area of my trailer. I dig my hands into my pockets and rock back and forth on my heels, waiting for Jake to say something. Jake steps toward me and smiles a huge fake grin and puts his hand on my shoulder. I flinch. He looks me in the eye and nods at me ever so slightly. He doesn’t say a word, but he gestures to my bedroom and begins walking back there. When I don’t move, he motions for me to follow. This is a huge leap of faith, and I hope it’s not into the abyss.

I suck in my breath and enter my room. Soheil’s words of warning float in the air around me: Don’t trust anyone. But I do trust my instincts; I pray those instincts are right. Jake shuts the door behind us.

“Now what?” I say a little too loudly.

Jake puts a finger to his lips and steps closer to me. “There’s no camera in here, but keep your voice down anyway. Sorry to be mysterious, but the bedrooms are the only places the drones and cameras can’t get to.”

“But they saw you on the camera in the common room coming into my bedroom. Isn’t that suspicious?”

“A guard going into a woman’s bedroom—let’s say it’s probably happening, and the Director doesn’t care.”

“Gross. That’s. Just. Wrong. It’s a guard and a prisoner. A prisoner can’t consent. It’s—”

“It’s coercion. It’s rape. I don’t know of any guards personally, but there is talk.”

“Jake, you can’t let it. You have to—”

“I know. And if I see something happening, I will stop it. I swear. Now, listen. What are you planning? Out there at the garden with everyone else?”

“Nothing,” I say flatly. Clearly, he knows something, but I’m not sure I should tell him anything. Not even sure it’s my right. It involves too many other people.

“I understand why you’re suspicious. It’s smart. It’s survival.” Jake makes a quick, precise exhale. And another one. Almost like he’s counting them in his head. He pulls off his cap and runs his hands through his short dirty-blond hair, damp with sweat. “Look, the Director—he’s talking about bringing more guards in here. He feels the rumblings in the camp, an air of dissent. He’s vindictive and petty, but he’s not stupid. Remember that young Arab American woman they dragged away—”

My muscles go taut; I clench my hands into fists. “Noor. She has a name.”

Jake nods. “Sorry, yes. Noor. You know how she wore an American flag hijab?”

I nod.

“Apparently, it got torn off somewhere in the struggle, and it showed up this morning on the door of the admin building. Ripped, stained with blood. And scrawled across it in black marker was the word ‘Resist.’”

A strange kind of elation bubbles inside me. I don’t know what happened to Noor or the other women. I’m afraid to even think about it. But Ayesha, Soheil, me—we’re not alone. No, it’s not joy that’s welling inside me. It’s hope. “Who? How? His security detail and the guards are everywhere by the admin building and the Hub.”

Jake continues. “I know. Should not have been possible. He knows that, too. A part of him fears it could be a guard.”

My jaw drops. “Holy shit.”

Jake continues. “The Director went ballistic. And it’s like he warned you: He wants more eyes, everywhere. He trusts me for now, and—”

“He trusts you? Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Yes. It should. Look, it took me a long time to get to this. Too long. It’s what I was saying before. I grew up military. Orders were sacrosanct in my house. But I received counterorders, too. Being in here. Meeting you and the others. I finally understood the real mission, my sworn duty to protect this country from enemies foreign and domestic.”

I don’t quite get what he’s trying to say, and he can read the quizzical look on my face.