RHYTHM
Now I’m angry.
I’m angry with my new shoes. They’re cheap and ugly, and they make annoying clicks as I walk through the hallways.
I’m angry with school lunches—every item on my tray date-stamped as edible for weeks or even months into the future. I had my first fruit cup today, all syrup and vacuum-sealed packaging. Is there nothing fresh in this country? Have they taken the farmers somewhere and shot them?
I’m angry that I have a visual to go with this thought. An image of bodies stacked and wrapped like the burritos on today’s menu. These thoughts are not healthy. I know that, but I can’t shake them. I can’t escape the bloodstained context that has been draped over my life. I can’t escape my memories.
I’m angry with Amir, who I saw today at school for the first time. He lifted his hand in greeting and then disappeared into the crowd of students jostling toward their classes before the bell. He was an apparition that my wretched mood turned into an accusation. I owe him, several times over, and yet I am a silent witness to his betrayal. He’s haunting me for it already.
And now I’m trying not to be angry with Emmy for dragging me to this football game.
“Ugh. I give up. I can’t tell them apart when they’re jumbled together like that. Who can even see the ball from here?” I’m not doing well at hiding my irritation. She’s been trying to explain the rules all evening, but I can’t focus.
“Laila, you’re not even looking—” She starts to protest, then stops. There are dark circles under her eyes and her cuticles are raw. She has no energy to cheer me up, and I have no will to cheer her on. We’re a sad, slumped couple of spectators here on the bleachers.
I force myself to try harder; I fumble for small talk. “I’m sorry. I make a lousy American teenager. At least it’s nice to be outside, isn’t it? Even if I’ll never understand this game.… What number is Jackson, anyway?” I hope I’ve remembered his name correctly. He’s the most recent addition to the satellite version of Emmy’s photo collage; his face grins from inside her locker door. Emmy hasn’t mentioned him all week.
“Sixty-one.” She sighs. “You know what? I don’t like this game, either. It’s boring. And it’s not like he even knows I’m here. Besides, I think I might be kind of over him. Do you want to leave?”
I do, but I lie for her. “No! Let’s stay. How can you be over him? He’s all you talked about last week. Don’t tell me his picture is getting an X already!” I finally cracked her code—the X’s on her pictures are the marks of unrequited love. They’re the tattoos of disappointing crushes past.
She scrunches up her face and stabs at her hair with a clip. “Who knows. I don’t even care, really. I’m just in a weird mood. My parents are at it again. Oh, crap. They’re starting the stupid crowd chant.”
I don’t know what that is, but I can feel it. The metal bleachers underneath me begin to vibrate. All around us people join in, stomping their feet and clapping rhythmically.
We will, we will, ROCK YOU.
We will, we will, ROCK YOU.
The crowd’s voice is surprisingly deep. They’re growling the lyrics, and at the base of the stands an ambiguous animal mascot raises his fist in the air to punctuate. The crowd gets louder. And louder.
Thump, thump, CLAP.
Thump, thump, CLAP.
Only Emmy and I seem to be immune from this mass hysteria. Why do they sound so angry? So primal? The bleachers are shaking hard enough that I curl my fingers around the edge of my seat to hold on, but this just gives the pounding shock waves yet another pathway to my spine. I’m breathing fast without really understanding why, and I know that it’s ridiculous, they aren’t stomping that hard, but I’m starting to feel as if I’m going to fall through the seats and plunge to the ground below. The edges of my vision turn watery, and I can’t decide whether it’s more important to hang on or to cover my ears. It’s just so damned loud.
“Laila? Laila? Are you okay?” Emmy’s tugging on my arm and shouting in my ear. “You look like you’re going to be sick. Come on, I’ll help you. Let’s go.”
I allow her to pull me to my feet, grateful that she doesn’t let go since the steps feel like they’re swaying and shimmying and trying to topple me. We’re halfway down when the crowd gets distracted by something on the field and everyone jumps to their feet, screaming, “Go! Go!”
We go. We clamber down the bleachers and away from the din. I focus on one step at a time, one breath at a time, until the noise around me starts to fade with distance, but my heart keeps thumping long after the chanting has died down and there’s a vaguely electrical humming in my ears. We’re past the concession stand, almost to the overflow parking lot, when I can finally take a full breath. My legs are still wobbly, but I make them move until I cross some invisible boundary—an arbitrary line that exists only in my head—and only when I’m over it do I finally feel safe.
Emmy’s eyes are wide.
“Thank you,” I tell her. My voice sounds far away, like someone else is speaking my words. “I think I’m okay now.” I can’t explain what happened back there in the crowd, but it was definitely worse than the dance. Much worse. This was an earthquake of panic. It has left me feeling sick, but not the way Emmy thinks.
I’m sick in my heart. I’m sick in my head.
I can’t live like this.
Maybe my mother was right—a thought that terrifies me worse than the chanting crowd. Maybe we can’t live here. Maybe I’ll never feel at peace, free from my past. Would it be any different if I went home, though?
I don’t know. All I have right now is here, and the thought of giving up any more than I already have is unfathomable.
I take a deep breath. I can do this. “Let’s go back. I’m fine now.”
Emmy is looking at me like I’m crazy. Which maybe I am. “No. I don’t want to. But I don’t want to go home, either.…” She chews on the inside of her cheek while she thinks. “We could go get ice cream. My treat?”
“You’ve read my mind.” I link my arm through hers, as much to hold myself up as from affection. It sounds normal and wonderful, but running through my brain is a staccato chant thumping in time with my heartbeat: I don’t. Deserve this. I don’t. Deserve this.
“But this time it’s my treat,” I tell her. “I insist.”
THEORIES
This time it’s me who waits.
Mr. Gansler is upstairs. Mother shooed me away when he arrived, so I’m out here leaning against the building in the exact spot where he once waited for me. The longer he’s up there, the worse the stories my mind concocts.
I’ve torn apart the telephone conversation I overheard a thousand times, and still I waver hopelessly. One minute I persuade myself that I misunderstood the whole thing, that there’s some sort of reasonable explanation. The next minute bloody, worst-case scenarios flash through my mind—paranoid plots and ridiculous conspiracy theories involving my mother and my uncle. And the CIA, of course. These are the moments that convince me that my thoughts are poisoned, that there is something profoundly broken in me. To think such things about my own mother, even fleetingly, cannot be healthy.
I’ve taken Amir’s word for Mr. Gansler being a CIA officer. He’s something sneaky, no doubt. And right now he’s in my home turning my mother into his mole. That’s what I’ve worked out, anyway—it’s the theory that lies at the halfway point between my denial and my paranoia. I believe that Mr. Gansler has convinced my mother to spy on Amir’s family. She’s reporting everything that goes on in their meetings. For all I know, he’s bugged our apartment—maybe even with her consent—and he sits outside listening in real time. Perhaps he’s changing the batteries in the microphones right now. Do bugs run off batteries?
Mr. Gansler is also using my mother to spy on my uncle. That’s the only explanation I can live with. The only reason she would willingly contact the man who murdered her husband. Even my poisoned mind can’t accept that she’d do it voluntarily.
She’s doing it for me. For me and for Bastien, that is. She’s doing what she has to do to take care of her children. To keep us from being evicted, to buy us new shoes, to feed us. This theory allows me to keep my mother. To not hate her.
I have no idea if it’s true.
Finally, Mr. Gansler comes downstairs. If he is surprised to see me, he doesn’t show it. Is surprise the first thing they train out of a CIA officer?
“Laila. It’s been a while. How are you?”
I don’t return his greeting or his carefully neutral smile. “Can you just tell me one thing?” I ask.
He glances at his watch. “I’m not sure. What is it you want to know?”
“Whose side are you on?”
Darren Gansler can look surprised. Briefly, anyway. Then the slippery bastard winks at me. Winks. He’s already walking away as he answers. “Whichever side is winning, Laila.” He looks proud of this answer, so he says it again over his shoulder. “I’m always on whichever side is winning.”
And with that, our conversation is over, proving once more that I am the Invisible Queen. Easily ignored, easily dismissed.
I want to hurt him, to throw something at his back as he walks away. My shoe, perhaps. I can practically hear the glorious sound of hard heel on thick skull. But I don’t. We need him. I know that, even if I hate it. So I control myself, taking deep breaths. I won’t throw anything now, but neither will I continue to be a passive bystander.
No one will answer my questions, so I will have to find the answers on my own. I am involved. I will be heard.