“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep,” I say.
“Of course you won’t,” Lili says, spreading the pillows and blankets on the couch into something resembling a bed. “But you must try.”
*
They go to bed, and the tears come again a few minutes later, a slow, feeble stream that I hardly notice at first. I know if I just sit here the crying will get worse, so I reach for my backpack and pull out the book I’d been reading.
I open it to where I left off, but I see right away it’s hopeless. There will be no fiction now. The letters on the page scatter like roaches and rearrange themselves into truth, covering the whole page with the only thing that needs saying tonight: he is already dead and you are alone he is already dead and you are alone he is already dead and you are alone
I slam the book shut, slam my eyes shut, and, goddammit, if I had a gun I’d put the muzzle in my mouth right now and blow the top of my head off. It is unbearable. Literally unable to be borne. The roof above me is collapsing. For the first time since I was seven, I fold my hands together and pray to a god that I know isn’t there.
Five
For the second time in twelve hours, it’s an urgent come now! knock on the door that wakes me. I spring up from the couch, nearly falling face-first onto the coffee table as I catch my foot in one of Lili’s blankets. Whatever news the urgent knocking means, it can be only one of two things. He’s dead or he’s alive.
Bela shuffles in, angrily tying his bathrobe belt, and opens the door. The man on the other side is very young with red hair and pale skin dotted with freckles. He introduces himself as Special Agent Fowler and shows his badge and ID. Good news or bad news, it’s Joey or Carlisle who would’ve come by. So why this Agent Fowler?
He unfolds a thick, densely worded document in front of me. “This is a search warrant for the home of William and Gwendolyn Bloom,” he says.
I push past him and hear Bela and Fowler arguing behind me as I head down the stairs. On the landing below, another agent grabs my arms from behind as I try to get into my apartment.
Through the door, I see four guys in windbreakers with Bureau of Diplomatic Security written on the back pulling drawers out of cabinets, piling papers into cardboard boxes.
I hear a voice call from inside, a voice with an elegant Southern lilt. “Take the photos, too. Everything means everything.” Carlisle, hands deep in the pockets of his pants, appears at the entrance of the hallway along with Joey Diaz. Carlisle nods when he sees me. “It’s all right, Mike,” he says to the agent at the door. “Let her in.”
As the agent releases my arms, I rush inside but freeze at the sight of a cardboard box sitting on the kitchen table. It’s filled with my school notebooks and my diary. “You have no right!” I shout at Carlisle, and snatch the diary out of the box.
Carlisle appears next to me and takes the diary back. “I am very sorry, Gwendolyn. I know how traumatic this must be, but I’m afraid it’s necessary.”
“What are you even looking for? My dad’s the victim here!”
“Well, that’s what we’d like to determine,” Carlisle says. “I want you to know, your father is a friend of mine, a dear friend. That’s why it pains me to do this.”
“So why are you doing it?”
He leads me into the apartment by the arm and nods to the couch. We both sit. “Gwendolyn, I have to ask you something now. Can you foresee any circumstances under which your father would choose to leave us?”
“Leave us?”
“Has he ever talked to you about defection. To another country.”
My mouth hangs open like a fool’s. “Fuck you, Chase.”
“There are people who have concerns about your father. Not me, not Joey. People in Washington.” He looks at me sternly. “So answer the question, please. Has your father ever spoken to you about defection?”
I stand and walk out onto the landing, into Bela’s arms. He takes me back upstairs. “Fascists,” he whispers.
*
I’m standing alone in my apartment two hours later, seeing what’s been taken and what hasn’t. Missing are all his papers and many of mine, all photos, all computers, and even the TV and Wi-Fi router. My clothes all seem to be there, though I can tell the drawers were searched. My books are mostly there but taken off the shelves and piled in precarious stacks on the floor. The rage boils in my veins, and even though the searchers wore rubber gloves, everything is now soiled, as if they’d coughed their accusation—defection, treason—over everything they touched.
The rage boiling in my veins is useless, though. I know this. The Diplomatic Security thugs have search warrants and holstered guns and declare their authority over my life with the words on the back of their official windbreakers, while I’m just a quavery-voiced child, hissing her tantrum to ears that give not a shit. How dare they accuse my dad? How dare they run rubber-sheathed fingers over my things? But power doesn’t dare; it simply does.
Still, I will remake what they’ve taken apart, put back some order to my world. I will start here, in the bedroom, in my bedroom, with my books. My hands shake so badly as I pick up the first handful of them, I can barely put them back on the shelf. On the covers are the heroes from paper worlds who’ve kept me company in Paris, Dubai, Moscow, New York. If they were real, these brave girls, they’d stare at me with pity and disgust in their eyes.
But there are no heroes. There is no courage. Just diplomats who write reports. Just fat Chase Carlisles who tell you your father’s a defector. Just security agents who wave search warrants about and paw through your life. Just me, a little girl with rage in her veins who burns it off by cleaning her room, like a little girl should.
Once the apartment is back in order—cushions back on the couch, the ring of dust around where the TV had stood wiped away, shoeprints on the IKEA rug scoured with baking soda and paper towels that shred in my hands—I go to the toilet, bend over it, and vomit. For a while, I sit on the bathroom floor, back to the wall, my skin buzzing, my mind repeating the only truth that matters: He is already dead and you are alone.
*
It feels like an electric shock every time the phone rings. So Lili answers for me, and I stare at her expression for clues. But it always ends with her hanging up and shaking her head as she says, “Nothing new.” You’d think these non-updates would get easier after three days, but they don’t.