Time Bomb(35)

But nothing had gotten better, and he’d realized that waiting around for other people to change was pointless. If you wanted something to be different, you had to do it yourself. The beard was to have been his first step. A small but important test to see how others would react. How he would feel before forging down a path different from the one his father expected him to take.

“Come on. They’re dead. There’s nothing we can do.” Tad stalked into the hallway, letting the door he’d been holding open close behind him.

Darkness wrapped around Rashid. He let it settle on him for a moment before reaching for his phone. Using the glow, Rashid looked at the unfamiliar girl. She had long, dark hair that she wore tied back behind her neck, and deep brown skin. Her face must have been beautiful before today. The side of it that hadn’t been smashed open still was.

Rashid turned away from the blood and gore that seemed even more horrifying in the dim light. He’d seen pictures of worse things that had happened in bombings in Palestine. In an effort to make him understand what it meant to really be a Muslim, his cousins had shown him places where people had died. They wanted him to feel what they thought he was supposed to feel. Sadness had walked the streets with him while his cousins had described the people who had been bombed as they shopped at a market. How could anyone see the scars on the streets and buildings and the wariness in the eyes of people trying to go about their lives and not feel their anxiety and fear?

He had wanted neither. But right now he was filled with both, in ways he had never felt on those streets. This blood was real. Mrs. Barnes and the girl were walking these halls an hour ago. They never knew they were supposed to be afraid. They didn’t know they’d stayed too long at a place they had every right to believe was safe.

Until it was too late.

Slowly, Rashid wrapped his fingers around the dead girl’s hand. He then reached out and put his other hand on Mrs. Barnes’s shoulder.

Even though Rashid didn’t know the girl, he felt the loss of the life that was cut short, one that he would now never have the chance to be a part of. She probably wouldn’t have wanted to know him. She might have even called him names. But if she had, he forgave her.

He looked at both of them, then closed his eyes and quietly said, “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah.” The words had to be said by a Muslim when dying. They were not meant to help those who did not believe in Islam, but Rashid felt the need to say the words anyway.

For them.

For himself. Because he had come into this school to do something to change his life. To find a way to be seen for more than his religion, to be a person who was more than just one thing. And this is what had happened.

Sitting back on his heels, Rashid said the words a second time, then prayed for forgiveness from Allah. The door to repentance was always open. Rashid had heard those words all his life, typically after he’d done something his parents disapproved of. Often he said “I’m sorry” because it was expected of him. Rarely did he mean it with his whole heart. Today he meant it down to his soul.

I’m sorry.

Shifting the light, Rashid looked at the girl again and spotted a small yellow bag sticking out from under one of her legs and slid it out. He unsnapped the flap of the purse and was rummaging through the zippered compartments when the door opened.

“What are you doing?” Tad appeared in the entrance. His body was framed by the faint light behind him, making him appear almost spirit-like. A shiver went up Rashid’s neck.

“What does it matter to you?” Rashid asked, willing Tad to close the door and go away. “I thought you were going to find a way out.”

“I was, but then I thought about that 911 call you didn’t make and . . .” Tad crossed his arms over his chest and stood in the middle of the doorway. “I just wanted to see what you were doing.”

“Because I might be planting a bomb in here?”

Tad tightened his arms over his chest.

“I’m looking for her ID!” The words shot like a bullet out of Rashid. “I want to be able to pray for her by name. She deserves for someone to know her name.” He opened the purse and dug through the contents.

There was an open pack of gum. A wallet with money and pictures. A small, almost crumpled photo hidden in one pocket along with a half-eaten roll of mints. A set of keys on a fuzzy bee keychain. Pens. Earbuds. A bunch of receipts and other trash, and finally a school ID card with the girl’s smiling face beaming from it.

“Angelica Johnson,” he said, wishing the girl could still smile. “She was going to be a freshman this year.”

Not someone who had called him names. Just a girl waiting for the next part of her life to start. And it was over.

“Now what are you doing?” Tad asked as Rashid closed his eyes.

Rashid didn’t answer as he sent a silent prayer to Allah to take care of the teacher and young girl who should not have been caught in a war zone. Then Rashid pulled from her wallet the small, bent picture of her and two of her friends making stupid faces in a photo booth. He grabbed his bag and slid both the ID card and the photo into a side pocket.

“What did you take?”

That was it.

Rashid spun around. “What is wrong with you?” He dug back into the pocket, pulled out the ID card, and held it up. “Here. This is what I took. If we get out of here, I thought I could give it to the police. I thought . . .” He shook his head and raked a hand through his hair. Shrugging, he said, “I thought if I get out of here, I could let the emergency workers know where she died so they could find her and bring her back to her family. I thought her family might want to know what happened to her and that they might want her ID.”