Time Bomb

by Joelle Charbonneau

  Frustrated, Tad walked over to stand next to Rashid. “There’s not enough here we can use.”

  Rashid nodded. “If we think it’s safe, we could try Mr. Lott’s room. The Robotics Club stores all sorts of things in there.”

  “That might be a good idea.” It was. Once again, Rashid was smart and helpful. It made Tad feel worse about everything that had happened earlier. “I’m really sorry about before.” Tad shoved his hands in his pockets and looked over at Rashid. “I mean it,” Tad continued. “I know I was off, and I should have asked you about the phone call instead of just making assumptions. I was scared and I was stupid, and I would totally understand if you don’t forgive me. Hell, I don’t know if I’d forgive me.”

  “I called my sister,” Rashid said quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “The call I made.” Rashid sighed. “I thought I was going to die, and I wanted to talk to my sister so she wouldn’t make the same mistakes I have.”

  And Tad thought he couldn’t have felt any worse about how he’d behaved.

  Rashid frowned. “Is Diana right?” he asked softly. “Will they really show our pictures on television?”

  Tad let out the breath he had been holding in. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was a start.

  “Yeah.” He wiped his forehead on his shoulder. “We’re probably all over the Internet. When we get out of here, we’ll be famous. They’ll want to interview Diana because of her father, but everyone is going to want to talk to us, too.” And they’d want to know why he was in the school in the first place instead of partying with the football team.

  He looked over at Frankie. Tad wasn’t sure what he would say if he was asked. It would serve Frankie right if he told the truth. Maybe—

  “That means everyone will see my face,” Rashid said, pulling Tad’s attention back to him. “First they’ll see all of the pictures, and then they’ll see only me.”

  Wait. What? No. “They’re going to show all of our pictures. They’ll see all of us.”

  “No,” Rashid snapped. “They won’t.” His eyes were hollow. Fear colored every word as he pointed toward the window. “You know they won’t. You just said it yourself. You know what it feels like to be judged by what you look like and instead of who you are, and you still did it. Everyone out there will do it too.”

  Tad wanted to tell Rashid that it wouldn’t go that way. That Tad had been stupid, and no one else would be. But there was no point in lying.

  Bombs. Terrorism. Muslim. Three things that always seemed to go together.

  “The entire world is going to see my picture, and they’ll judge me just like you did. They’ll judge my family.”

  Frankie pushed himself up off the floor. “But you’re not the one who bombed this place.”

  “No. I’m not,” Rashid said, looking out the window.

  Tad searched for something to say . . . anything. But he had nothing. Just a dull ache.

  “The governor has put out a statement asking everyone to pray for the safety of those inside the building as well as the first responders who are fighting the blaze, along with the three who were . . .”

  Rashid looked back at them all and let out a bitter laugh.

  “What?”

  “Do you think the governor or anyone outside will pray for me to get out safely?” He lowered his gaze to meet Tad’s eyes. “Not that it matters. This is my punishment for thinking that being like all of you was the answer.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Rashid shrugged. “It was easier when I was younger. At least it seemed like it was. People didn’t automatically think I was Muslim until I had a beard. We’re not supposed to cut it when it grows in; did you know that? My cousins were jealous this summer because the beard made me look older. But here, it only seems to make people think about how I am different. Even my friends.”

  “That’s why you shaved your beard? To be like everyone else?” Diana asked from her perch near the window in the far corner of the room.

  “No.” Rashid looked down at his hands. “I shaved it because I wanted people to see me. I did it here so my family wouldn’t see what I was doing before I was done. The school was letting students take new identification photographs today, and I hoped . . .” Rashid shrugged and shook his head.

  For a second, everything was silent. The radio was still crackling, but Tad heard nothing other than Rashid’s words and the pain behind them.

  Finally Tad spoke. “You thought if you looked like everyone else, people would stop calling you names or looking at you sideways?” He understood that. He should. His life was filled with moments that made him wish he were someone else.

  White kids calling him Monkey Man or Afro Boy—even though he kept his hair short.

  When he was little, having his friends tell him their parents called him Half-Breed. Then the cleverer ones shouting “Zebra!”

  People telling him that he couldn’t understand what it was really like to be black because his daddy was white. He didn’t count as black. He certainly didn’t count as white. And when he told his family he was gay, he realized that no matter how much they might try to understand him, he’d never be the same as they were. He’d always be the odd man out who had to work to fit in.

  And then Frankie made him feel that who he was was okay, before snatching that away.

  Tad’s heart beat faster. His palms sweated even more as the memory of those moments twisted in his gut.

  “Boo-freakin’-hoo,” Z said, dropping a box of stuff onto the floor. Kaitlin jerked in her sleep, and Rashid moved to her side as Z said, “You shaved—something a zillion guys do every day—and your family is going to hate your makeover. Sorry, but I’m not sorry. At least you have a family to give a crap, so how about we stop telling sob stories and figure out how we’re going to get Kaitlin to the paramedics and the rest of us out of this place?”

  Z crossed the room to the storage closet. He disappeared inside, and Tad said, “I think most of us in this room can understand what you’re dealing with.”

  Cas nodded.

  “Do you think anyone would assume any of you could be a killer because of how you look or how you pray?” Rashid asked.

  “No, but I’ve had people make assumptions about me because I’m black.” Tad swallowed hard, looked at Frankie, and said, “And also because I’m gay.” Now that he’d admitted it to someone outside his family, it was like a balloon inflated inside him, waiting to be popped.

  “You’re gay?” Diana asked from the corner.

  He nodded, never taking his eyes off Frankie. “Yeah. News flash. Macho football players can be gay.”

  “How about we do true confessions later and worry about escaping now?” Frankie said, grabbing a couple of extension cords off the ground. Tad had come to the school today to force Frankie to face him and admit the truth. To admit that they had been more than friends and to tape that admission. He hadn’t planned on showing the tape to anyone. He just wanted proof that he hadn’t fooled himself and to let Frankie know eventually that it existed. Then Frankie would finally understand what it was like to have someone twist you up inside and make you worry about who you were and whether there was something wrong with you. Tad had earned that. He’d earned having the upper hand for once.

  And maybe he would have used it.

  Tad swallowed hard at that thought. He told himself he’d never wanted to use the tape, but he’d been angry and tired and maybe he’d wanted to make the tape because he didn’t want Frankie to get a pass the way he always did. The way Tad never could.

  Knowing that he’d been angry enough to think that way sucked, but it didn’t make it any less true. And if he wanted Frankie to face it all, now was the time. Frankie could deny they had kissed. He could deny all the late-night phone calls, but everyone in the room would still hear what Tad said.

  The words sprang to Tad’s lips, but as he looked around, he realized he didn’t want to talk about Frankie and his choices. Frankie wasn�
��t important.

  So instead, Tad said, “If we think it’s safe enough, Rashid said there might be some things we can use in Mr. Lott’s room.”

  Rashid nodded. “I can go. I’m in Robotics Club. I know where everything is kept.”

  “What about the smoke?” Cas asked.

  Rashid turned to her. “I can hold a piece of wet paper towel over my mouth. I won’t be gone long.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Tad offered.

  “You don’t trust me to go on my own?”

  “Of course I trust you,” he shot back. “But I was in that room during the first explosion, and I know where the floor is cracked. I can help.”

  He waited to see if Rashid turned him down.

  He didn’t. “Wet a paper towel for each of us.” Tad reached for the water bottle next to Kaitlin as Rashid added, “You guys should close the door behind us to keep the smoke out until we come back.”

  “Ready?” Tad asked, handing one of the wet paper towels to Rashid.

  “As ready as I’m going to be,” Rashid answered, wrapping the edge of his shirt around the handle on the door, turning it, and pushing it open. “Let’s go.”

  They stumbled through the smoke and debris of the hallway to Mr. Lott’s classroom. Despite breathing through the paper towel, Tad tasted char and smoke. Mr. Rizzo still lay on the floor. Unmoving. Tad pressed the wet paper towel tighter to his mouth to keep from throwing up as he stepped over the body and slipped into the room.

  “Who was the friend you were going to meet today?” Rashid questioned as he hurried toward the boxes in the corner of the room.

  “Does it matter?” Tad asked.

  Rashid looked at him for several long seconds through the haze of dark gray smoke. Finally he said, “No, it doesn’t. Not to me.”

  1:18 p.m.

  Frankie

  — Chapter 39 —

  FRANKIE LET OUT a breath of relief the minute Tad and Rashid went out the door. He’d dodged the bullet this time. Hearing Tad’s voice when he was coming down from the third floor had unsettled him, but when he got through the doorway and saw him in those clothes . . . Tad had changed clothes to meet with him. And he was pretty sure he knew why.

  During one of their midnight calls, they both had the same movie on at their houses. It was some movie about a geeky girl and a popular guy, and the girl changed her look in order to get the guy’s attention. Tad turned the movie off and said people should just accept each other for who they were. Frankie had laughed and said something like sometimes the only way people took something seriously is if you forced them to.

  Clearly Tad wanted to be taken seriously, and if they got out of here, Frankie would have to come up with something to tell him to make him back off.

  He liked Tad. He did, but he couldn’t be what Tad wanted. The conversations they had were great. They had a lot in common. It was no wonder they clicked.

  It was just one kiss.

  He should never have done it. He stepped over a line that no one in his family or his friends would ever understand. Even he didn’t get why he’d crossed that line. He wasn’t interested in guys. That wasn’t who he was supposed to be. He was supposed to date girls like Diana. If he hadn’t bailed on her, he would never have seen Tad on the Fourth of July. This was Tad’s problem. Not his.

  He shook his head and held up the two rolls of twine he’d found in one of the drawers. “I know this stuff isn’t strong enough on its own, but we might be able to make it work if we braid it together into something stronger. What do you think, Diana?”

  She glanced over at him and blinked. “What?”

  “What do you think about using the twine to create a stronger rope?”

  “Why are you asking her?” Z laughed. “Does she look like the Girl Scout type?”

  “No, but I’m betting by her bracelet that she knows how to braid things,” Frankie said. Diana looked down at her wrist as if surprised that he’d noticed the bracelet. “Am I right?”

  “You can’t really expect us to go out that window on a rope made of braided twine like we’re deranged superheroes.” Cas looked up at him. Her face was sweaty and streaked with dirt and under it all her skin looked pasty. But her voice was sharp when she said, “There’s no way I can do that.”

  “You survived a bunch of explosions, a fire, and climbing down through a collapsed floor.” He looked her dead in the eyes, the way he did to his receiver as he was calling a Hail Mary play when the team was losing. “I’m thinking you can do just about anything if you want to.”

  “I’m guessing she doesn’t want to,” Diana said, crossing to the middle of the room. “But I do. I didn’t come to this school today to die.”

  “I don’t think any of us came here thinking we’d end up dead,” Frankie said.

  “Are you sure about that?” Diana glanced down at Cas, who looked down at the floor.

  “What are you—”

  The door burst open, and a coughing Rashid and Tad hurried inside through a cloud of smoke. Tad dumped the stuff he was carrying on the ground, turned, and slammed the door behind him. Kaitlin whimpered as Rashid shoved a bunch of the paper towels back under the door.

  “Did you find any rope?” Z demanded.

  “Sorry, man.” Tad turned from the door. “No rope.”

  Damn.

  “But we found something we think we can turn into a stretcher. There was a canopy someone must have—”

  “Without rope, what’s the point?” Z ran a hand through his hair. “We don’t have time to wait around for Princess here to braid a bunch of twine together that we don’t know will be long enough or strong enough or . . .” He looked around, then up at the ceiling. “What about the wires in the ceiling? It’s not like they’re being used for electricity right now.”

  “I tried pulling out electrical wires earlier,” Tad said. “They’re strong enough to hold just about anything, but impossible to yank out of the ceiling or the walls. Trust me, I tried.”

  Z glared at him. “And I’m supposed to give up because ‘you tried’?”

  “Tad has some muscle,” Frankie added.

  “And of course you’d know,” Z shot back, climbing up on one of the high-top desks. “Do you think I’m going to put Kaitlin’s life in the hands of two people who are stupid enough to spend their time jumping other guys?”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Frankie clenched a fist as his heart pounded hard. “I don’t jump other guys.”

  “So you just let them tackle you?” Z looked from Frankie to Tad, then back at Frankie, and smiled. “Maybe that’s exactly what you do. Tad here just told us he’s gay. How about you, Captain of the Football Team? Have you been feeling up Tad’s muscles? That how you know how strong he is?”

  “Up yours.”

  “You’re going to make the team jealous if they hear you say that.”

  “Stop it!” Diana shouted. “This is stupid. Frankie isn’t gay.”

  “You calling me stupid, Princess?” Z shoved the table in front of him as blood pounded hard in Frankie’s ears. “Maybe you should look in the mirror.”

  “Screw you!” Diana shouted.

  “Don’t let him get to you,” Tad said. “He’s just trying to get under your skin.”

  “Yeah,” Frankie agreed. “He’s not worth listening to or getting upset over. He just wants to make everyone else as miserable as he is.”

  “You think you know me?” Z pressed his hands against the ceiling tile next to the light and shoved it upward. “None of you know anything about me. So don’t pretend you do.”

  “And you don’t know anything about me or Frankie or anyone else in this room,” Diana said. “We’re all stuck and we’re all scared, and just because—”

  “Scared?” Z looked down from above at her. “Are you scared, Princess? Scared that for the first time in your life, you have to actually look out for yourself because there isn’t someone around to do it for you?”

  “How about you stop
taking your crap out on us.” Frankie shoved the table Z was standing on. Z put his hands on the ceiling to keep from falling as Frankie shouted, “Just because you’re pissed and scared doesn’t mean we have to be your personal punching bags. If you hadn’t noticed, we haven’t done anything to you.”

  “Yeah.” Z looked down at all of them from above, sweat dripping down his forehead as he nodded. “None of you have ever done a damn thing. And if we get out of here, you can keep on doing nothing.”

  Z yanked the light fixture downward. Dust and bits of tile rained from the ceiling as the light now hung an inch or two below it. Z continued to pull at it and budged it just a couple of inches more.

  Frankie and Tad had both been right about the wire being strong.

  “Now, that’s impressive,” Diana said. “At this rate, you’ll have enough wire to make a ladder by Christmas. We’re saved.”

  “Shut up,” Z said. “At least I’m trying to get the hell out of here instead of waiting around, hoping for the best.”

  Z pulled on the light again and snapped the plastic of the fixture while the wires barely moved.

  “Z’s right,” Frankie said as Diana glared at him. “We have to keep trying. Why don’t you start braiding together some of the twine, and Rashid and Tad can build whatever stretcher they were thinking about while Z and I work on getting the wires out of the ceiling?”

  If nothing else, it was something to do besides talk.

  “I don’t need your help,” Z said. “I don’t need anyone’s goddamn help.”

  “You needed my help when we had to get Kaitlin out from under that air conditioner,” Frankie said quietly. “I’d like to help get her to a doctor. Okay?”

  “. . . authorities are pursuing leads on the identity of those believed to be behind setting the bombs. Meanwhile, the bomb units have disarmed a bomb discovered in the field house, and they are continuing to search for other devices as firefighters battle the fire, which finally appears to be under control. Two girls who escaped out of a window on the east side of the building are being treated for cuts and second-degree burns, and we are sorry to report that one of the firefighters injured by the device detonated when first responders went into the building has died from—”