She held her breath. Her heart pounded harder with every second that passed as she stood there—waiting. For Frankie . . . for Tad or Rashid or Diana or Z to say something.
Sympathy.
Outrage.
Comfort.
Something.
The sound of a helicopter came closer and then faded.
A siren sounded outside, then went silent.
Someone on a bullhorn shouted something that was impossible to understand.
And no one inside the room said a word as Cas waited, understanding their discomfort and hating them for it at the same time.
When it was clear that no one was going to speak, she nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“You’re right,” Rashid said. “Bullying is an easy word, and I feel like I should say something to make it better. But I don’t know what.”
“Neither do I,” Tad said.
Cas blinked. Tears welled up, and she shook her head to ward them off. “It doesn’t matter.”
“If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have tried to kill yourself,” Z said. “Unless you were just saying that to get attention.”
“Leave her alone.” Frankie stepped closer to Cas.
“She doesn’t want to be left alone.” Z barked a bitter laugh. “If she did, she’d be standing in the corner like Diana over there, pretending none of us exist, instead of letting you all know that for a lot of people, life isn’t about football games and parties and making out in your basement, hoping your parents don’t come down and catch you. Life sucks, and there aren’t any words anyone can ever say that will make that better for me or Cas or the majority of people who don’t have parents who think their crap smells like roses.” Z pushed the desk next to him and strode to the window. “This all sucks.” He hung out the window and yelled, “Do you hear me? If you’re going to blow this place up, go ahead and do it now, because we’re never getting out!”
“You don’t mean that,” Rashid said, looking over at Kaitlin, who trembled in her sleep. At least Cas wanted to think she was sleeping. Kaitlin could be in a coma at this point. How would any of them know?
“Don’t I?” Z looked over his shoulder. “Life is crap, and no one in this building ever gave one damn what was happening in my life until my mother was dead. Who cares about the guy who looks like a screwup and cuts summer school because his mother might die any day and he didn’t want her to die alone? Nah. Just send the mother who the school was told died a letter telling her that her son is going to have to repeat junior year because he didn’t finish precalc. Is it any wonder I came to this place to let Mr. Casey know how much I appreciated his concern for my well-being? Kaitlin thought if I just talked to him, he’d understand how bad things were, but I know words don’t do squat.”
“He’s right,” Cas said, stepping toward Z. “Words don’t make anything better. They’re just the first step, and most people don’t bother to follow through with the others. Words are easy.”
“Yes.” Tad nodded. He pushed up the sleeves of his dirty tux shirt, looked at Frankie, and said, “Yeah. They are.”
1:47 p.m.
Z
— Chapter 41 —
KAITLIN GASPED FOR AIR. Rashid was up and next to her before Z moved to her other side. He held his breath as he watched Rashid check Kaitlin’s pulse before shaking his head.
“What?” Z asked. “What’s going on?”
Kaitlin moaned. Her eyes fluttered, and Z took her hand as he looked desperately at Rashid. Kaitlin’s fingers were ice-cold.
“I don’t know.” Rashid took her pulse again. “She’s still breathing, but it’s getting shallower and her pulse is weaker than it was before. I don’t know what to do.”
“Can you do CPR again?” Z asked. “It worked before.”
“Not unless she stops breathing.” Rashid had given the answer Z knew was coming. He’d spent too much time in hospitals not to. “The swelling in her legs is worse. There’s probably internal bleeding. I just don’t know what more any of us can do.”
Z gripped Kaitlin’s hand and closed his eyes.
He had done this to her. If he’d answered her message today, she wouldn’t have come looking for him. She would be healthy and whole if it weren’t for him.
“If we get her to a doctor, there still might be a chance,” Rashid said. A hand touched Z’s shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see Rashid’s looking at him. “The stretcher is almost done. It’s not very strong, but Kaitlin is light, and if we strap her to it with the electrical wire . . .”
“I can try to braid the twine and the cords together faster,” Diana said, and Tad added, “I’ll help. Rashid can finish getting the stretcher ready, and I can work with Diana. We’ll get her out of here, Z.”
Would they?
“I can’t just stand here and do nothing.” Z paced toward the window. “There was nothing I could do for my mom. Nothing at all. But it seems like the fire is under control, and the radio said the firefighters were coming in soon. Maybe I can help them by moving stuff on this side so they can get through.” He turned and headed back to Kaitlin.
“I can help,” Frankie said.
“No,” he snapped, and looked at Kaitlin’s face, wishing she’d open her eyes. But it was like his mother all over again. Shallow breathing. Eyes closed.
“Look,” Frankie said, “I can go one way and you can go the other. Two of us can check out all the stairwells faster that way while the others work on the rope. If one of us hears firefighters or spots a path that can be cleared, we can let the other know.”
Z’s knee-jerk refusal died on his lips. “Fine.”
Frankie clapped his hands together. “Let’s do it.” Frankie headed for the door and Z turned to Rashid. “Take care of her for me. She’s special.”
Rashid nodded. “I will, Z.”
Z looked at the terrifyingly slight, almost imperceptible, rise and fall of Kaitlin’s chest. “She’d want you to call me Alex.”
“Okay. Alex,” Rashid said. “But when we get out of here, you’ll have to tell me why you’re called Z.”
“I will,” Z promised. Frankie opened the door. Smoke and dust came through as Frankie disappeared down the hall.
As Z was leaving, he whispered to Cas, “I meant what I said before. I get wanting to die.”
Before she could say anything, Z ran.
When truth is buried underground, it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.
—Émile Zola
1:51 p.m.
Rashid
— Chapter 42 —
SOMETHING WENT snap in the hall—probably Z or Frankie had stepped on a tile. Then things got quiet.
No one moved.
“What did Z say to you?” Diana glanced over at Cas.
“Nothing.” Cas looked out the doorway and shook her head. “It’s not important. What’s important is getting out of here.”
Rashid took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. Since they can’t get a ladder up here and Kaitlin might not have time to wait for Frankie and Z to come up with another option, we should keep working on the stretcher until we hear otherwise.”
Tad frowned at the door before nodding. “We’re almost there. The metal strips seem secure. They might hold together as long as the rope doesn’t give way. Diana, what do you think?”
“I think you should worry about your part and I’ll worry about mine.”
“Don’t fight,” Cas said from the doorway that Frankie and Z had just disappeared through. Rashid saw the tears that glistened in her eyes as she asked, “Can we turn the radio back on? Maybe they’ll tell us help is finally coming.”
Rashid clicked on the radio before heading over to help Tad. There was the buzz of static, then the announcer telling everyone that the firefighters were making progress. The fire was contained to the west side, and they hoped to have it out soon.
“With one person of interes
t being questioned, authorities are now working to find another individual they have confirmed is involved in this terrible bombing. A source confirms that the individual is one of the students trapped on the second floor of the school. With four bombs having already gone off, there appears to be one explosive device still inside the school that could detonate at any time.”
Another bomb was ready to go off, and the bomber was one of them.
They all looked at Rashid.
Of course they would look at him. Everyone outside was probably also assuming he was the bomber after that report. A Muslim with a family from Palestine. Of course he must be radicalized. Angry. Eager to strike. He didn’t care what they thought out there. Maybe he had when this started, but not now. The only people whose opinions mattered were the ones inside this room. “I am not part of this.”
He looked over at Kaitlin.
Rashid hadn’t wanted to say it aloud, but he was almost sure she wouldn’t make it. He wasn’t his father, but he’d learned enough from him to know the odds were bad when he first saw her and were getting worse with each minute that passed. If they thought he had caused this . . . that he had gone against everything he had ever been taught . . .
“I didn’t do this.”
“Of course not.” Tad stood up and stepped over the cords and the stretcher and everything else in the middle of the floor. “It’s not you, and it sure as heck isn’t me.”
“How do we know that?” Cas asked. “You could be lying. Anyone in this room could be lying, and we wouldn’t know until it was too late.”
“I don’t believe he’s lying.” Rashid stepped around the desk to stand at Tad’s side. He’d seen Tad’s face when he realized there was a bomb in the locker. He hadn’t a clue what he was looking at until it was almost too late.
“You can’t know that for sure,” Diana said. She’d crossed to the door and peered down the hall.
“He had a chance to get out of the school after the bombing, and he didn’t take it,” Rashid said, then turned toward Cas. “Tad rescued me instead and got trapped with the rest of us.”
“That proves nothing,” Cas shot back. “He might be a suicide bomber. He might want to die to prove his point.”
“Dying doesn’t prove a point.” Rashid threw up his hands and kicked a box of Bunsen burners across the floor. “It’s crazy that some people think suicide bombing is a noble thing that will change the world. All it does is kill people. Killing doesn’t change minds. It doesn’t change the Koran or the teaching of Allah that taught me to be kind to all people and humble in all things. It just kills.”
“And trust me when I say that I don’t want to die,” Tad added.
“But they think one of us was working with the other bomber,” Cas said.
Another bomb, Rashid thought. “If they are right and there is another bomb, the bomber would want to make sure it went off.”
They all turned toward the door.
“Z came up with the plan to leave,” Tad said. “What if he was just trying to get away so he could detonate the last bomb?”
“What did Z say to you?” Diana stormed toward Cas. “When he left, what did he say?”
Cas looked toward Tad, then to Rashid, and finally back at Diana. “He said that he knew what it was like to want to die.”
“It’s got to be him,” Diana said.
“And Frankie’s out there with him.” Cas bit her lip. “He doesn’t know Z might be trying to set off another bomb.”
The radio crackled, and the woman’s voice said something about firefighters pulling another person out from the first floor. Then the sound faded. Rashid leaned closer, trying to hear the announcer as she talked about the identity of the first bomber, who . . . then there was nothing. The batteries had finally died.
“We have to warn Frankie.” Diana tried to push Tad out of the path of the door.
Tad held his ground. “Stay here. Z and Frankie were going to go in opposite directions. If they did, then Frankie is most likely on the other side of the school from where the bomb will go off, and that’s probably the safest place to be.”
“What about us?” Cas asked, stepping toward Kaitlin.
“The bombs didn’t destroy this area before,” Rashid explained, trying to calm the panic growing inside him. The bomber might not be Z. If not, then it was someone else . . . maybe someone he was looking at now. “This room was the one least touched by the explosions.”
“This room didn’t get destroyed by those bombs,” Diana said. “If the next explosion is above or below us, we won’t be that lucky.”
Cas shook her head.
“That’s not going to happen,” Tad insisted.
“How do you know?” Cas asked. “Why were you in the school anyway?”
Tad stared at her. “Didn’t you just say the bomber was Z? Why question me?”
“I want to know why you were here. Do you have a reason?”
“Yeah. I had a reason.” Tad looked toward the open doorway. “I got involved with someone this summer who I thought really liked me and I liked him, only he decided to stop answering my texts and my calls. I knew he’d be here today. I wanted him to have to face me instead of pretending like I didn’t exist. I wanted him to have to look me in the eyes, because I’m tired of people not looking at me so they can pretend that I’m what they want me to be instead of facing who I really am.” Tad spat out the last angry words. “I wanted him to know what it felt like to be me.”
Rashid felt that anger down to his soul. He knew it better than he knew anything else in his life. He was Muslim. He was American. Most people seemed to think he couldn’t really be either by being both. Too American to be a true Muslim. Too religiously observant to be a real American. There was no right way to be both. But he was both. All he wanted was to be himself—whoever that was. He just wanted the freedom to find out. “So you were going to try to make him really see you—kind of like me shaving my beard.”
Tad cocked his head to the side. “Yeah.” He nodded, almost to himself. “Yeah.” He turned toward Cas. “But just because I’m tired of people pretending I’m not gay or that I’m not more than just white or black or whatever doesn’t mean I was looking to blow up the school and my ass along with it.”
“Well, the cops say they’re looking at one of us.” Cas looked around the room at each of them. “It could be Z, but it could be someone else. How can we be sure who it is?”
“What about Frankie?” Tad asked, stepping toward her.
Cas went still. “What about him?”
“He got the coach to cancel practice. The rest of the team is at the lake, far away from all of this. Kind of convenient, don’t you think?”
“You think Frankie set the bombs?” Cas asked. “No way.”
“Why?” Rashid asked her, even though the answer was obvious. Frankie wasn’t Muslim like he was or different because he was half black and gay like Tad. But Rashid knew from experience that Frankie wasn’t the perfect guy he claimed to be. He’d seen him high-five his friends after they called Rashid or other kids names.
“Frankie saved me,” Cas explained. “When I was trapped in the art room, Frankie got me out. I would have died in the fire if he hadn’t helped get me out. He wouldn’t do this. He heard me playing clarinet and stopped to talk to me.”
Rashid frowned. “When? After the explosion?”
“No,” she said. “Before. I was in the music wing. I just wanted to play one last time before—”
“Before you killed yourself?” Diana finished for her.
Rashid held his breath as Cas looked down at the floor and nodded.
“You were going to kill yourself here at school?” Rashid asked, wiping his forehead.
“And maybe you didn’t want to die alone?” Diana said. “That would make sense. It would explain why you’d come here instead of going somewhere private. You wanted to belong, and once you died in the explosion, everyone would talk about you as part of a group.” Diana hadn�
��t moved from her spot near the doorway, making it clear to Rashid that she didn’t trust any of them enough to stand near them.
“What?” Cas took a step back, pressing herself against the desk behind her. “No. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Only, as much as Rashid didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, it sort of did. “Suicide bombers in Palestine almost always target other people when they die. The more bodies, the more important the story.”
Cas shook her head. “No,” she insisted. “That’s not what happened.”
“Then why do it here?” Tad demanded. “Tell us.”
“Why?” Cas looked up at the ceiling and bit her lip. “Because this is the place that makes me feel the worst about myself. I was worried I wouldn’t go through with it if I tried to do it anywhere else. I figured if I got nervous or started to have second thoughts, I could just look around and remember why I didn’t want to live anymore. And . . .”
“And what?” Rashid asked.
“And maybe I was hoping . . .” She shook her head. “It’s stupid, but even though I wanted to end it all, I was waiting for something to happen.”
“Like what?”
She sighed. “I don’t know exactly. Something that would convince me things weren’t all bad. That if I just waited for a few more days or weeks or even months, my life would get better. Frankie walking into my practice room and talking to me almost made me change my mind. If he’d come back again or if I’d talked to someone else, I might have taken my clarinet back and left. But the only other person I saw was Diana. I could tell you saw me, but you pretended you didn’t and looked the other way.”
Time Bomb Page 18
