Fact: Sticks and stones can break your bones…
Alternative fact: …but words will never hurt you.
Truth: Words can be terrifying. Sometimes words leave scars. Words can break you, too.
There were dots to connect, but I kept wondering if my overactive imagination was seeing links where there weren’t any to see.
I sketched out what we knew so far after Usman and I spoke last night. And a common denominator kept popping up.
• Dec 16th: Letter postmarked from London to mosque: You can pray all you want to your God. But God is Dead.
• Nate in London during winter break, Dec 15–?
• Jan 3rd: Ghost Skin newspaper hack: “I am the herald of lightning.”
• Jan 6th: Smoke bomb and swastika painted at school
• Jan 6th: Jawad’s Amber Alert (missing day before?)
• Jan 7th: “Swallow your poison” flyer and text to me
• Jan 10th: Nate says “God is dead” in class
• Jan 13th: Usman interviews Jawad’s parents and sees text: Dead are all gods: now we want the supermen to live.
“Wait. The text Jawad’s parents got is from Nietzsche, too?” Asma asked, turning to look at me and then Usman as we flanked her on the bench across from school. Rachel had to meet with her Senior Seminar adviser during lunch and couldn’t make it.
“But what does it mean?” I asked. “When I Googled, I read that white supremacists kinda glommed onto Nietzsche. He’s all over their websites. Some of his stuff is even used… kinda like a code word or a secret handshake. There was an article about some bookstores seeing increased sales of his books recently.”
Usman scoffed. “Wow. Rich racists like to read so they can be educated about their bigotry, huh?”
I nodded and continued. “So, Nate quoting that phrase could be a coincidence or not. And the text Jawad’s parents got? That’s gotta be an outlier, right?”
“Outlier?” Asma asked.
“It’s already a bit of a stretch to link Nate to the mosque note, even if he was in London over break and blurted out the same words in class. I mean, there’s no proof he actually sent it. I guess it would be circumstantial evidence, but barely, right?” I asked.
“Being in London gives him opportunity. And we can confirm he knows the Nietzsche quote. But motive?” Asma scratched her neck.
“So you’re thinking Nate is the one who sent the threatening note, hacked the school newspaper, set off the smoke bomb, and he…” Usman’s voice trailed off. “Look, I think the dude seems pretty messed up, and I checked out one of his birding videos from Jackson Park, which was creepy as hell. But maybe we need to step back for a second and consider that we’re looking for him to be guilty because that’s what we want.”
“Confirmation bias.” Asma nodded. “It comes up a lot in true crime podcasts when the police are convinced the murderer is one person and they totally miss the real killer because they’re fixated on the wrong guy.”
I took a deep breath. They were right. Nate was a weird loner except for being friends with Joel, a rich stoner, who was, also, admittedly strange. But it didn’t mean they’d committed any crimes. Still, it didn’t feel right. “I know it sounds ridiculous to even think about connecting Nate to Jawad going missing, but… this Nietzsche stuff keeps popping up. Seems like it has to mean something.”
Asma nodded. “Same. But weird behavior and bizarre coincidences don’t mean he’s a kidnapper or even the hacker.”
“What about the #bombboy tweets?” Usman asked. “Did you Google that odd one after you showed it to me?”
I scrunched my eyebrows together. “I didn’t take screenshots right away and—”
“What! First rule of true crime club: Always get receipts,” Asma yelled.
“I know. I was going to, but after I talked to Usman, I also kinda bumped into Richard. We were chatting, and then suddenly the bell rang, so I rushed off to class. By the time I remembered to grab screenshots, the tweets had been deleted.”
“Wow. That must have been some bumping.” Asma smirked.
Usman held an imaginary microphone to my mouth. “Could you please describe the bumping, ma’am.”
“Shut uuuuuppppp,” I said as my two friends burst into uncontrolled giggles. “Wow. So mature.”
Usman coughed. “Fine. Okay. Was it only that tweet that was deleted or the whole account?” Usman asked.
I scrolled through my phone to get to the app and the hashtag. Then I showed Usman the deleted content message and shrugged.
“Give me your phone a sec,” he said, his hand outstretched. I handed it to him. Staring intently at my screen, Usman furrowed his brow and started typing.
I turned to Asma. “So, um, there was a tiny bit of other news yesterday afternoon, which I was going to text you about, but I wanted to get your reaction in person.… Richard asked me to the Winter Ball.”
Asma’s jaw dropped. “This is breaking news. I can’t believe you buried the lede!”
“Going to a dance is not news.” I tried to act all nonchalant, like my stomach wasn’t doing summersaults every time I thought about it.
“You going to a dance is absolutely hot-off-the-presses clickbait. And with Richard. Oh my God. I cannot get over it.”
“I can’t get over it, either,” Usman chimed in without looking up from my phone. “And I’m going to have plenty to say in a minute.”
I tried to suppress my smile. But why did I feel like I needed to? Why did it feel so weird to be excited for a school dance? Maybe because dances were ridiculous, manufactured, forced-fun social events that I’d always looked down on. But I was excited. And my friends were, too.
“The account’s deactivated,” Usman said, still not looking up from my phone. “But I’m digging up their tweets on an internet archive. Hang on.”
“Tell me everything,” Asma said, ignoring Usman’s much more important side note. “How’d he ask? What are you going to wear? I’m going to have extra new outfits for the wedding, so if you… Oh! My khala in Karachi sent me a gorgeous burnt-orange gagra choli that would look amazing on you. I still have to get it tailored to the right size, but it’s yours if you want to wear it. My closet is your closet.”
I grinned. “Thanks, but I think I’m going to wear that kurta pajama I wore last Eid.”
“The dark-blue one with the silver-threaded embroidery?”
I nodded. “I think it’ll work?”
“It’s perfect. He’s so lucky you even deigned to go with him. The mighty Safiya, slain by the captain of the swim team.”
“Don’t forget lacrosse!” Usman added, still busy with my phone.
We all laughed. But I shuddered a little. It felt wrong, surreal, to be talking about dances and outfits with Jawad still missing.
“Got you!” Usman yelled, holding the phone triumphantly. “This ass tweeted racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic shit. All. The. Time.”
“Gross,” Asma said.
“One more thing,” Usman added, turning my phone so we could all see the screen. “That tweet you found, about the redeemer and being redeemed? It’s a Nietzsche quote, too. And the account name, Zarathustra? It’s one of his books.”
I hopped up off the bench and started pacing. We all got quiet. Stared at each other. Like each of us was having the exact same thought at the exact same time.
Asma spoke first. “So… we’re blowing way past coincidence here, right? There’s gotta be a connection.”
“The only common link is the Nietzsche thing, and the only connection to that is Nate. He’s a bird-watching, conceited dweeb, and probably a racist who maybe sent that letter to my mosque. But hacker? Vandal? Kidnapper? We don’t have enough evidence to accuse him of all that,” I said.
Usman looked at the ground and reached down to pick up a dry twig near his feet and rolled it between his fingers. “We can’t go around accusing rich white kids of anything. Period. Not of being Nazis or hacking the paper. And definitely not kidnapping. Not without super-obvious evidence. Like a video of them committing the crime. Sometimes that still isn’t enough. That shit would blow back on us, though. Count on it.” Usman looked up at me. “Hardy could pull your scholarship for making false accusations, which you know he’s dying to do. And whose side do you think the police will be on? Yours or the rich alderman’s kid?”
“Ugh. You’re right,” Asma said. “Plus, I can see the anti–cancel culture brigade screaming about it now.”
I gulped. “Right. Okay. We can’t name names,” I said. “We don’t have any real evidence besides Nate blurting out a phrase and being in London and having a BFF who sells Adderall and wears fatigues. Which all amounts to… basically nothing.” Those were the facts. Still, the whole truth felt out of reach. Maybe that’s why my stomach was all twisted in knots. One thing I did know is that the longer Jawad was missing, the less likely he was to be found alive. And I was trying so hard not to think of what those whispers around me could be—the voice that no one but me seemed to be able to hear. Maybe my gut was trying to tell me something I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.
Usman took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his head. “The kidnappers did ask for ransom. What… thirty thousand?” I nodded and he went on. “It’s not like Nate needs money. That’s practically pocket change for him.”
“Look. This isn’t a cold case, but the first rule of solving a mystery is reviewing all the existing evidence and making sure the police didn’t miss anything,” Asma said.
I scoffed. “The police can’t miss something they never bothered searching for in the first place. We don’t know if Hardy seriously looked into who hacked us. He’s the only person who has something to gain from clamping down on the paper.”
“Whoa. Now you’re saying it’s Hardy?” Asma’s eyebrows shot up.
“You said look for motives. And he has motive. Shutting us down and shutting me up. It would be his dream to dump the troublesome scholarship kid.”
“Sure, but no way he could’ve graffitied the school,” Asma said. “He was around us the whole time.”
“He wouldn’t get his own hands dirty,” Usman said. “He’d pay someone else to do it.”
I chuckled. That tracked. Hardy was like a type A, hospital-corners neat freak.
I sighed and shook my head. A crack made me jump back, startled. I thought Usman had broken the twig he was holding. But he was still rolling it between his fingers. Neither he nor Asma seemed to have heard the sound. There was no one else around. I took a deep breath and let my eyes flutter closed for a second. I heard that voice again. So faint. But I knew what I heard. It wasn’t a delusion. Help. Safiya. Help me. I opened my eyes. There was that incense smell hanging over us like a cloud. I was the only one who noticed that, too.