Time Bomb

by Joelle Charbonneau

  Rashid and Frankie and Z had told the FBI and the cops and everyone else who interviewed them what she had said before letting them all leave and setting off the final bomb. She’d never meant to get caught in the blast and had believed her father’s aide had set up another student to take the fall. On the advice of his lawyer, the senator’s aide wasn’t talking anymore, but everyone was speculating that he had always intended for Diana to die. A senator losing a daughter to the kind of violence his bill was trying to prevent was far more sympathetic than one whose daughter had lived. The aide said he and Diana had been working for the greater good. Maybe he even believed it. After talking to Rashid, Cas wasn’t sure what Diana had believed.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to pick you up later?” Cas’s mom asked.

  “Rashid said he’d drive me home,” she said, looking at the construction crews sweating in the September sun. It was hot today, but that didn’t matter to Cas as she opened the SUV door and hopped out of the car. “I’m okay, Mom. Really. It’s not like there’s any reason for someone to blow this place up again,” she said as she straightened her black tank and black shorts. Her mother gave her an uncertain smile. Cas was getting that smile a lot nowadays, but it was better than the manic one that tried to pretend everything was normal.

  Waving to her mom, Cas turned and looked at the building sitting on the hill that was slowly being put back together. It would be months before it was back to normal. As if that was possible.

  The administration was saying that the school would partially reopen in January. No one she knew actually thought the damage could be fixed so fast, but Cas hoped it would be. She wanted to believe that mending what was broken could be done quickly if you wanted it badly enough. But until the school was ready, classes and all activities were being held at the community college. Cas’s mother, her father, even her new but still annoying shrink assumed that after everything, she would want to attend a different school or be homeschooled. Homeschooling would mean no kids to face. No repercussions for the rules she’d broken. She could just forget that it and everything else she was running from had ever happened.

  Only she didn’t want to forget.

  She spotted Tad coming out of a group of trees. His eyes were firmly fixed on the building where their lives had changed, so he didn’t see her watching him—studying how gingerly he was walking. She’d been in the hospital for two days with the blood loss and risk of infection. He’d been in for more than a week. All because of the gun she’d brought with her.

  The gun.

  Explaining it—how it had gotten into Diana’s hands and why Cas had brought it to the school in the first place—was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.

  Seeing her father’s expression.

  Watching her mother cry.

  The hundred hours of community service she had been given for her actions were nothing compared to the way people pretended not to stare when she walked by. They all now knew that Cas had gone into the school that day intending to die.

  But fate had intervened, and Cas was alive.

  She saw Tad turn toward her. The haunted, hollow look she’d seen when he had first woken up from surgery was still there. Cas wondered if it would ever fade.

  Rashid had given her a message from Diana. Cas hadn’t been sure she wanted to hear it, but it was hard to ignore someone’s final words, even if that someone had called you a coward. Cas thought about those words now as she watched Tad checking his phone and walked to meet him.

  Rashid was right.

  When Cas had admitted to everyone that she’d wanted to die, Rashid had said it took courage to live.

  Yeah. It did.

  Tad

  — Chapter 47 —

  “FRANKIE’S NOT COMING,” Tad called to Cas as she walked toward him. She looked different. Her dark hair was shorter and had some kind of blond highlights that, against the brown and with the black eyeliner she was wearing, made her look harder . . . but in a good way. Or maybe it was the way she studied the building behind him that made her seem so different. As if she was determined not to let it beat her.

  Tad felt the same. It’s why he sat in the stands of every practice, even though he wasn’t cleared by the doctors to play. Some of the guys had transferred to other schools. Frankie had. Now one of the junior varsity quarterbacks was leading the team, and Frankie didn’t seem to mind. The two of them had talked a couple of times since it happened. Tad had insisted and hadn’t let Frankie dodge him. He was done with being pushed aside. Tad told Frankie he needed him to listen. And Frankie had. The conversations weren’t easy or comfortable . . . not like the ones they’d had in July, when things were different between them. It was hard to watch someone you cared about pretend to be someone he wasn’t. Or maybe he wasn’t pretending. Tad had realized it wasn’t up to him to decide that. Only Frankie could. All Tad could do was live his life the way he wanted to. He wasn’t sure what that meant yet, but he’d figure it out.

  Tad put his hand on his abdomen where they’d removed the bullet. The ache would eventually fade, but he wondered if it would ever go away. The upside was that if he ever decided to go into acting, he’d be able to play a guy who got blown up and shot and look as if he knew what he was doing.

  One day at a time, his father had said when Tad got out of the hospital. Tad was trying, but, really, it all still sucked.

  “Did Frankie say why he’s not coming?” Cas asked Tad as she stopped next to him.

  He held out his phone so Cas could read the text.

  CELEBRATING YESTERDAY’S WIN WITH SOME OF THE NEW TEAM. TELL EVERYONE I SAY HELLO.

  Frankie had bailed on them, but he’d sent a message. For Frankie, that was progress.

  No one was surprised when Frankie and his sister enrolled in a different school or how now that Frankie was healed, he was leading a new team to victory. If he wanted to be noticed by scouts for a football scholarship, every game counted. So far, Frankie’s new school had won every game. Tad’s squad couldn’t say the same. Frankie’s new team had beaten them soundly last night.

  “He played a good game,” Cas said. Tad shrugged. Cas had come to the game and sat with Tad as he watched Frankie connect with his new receiver. He hadn’t told Cas to come. She had just slid into the seat next to him and asked him to explain what she was watching while the crowd seated on both sides of the field cheered for Frankie’s return. Even when he was playing against them, people viewed Frankie as a hero.

  “You should have hung out with your team after the game,” Cas said. “You need to be with your friends.”

  “I might next week,” said Tad, not sure if he would. “Or maybe I’ll skip the game and watch a bad horror movie instead.”

  Cas smiled. “Either way, you’ll see a slaughter.”

  Tad smiled back. “Except one comes with a more comfortable chair.” At this point, that sounded pretty good to him. “So when are we going to do this thing?”

  “Rashid’s waiting at the Park,” she said, looking at her phone.

  “Then let’s go find him.” It was time to do what they came here to do.

  Frankie

  — Chapter 48 —

  HE WATCHED THEM from the street. Cas and Tad looking up at the school. The two of them walking off to meet Rashid at the spot everyone called the Park. Browning grass and a couple of trees wasn’t exactly his idea of a park. But people liked labels to tell them what to think.

  Hell, they had labeled him a hero. All the talk shows wanted him to speak about Diana and surviving the bombing. Someone even offered to represent him if he wanted to write a book. His father said he should think about it—after all, Frankie had saved Cas’s life and he’d dated Diana, so he had insight into what people on TV were calling her complicated mind. But all Frankie wanted to do was pretend none of it had ever happened. That nothing that occurred this summer had ever happened.

  It was over. He was at a different school now, with different friends. No one knew about
why Tad had been in the school when Diana had tried to blow them up. All people knew was that she’d done something crazy to help her father and that she was dead. Kaitlin was too.

  Frankie could still see Kaitlin’s pale face and hear the way she told Z it was all going to be okay, even though her legs were crushed. She had to know she was going to die. Yet no one was calling her a hero. That just showed how stupid the world was. Everyone saw what they wanted to see. Kaitlin was a victim. She was dead, and heroes didn’t die. Heroes saved the girl when they saved the day.

  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.

  “Hey,” Z had said, sitting up against the pillows on the bed.

  “I just wanted to come by and tell you how sorry I am.” Kaitlin had died in surgery. They’d done their best, but it hadn’t been good enough. It was amazing she had survived as long as she had. Z had shrugged and looked off toward the window while Rashid transferred his weight back and forth, trying to come up with something else to say. “You know, you still haven’t told me why you’re called Z.”

  “You really want to know?” Z had looked back at him. “When my mom was first diagnosed, she told me she was going to beat it, because she wanted to be there for me. So she was going to follow every step her doctors told her to take—A to Z. After that, I called myself Z to remind her I’d be there at the end of it all. Guess I need to go back to calling myself Alex now.”

  “I don’t know,” Rashid had said. “I kind of like Z. It suits you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you chose it.”

  When leaving the room, Rashid had turned back and for a second caught a glimpse of the smile from the photograph in the yearbook. The next day, there had been a note waiting for Rashid at the nurse’s station.

  GOING TO CALIFORNIA. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING. —Z

  This time it had been Rashid who smiled, because Z had chosen who he wanted to be. And wasn’t that what they were all trying to do?

  Tad lifted the tile to his nose. “I’ll never forget this smell.”

  “It smells like fear,” Cas said.

  Rashid looked at the two of them and said, “And courage.”

  “Kind of like going to high school.” Tad laughed.

  Cas smiled. “It would be nice if it would get easier.”

  “Yeah,” Rashid said, looking back at the school where s
o much had happened. Where so much would continue to happen. Yeah, it would.

  Acknowledgments

  There are people who make both your life and your work better. My life was improved in so many ways the moment my agent, Stacia Decker, decided to take a chance on me. Since that day she has believed in me even when I’m not sure I believe in myself. Stacia—thank you from the bottom of my heart for being my friend, my champion, and a voice of reason when I need it most. You make me a better writer and I’m lucky to have you on my side.

  I’m also fortunate to have an amazing team who stands by me and makes everything I do look better than I ever could have imagined. First and foremost, Margaret Raymo, who always trusts that I will take thoughtful comments and turn them into something that shines. Karen Walsh and Lauren Cepero, PR extraordinaires, who field my crazy emails with grace and friendship. Ali Schmelzle, the most amazing cheerleader a girl could have in addition to being a sales expert. And to Mary Wilcox, Linda Magram, Candace Finn, Lisa DiSarro, and so many others who have gone above and beyond to take my words and put them into the hands of readers—thank you from the bottom of my heart. Also, to Catherine Onder, HMH Books for Young Readers’ fearless leader and publisher, thank you for your vision and leadership.

  All stories are personal, but this one forced me to look at life in a very different way and to walk in shoes that are not my own. Thank you to all of the students, teachers, and friends who were willing to talk to me about their lives and to help me see the world through new lenses. I owe a very special thanks to Tayaba Inam, Ann Carboneau, Becca Hix, Kimmily Phan, Yokabit Ayele, Malik Basham, Brittany Bush, Maria Celeste Hernandez, Thomas Holmes, Aja Martin, and Jennifer Weaver for your point of view on this story and for helping me make the characters as real as I could.