RASHID LOOKED AT THE SCHOOL. It was amazing how fast brick and mortar that had appeared so sturdy could be taken apart and how quickly the process of putting it together again began. It already looked very different from that day when firefighters led him to safety.
He understood the need to wipe away the signs of the destruction Diana had caused. To pretend that things hadn’t gone off the rails and that everything was just fine now that the threat was gone.
Rashid shook his head, adjusted the bag on his shoulder, and walked across the grass that crunched under his feet. Rain was in the forecast for tonight, his father said. Then things would turn green again.
His father claimed he wasn’t angry that Rashid had shaved. Disappointed was the right word. Rashid still wasn’t sure if it was disappointment that Rashid hadn’t talked to him about it or that he had done it in the first place. But he was grateful when his father said Rashid could choose whether or not to keep shaving, even when it was clear his father wished for him to stop. “What is good for one man is not the right choice for another.”
Right now, letting his beard grow back was the right choice for Rashid. After everything that he’d gone through in order to blend in, it was funny that he no longer wanted to. When he’d called his sister after the first bomb went off, she hadn’t answered. So he’d left a message telling her that he hoped she would always be true to herself and live the life she wanted to live. It was something he wished he had done more of before that day, and now he was trying to take his own advice. Shaving a beard wouldn’t change how people thought of him. Not really. But talking to them about why he had the beard might. If nothing else, it was a place to start, and he’d go from there.
“Frankie bailed,” Tad said as Rashid sat on the dry grass, grateful for the breeze and the shade of the tree.
“Did he say why?” Rashid asked.
“Team party.”
Rashid wasn’t surprised that Frankie hadn’t come. He had looked uncomfortable when Rashid had talked to him in the hospital after the bombing and when Rashid had asked for his phone number.
“No matter what happens,” Rashid had told him, “I’d like all of us to stay in touch. No one else will ever understand what it was like.”
Which is why Rashid had invited Frankie today and why, even though it would be easier without him, Rashid wished he were here.
“I told Tad he should party with his football friends too,” Cas said. Rashid knew she was concerned about how much time Tad spent alone. It was part of the reason Rashid had asked them to meet.
“And I told Bossy that I’d consider it. Although I think maybe I’ve come up with a better idea for all of us next Friday.” Tad looked at Rashid. “So maybe someone would like to tell us why we’re at school on a Saturday?”
Rashid unzipped the backpack and pulled out three of the five small pieces of broken, charred tile he’d taken from the wreckage before they began reconstruction. “I thought you guys should have these and I thought this was the best place to give them to you.”
Cas took the blackened tile Rashid held out to her and ran her finger over the jagged edge.
“Everyone keeps saying everything will be back to normal soon, but I want to remember,” he said. Remember. Forgive. Understand. All of it.
It’s why he had the photograph of the girl he’d found in the bathroom on his nightstand, along with pictures he’d copied from the yearbook of everyone who had been stuck in that room while the fire raged and bombs threatened. Z was actually smiling in his photograph. Something Rashid saw him do only once in person, when Rashid had walked into his hospital room after he’d come out of recovery. The bullet had been removed. No permanent damage had been done. Rashid just wished that the other scars would heal as well.
“Hey,” Z had said, sitting up against the pillows on the bed.
“I just wanted to come by and tell you how sorry I am.” Kaitlin had died in surgery. They’d done their best, but it hadn’t been good enough. It was amazing she had survived as long as she had. Z had shrugged and looked off toward the window while Rashid transferred his weight back and forth, trying to come up with something else to say. “You know, you still haven’t told me why you’re called Z.”
“You really want to know?” Z had looked back at him. “When my mom was first diagnosed, she told me she was going to beat it, because she wanted to be there for me. So she was going to follow every step her doctors told her to take—A to Z. After that, I called myself Z to remind her I’d be there at the end of it all. Guess I need to go back to calling myself Alex now.”
“I don’t know,” Rashid had said. “I kind of like Z. It suits you.”
“Why?”
“Because you chose it.”
When leaving the room, Rashid had turned back and for a second caught a glimpse of the smile from the photograph in the yearbook. The next day, there had been a note waiting for Rashid at the nurse’s station.
GOING TO CALIFORNIA. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING. —Z
This time it had been Rashid who smiled, because Z had chosen who he wanted to be. And wasn’t that what they were all trying to do?
Tad lifted the tile to his nose. “I’ll never forget this smell.”
“It smells like fear,” Cas said.
Rashid looked at the two of them and said, “And courage.”
“Kind of like going to high school.” Tad laughed.
Cas smiled. “It would be nice if it would get easier.”
“Yeah,” Rashid said, looking back at the school where so much had happened. Where so much would continue to happen. Yeah, it would.