No True Believers

by Rabiah York Lumbard

  A legal hell.

  For a second it seemed like the Shell sign was agreeing. The lights behind the S were dim and dull. But the last four letters burned bright.

  “Oh my God, Amir. Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s when I realized how real this all was and how it was coming to a head that night, that there was more and that I had to get the fuck out. Salma, I had to.”

  “Yeah, okay, I get that. But…you left. Without me. I’ve been losing my shit, Amir. Why didn’t you do more? You couldn’t have done—” My voice started trembling. “I mean, seriously, a letter to Epstein?” My heart flipped with fear and rage and a swell of pain. “A letter, Amir? A letter?”

  “No…Salma, please. I didn’t have any options. Yes, I left a letter for Epstein, but I also left instructions for my sister; she was supposed to leave the house and find you. Tell you what was going on in person.” His voice stopped. He broke into a full cry. “But then the cops showed up at my house before she could do that. And we both knew that I was phase one. You are phase two. Whatever that means. So she had herself arrested. To buy us both time.”

  “Yeah, I know. I saw them leading her out. But still. I just—”

  “Salma, I had to leave like that. There aren’t that many direct flights out of Dulles. I had to GTFO while the window was still open. Besides, I had already gotten lucky once that night—with Kyle not finding my Jetta before the show. The fact that I parked at the farthest lot, the one that costs fifteen bucks instead of twenty-five. It saved me…saved me from whatever it was he was going to put in the Jetta, probably something to connect me to the bombings. So he had to follow me. And I got lucky, lucky that I was paranoid, lucky that your paranoia rubbed off on me. But I wasn’t going to push my luck. Salma…I love you. I had to go like that.”

  He took in another breath, then kept talking.

  “But once I was safe, once I was here in the UAE, texting you was the first thing I did.”

  The cryptic text: nedruDrelyTmorf. He did. And it worked. I guess, in a way, he was right.

  I started shaking. My mind was finally putting together all the pieces. The third. The Turners. Pin it on Amir and Salma. Triple fuck shit. My mind shifted gears.

  “How did you get out?” I asked Amir. “What were the logistics?”

  “Baba. His GTFO paranoia. It finally paid off. He walked me through the plan over the phone, with the cops right there. It was brilliant, Salma. My old man is actually a genius.” My heart ticked upward, just a little, thinking of Mr. Ammouri tricking the cops. “He spoke to me in code. He told me that he didn’t have time like usual to stop by the ATM—‘like usual,’ his words—so that I would have to stop by instead. He said that I could pay back Ahmed in person that way.”

  “What?” I asked, not following.

  “He doesn’t know how to use an ATM, remember? He was telling me to get money!”

  “I…But who’s Ahmed?”

  “My boy in Dubai, the one I’ve been doing oud sessions with for over a year, via Skype,” Amir said. “Remember? It was Dad’s way of telling me to go to Dubai and stay with Ahmed.”

  “Oh my God,” I gasped. I finally got it. I nodded as if Amir could see me. He was right: it was pretty brilliant. I wanted to hug Mr. Ammouri….Sometimes it was so easy to mistake loss of hearing for cluelessness. He wasn’t broken at all. He was sharp enough to get his son the “f” out without incriminating himself. Amir was safe. And finally I had someone who believed me. Someone who saw the Turners for who they were. I looked back up to the sky, knowing it was evening to my morning where he was.

  “Salma,” he continued. “I know you. I know what you’re thinking. Stop. This is possible. You can do this.”

  His words echoed in my ear. Literally. And something cracked. The line was breaking up.

  “Salma?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re in serious danger. Tell your family everything you know and come here. Get to the airport before it’s too—”

  Click.

  The morning sun beat down on me.

  It was a new day. How would I survive it? Every passing second was more painful than the next. Each brought more unknowns, more uncertainties. I wanted to scream. I didn’t want to end the conversation, either. I wanted to tell Amir that I loved him, but that I also loved my home and my country and that love wasn’t love unless you went into the ring swinging for it. That this wasn’t over. That there was one last move I could try. I pressed redial, but all I got was a prerecorded message.

  Blah, blah, blah, mughlaq. The line was dead.

  AMIR WAS RIGHT about one thing: it was time to come clean with my family. I guess it was time to embrace his GTFO plan. Either way, I needed all the help I could get, including theirs.

  I scrolled down and called Dad as I finally left the store and walked toward the minivan. Compared to Mom, he was the calm one. When Hala and Yasmin went missing and then returned, she totally flipped on them. He’s the opposite in emergency situations—focused. I dialed his cell. He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Dad…it’s—”

  “Good morning, dear. How are you?” he answered brightly.

  I stopped walking, standing in the middle of the nearly empty parking lot.

  How was I? It was nearly six in the morning and I was calling him from a burner phone—so no caller ID—having snuck out for the second night in a row with his car, and Dad was asking me how I was? I wasn’t expecting comatose calm.

  “Did you get my text?” he asked, his voice still blasé. Alarm bells rang in my head. Was he speaking in code like Amir’s dad? Was someone listening? Was he even still at the hospital? Unsure how to respond, my answer spilled out more like a question. “Um, no…hang on a minute.” I took out my other phone, the real one, and turned it on.

  Still at hospital. Mr. Ammouri called a few minutes ago. He was just released from the police station. Go home. Mom is waiting. PANDA.

  Go home? Mom is waiting? PANDA? Did this mean that Dad was on the same page as Amir? That they all wanted me to GTFO before GTFOing wasn’t possible? But still, had my life really come to this? Fearing my own government? And my crazy-ass neighbors?

  “Dad, um, wait. Are you saying what I think you’re saying.” My stomach tightened. I wasn’t good at this kind of subterfuge.

  Dad drew in a sharp breath. What he did next was brilliant. I doubt Northern Virginia cops, even if they were working with the feds and a team of translators, could quickly unjumble the polyglot message he imparted. Hell, even other native Arabic speakers don’t understand the languages and dialects of Morocco. Using a mix of Spanish, French, colloquial Arabic, and rarest of all, Riffian, he confirmed my question. YES. GTFOing was a go. A short-term fix for a possible long-term clusterfuck. It was something. The best he could do. “My hands are tied with Titi,” he said, basically in tears.

  I put one foot in front of another and walked closer to the car. A breeze rustled my hair, carrying with it the sweet scent of pine needles. It was beautiful, surreal. And yet it hurt. I’d never realized that beauty could be so painful to behold. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Mom’s…okay with—” I stopped talking, opened the car door, sat down, and locked it. I wanted to ask if Mom was on board with this plan, but I didn’t know how to ask that without giving the plan away. I think Dad got me, though. There was a long pause. And a sniffle.

  “Yes, Salma. Yes. Please. Listen to your parents. Go home.”

  His tone stressed the word go, but stopped after home. That last word barely eked out of him. Home, like the beauty surrounding me, was painful to hear. Stinging my heart like a pine needle. “Okay,” I said, finally relenting. “I will.”

  I got Dad’s message. And I didn’t want him to spell it out any more. I put the key in the ignition and stirred the minivan to life. Washington Boulevard wa
s also stirring to life. The early go-getters of the world starting their day—a lone jogger, a dog walker, a few commuters waiting for the bus. If my own life had any normalcy, I’d be fighting with my dad about waking for another typical day of high school instead of deciphering coded speech and realizing that my parents wanted me to GTFO of Arlington. I shook my head.

  “I’ll go home, Dad.”

  I could hear my father full-on crying. Something I’ve rarely heard.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Salma. With all my heart,” he said slowly, gravely, and hung up.

  * * *

  —

  As soon as Mason Terrace was within view, I slowed down to five miles per hour and checked the surrounding streets for suspicious vehicles. Nothing. Good. Kept creeping.

  But the moment I saw Chez Bakkioui, down at the far end of the cul-de-sac, I hit the brakes. Tapped them. There’s no hitting when you’re moving at five miles per hour. But there it was—a cop car, sitting in our driveway. Dad said nothing about the cops being at home. Home was supposed to be safe. I pulled out my phone. No messages. I texted both of my parents. Nothing. What the hell do I do now?

  I drove the minivan slowly past the entrance of Mason Terrace and did a U-turn so I could face the house, watch it. I sat there for what felt like an eternity, waiting for instructions. My head was pounding and my stomach flipped like a dying fish. The car suddenly felt claustrophobic. Like everything that was happening outside was putting pressure on it, on me. Like all my fears and paranoia and exhaustion were pressing down on it. I felt like I was going to implode.

  Seriously? Had I gotten this far to only get this far? Completely and uttered cornered? And why was my hand stinging? I glanced down. My hands were swollen from gripping the wheel so hard that my pinkie ring had cut into my finger. I licked the skin around the ring and gently wound it off. I switched it to my right, glancing at the quote that was engraved on the inside from Mom’s favorite poet, Rumi: Never lose hope, my heart.

  Mom always said it meant more coming from Rumi—someone who lived through multiple wars, the Mongolian invasion, the Crusades, a decade of wandering as a refugee from country to country until he finally settled in the West, or what was west at the time—in Turkey. He knew the worst of pain and loss, and he never gave up. Hence the later part of the quote…the part that didn’t fit on the ring: Miracles dwell in the invisible.

  But do they, really? I mean, what was Rumi smoking? Miracles dwell in action. In life saving…

  Fuck it.

  I unbuckled my seatbelt. I wasn’t going to sit around waiting. Doing absolutely nothing while my entire world imploded. It was 6:55. Any minute now Kyle would be going to school. If he left with his dad, ya rab, let it be, let it be, then that would mean they’d both be gone. Junior for the entire school day, senior off to work. Even if Kyle Sr. did come home, the trip there and back would at the very least buy me a good thirty minutes to snoop around. I’d have the opening I needed. And the woods that wrapped around Mason Terrace, the same woods where my sisters hid, where Mariam and I encountered our make-believe monster, were right there. Right outside my door.

  Leaving the minivan with the keys in the ignition and the car off but unlocked in case I needed a quick getaway, I snuck inside the tree line and walked around the back of the cul-de-sac so I could see both the Turner house and my own. As I made my way over, my eyes flashed to my favorite bay window. Detective Tim—Detective McManus, whatever he felt like calling himself—was sitting right there, in my spot, behind the glass. I glanced at my phone. Still no messages from Mom or Dad.

  At 7:03, both Kyles exited their house and hopped into their truck. It was parked not too far from where Kyle Jr. rescued me from Michelle and Chris. And he had. He really had. Strange and getting stranger…

  I waited a few more minutes, set a thirty-minute in-and-out timer, and whispered, “Bismillah.” I stepped out from the forest and into the suburban backdrop of birdsong and distant traffic and a cop only forty yards across the street, and snuck up to the side of the Turners’ house, my peripheral vision wide open. But no one was around.

  Thank you, God. I promise you, after all of this is over, I’ll definitely give up committing crimes. I’m really sorry about that. Please hang in there with me.

  Within seconds I was kneeling down in front of the tiny basement window that Mariam and I had snuck in and out of a thousand times before. If only she could see me now. I held my breath. If the Turners kept the same alarm system the Muhammads had, then this window was safe. Mr. Muhammad saw no point in wiring it, considering its size. Only a small child or a person with dislocatable limbs could pass through it. Hopefully it was still the same.

  I pulled the lever on three…two…the window opened. Silence. Good, great, perfect.

  Alhamdulillah.

  I crammed my skinny body through the opening, head first. It wasn’t pretty. It was also when I encountered my first problem: Mariam’s basement wasn’t hers anymore. The couch that had once cushioned our falls was gone. A stupid oversight on my part; here I was dangling from my feet. I had no choice but to drop to my hands, somersault onto my back, and hope for the best. It was more of a collapse than a drop, more of a flop than a roll, but I’d conquered the first hurdle.

  I stood up, closed the window, and left my shoes behind. Better to snoop in quiet clean socks than in filthy shoes. I checked my phone for updates, but there was nothing. Back to my mission.

  Sparse basement. There were a few unpacked boxes in a corner, but other than that, nothing. No furniture, no decorations. No signs that read “Secret society meets here” or Crusader flags or Klan robes or any other weird regalia. What was I expecting? Whatever, I was on the clock. I sped toward the stairs, then came to an abrupt stop. There was Drexler, tied to the bottom railing. He glanced up at me with the saddest doggy eyes. I bent down for a moment and patted him on the head. “I know you’re one of the good ones,” I whispered.

  That’s when I smelled the bleach. Being frustratingly sensitive to manufactured chemicals, I was immediately overwhelmed by a sharp headache. Shit. What had happened here? I patted the doormat. Damp. I lifted it up, then immediately let go of the rug. Bloodstains.

  I was sure of it.

  Drexler whimpered.

  I wanted to untie him. Let him go. But I couldn’t. With a hole in my chest, I left him alone and hurried up two flights to Mariam’s old room, now Kyle’s. It could have belonged to any teen. A few posters on the wall of bands I had never heard of, and dirty clothes on the floor. I wasn’t about to go rummaging through anything, seeing how dirty it was and how his laptop was sitting right there—calling my name.

  On a whim, I opened it. Locked. I typed Pulaski88, not really expecting—

  Jackpot. Access: granted. I felt a surge of vengeful joy. Now you know what it feels like, asshole, I gloated silently. Hunching over his desk, I quickly scanned his home screen. There were several folders…mp3s, Odin’sAxE…Of course. Kyle was the one who’d argued with Debbie in the now-defunct Twelve Generals chatroom. The Odin’sAxE folder was stuffed with Nazi memes. I passed over the Sieg Heil nonsense and clicked on a picture of Christopher Columbus with an outsized thought bubble.

  Dear Conquered Peoples,

  The history of humanity is one of constant conflict and competition. We fight for resources: land, food, water, and childbearing women. You whine about how the Godly White Man has always triumphed. You losers want me to regret my superiority at conquest? You want apologies and reparations from someone who is stronger and smarter than you? News flash: my fellowship and I won the conflict. We won the competition. We aren’t sorry. We owe you nothing.

  I closed the folder. It was what it was: idiocy reframed as sacred wisdom. (Seriously: “childbearing women”?) I quickly scanned a few more memes—several that questioned the Holocaust, a couple of memes about black-on-bl
ack and black-on-white crime, and something that resembled a family tree but more ancient. It had a quote: “God shall enlarge Japeth.” Okay, weird. Who was Japeth? I checked the time…7:20. Whatever, there wasn’t time to explore that. His meme folder was crass and childish.

  My eyes roved the screen, desperate to find anything that would redeem my prince, myself, my family. I zeroed in on a lone PowerPoint. OPERATION AQY. I double-clicked on it. The file was huge, encrypted with block cipher just like the blog that first led me to FallenSheClimber, Kyle’s presumably dead mom.

  And that’s all I really had at that point: dead ends. Yes, I had something. Kyle really was Pulaski88. Which meant he’d been stalking me before Mariam and her family had moved out. How? Actually, I knew the short answer: he was light-years ahead of me, tech-wise. (Which pissed me off.) So no doubt he’d also stirred up the hate that had ruined Dr. Muhammad’s practice. That seemed to be the gist…we were the perfect “operations base.” He’d lured me right to him, setting me up to ask him for incriminating advice in that stupid “ethical hacking” forum. And he’d kept records of our incriminating exchanges. I’d been such a sucker.

  But there was no point in dwelling on the mistakes of the past. Knowing that Kyle was Pulaski88 wasn’t enough. I needed to get my hands on the encrypted files. I took out my thumb drive and copied the file. Or tried. The jerk had disabled his USB port. I couldn’t even email myself the file because that would require logging into my email account, compressing the file, and erasing the browsing history so he couldn’t see that someone had been active on his computer. The erasure itself would be proof of my presence, and I had no time for more intricate track covering.