Time Bomb(69)

Technically, Z should have been a hero as well, but no one knew where to find him. One day he was in the hospital and talking to all the cops and FBI agents like the rest of them; the next he was gone. Frankie had heard Z wasn’t attending classes at the community college and no one at the other schools where students had enrolled had run into him. Rashid claimed Z had headed for California, but no one else had heard from Z. No one knew what to believe. It had almost become a game online to speculate where Z had gone and what he had been doing in the school in the first place. Yet, despite varsity practice being canceled, no one ever questioned why Frankie had been there.

He looked back at the building and wondered if any of his handiwork had survived the fires. The one in the field house had been his best effort, and it was the part of the school with the least damage. He was pretty sure someone must have seen the tag line Frankie had added under the HOME OF THE TROJANS sign.

Because a good offense starts with a great defense.

Of course, if anyone had noticed, no one cared about who might be responsible. The high school got blown up. More than a dozen people died. And his parents’ first priority after all that had happened was to get him into a new school so he could make the most of his senior year. They still needed him to get over the bar and win. To still be the guy that everyone looked up to. And winners didn’t go off track. They didn’t think about the things that could upset everything. They looked for the next challenge and didn’t look back. Not even when they wished they could. Maybe someday, he thought. But not yet. Not now.

Frankie spotted Rashid walking down the sidewalk toward the Park, where Cas and Tad were waiting—one who thought he was a hero, and the other who knew he wasn’t.

Rashid disappeared behind a tree, and Frankie put the car in gear and drove away.

No looking back. Because that’s who he was.





Rashid





— Chapter 49 —


RASHID LOOKED AT THE SCHOOL. It was amazing how fast brick and mortar that had appeared so sturdy could be taken apart and how quickly the process of putting it together again began. It already looked very different from that day when firefighters led him to safety.

He understood the need to wipe away the signs of the destruction Diana had caused. To pretend that things hadn’t gone off the rails and that everything was just fine now that the threat was gone.

Rashid shook his head, adjusted the bag on his shoulder, and walked across the grass that crunched under his feet. Rain was in the forecast for tonight, his father said. Then things would turn green again.

His father claimed he wasn’t angry that Rashid had shaved. Disappointed was the right word. Rashid still wasn’t sure if it was disappointment that Rashid hadn’t talked to him about it or that he had done it in the first place. But he was grateful when his father said Rashid could choose whether or not to keep shaving, even when it was clear his father wished for him to stop. “What is good for one man is not the right choice for another.”

Right now, letting his beard grow back was the right choice for Rashid. After everything that he’d gone through in order to blend in, it was funny that he no longer wanted to. When he’d called his sister after the first bomb went off, she hadn’t answered. So he’d left a message telling her that he hoped she would always be true to herself and live the life she wanted to live. It was something he wished he had done more of before that day, and now he was trying to take his own advice. Shaving a beard wouldn’t change how people thought of him. Not really. But talking to them about why he had the beard might. If nothing else, it was a place to start, and he’d go from there.

“Frankie bailed,” Tad said as Rashid sat on the dry grass, grateful for the breeze and the shade of the tree.

“Did he say why?” Rashid asked.

“Team party.”

Rashid wasn’t surprised that Frankie hadn’t come. He had looked uncomfortable when Rashid had talked to him in the hospital after the bombing and when Rashid had asked for his phone number.

“No matter what happens,” Rashid had told him, “I’d like all of us to stay in touch. No one else will ever understand what it was like.”

Which is why Rashid had invited Frankie today and why, even though it would be easier without him, Rashid wished he were here.

“I told Tad he should party with his football friends too,” Cas said. Rashid knew she was concerned about how much time Tad spent alone. It was part of the reason Rashid had asked them to meet.

“And I told Bossy that I’d consider it. Although I think maybe I’ve come up with a better idea for all of us next Friday.” Tad looked at Rashid. “So maybe someone would like to tell us why we’re at school on a Saturday?”

Rashid unzipped the backpack and pulled out three of the five small pieces of broken, charred tile he’d taken from the wreckage before they began reconstruction. “I thought you guys should have these and I thought this was the best place to give them to you.”

Cas took the blackened tile Rashid held out to her and ran her finger over the jagged edge.

“Everyone keeps saying everything will be back to normal soon, but I want to remember,” he said. Remember. Forgive. Understand. All of it.

It’s why he had the photograph of the girl he’d found in the bathroom on his nightstand, along with pictures he’d copied from the yearbook of everyone who had been stuck in that room while the fire raged and bombs threatened. Z was actually smiling in his photograph. Something Rashid saw him do only once in person, when Rashid had walked into his hospital room after he’d come out of recovery. The bullet had been removed. No permanent damage had been done. Rashid just wished that the other scars would heal as well.