The Terrorist

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Some of us,” said Samira, “feel this shows great love from our families. Our families care what we do, as opposed to American families, who don’t care what their daughters do.”

  “You wanna get shot for falling in love?” said Tiffany.

  “I will marry the husband my parents choose,” said Samira. “Love will come afterward.”

  “Mohammed,” said Tiffany, “is that true? You know any situations like that? Guys who shoot their sisters and it isn’t murder, it’s civic duty?”

  “Tiffany,” said Con, “try to be civilized, okay?”

  “Watch who you’re accusing of being uncivilized,” said Tiffany. “I wanna know, then, Samira, what you’re doing in a Western school, where kids date, and some of them sleep around, and some of them do drugs, and some of them drink and swear? How come your loving family lets you in the door of a sick place like this?”

  Laura thought that was a good question—it certainly applied to Jehran—but Mr. Hollober joined Con’s team, which never answered difficult questions, or better yet, didn’t allow anybody to ask them. This was called diplomacy.

  They were wrong when they said if you went overseas, you would better understand other nations and people and religions. The more Laura heard, the less she understood. The less she wanted to understand. She usually wanted to give American lessons so people would see that the American way was best.

  But even Laura knew that you never said that out loud. Not in an international school. Not if you wanted to live.

  Billy had said everything out loud. And everybody had reacted like the Jamaican bus driver: they liked him, anyhow.

  She was no closer to Billy’s killer. There was no real way to get closer. Would it give his death meaning to use his passport? If Laura said no, and Jehran had to obey her brother, she would have a terrible life, a life she did not choose. But if Laura said yes, and Jehran tried to escape and got caught—she would not have a life.

  Laura’s mother was studying Billy’s chair.

  The table sat four. It would look funny without his chair. But she could not bear the sight of the chair Billy liked to tip backward, and she would have to yell at him not to do that, and he would say, “Mom, have you ever actually known a person who fell backward and cracked his skull? It’s a myth, like alligators in the sewers of New York. Real people can balance their chairs on two legs.”

  She put her hands on the top slat of the chair back, to shift it out of sight, but she thought: if I take away the chair, how can Billy have supper with us again?

  Then she thought: he’s not going to. You know he’s not. There is no resurrection in this world.

  She could not move the chair. It would always be Billy’s, and would always be empty. She staggered away from it.

  Nicole found the kitchen on the first try. It looked alien, the way it had the day they arrived in London, and nothing about the kitchen was shaped, or opened, or worked, the way it did back home.

  Nicole remembered the first time she did dishes. It felt weird. You didn’t go to London to do dishes. You went to London to see Windsor Castle or catch a glimpse of the royal family.

  BBC Radio played a cathedral choir. Thin melancholy Christmas music.

  Nicole Williams could not believe that a mother was expected to face Christmas without her child.

  Christmas, the holiday of giving.

  Children aren’t old enough to give, thought Nicole. They take. Taking is the beginning of love. Nobody ever received as joyfully as Billy. And I can give him nothing now. Not one toy. Not one more minute on earth.

  At the end of the day, Nicole was still in the kitchen, staring at the cans of SpaghettiOs that were still waiting for Billy.

  Con trapped Laura at their lockers. “I asked my father,” said Con, “about your idea that terrorists are country specific. I said could you really get a good combination of person and country and religion, and zero in on your terrorist?”

  Con’s father might actually know things like that, so Laura listened.

  “Dad says Libya, Syria, Iran, and Iraq are the biggies in terrorism. I told him you were going for Northern Ireland, but he pooh-poohed that. The Irish raise so much money in America, they’re not about to murder a sweet little American kid.”

  Laura was hard inside, waiting, needing the fact that would take her forward.

  “You’re imagining a conspiracy,” Con said. “You’re picturing a whole country and spies and bombers and demented expatriates gathering together to exterminate Billy. But there’s no logic to that.”

  “Where is the logic?” Laura tried to dial the combination on her lock.

  “My father says terrorists are plain old bad guys. Instead of expecting them to be brilliant and complex, you should go for the quick and ugly.”

  “Oh, Con, that’s stupid. That’s just another dial-a-horoscope answer! Today you will find something ugly. Leave me alone, Con.”

  Laura walked away without getting what she needed from the locker, sick of her best friend, sick of all friends and friendly things. Laura could not bear the possibility of talking to anybody else. Jimmy, Kyrene, Mohammed, Tiffany, Andrew, Bethany—she could not stand the sight or the sound of them. As for waiting on the corner with Eddie, she would never do that again.

  Laura crossed the street instead. When she glanced back at the school, she saw Mohammed. From so far away, she could not tell that he was handsome, only that he stood very still and stared back. Next to the holly trees was Andrew. How American he seemed, team jacket hanging open, huge expensive sneakers untied. Jimmy was waving to her, and his wave seemed to curl, as if summoning her. Con had pressed herself against the side of the building, head low, pretending she was not there, but looking at Laura from beneath her falling hair.

  Why were they looking at her?

  Didn’t they have anything better to do?

  Laura strode down the block as if she had plans, and it began to pour, which she should have known it would do, but she still wasn’t conditioned to England’s constant rain. She had no umbrella.

  A few blocks away lay Regent’s Park.

  Regent’s Park was much bigger than the Boston Common Laura knew. On sunny days, there were soccer balls and Frisbees, black children and white children, dogs on leashes, and many more dogs not on leashes. Even today, in such cold, sloppy weather, there were two soccer games.

  A sense of evil enveloped Laura. The sum of her thoughts was dark glass behind which anything could hide: Billy, the escalator, the police, Mr. Evans, the mumbled funeral in a strange church, the stares of sixth graders, the vanishing of classmates, the anger of Mr. Frankel, the horror of Eddie, the awful situation of Jehran, and the awful thing that Jehran wanted from Laura.

  And eyes, eyes everywhere.

  She was being followed.

  She jerked behind a closed-for-winter restaurant, ducked around a thick hedge, and waited.

  But nobody came.

  And when she edged out, no one was there.

  Oh you terrorist! thought Laura Williams. What have you done to me? All my friends have to do is stand on a corner and I’m afraid of them.

  Con Vikary’s father was picking her up at school because she had a dentist appointment. Con huddled beneath an overhang to stay dry, and she could see Andrew and Mohammed and Eddie watching Laura. Con tried to brush off Laura yelling at her, but she couldn’t. It hurt.

  Con moved every year. It was so hard to make friends! And she had to make them continually, in different countries, and if she had to find another best friend only halfway into the year … Con felt weak and lonely and awful.

  “We’re all watching Laura, aren’t we?” said Jimmy Hopkins.

  She jumped a foot. “You scared me, Jimmy.”

  “We’re terrorist bombing groupies. Laura is drama and tragedy and we want to be part of the action.”

  “That’s sick, Jimmy.” Con was so relieved when her father pulled up. She didn’t look back at Jimmy and she didn’t look over at Mohamm
ed and Andrew.

  Dad kissed her. “Have a good day, Con?”

  There seemed no way to talk about the kind of day she had had. Con was beginning to fear that she would always mean well, and always screw up. “Daddy, let’s not go to the dentist. Let’s go to the patisserie.”

  Her father grinned at her, and his grin was so normal, so American, that she felt safe for a minute, and she was surprised. I didn’t know I felt unsafe.

  But after Billy, we’re all unsafe.

  Forever.

  It was a hike across Regent’s Park, but eventually Laura would come out close to Heathfold Gardens. The wind felt as if it had come from the Siberian steppes, but the soccer teams kept playing, bare legs in icy mud. Laura trudged on. The thin tower of the mosque rose above the treetops, and the cages of the London Zoo were half visible beyond the playground.

  At last she was on Finchley Road. A service at the mosque had just ended. The worshippers were distinctive: bold African prints, delicate Indian elegance, and the tentlike black envelopes of rule-abiding Middle Eastern women. Laura wondered if she would have anything to say to such women, or they to her.

  What would it be like to spend your life inside a black robe?

  What would it be like to know that people were serious about the word “obey”—that yes, you were going to obey your husband every day of your life in every word he said?

  Once she had asked Samira if she went to that mosque.

  “I’ve never gone to a mosque,” Samira had said.

  Laura knew you could be Christian and not pay attention to church, but she had not known you could be Islamic and not pay attention to the mosque.

  There, on the sidewalk, stood Mr. Evans, smoking a cigarette in the rain. “Laura,” he said. It was a lecture in one word. “You’re soaked. Here. I’ll take you to tea. We’ll go to Louis’ Patisserie—it isn’t far—you’ll dry out and they do quite a nice tea there.”

  Afternoon tea was the best thing about London.

  Basically, tea meant a really good after-school snack. They brought you a pot of tea, milk in little pitchers, and sugar in fat brown lumps that were lumpy, not the square squares of American sugar lumps.

  Then you ordered your pastry. London was pastry heaven. “Sweets,” they were called, or hideously, “pudds.” This was short for pudding, which sounded thick and blobby, but nobody meant pudding; they meant dessert.

  How disgusted Billy had been to learn that British children had mostly lost interest in tea. “Where do your kids go for after-school snacks?” he had asked his father’s British colleagues.

  “McDonald’s,” they told him.

  Billy was absolutely totally disgusted with British children. “How are you supposed to get to know other people’s cultures,” he said darkly, “when they keep trading them in?”

  Laura was better now at handling Billy memories. She said to Mr. Evans, “I’m having tea with you only if you skip the lecture.”

  “Mmmm,” said Mr. Evans. “I’m afraid I cannot skip it, Laura. There’s a bit to discuss.” He popped her into a car driven by a policeman whose expression indicated that he had better stuff to do than drive Laura around. Or else he had appendicitis.

  The tables at Louis’ were very tiny. Laura and Mr. Evans were jammed in among strangers. Laura chose a Hungarian pastry, with lots of layers, and cinnamon, and raisins and butter. The sweet hot milky taste of her tea was like childhood: like the warmth of home before bad things happened.

  Mr. Evans was very serious about his pastry choice. Laura liked a person to whom food mattered. Billy, of course, had been extremely serious about his desserts. He usually ordered something with clotted cream, which tasted like whipped cream, but more so.

  Mr. Evans got butter on the sleeve of his too-large wool jacket and Laura knew she could tell him Jehran’s problem. He would help solve it, and that way she wouldn’t have to—

  “Laura,” said Mr. Evans, “you and your family need to go back to the States. It’s hard on you to be here, and it’s especially hard on your mother. Christmas is coming, and you should be home. You could pressure your family to return to Boston.”

  “We have a right to stay, Mr. Evans,” said Laura, who had no idea whether they had any such right. Perhaps the British would deport the Williamses. She almost grinned. Billy would be awfully sorry to miss getting deported.

  If we go home, she thought, how can I help Jehran?

  She had forgotten the fat pack of money. Her eyes flew open and her hand flew to her purse, to be sure she hadn’t lost it. She wet her lips.

  Suddenly, queerly, she was afraid of Mr. Evans. Of what he could do to her, and to Jehran. All this money. Was it Jehran’s? Was it stolen? Would Mr. Evans arrest Laura if he found it? And the passport—if Laura told, Mr. Evans could confiscate the precious passport that had been Billy’s.

  “But is it best for your family?” said Mr. Evans. “Laura, I have the sense that your parents are staying so your school year isn’t disrupted. But it has been disrupted. And you’d be better off at home.”

  “You just don’t want me talking to people,” said Laura. Who had complained. Jimmy? Mohammed? Samira? Con?

  “What do you think you will accomplish?” said Mr. Evans nicely, as if he really wanted to know.

  Laura wasn’t accomplishing a thing. She might as well have been playing football by sitting in a chair. She couldn’t score because she didn’t even know who the enemy team was. “I have to try, Mr. Evans.”

  “No,” said Mr. Evans. “There are plenty of people trying, Laura. They are experts. They know what they’re doing.”

  “If they knew what they were doing, they’d have done it.”

  Mr. Evans gave Laura the well-known American teens are so rude look. “You are losing friends, Laura. Treading on toes.”

  “It isn’t a question of toes,” said Laura, shotgun angry. “It’s a question of bombs. Bombs that splatter you so you don’t have a heart or arms or legs, never mind toes.”

  Her voice had skyrocketed.

  People were staring.

  The pianist, who had been taking a break, went quickly back to the keyboard.

  She had no use for Mr. Evans, none at all. Toes! As if her brother’s murder were no more than a day that hadn’t gone well.

  Mr. Evans gave Laura her instructions for future behavior.

  The usual rules, thought Laura, for those of us whose brothers get blown up. Don’t get into a car without checking the backseat for crouching murderers. Don’t leave your suitcase unattended. Don’t accept packages from strangers.

  In her purse lay a package she had accepted from a stranger.

  CHAPTER 12

  LAURA WAS CAREFUL.

  When school ended, she waited until her friends had left by car, or bus, or Underground, and then she took a bus as if to go shopping at Selfridges. After a block or so, she got off and took a different bus, walked the wrong way down a one-way street, and entered the Underground at a station she never normally used.

  She took a train to an area not for tourists: city-grim and city-sad. It reminded Laura of shimmy corners of Boston, though the architecture, and certainly the speech, was different. Trash in the streets, abandoned cars where grass should have grown, sullen children smoking in doorways.

  I wouldn’t set foot in this neighborhood at home! she thought. Why am I doing this in London?

  Again she felt eyes on her back, but these were not the eyes of friends; they were the eyes of strangers, deciding what kind of victim she would make.

  A stupid one, thought Laura Williams, walking swiftly past betting shops, pubs, and abandoned stores.

  Within a block she found a cut-rate travel agency, as she had known she would. London was full of tourists and immigrants and aliens and strangers, and all of them came from somewhere and would want to go back one day.

  Travel posters inside the windows of the shop had faded, and the tape holding them down was brown and split. Brochures curled at the corners.
When she entered, the floor was filthy with squashed-out cigarettes and the air was gray. The travel agent was Indian, overweight and irritated, talking through a cigarette that bounced between his thin lips.

  What was she doing? Why had she not chosen a nice travel agency in a nice neighborhood? This was London! Millions of people! Nobody was going to recognize her, nobody knew her to start with.

  “Two round-trip tickets to New York City, please,” she said. “American Airlines. Departing December twenty-eighth.” She used her most London accent, and he looked at her oddly, and she realized she had used her Jehran-Masterpiece Theatre voice, which nobody in this neighborhood possessed.

  But she did not interest him. Only ticket sales interested him, and he went into his computer.

  Laura forced herself to concentrate on the plan.

  The London Walk Club was taking a morning train to Edinburgh on December twenty-eighth. Laura and Jehran would fly out that morning, too, get to New York, Laura would escort Jehran to the taxi stand, and Jehran—brave, brave Jehran—would be on her own in a new world. Laura would turn around and fly back. Jehran would disappear without a trace.

  If an official asked, Laura would say she and her little brother were visiting Grandma over vacation. But that meant Laura, who had to fly back the same day, could not display a return ticket for that day. Customs officials would want to know why a visit to Grandma was not at least for one night.

  It wouldn’t matter to Jehran, who would just toss her return ticket in the trash and vanish.

  But Laura would have to have a second ticket to come home on. She had decided to buy this at another agency on another day.

  The ticket agent had difficulty finding seats. Laura had forgotten how busy Christmas season was. Seats were sold. Oh no! she thought, it’s not going to work!

  “No seats on American,” said the man. “Would you travel British Air?”

  If she had not lived in London for months, she would not have understood a single word. The accent combination of immigrant from India and slum London was another whole language. “Well, okay,” said Laura, forgetting to sound Brit.