I don’t say another word as she walks away. I hear ice cubes rattling in a glass, and I know I was right about her drinking. But nothing else—nothing—makes any sense to me.
RHYTHM
Now I’m angry.
I’m angry with my new shoes. They’re cheap and ugly, and they make annoying clicks as I walk through the hallways.
I’m angry with school lunches—every item on my tray date-stamped as edible for weeks or even months into the future. I had my first fruit cup today, all syrup and vacuum-sealed packaging. Is there nothing fresh in this country? Have they taken the farmers somewhere and shot them?
I’m angry that I have a visual to go with this thought. An image of bodies stacked and wrapped like the burritos on today’s menu. These thoughts are not healthy. I know that, but I can’t shake them. I can’t escape the bloodstained context that has been draped over my life. I can’t escape my memories.
I’m angry with Amir, who I saw today at school for the first time. He lifted his hand in greeting and then disappeared into the crowd of students jostling toward their classes before the bell. He was an apparition that my wretched mood turned into an accusation. I owe him, several times over, and yet I am a silent witness to his betrayal. He’s haunting me for it already.
And now I’m trying not to be angry with Emmy for dragging me to this football game.
“Ugh. I give up. I can’t tell them apart when they’re jumbled together like that. Who can even see the ball from here?” I’m not doing well at hiding my irritation. She’s been trying to explain the rules all evening, but I can’t focus.
“Laila, you’re not even looking—” She starts to protest, then stops. There are dark circles under her eyes and her cuticles are raw. She has no energy to cheer me up, and I have no will to cheer her on. We’re a sad, slumped couple of spectators here on the bleachers.
I force myself to try harder; I fumble for small talk. “I’m sorry. I make a lousy American teenager. At least it’s nice to be outside, isn’t it? Even if I’ll never understand this game.… What number is Jackson, anyway?” I hope I’ve remembered his name correctly. He’s the most recent addition to the satellite version of Emmy’s photo collage; his face grins from inside her locker door. Emmy hasn’t mentioned him all week.
“Sixty-one.” She sighs. “You know what? I don’t like this game, either. It’s boring. And it’s not like he even knows I’m here. Besides, I think I might be kind of over him. Do you want to leave?”
I do, but I lie for her. “No! Let’s stay. How can you be over him? He’s all you talked about last week. Don’t tell me his picture is getting an X already!” I finally cracked her code—the X’s on her pictures are the marks of unrequited love. They’re the tattoos of disappointing crushes past.
She scrunches up her face and stabs at her hair with a clip. “Who knows. I don’t even care, really. I’m just in a weird mood. My parents are at it again. Oh, crap. They’re starting the stupid crowd chant.”
I don’t know what that is, but I can feel it. The metal bleachers underneath me begin to vibrate. All around us people join in, stomping their feet and clapping rhythmically.
We will, we will, ROCK YOU.
We will, we will, ROCK YOU.
The crowd’s voice is surprisingly deep. They’re growling the lyrics, and at the base of the stands an ambiguous animal mascot raises his fist in the air to punctuate. The crowd gets louder. And louder.
Thump, thump, CLAP.
Thump, thump, CLAP.
Only Emmy and I seem to be immune from this mass hysteria. Why do they sound so angry? So primal? The bleachers are shaking hard enough that I curl my fingers around the edge of my seat to hold on, but this just gives the pounding shock waves yet another pathway to my spine. I’m breathing fast without really understanding why, and I know that it’s ridiculous, they aren’t stomping that hard, but I’m starting to feel as if I’m going to fall through the seats and plunge to the ground below. The edges of my vision turn watery, and I can’t decide whether it’s more important to hang on or to cover my ears. It’s just so damned loud.
“Laila? Laila? Are you okay?” Emmy’s tugging on my arm and shouting in my ear. “You look like you’re going to be sick. Come on, I’ll help you. Let’s go.”
I allow her to pull me to my feet, grateful that she doesn’t let go since the steps feel like they’re swaying and shimmying and trying to topple me. We’re halfway down when the crowd gets distracted by something on the field and everyone jumps to their feet, screaming, “Go! Go!”
We go. We clamber down the bleachers and away from the din. I focus on one step at a time, one breath at a time, until the noise around me starts to fade with distance, but my heart keeps thumping long after the chanting has died down and there’s a vaguely electrical humming in my ears. We’re past the concession stand, almost to the overflow parking lot, when I can finally take a full breath. My legs are still wobbly, but I make them move until I cross some invisible boundary—an arbitrary line that exists only in my head—and only when I’m over it do I finally feel safe.
Emmy’s eyes are wide.
“Thank you,” I tell her. My voice sounds far away, like someone else is speaking my words. “I think I’m okay now.” I can’t explain what happened back there in the crowd, but it was definitely worse than the dance. Much worse. This was an earthquake of panic. It has left me feeling sick, but not the way Emmy thinks.
I’m sick in my heart. I’m sick in my head.
I can’t live like this.
Maybe my mother was right—a thought that terrifies me worse than the chanting crowd. Maybe we can’t live here. Maybe I’ll never feel at peace, free from my past. Would it be any different if I went home, though?
I don’t know. All I have right now is here, and the thought of giving up any more than I already have is unfathomable.
I take a deep breath. I can do this. “Let’s go back. I’m fine now.”
Emmy is looking at me like I’m crazy. Which maybe I am. “No. I don’t want to. But I don’t want to go home, either.…” She chews on the inside of her cheek while she thinks. “We could go get ice cream. My treat?”
“You’ve read my mind.” I link my arm through hers, as much to hold myself up as from affection. It sounds normal and wonderful, but running through my brain is a staccato chant thumping in time with my heartbeat: I don’t. Deserve this. I don’t. Deserve this.
“But this time it’s my treat,” I tell her. “I insist.”
THEORIES
This time it’s me who waits.
Mr. Gansler is upstairs. Mother shooed me away when he arrived, so I’m out here leaning against the building in the exact spot where he once waited for me. The longer he’s up there, the worse the stories my mind concocts.
I’ve torn apart the telephone conversation I overheard a thousand times, and still I waver hopelessly. One minute I persuade myself that I misunderstood the whole thing, that there’s some sort of reasonable explanation. The next minute bloody, worst-case scenarios flash through my mind—paranoid plots and ridiculous conspiracy theories involving my mother and my uncle. And the CIA, of course. These are the moments that convince me that my thoughts are poisoned, that there is something profoundly broken in me. To think such things about my own mother, even fleetingly, cannot be healthy.
I’ve taken Amir’s word for Mr. Gansler being a CIA officer. He’s something sneaky, no doubt. And right now he’s in my home turning my mother into his mole. That’s what I’ve worked out, anyway—it’s the theory that lies at the halfway point between my denial and my paranoia. I believe that Mr. Gansler has convinced my mother to spy on Amir’s family. She’s reporting everything that goes on in their meetings. For all I know, he’s bugged our apartment—maybe even with her consent—and he sits outside listening in real time. Perhaps he’s changing the batteries in the microphones right now. Do bugs run off batteries?
Mr. Gansler is also using my mother to spy on my uncle. That�
�s the only explanation I can live with. The only reason she would willingly contact the man who murdered her husband. Even my poisoned mind can’t accept that she’d do it voluntarily.
She’s doing it for me. For me and for Bastien, that is. She’s doing what she has to do to take care of her children. To keep us from being evicted, to buy us new shoes, to feed us. This theory allows me to keep my mother. To not hate her.
I have no idea if it’s true.
Finally, Mr. Gansler comes downstairs. If he is surprised to see me, he doesn’t show it. Is surprise the first thing they train out of a CIA officer?
“Laila. It’s been a while. How are you?”
I don’t return his greeting or his carefully neutral smile. “Can you just tell me one thing?” I ask.
He glances at his watch. “I’m not sure. What is it you want to know?”
“Whose side are you on?”
Darren Gansler can look surprised. Briefly, anyway. Then the slippery bastard winks at me. Winks. He’s already walking away as he answers. “Whichever side is winning, Laila.” He looks proud of this answer, so he says it again over his shoulder. “I’m always on whichever side is winning.”
And with that, our conversation is over, proving once more that I am the Invisible Queen. Easily ignored, easily dismissed.
I want to hurt him, to throw something at his back as he walks away. My shoe, perhaps. I can practically hear the glorious sound of hard heel on thick skull. But I don’t. We need him. I know that, even if I hate it. So I control myself, taking deep breaths. I won’t throw anything now, but neither will I continue to be a passive bystander.
No one will answer my questions, so I will have to find the answers on my own. I am involved. I will be heard.
SHIFTS
“Are you sure we won’t get caught?” I ask Ian this for the third time.
He laughs. “Relax, Laila. This is the perfect place to practice. There’s no one around.”
I am eager to begin my search for answers. I itch to toss our apartment, to look under cushions and mattresses, to open, to find, to redial. But Mother rarely goes out, and so I will have to wait. In the meantime, I am learning to drive.
Ian has a driver’s license but no car. I have a car but no license. Together, we make a whole driver. Theoretically. If only I could manage to keep my foot on the gas pedal long enough to make any progress. Some reflex deep within causes me to slam on the brakes the second I get any momentum.
I’m also distracted. Ian smells nice, woodsy and toothpasty—a more appealing combination than it sounds.
“Why haven’t I ever seen you driving?” I’m delaying. We’ve been here nearly an hour and I still haven’t been able to correctly angle the car into any of the thousands of empty spots in the parking lot of an abandoned mall. No matter how many times I try, I end up crooked, straddling the lines. Ian may not be frustrated, but I am.
“Try it again. You’re getting closer.” He points to a spot three rows over. “I’m saving for a car, but it’s slow going. Technically I have enough for the car, but it’s the tags and the insurance I can’t afford yet.”
This gets my attention. “Can you make me a list? Please?”
He braces himself against the dashboard as I jerk to a sudden stop. “A list of what?”
“Those things you just mentioned. Tags and insurance. And anything else. How you register a car, that sort of thing.”
His eyebrows climb. “So let me get this straight: you’re too young for a license, you have no insurance, and your car isn’t even registered? Forget what I said earlier—you are going to get us arrested.”
He must see the panic on my face, because he quickly reassures me: “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You’re fine as long as we stay in this parking lot. But I’ll take the back roads home. Just in case.” He gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze. He’s better than a seat belt at making me feel safe.
“Let’s take a break. I don’t want to practice anymore.” The car seems more trouble than it’s worth. Besides, I can’t picture my mother doing this—enduring shaky starts and jerking stops until she finally masters driving.
“Good timing—I’m starving.” Ian reaches into the backseat for a plastic bag and pulls out two bags of chips and two cans of soda. “Which do you want? We have salt and vinegar or barbecue chips.” His gold-brown eyes twinkle in the sunlight as he changes to a campy French accent. “Only zee best for zee mademoiselle. Zee finest delicacies from zee finest convenience store in town.”
I wrinkle my nose and just take one of the cans.
“What’s wrong with chips?” he asks. “Breakfast of champions, second only to cold pizza in the morning!”
“Ugh, I hope not.” I shudder. Then giggle. Did I really just giggle? Ian’s banter renders me happily foolish.
“You’re not a fan of good old-fashioned American junk food, huh?” He opens the bag of barbecue chips with a flourish.
“It’s just—” I try to think of the nicest way to phrase it. “The food here is so … loud.”
He mulls it over, then laughs. “I never thought about it like that, but I see what you mean.” He makes a show of crinkling and crunching his way through a bite of chips, then laughs again as I open my soda with a sharp crack.
He tilts his seat back and shifts so that he’s almost facing me. “I’m glad you asked me to teach you to drive. Even if you aren’t doing much driving.” He grins as I stick my tongue out at him. “You’ve seemed a bit, I don’t know, distracted or something lately.”
I can’t argue with that.
“I thought it might be because of your family stuff. The General is getting some pretty bad press lately. He seems like he’s in over his head, to put it mildly.”
The muscles in my shoulders go rigid. Where did this come from? I stare straight ahead. I don’t want to look at Ian right now. I made myself clear the other day, so why does it feel like I’m being interviewed?
For once he doesn’t notice my reaction. He presses on, and it just gets worse. “Has anyone in your family been in touch with him? I mean, I’d hope not, not after what he did to your dad. But he is your uncle, so I assume that someone somewhere in your family tree is still talking to him?”
The buzzing starts in my ears again. It’s almost drowning out his words as he continues to talk to my profile. I focus on a distant point—an old movie theater marquee advertising films long gone. Why would he ask this? Of all questions, why this one? It could be a coincidence. I know it’s a coincidence. But it’s too late. Something in me has already shifted, and my poisonous thoughts are burbling over, fizzing and spitting like the warm soda in my hand.
Finally, he notices. “Hey, I’m sorry, Laila. I didn’t mean to upset you. We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. I just …” He trails off. “I’m just interested in you. I’m just trying to know you. To understand you.” He’s leaning toward me, trying to grab my eyes with his, trying to get me to look at him.
“We should leave now. You drive.” I get out of the car and walk around the front. I stand outside his door until he opens it and steps out.
“Laila—” he starts. He sounds miserable.
But I slip around him into the passenger seat and shut the door. He stands, looking at me through the window for a long minute before his shoulders slump and he makes his way to the driver’s side and starts the car. “I’m sorry, Laila. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m an idiot.”
Or a spy. There, I’ve thought it. Most of me knows it’s a stupid, laughable idea—the delusional notion of someone who has watched too many movies. After all, Ian’s original appeal was the fact that when I’m with him, I’m just a girl and he’s just a boy. Nothing more complicated than that.
But in my experience there are always complications. And rarely coincidences.
And my life—my history—contains more spies than boyfriends. I don’t have room in my head for any new fears, no matter how ridiculous they are.
“Take me home.”
He taps the top of the steering wheel with his fist twice, slowly. He wants to say more, I can see it, but he doesn’t.
We drive home in silence.
EVIDENCE
At last the door closes and I am alone.
Bastien came home two days ago with a note from his teacher requesting a meeting with his parents. The surprising plural of that word made me wonder what legends my brother has been weaving for himself.
They left a half hour later than planned—a delay that had me nearly screaming with impatience. Bastien was sloppy and morose, first losing track of one shoe and then insisting that he couldn’t leave until he’d found his gray sweater—no other sweater would do. Mother wasn’t much better. She changed her clothes twice and frowned her way through an excruciatingly slow cup of tea before heaving a deep sigh and finally walking out the door.
I begin immediately. There aren’t many hiding places, so this shouldn’t take long.
Mother’s bedroom is surprisingly tidy. Dresses are carefully hung in the closet, makeup tubes and bottles are organized by size on top of the dresser, and drawers contain only ordinary, folded things that are supposed to be found in drawers. There are no pictures on the walls; there is no ornamentation anywhere. Even the bedspread is plain and utilitarian, and the jewelry box I was certain she once had is nowhere to be seen. The room makes me think of Amir’s apartment. It is the bedroom of someone who does not plan to stay long.
The secrets lie under the bed.
Everything I need to know is contained in a single cardboard box, the low, flimsy kind that might be used to gift wrap a man’s dress shirt. I’m almost disappointed—my mind had concocted entire roomfuls of evidence. In reality, there is curiously little—a few photos and a small stack of papers.
The Tyrant's Daughter Page 13