SAFIYA

JANUARY 18, 2022

Lie: Forewarned is forearmed.

Truth: Nothing can prepare you for your world shattering.

It was dark by the time we got home. The police had questioned me, and one of them—Detective Diaz—gave me his card in case I remembered anything else. My parents and I were mostly silent on the way home. They’d left the car at the edge of the park. I guess my parents didn’t know about that access road, either. My mom escorted me to the car, our arms around each other’s waists like she needed to hold me up. Maybe she did. Maybe we held each other up a little. My dad walked a half step ahead, blocking the wind, blocking everything. Like he was my shield.

Inside, our apartment felt warm but also somehow wrong. My entire world felt jagged, like I was looking through a cracked lens. I wondered if I would still hear Jawad’s voice. I wondered if he felt at peace. I excused myself to take a shower while my parents got dinner together. My steps were heavy, and every muscle in my body ached. I felt so, so tired. My stomach lurched, and I barely made it to the bathroom, flipping up the lid of the toilet to puke my guts out; dry heaves followed. I turned the shower on, left my clothes in a pile on the floor, and dragged myself into the stream of hot water. I shivered, even in the steam. I don’t know how much time passed, but my dad knocked on the door to tell me dinner was ready.

I barely touched my daal and rice. It was always what my mom made for me when I wasn’t feeling well, making sure the rice was extra soft and the lentils not too spicy. My parents watched me eat, like I was a baby bird learning to feed itself. Too scared to take their eyes off me.

Of course, I hadn’t told them the whole truth. The parts I did have to share with the police and my parents made my mom’s face pale. Some things they’d known about: the newspaper hack, the swastika, the graffiti on our store. Others they didn’t: the threatening Swallow your poison text and Nate confronting me after school. I’d kept the rest simple. I didn’t lie. I was walking and thinking in Jackson Park. A lot of the weird things at school had pointed to Nate. Nate seemed to have white supremacist sympathies. And he’d worn those green glasses at school, in his birding videos, and he’d even pointed out the area around the culvert as a place where there were ghosts. His “secret spot,” he’d said. It had to be him. Occam’s razor, right? What I didn’t tell my parents, or anyone else, was that maybe the ghosts were real. Maybe one of the ghosts talked to me. And that ghost was Jawad.

“I’m tired,” I said, pushing back my chair.

My parents both leaped up, startling me.

“Beta, you have been through a lot today. Probably best to get some sleep,” my dad said.

“We’ll be right here if you need us,” my mom added. “You can call us for anything. You can talk to us about anything, and I can make up the futon on the floor of our room if you want to sleep there.”

I smiled. “I’m okay. I think I’m going to crash.” I hugged both of them. My dad had to gently tug at my mom’s arm so she’d let me go.

My body was bone tired as I dragged myself from the table to brush my teeth and pull on my flannel boxers and a T-shirt. Even in winter, I wore boxers to bed. Weird, I know. But wearing long pj’s made me feel constrained. I hated that feeling.

I turned off the lights and pulled up the blankets. But whenever I tried to close my eyes, my brain revved into motion. Like one of those plastic toy cars you pull back on the carpet and then let go to see it race across the room.

I sat up and grabbed my phone off my nightstand. It was on silent, but the screen flashed a million missed texts and calls. Almost all from Asma. Usman had checked in, since he thought I was feeling sick. A couple from Richard, which I didn’t read. Didn’t have the energy. I felt hollow. Like even looking at all the texts was too exhausting. Every part of me was tired.

I’d told Asma that I’d found Jawad, but only because she’d gotten my text after her ortho appointment and had called to check on me. I’d picked up and couldn’t hide how broken I felt. It was probably a mistake to tell her, to get her even more involved. The detective at the scene warned me to not speak about it to anyone. I was a witness. With the murderer still out there, it could be dangerous. For me. Or for anyone I talked to. No way I’d risk endangering my friends. I was the one who’d dragged everyone into this in the first place. But at this point Asma knew almost the whole story. None of the news reports had mentioned me by name, stating only that “an individual on a walk had come across the body.” I’d asked Asma to keep my secret. I trusted her, and I’d do what I needed to protect her.

I shot off a quick text to her: I think it was Nate. My phone rang immediately. I barely got out a syllable before Asma jumped in:

“What do you mean, you think it was Nate?” she asked. “And holy hell, are you okay? I kept thinking about you when I was scrolling through the news.”

“The answer to the second question is, I don’t think so. I mean, I saw him. Jawad. His body. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget that,” I whispered. “I don’t think I should forget it.”

“I’m so sorry. I wish you hadn’t been alone.”

I took a deep breath. “I think Nate’s glasses were at the scene. You know, the green ones?”

“The signature glasses he bragged about on his YouTube videos? That he got in London?”

“Yeah. Those.”

“Holy crap.” Asma paused for a second. “But I guess it could still be a weird coincidence? I mean funky-shaped, emerald-green, translucent frames are unusual, but there have to be other people in Chicago with those same glasses.”

“I dunno. Too many coincidences. Eventually circumstantial evidence can actually point to the guilty person, right?”

“Do you know for sure if they’re the same?”

“Hang on,” I said, and scrolled through my photos. “I sent you three pics I took.”

“Oh my God, you took crime-scene photos?”

“No! I mean. Only the glasses and the area. Not of…”

“It’s okay. Hang on. Here they are. Let me pull up his YouTube channel.”

While Asma did that, I grabbed my laptop from my desk. It was a little banged up at the corners, but it got the job done. I put in my earbuds so I could talk to Asma hands-free and then zoomed in on the writing on the inside of the glasses.

“They look a lot like the ones he’s wearing in the videos,” Asma said. “I wonder if we got any photos of him at school while he was wearing them. Or maybe yearbook staff did? They were in classrooms taking candid shots last week. I’ll check tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” I said absentmindedly. Part of the picture was a bit blurry, and I couldn’t make out all the words. I was hoping it was the name of the manufacturer or store where the glasses had been made. Maybe the brand. “Asma, can you tell what the last two letters of that word on the inside of the frame are? It looks like it says Chelsea Opti—I can’t quite make it out.”

“I think it’s two x’s, like Optixx?”

I Googled and got hits right away. “It looks like a fancy eyeglass shop in the Chelsea neighborhood in London.”

“I’m pulling it up, too. Oh, this definitely looks posh, as the Brits say. Look, it says they do custom frames. Do you think…?”

My heart pounded in my chest. The puzzle pieces were almost clicking into place. “What’s the time difference between here and London?”

“Dude. It’s, like, 4:00 a.m. there. It says the shop opens at 10:00 a.m.”

“Ugh. I’ll call tomorrow.” I bookmarked the page, closed the lid of my computer, and crawled back into bed.

“Listen, are you really okay?” Asma gently asked.

“Honestly, no. I think I need to go to bed. See you tomorrow?”

“Wait. You’re going to school? No. Don’t you think you should take the day off?”

“Ugh. My parents want me to stay home, too. And I feel like I could sleep for a month, but I’d rather be at school than home alone,” I said. I didn’t add with my thoughts. Which is exactly what I was afraid of. Thinking.

“Jesus, I can’t believe you discovered the vandalism at your store this morning. It feels like a million years ago. Look, stay home tomorrow, okay? Maybe we can grab breakfast before I go to school—I can miss first period.”

“Fine. I can’t fight both you and my parents.”

“Great. I’ll swing by and pick you up.”

“Please, please, keep everything between us. You can’t even tell Usman. The police made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone else. I shouldn’t even be talking to you about it. It could be… dangerous, especially with Nate so close.

“I get it. And I won’t tell anyone, but… your friends love you. We got your back. Okay? Always. G’night.”

I was beyond exhausted, but images of those glasses tugged at my brain. I popped back over to my desk, opened my laptop, and fired off a chipper email from my secondary email account with a fake name to ask about Nate’s glasses, but sneakily.

I staggered back to bed, pulled up the covers again. This time when I closed my eyes, all I saw was darkness.