I Hope You Get This Message

by Farah Naz Rishi

  She closed the door behind them as Adeem stumbled in after her, and set the candle down on the desk. Lightning shattered the tranquil darkness, dousing the library in a momentary silver glow. Outside, a dogwood tree sagged precariously beneath the torrent of rain and shrieking winds. There was no sign of the storm letting up.

  Adeem spun to face her. “What?” he whined. “What’d I do?”

  “Oh, Adi-jaan, my dear baby brother,” Leyla began cheerfully, “did you know that books are a thing?”

  Adeem blinked in confusion.

  Leyla bounded, fairy-like, to a bookcase. The flickering-heartbeat light of the candle danced across shelves filled with fractured-spined books and Dad’s collection of old radios—including the Philco, recently chipped.

  She yanked a small green hardcover book from the shelf, waved it toward him. Dad had given her that book a couple months ago; the cover was already showing signs of wear and tear. “See, there’s something you can do called reading. Whole worlds appear in your mind! Like VR, but better.”

  “Shut up,” Adeem grumbled. “I know what reading is, but I prefer my Switch.”

  “Yeah, but, see, your Switch is dead, and you don’t have to charge books.” She patted the plush red Oriental rug on the floor with her foot. “Come, Adi, sit. I can read to you.”

  Adeem stared back incredulously. “Who even reads poetry anymore?”

  “For your information, I read poetry.” Her eyes trailed to the window. “And so does Priti.”

  Priti was new at Leyla’s school, and the two of them had become fast friends. It wasn’t long before she was coming over almost every day, and now Leyla wore a crescent moon necklace around her neck—a friendship necklace from Priti—and Adeem had yet to see her ever take it off.

  Leyla becoming obsessed with poetry was one of many things that were beginning to change.

  “What about Reza?” Adeem challenged. “What does he think?”

  “He . . .” Leyla hesitated. “Well, he doesn’t love it as much as Priti and I do.”

  Adeem followed Leyla’s gaze toward the window, too, wondering what kept her attention. But he saw nothing beyond the unrelenting rain.

  He sighed and took a seat on the rug, spreading his spindly legs out in front of him. “At least someone has enough sense.”

  “You never know if you don’t give it a try,” she lectured. “You of all people should like poetry. Let me put it in a way you’ll actually understand.”

  As Adeem glared, Leyla sank onto a plush armchair in the corner of the room, book in hand. “Poetry is like code. Each word is its own variable, each carrying a different associated value, depending on the author’s intent. And every string of words comes together, like a data structure, to create a message. So reading poetry is running a program in your brain; if you understand the meaning of the words, then the poet’s code—their message—succeeded.”

  Adeem had only just started learning the basics of coding. He didn’t exactly understand the metaphor. He definitely wasn’t much of a reader, either. But Leyla had known exactly what to say to pique his interest.

  At least, a little bit.

  He’d listen, if only to prove her wrong. “Whatever you say, but,” he said, sighing, “fine. If I die of boredom, though, it’s your fault.”

  Leyla grinned, victorious. She peeled open the book, a collection of Sufi poetry, and read a few poems from Rumi, another by Rabia Basri. It was when she’d chosen a ghazal by Hafez that Adeem started to really listen.

  “‘With looks disheveled, flushed in a sweat of drunkenness, / His shirt torn open, a song on his lips and wine cup in his hand / With eyes looking for trouble, lips softly complaining, / So at midnight last night he came and sat at my pillow . . .’”

  Leyla paused, catching Adeem’s wide-eyed expression. “Maybe I’ll just skip this one.”

  “Wait, is Hafez talking about another dude? On his pillow?”

  She smiled tentatively. “It kind of sounds like it, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s . . .” Adeem made a face, like he’d eaten something sour. “Weird. So, like, he’s gay?” He had nothing against it, but homosexuality was one of those topics swept under the rug in Sunday school. The one time he’d asked one of his Sunday school teachers, Auntie Aminah, about it, she simply sighed and said, It’s complicated, and left it at that. Being gay was a thing, an identity, that existed, and that was all he really knew.

  Leyla’s smile faltered. “Who really knows?” she said, chuckling. “All right, Adi. I think that’s enough torture for one night.”

  She held the book close to her chest and stood. “Hey, I just remembered—I might have a portable charger in the storage room. Wanna help me find it?”

  He was so excited by the prospect of playing Pokémon, he barely noticed the flicker of pain across her face, lingering like the shadow of candlelight. But now, his memories of Leyla were like a blurry photograph, slowly coming into focus. It was funny almost; he’d always been so good at fixing things, at solving puzzles, but he couldn’t even decode his sister’s signals.

  The only sign he’d ever understood was when the night Leyla disappeared, her favorite green book of poetry was gone, too. A sign she wasn’t coming back.

  You okay? Cate now mouthed, pulling him from his memories.

  “Yeah,” said Adeem. “Just . . . defragmenting.”

  She tilted her head and stared at him quizzically, but Adeem had too much on his mind to elaborate.

  He’d already asked Sheriff Beeson if he could make a couple phone calls using the office landline. “Please do whatever it takes to get yourselves back home,” the sheriff said after he’d lead them out of their cell and to the back of the office where a row of volunteers were fielding incoming phone calls. The sheriff handed him a greasy black landline phone.

  Adeem first called Reza. After apologizing that he hadn’t been able to call sooner and assuring him again and again that he truly was okay, he explained the situation, leaving out the part about Cate’s attempted—albeit hilarious—tampon theft. Then, when Reza promised to let his parents know he was safe, Adeem asked for Priti’s phone number.

  The line went quiet. Adeem understood Reza’s shock; putting himself in close proximity to Priti, especially now, was asking for a fight. But he’d remembered Reza saying she lived in Las Vegas, and his options weren’t exactly . . . broad.

  “Unless you have someone else you can send over,” said Adeem eagerly, “because I would gladly take literally anyone else in your magical Muslim network to bail us out.”

  “I’m sorry, bud,” Reza apologized. “Priti’s the only one I know; Las Vegas isn’t exactly a huge HQ for Muslims. I can call her for you, if you want.”

  Adeem bit down hard. His gut reaction was to scream YES, but:

  “I should probably do this. I think.”

  If he had to face her, he may as well talk to her sooner than later.

  “Just don’t be too hard on her, okay?” Reza warned. Adeem made no promises.

  Now he squeezed the phone tightly in his sweaty hand as he waited for someone to pick up.

  “Hello?” a voice on the other line said, deep and warm and familiar, like a fresh pot of doodh pati on a cold evening. It made Adeem bristle.

  She picked up. She actually picked up, Adeem thought, panicking.

  “Hello?” Priti asked again. “Anyone there?”

  Her voice sounded exactly the same. In his head, he’d half imagined her transforming into some kind of manipulative, homewrecking witch the moment Leyla agreed to run away with her, complete with a throaty Disney villain laugh. But she was still just Priti, the same girl who’d come over almost every day after school and helped Mom do the dishes, who’d done so much of her homework on the kitchen table with him and Leyla and Reza.

  The same girl who’d left with Leyla, and without a word.

  “Hey.” Adeem cleared his throat. “This is Adeem.”

  “Holy shit,” Priti breathed. “Adi?”<
br />
  He’d suddenly felt a horrible concoction of embarrassment and shame brewing in his stomach. This was a stupid idea. Why would Priti travel out of her way to save him, the kid who’d, as far as she knew, done jack shit to support Leyla when she’d needed him most? That’s probably why she hadn’t stopped Leyla from leaving her family behind. For all Adeem knew, Priti might have encouraged it.

  The conversation was short, awkward, stilted; Adeem could barely hear Priti over the constant ringing of telephones and the shouting of police officers and volunteers issuing instructions for those who’d gotten themselves stranded in the desert outside Las Vegas, finding safe haven from nearby riots. And he could barely think with Cate staring at him like a curious bird. Maybe she could see the discomfort on Adeem’s face.

  “I need you to pick me and a friend up. Unfortunately, we’re stranded, and you’re the closest person to us. I don’t really have a choice.”

  He knew she probably had a million questions, starting with how he’d finally gotten hold of her new number and whether he was looking for Leyla. But she didn’t ask any of those things.

  As he glanced at the clock hanging on the wall above one of the sheriff’s desks, he wondered if Priti had expected this phone call to come someday.

  “I can do that,” she said. “Where are you? Do you need help getting back home?”

  He glanced at Cate. “Clark County Sheriff’s Office.”

  He heard her take a deep breath. “Wow. You, uh, wandered a little far from home.”

  “Like I said, unfortunately, you’re the closest person to us.”

  Adeem had no idea what the state of the roads would be anymore; most people would have run out of gas by now, unless they’d stocked up ahead of time. For Priti, the drive to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office probably wouldn’t take long under normal circumstances. Now, though, it could take hours.

  And going back home would take days, would take until the end of the world.

  Priti would send the Great Eagles vis-à-vis her car: he’d head back to Hobbiton, back to the safety of his office library, and Cate, the raging little dingus, would find some way to fly right into the all-seeing alien eyeball of Alma-uron. Alone.

  He gave Priti the address, his throat strangely tight.

  “Got it,” said Priti. “It’s gonna take me a while, so hang tight. I’ll leave right now. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  Adeem bit his lip and hung up. He looked over at Cate, who was still fiddling with her blackbird key chain while she waited for him to finish.

  The radio broadcast in the background had long moved on from local traffic conditions to some breaking news about a mass poisoning of water supplies across the Northeast. He could have sworn the broadcast sounded even weaker than before.

  “So who did you call?” asked Cate. She had traded away her key chain for her nails, picking at them mercilessly, though they were barely anything more than keratin stubs.

  “My sister’s ex.” It sounded weird saying it out loud.

  “And she’s actually agreed to pick us up?” Cate let out an exasperated puff of air. “Is she a saint or something?”

  Adeem clenched his teeth and looked ahead.

  It was a little past 9:00 p.m. when Sheriff Beeson approached their cell again.

  “Your ride’s here,” he said. Following him was a young brown woman with bruise-colored bags under her giant, round eyes. Her once-long black hair was now cut short, barely reaching her pierced ears, but she still wore dark colors like she had back when she and Leyla were in high school: a dark gray athletic jacket, black leggings, black sneakers. Adeem remembered his mom asking her over dinner why she always wore those kinds of clothes—You’d look so pretty in a dress! she’d lamented—but Priti replied that her own family had bounced around so many times as a kid, she was used to being on the move.

  And here she was again: a walking memory.

  Priti. That acidic feeling of anxiety chewed harder at Adeem’s gut.

  “Adi?” Priti asked, hesitant.

  “Long time no see,” Adeem replied stiffly. He had so many things he wanted to say to her, so many words scrabbling at his throat. But he had to focus. He had to be numb. He just needed to use Priti to get into the city and find another way to get home. This could be easy. Painless, even.

  “What the hell happened?” Panic crept into her voice. “You didn’t tell me you were in jail.”

  “I’m not.” Beside him, Cate became very interested in destroying her nails again. “Not technically, at least. Unless you count charm and intelligence as crimes.”

  Priti didn’t smile; instead, she looked at Sheriff Beeson with narrowed eyes. “You really didn’t have to lock them up in a cell, did you? They’re kids. That seems unnecessary.”

  Sheriff Beeson sighed and took his ring of keys off his belt. “As I told them earlier, it was for their own protection.”

  Priti turned toward Cate with an uncertain smile. “And you must be Adeem’s . . . friend?”

  “Cate,” she introduced herself. The smile hadn’t left her face since she’d come back from a trip to the ladies’ room and gleefully informed Adeem that the sheriff’s bathroom had free tampons.

  “Thank you so much for coming all this way to save us.”

  Priti rubbed the back of her bare neck. “I’d say it was no trouble, but, not gonna lie, I thought traffic was going to murder me.”

  She stepped back while Beeson unlocked the cell. As Cate and Adeem filed out, Adeem could have sworn he saw Priti move toward him, as if going in for a hug, but suddenly decide against it. Adeem was glad. He didn’t want Priti getting the wrong idea about a reconciliation, even if the world was ending in little more than two days.

  Sheriff Beeson led the three of them past a row of desks and blue filing cabinets to a waiting area by the main entrance. “I’ll give the three of you a moment to catch up while I get some paperwork ready.”

  Priti’s eyebrows twitched. “Paperwork? Really?”

  “Like I told these kids before, if I start getting lax with the law, we get chaos,” he replied. “More than we already got. It’s just for our records, and I reckon you could use a moment to talk.” With that, he stepped away, leaving no room for argument. Adeem was pretty sure the sheriff hadn’t been off his feet in hours. Around them, the bustle of other officers and frantic people begging for help finding loved ones they’d lost contact with made Adeem feel like they were in the eye of a storm.

  “Ridiculous,” Priti muttered. She looked Adeem over. “So? Are you okay? Are you going to tell me what you’re doing out here so far from home? Do your parents know where you are?”

  “Oh, cool, are we gonna do that thing where we pretend to care about each other?” Adeem asked.

  Priti flinched. Which, Adeem realized, didn’t make him feel any better.

  “You’re right,” she said weakly, her voice almost drowning in the flurry of the sheriff’s office. “But I drove through hell to get here, so I think you owe me that at least.”

  “Owe you?” His head flared with quiet, cold rage. “Owe you? You really want to talk about who owes who right now?”

  Pull back! Pull back! he could hear his inner voice of reason command.

  “I get that you’re mad, trust me. You have no idea how guilty I . . .” Priti ran a hand down her tired face. “Just trust me, okay? You don’t know the whole situation.”

  “We can all catch up in the car,” Cate suggested, tugging on Adeem’s sleeve.

  “No,” Adeem said, shaking her off. “Please do educate me on this whole situation you speak of, because you, at the very least”—he glowered at Priti—“owe me a freaking explanation.”

  “Now’s not the time, Adi.”

  “Don’t call me that. Don’t you dare call me that.”

  “Is everything all right?” a gruff voice belonging to another sheriff called out from behind his desk, observing them with an irritated expression.

  “Yeah,” Cate answere
d calmly, “just figuring out transportation plans so we can get out of your hair!” She glared at Adeem. “We’ve got two days left; we don’t have time for this.”

  “She’s right,” said Priti. “I know you want answers, but we need to get you home. I have friends that are running a shuttle out of Las Vegas tomorrow morning—”

  “Just tell me something, okay,” Adeem interrupted, “because I’m having difficulty understanding.” He was wrong to think he could stay calm. It was Priti, Priti who’d helped wedge his family apart. She was a half of a whole problem. And now the words gushed up his throat faster than he could will them down, an inner Wall of Jericho all but crumbling into nothingness. He couldn’t stop them if he tried.

  “And don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful you’re helping me now. But you can’t just help me now and think that’s going to somehow make up for everything. I’ve waited two long-ass freaking years for you both, and I am not letting you put me on some shuttle back to Carson City without telling me why you didn’t have the decency to tell me and my parents what happened to my sister. You of all people knew how close we were.

  “But even now, with Alma, with everything happening, you still didn’t call. I had to be the one to chase Leyla, all by myself. So why? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because Leyla broke up with me. Because Leyla left home with little more than the clothes on her back, and all she had was me, and we weren’t ready for that kind of pressure on our relationship. Leyla didn’t want me to . . .” Priti swallowed. “Fuck, just . . . forget it. I should have been better. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “No. No, no, wait. What do you mean, Leyla didn’t want . . . ?”

  Priti stared at the floor and bit her lip. She had the look of someone who’d been caught with a secret that had slipped out of her grasp and writhed on the ground for all to see.

  “Leyla didn’t want you to know. She thought it’d be better that way.”

  Adeem slowly blinked away the blur edging his eyesight. It all made sense. Maybe it’d always made sense, but he just didn’t want to see it: Priti hadn’t said anything only because Leyla had told her not to.