“Is this yours?” I ask, holding out the wallet.
Samir nods in a shy sort of way and mutters, “Thank you.” He puts the wallet in his pocket.
I don’t know what else to say. Samir only joined our class this term and I don’t really know him. I’m just wondering where he’s from and if I should ask when the door below us slams shut and footsteps echo on the stairs. Samir throws me a nervous look and I’m thinking, Is it too late to hide? when Samir-mark-II appears in the doorway. Same black hair, not quite so spiky, same dark eyes and dark skin but quite a bit taller and a few years older.
“This is Naazim, my brother,” says Samir.
Naazim fixes me with a suspicious stare and I can’t help thinking that if anyone looks like a terrorist, he does. He has this sort of smoldering look on his face you see on suspected bombers they show on TV and he’s wearing very greasy overalls. Car mechanic, I decide. But fortunately I manage to keep silent.
Naazim barks out, “Who you are?”
He has a strong accent and I’m wondering if he’s from Pakistan or maybe Afghanistan, when he snaps, “Where you live?”
I glance over at Samir for support but he’s fixed on his brother so I shrug and start to explain about the gang. But then Samir catches my eye and something in his look makes me stop. He doesn’t want Naazim to know about the bullies on the high street and his dark eyes have such a pleading look that I pull up short and instead mutter, “I’m Alix. I live on Hayling Island.”
Naazim’s face gets even darker and he starts rattling away to Samir in this totally foreign language. His voice is rising as he waves his hand about, which is also covered with grease, and he keeps shooting me poisonous looks. He’s standing between me and the door so there’s no way out and Samir can’t get a word in edgewise. It’s starting to get scary and I try to gauge whether I could slip past and race down the stairs. I can’t help wondering if they go on like this all the time. Maybe they’re planning their next attack on mainland Britain. The battery in my useless cell phone is probably too flat to call the police.
Naazim keeps going like a rocket and in the end I’m getting so tense I start to fiddle about with some lemon peel lying around on the counter. There’s nothing I can do until Naazim lets me go, assuming of course that he will, and I’m just wondering what I should do if he doesn’t when Samir says in English, “She’s just leaving.”
It’s then I realize the difference.
Samir speaks really good English, with hardly any accent. In the end Naazim just grunts, “Samir must clean kitchen,” and he’s gone, leaving us alone.
I’m so relieved I let out a big sigh and throw Samir a look, expecting him to say something like, “Big brothers, what a waste of space.” But he just stands there staring toward the door. I’ve never seen anyone keep so still.
It feels quite weird so I say, “I’d better go.”
Samir nods and I follow him back downstairs again, but as I go out the front door he calls out, “See you in school?” He has that sort of lost, pleading look in his eyes again, so I call back, “Okay,” and sprint off to the bus stop, but I can’t help feeling relieved I’m outside again.
Families can be so embarrassing, I think as the bus pulls out of town. I don’t blame Samir for not spilling anything to his brother. Maybe Naazim is a bit of a bully himself.
I’m just deciding that Samir is the best at English in his family, that they all rely on him and so he doesn’t want to tell them about the bullies and look weak in front of his brother, when someone halfway down the bus says out loud to no one in particular, “They want their heads examinined.”
I whip around in shock. What do they know?
Then I see Mrs. Saddler from our street nodding toward a windsurfer tacking across the choppy sea out in Langstone Harbor. I should have guessed. Mrs. Saddler’s always complaining about something. Last week she told Mum I shouldn’t be running around on the beach anymore. “She doesn’t keep that dog of hers under proper control. I wouldn’t let my Jeremy run about on the yacht club road unleashed.”
She’s such an old bat. She hasn’t got a clue what I have to do to train for the marathon, and my dog, Trudy, loves to run with me, her daft spaniel ears flopping from side to side. Jeremy couldn’t run to save his life.
My phone rings. It’s Kim. Finally!
“Gran’s okay,” she says. To be honest I’d completely forgotten all about our shopping trip and why it was canceled. “So Mum’s happy. She was really worried,” Kim goes on.
“Great,” I say, but I can’t help feeling a bit jealous.
Kim has sisters, brothers, a mum and a dad, and that’s just for starters. My dad skipped two years ago. Disappeared with Gorgeous Gloria—Mum and me call her the Gremlin—and we haven’t heard from him since. We moved into Grandpa’s little cottage when Dad left but then Grandpa died last year and now it’s just us two. And the broken leg of course.
My phone crackles and I say to Kim, “You’ll never guess where I’ve been.”
“Where?” she says.
“A suicide bomber’s house!” I say.