by Audrey Bell
"What about you, Hadley?" he asked. He sounded overly polite. Cold, if I was being honest.
"Ginger ale would be great, thanks." I smiled as warmly as I could. "How are you?"
"Fine,” he said shortly.
Xander filled a cup with ice and ginger ale. He looked at me with frozen eyes and pushed the glass across the bar. He handed David a beer.
"On the house," he said icily.
"What's with him?" David asked as we watched him walk away.
I shrugged, sipping my ginger ale. "I think I wanted vodka."
"Now, you're being sensible."
"Let's guess the name of the child bride," I said.
"Tatiana."
"Svetlana," I countered.
"Anastasia."
"Too 19th century."
He chuckled. "Let's not think about Jack or Jack's child bride."
"Fine," I said. I looked around. "Should we nap?"
David disagreed with and disapproved of my suggestion. He snorted and dragged me over to the seniors in the GSA he had rekindled his friendships with.
People were getting drunk, David included. Jack definitely included. I kept looking over to see if he was still around. He was never looking at me when I checked.
"I'm going to go," I said, suddenly sick of it.
"You sure?" David asked with concern.
I nodded. "I'm tired."
"Thank you for coming," he said. "I know you didn't want to."
"Hey, it was fun. I’m glad I came," I hugged him. "See you at home?"
He nodded. "Yeah."
I left alone, shouldering out the door into the warm evening.
I felt alone, I realized. Which was strange. I'd just been in a crowded room of people, but I felt disengaged from it, detached completely, profoundly unlinked to the people with whom I had so much in common.
I had felt like this all the time before I started seeing Jack. It hadn’t bothered me then. But now that I had been in crowded rooms with him and known what it was like to feel like the person next to you was, in some unique way, the exact same thing that you were, I missed it. And I hated feeling so detached. I wondered if I would always hate it now, or just when I saw Jack.
I looked back at the door, wondering if I should give it one last shot. But I shook my head. I'd be graduating in two weeks. I’d gotten a lot out of college, I told myself. I didn’t need to ask for anything more. I had a degree, a friend named David who I would do anything for, and the job I had always wanted.
All good things.
But I felt like I'd missed out on some essential part of being young. I felt older than my classmates. I knew that was my fault.
I turned back towards the road.
I heard a familiar laugh and I turned to see Jack, and the pretty new girl, and it took a moment for him to see me.
He stopped laughing. I started walking.
"Hey!" he called. I didn't turn around. I didn't want to meet the girl or talk to the boy or do any of the post-not-breaking up stuff.
I heard his footsteps as he ran after me.
"Hold up."
"I'm going home."
He looked at me. He looked like he was going to say something.
"Jack!" she called.
His face fell while he was looking at me. "You look good."
I smiled. "Thanks. I'll see you around."
"Let us drop you off."
"That's okay. Really." I nodded. "It's a five minute walk. I'll be back before the cab's here."
He looked resigned to that. "Shit, Hadley."
"Jack! What's the address of this place?" she called.
Jack closed his eyes briefly. "Hadley."
"Jack, it's around the corner," I laughed. I pushed his shoulder playfully, but he locked his feet in place so I just ended up with my hand resting on his shoulder. I dropped it to my side.
He looked deadly serious. I was the one who should've been annoyed and jealous, and I was, but it wasn't fair. Of course he was with another girl. Of course she was pretty. Of course I was alone.
"I'll see you around," I said.
He didn't follow me and he didn't say anything but when I reached the corner, I snuck a glance over my shoulder at him. He was still watching.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It was the feeling of detachment that prompted me to forgo the last weekend of festivities before graduation to apartment hunt with my father in New York.
My mother and Solomon had both called to offer me Solomon's Greenwich Village apartment, but I didn't want that. I wanted a place of my own, where I paid the rent, and wouldn't be suddenly evicted when my mother's marriage fell apart.
My dad needed to be in New York that weekend and said he'd look with me. I knew he'd be more practical about what I needed and what I'd be able to afford.
"I still think this is a bad idea," my dad said when I met him at the hotel for lunch.
I rolled my eyes.
"Your boyfriend agreed with me," he pointed out.
"He's not my boyfriend."
"You broke up?”
"We were never dating."
He sipped his water. "Your generation has some messed up ideas about normal relationships. You know that?"
I inhaled sharply.
"That boy likes you," he said.
"Dad."
"And you like that boy."
"Dad."
"Screwy ideas," he said.
"Shut up."
He smiled, extracting a piece of bread from the basket before him. "You want to see what New York looks like on a journalist's salary?"
I raised my eyebrows.
He ripped the bread in half and took a bite. "It might be scarier than Syria."
It wasn't scary. But it sure was small and overpriced.
My father didn't gloat though. He let me ask the broker most questions—rent, security deposit, transport—and he chimed in with things I wouldn’t have thought of—whether the building was responsible for fixing appliances, if the security deposit was fully refundable, if there was someone I could call if I ever lost my keys.
My dad told me he thought I had a suicide gene when I told him I liked the place on 116th Street best.
"Why?" I asked.
He smiled. "This is Spanish Harlem. It has the highest crime rate in New York.”
"Well, it has high ceilings," I said. And it was clean and the neighborhood wasn't nearly as bad as my father made it out to be. I liked the idea of having a little bit more space up here instead of a closet and a bathroom further downtown.
My dad cosigned the lease grudgingly and we went to dinner; tired but infinitely relieved that we wouldn’t have to spend the next day tramping around walk-ups.
We ate at a famous restaurant in Harlem that my dad somehow knew somebody at. He was the opposite of me in that way—I didn't know people in places where I should. He knew people everywhere, even in places where he shouldn't.
My dad started in on Jack again after we ordered wine.
"You met him for five minutes. He stormed out of dinner," I said.
"The only people worth keeping around are the ones who drive you crazy." He nodded. "If I figured that out when I was twenty-five, I'd probably have never left your mother."
"You slept with a secretary."
He shrugged. "It was complicated. So, why'd you dump him?"
"How do you know he's not the one who dumped me?"
"I saw how he looked at you.”
"Well, you must have been hallucinating because he ended things,” I said.
My dad studied me for a second and nodded, like he wasn’t sure he believe me. "Your mother is in a state about you going to Syria."
I exhaled. "It's not like I enlisted."
"No," he said. "I don't think you'd much like thinking about David going over there though." He paused. "Or Jack."
"That's over."
He cleared his throat, annoyed. "Listen, Hadley. All I'm asking is that you acknowledge our concern. You think you're doing someth
ing selfless and noble, and you are, but it's selfish to refuse to see how it affects the people who care about you."
I bristled. "Oh, you think I'm being selfish?" I demanded. "Well, about time, don't you think? You know how many times we moved? You know how many different stepsisters and stepbrothers I grew up with that I don't talk to anymore? That mom told me were family members before she changed her mind?"
The restaurant wasn't noisy enough to drown out my voice. The diners at the table next to us glanced over at me, seemingly perplexed.
I lowered my voice, embarrassed. "I know it's selfish. Okay? It's for my career. But, I'm twenty-two. And you were never there. That was selfish. And instead of just getting on with things, Mom went looking for love. Over and over and over, no matter who we had to leave or where we had to go. That was selfish."
“Alright.” He held up his hands in surrender. "Fair enough."
"I know it affects you and I know I pretend not to see it," I continued. "I feel like that's probably what you did when you came to visit, right? You pretended not to see how freaked out I was?" He didn't meet my eyes, looking down at a menu. I shrugged. "It might be different if you had ever given me the courtesy of acknowledging how things affected me.”
He rested his chin on his hand and cleared his throat. "I thought you'd be better off with your mother.”
"I'm sure you convinced yourself," I said. "But you're a smart guy. You don't get to run a company without noticing a few things. You knew I wouldn't be. You just wished I would."
He leaned back and looked me in the eye. "I worked. Your mother didn't. I thought you'd be neglected if you lived with me. You would've been. I was working sixteen-hour days six days a week. I would’ve had to hire someone to raise you." He met my eyes. "I'm not saying it was perfect—life with your mother. I know it wasn’t. I know that. But I did believe it was better. I didn't talk myself into thinking that. Maybe I was wrong, but I wasn't deceiving myself. The thing you learn when you grow up is how to make do with the choices you have.”
I hadn't expected an apology, but I didn't want an explanation either. "The point, Dad, is that you chose your career. And Mom chose romance. And neither of you chose me. So, the fact that I’m choosing my career is something you should respect.”
"It is, Hadley."
I nodded. “Well, good.”
He was quieter at dinner then. He told me about the tech company in Europe they'd been looking into, about how much savvier the young associates at work were, and about how he couldn't believe I was graduating from college.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Dale shook my hand gruffly, while he was on the phone. "Well, whatever the fuck happens, we're not going to get scooped by Larry Dawes."
I smiled and caught the eye of a much-younger reporter grinning in the corner. I couldn’t believe I was here—at the New York Times as a new hire.
Dale waved at the younger reporter to get his attention and made an indecipherable series of hand gestures.
The younger reporter grinned. He nodded. He was tall and lanky with dark hair and square-framed glasses.
"Hadley, I'm Kip Styles."
"Nice to meet you."
"You'll have to forgive Dale. He woke up in a good mood and he's been trying very hard not to show it."
"I heard that," Dale growled.
Kip laughed. "Come on. Let's get you set up."
I followed him to an elevator bank and up to the eighteenth floor. "You’ll be overseas mostly, right?"
I nodded. “Yeah.”
"So, you'll have a neat desk." He smiled. "You're young to be doing this."
"What?"
"Going to a conflict zone." He smiled. "You speak Arabic or something?"
I nodded again. “Um, yeah. I do.”
"I thought so." He logged me into a computer and set up my email account. “They usually don't take anyone out of college without good reason. Arabic is a good reason."
I nodded.
"What do you do?"
"Metro," he said. "And I cover sports a little. Baseball and hockey.”
“Cool.”
He nodded. “It’s fun. Not nearly as prestigious as international news, of course, but they also never send me further than Yankee Stadium.”
I smiled.
“Dale said he’d come up to brief you and then you'll probably be free to go after that.” He grinned. "Don't let him freak you out."
I nodded. "Yeah. Sure. I won't."
Kip left me for coffee and I looked around the newsroom in awe. I couldn't believe I was actually, really here.
"Hey." Dale said, pocketing his Blackberry and coming back towards me. "Let's chat."
I nodded and followed him into his office. He closed the door. "You're done with classes?"
I nodded.
"When's graduation?"
"Saturday."
"Congratulations. So, Syria. What do you know?"
I looked at him warily. "Where should I start?"
"With the basics."
"It's bordered by Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan."
He nodded.
"Official language is Arabic. The ruling party is the Ba'ath Party. They’ve been in power since 1963. The current conflict started in 2011, with the rest of the Arab Spring uprisings. Protests began relatively peacefully. However, the government tried to crush the demonstrations using military force. The protests developed into a violent uprising against the ruling party. In the past few months, it’s become a full-scale Civil War. Bashar al-Assad, the current President, has refused to resign under international pressure.” I took a breath. “The conflict’s been going on for two years now. And it’s been complicated by religion and by the involvement of other countries. Assad is an Alawite, which means he's part of a minority branch of Islam, as opposed to the Sunni branch." I took a breath. "Large parts of the conflict can be found in the religious differences, as well as political ones."
He nodded. "Good. Current death toll?"
I lifted my shoulders. "I don't know. I haven't seen a specific number."
"As of now, it's safe to say 40 to 50,000."
I bit my lip. Christ.
"Meaning it could be many, many more. And millions of people have been displaced," Dale handed me a folder. "Here's our timeline of major events. It's helpful, but it's not the most important thing you should know. What you should know is that where we are sending you is extremely unstable. It's safe enough. We feel comfortable with the risk, but it is ultimately unstable. No matter how many facts you memorize, a clear head will be your most important asset."
I nodded.
"So, let's run through this."
We ran through the grim facts. He talked. I listened and made notes. When we finished the most recent updates, he cleared his throat.
"Right. You're fluent in Arabic. You won't be doing that much reporting at first. You'll contribute, but Erin and Kevin will do most of the writing. Chip does photos. The four of you will be a team." He nodded. "Think of yourself as a highly valuable assistant." He smiled. "The young man over there now is leaving us for law school. He burnt out quickly—six months—but a lot of people don’t even last that long.”
I nodded.
"So, rest up. You know? Let your friends have your fun. Tell them you need to sleep," he said. "As a precaution, we have hostage training sessions for anyone going over there. How much longer are you in town for?"
"Friday."
"We can schedule it for Thursday. I think it's better to do this a few weeks before, so you're not panicked when you go."
I nodded. "Yeah, sure."
Chapter Forty
I wanted to say the training had been reassuring. But it hadn't. I ended up with a notebook of things not to do and a foreboding sense that the training was a desperate attempt to assure workers they had some modicum of control.
Dale had told me to delete my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts and to open new ones just for work.
"Everyone uses so
cial media now." He explained. "Even Syrians in the middle of a civil war."
Deleting my Facebook seemed like especially good advice when I logged in and saw a picture of Jack with some delicate-looking Asian girl named Grace on my newsfeed. It could have just been a friendly photo. Jack was wearing his fraternity’s senior week t-shirt and Grace was wearing one from her sorority. But they were both beaming at the camera. And for some reason I hated that.
Delete. Gladly.
During hostage training, I had thought of Jack only sparingly, which surprised me. I'd thought more of his father, who I felt I had actually come to know by reporting on him for Riley’s class. I'd found video clips of him online. Alex resembled their father much more closely than Jack, but there was one short clip I found of Scott Diamond interviewing a man outside of the New York Stock Exchange. It was a boring interview about exchange rates. But it was just like watching Jack. They had all the same mannerisms.
I wondered if Scott Diamond had known to not beg. Begging, they told us, made you easier to kill. Personal details, however, were helpful. The things your father said when you went fishing, the cake your mother cooked for your twelfth birthday, the bedtime story your sister told her kids. Those things humanized you. Those things, they told us, could save your life.
I wondered if they taught Scott Diamond to be compliant and calm. I wondered if he tried to tell the men who killed him about Jack and Alex and Julie. I wondered if any of it mattered at all.
Chapter Forty-One
My mother came to town in a blue dress and with Solomon, intent on not speaking to my father, in keeping with tradition.
My parents turned out to be easier to ignore than they'd been before. David chattered at my mother and plied her with champagne until she remembered the only thing she loved more than not speaking to my father was being the center of attention.
Justin's parents came, too. They were lovely.
My mother rolled her eyes when Justin's mother explained she worked as a neurosurgeon. I understood for the first time in my life that my mother looked down on women who worked so that she would not have to look down on herself. When Justin’s mother asked what she did for a living, she spoke haughtily: "I'm a mother," she said, turning her attention towards Sol.
