SAFIYA

JANUARY 17, 2022

Truth: The end justifies the means.

Lie: The end justifies the means.

“Can you get me Nate’s locker combination?” I’d asked Rachel to meet me Monday morning before school at my bench. I rushed out the words, hoping I wouldn’t lose my nerve.

“Oh, sure. No problem. I’ll ask him in Senior Seminar: ‘Hey, Nate, can you give me your locker combination so Safiya can check to see if you are the school hacker and maybe a Nazi? Pretty please?’” she said with an eye roll.

Rachel had been there for a lot of conversations about Nate, but I hadn’t filled her in on every single one of my suspicions. She didn’t know that I thought maybe Nate had done a lot more than send threats. It didn’t seem smart to say it all out loud. My two closest friends were already involved—maybe too involved—and after the way that cop had looked at me and Asma at the precinct on Friday, like we were the ones breaking the law, it felt wrong to drag them even further down this rabbit hole.

If Nate was involved in taking Jawad, that meant he could be violent. Painting that swastika was a kind of violence, too. But kidnapping? That meant he was okay with up close physical violence against a person. That was even more bloodcurdlingly scary. Nate’s dad was one of the most powerful aldermen in the city. And I guessed he would protect Nate no matter what he’d done. That’s always how it went. We get cops coming to our mosque, asking us to rat out nonexistent terrorist sympathizers, but were white Christian congregations being surveilled and asked the same thing about white supremacists?

The police might not care about keeping my friends safe, but I did. And all my thoughts were simply that—feelings, suspicions. What if I’d led everyone down a dead end? It felt like everything pointed to Nate, except for his personality, motive, and limited opportunity. Ugh. I thought back to that whole confirmation-bias discussion I’d had with my friends. Was I looking for him to be guilty? That’s what corrupt cops did—forced the evidence to fit the crime. That’s how innocent people went to jail. I wasn’t going to do that.

I needed a smoking gun. A single, clear, no-doubt-about-it piece of evidence for something—the hack, the swastika, the kidnapping. Ugh. Even linking those three things as, like, a crime spree felt absurd. But if I could find a real clue to prove even one of my suspicions, maybe others would fall into place. I had to search where Nate might hide something. I couldn’t break into his house. But his locker, that was reachable.

“I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think it was important,” I pled with Rachel. “Hardy refuses to listen to anything I have to say, but I’m sure that Nate was involved in the hack and maybe the graffiti, too. And… well, you work in the office first period, right?”

“You want me to steal his combination?” Rachel’s voice was flat, her face expressionless.

In my sophomore year, the school had switched from allowing us to bring our own locks to using built-in-locks because of a stolen-test scandal. Hardy made sure to always inform us that the school had a right to search our lockers because they were school property, but I guess he got sick of using bolt cutters, and switching to built-in locks was another way he could control the students. “Isn’t there, like, a master file of all the assigned lockers and their combinations?”

“It’s on the server, password protected.”

“But you have the password, right? Or a way to get it? I mean, isn’t that how you managed to get a locker next to Adam all four years, or was it a coincidence?”

Rachel smiled. “Will not confirm or deny. But will say the front-office staff makes a beeline to the break room when freshly baked goods arrive, leaving their desks and computers wide open for the length of a coffee break.”

“And you are an excellent baker.” I grinned. “I’ll owe you, okay?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m in. If Nate is the asshole who put up that swastika, I’m happy to do a little crime for the greater good. When are you going sneak into his locker?”

“Fourth period. While everyone is at the assembly.”

“Maybe I’ll join you. I don’t think I can deal with another drinking and drugs are bad lecture from Hardy and whatever cop he’s bringing in to show us a forty-year-old slideshow that refers to weed as Mary Jane.” Rachel rolled her eyes.

I smirked, and we both headed toward the front entrance. “Oh, one more thing.” I lowered my voice since we were getting closer to other students. “Don’t text. Give me, like, a note or something I can get rid of easily.”

“Oooh, that’s very cloak-and-dagger, old-timey spy movie. I accept the mission. And be careful, okay?”

I walked into the auditorium in fourth period with everyone else. Once Ivy, the student body president, started talking, I told Mr. Byron I had a “female emergency,” and he let me go out the side door. Normally we’re not allowed to leave all-school assemblies, but from the face Mr. Byron made as he waved me off, I knew he wasn’t going to stop me. Rachel had passed me a note, palm to palm, during the previous period: Swallow this after reading. 237: 5-40-37 xo.

During the all-school assemblies, pretty much everyone was in the auditorium except for two security guards and the custodians. One of the guards sat at the front desk and signed people in, and the other roamed the halls. After the second morning bell rang, all the doors to the school locked from the outside except the front doors. Senior hall was out of the sight line of the check-in desk, and I hoped the wandering security guard wouldn’t wander toward me.

I hurried through the cafeteria and snuck into senior hall, which was completely clear. Nate’s locker was across the hall and about a dozen lockers away from mine. My fingers shook and my heart pounded out of my chest as I spun the numbers on the lock. I’d never even stolen a piece of candy from my parents’ own store. I passed the second number and then had to restart. Hurry, I whispered to myself as I glanced again and again down the hall, trying to silence the thoughts screaming in my mind that I was delusional, so I could listen for the footfalls of the school security guard or the jangle of the keys on a custodian’s belt loop.

Calm down. I turned to the last number; the lock clicked, and I lifted up on the metal handle. I sucked in my breath. I hadn’t been sure what I would find, but I didn’t think it was this: a perfectly organized space. Nate’s black coat hung on a hook, gloves stuck out of the pockets, and a gray scarf was folded and placed on the top shelf. His books and binders were neatly shelved on the bottom. There was no backpack. Like a lot of kids, he probably carried it with him during the day. God, this was ridiculous. I was ridiculous. What did I think he was going to have in here? A notebook with the word CRIMES scrawled in red Sharpie on the cover?

I shook my head and started closing the locker door, remembering I shouldn’t slam it shut. But I paused, stole another quick glance down the hall, and then rifled through the binders to see if there was anything unusual. There wasn’t. Then I stuck my hand into his coat pockets, moving the gloves aside. The left pocket was empty, but there was a folded-up piece of paper in the right one. I snagged it and unfolded it: the missing quote page from the Nietzsche book. My chest tightened. There was a quotation circled multiple times: Swallow your poison, for you need it badly. It was the same one scribbled across my column. It was the same one texted to me. I gently shut Nate’s locker, shoving the page into my back pocket as I walked toward the auditorium, my palms clammy and my heart thumping out of my chest.

I paused.

If he realized the page was gone, he would likely know that someone took it. That someone had been in his locker. Did I put the binders back in the right order? And how the hell could I even prove it was in his locker in the first place! Crap. I was terrible at this. I couldn’t present the missing page as evidence to the police. How could I explain how I’d gotten it? Rachel had stolen the combination for me. Nate could say that I’d stolen from him or that I’d ripped the page out myself, planted it. And my fingerprints were on Nate’s locker. Would they take fingerprints? Could it come to that? I sighed. I needed to put that paper back.

The bell rang, and reality hit me in the head like a hammer.

My breath caught in my chest. It was too late. I was screwed. Students would be flooding the hallway any second.

I hurried to my locker, spun through the combination, and flung open the door. I crouched on the ground and jammed the page I’d stolen from Nate into my backpack, shoving the whole thing into the bottom of the locker.

“What are you, the Flash?” Richard’s voice startled me out of my catastrophizing.

“Huh?” I jerked up, knocking a binder off the top shelf of my locker. It promptly smacked into the side of my face. Ow. That was going to hurt for a while.

Richard bent down to grab my binder. “Are you okay?” he asked, handing it back to me.

“Fine. I’m fine,” I said as students started to fill the hall and I scanned for Nate. “Sorry, what were you saying?” I turned my eyes to Richard.

“That you must’ve raced out of that boring assembly even faster than I did.” He grinned.

“Yup. I fled the first second I could.” It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. I didn’t like lying to him, but it wasn’t like I could tell him the truth: Oh, hey, I’m your Winter Ball date. Also a klutz and a thief. Yeah. That would go over real well.

“Your cheek is getting all red,” Richard said, gently touching the side of my face with his fingertips.

We locked eyes. And stood there, next to my locker, heat filling the space between us, everything else falling away. Seconds slipped by. Maybe it was hours. Maybe it was days. Maybe time ceased to exist in that tiny moment of life’s perfection.

Asma called my name, and I shot her a glance over my shoulder. When I turned back to Richard, he pecked me on the cheek. “A kiss to make it better?” he whispered as he pulled his lips away.

I was certain I was about to spontaneously combust. God. I was a giddy teen rom-com cliché, but with more panic and terror churning in the mix. As Richard walked away, fading into the crowd, I saw Nate standing in front of his locker glaring at me, his shoulders squared, his face twisted in anger.