Lie: Hindsight is 20/20.
Truth: We see our past how we want to see it, to frame ourselves in the best possible light.
“Nate was there. The glasses put him at the scene of the crime! They probably won’t even bother questioning him.” I shook my head. While Asma drove us to a coffee shop, I filled her in on my early morning call with Detective Diaz. I was still exhausted but was up at the crack of dawn, too jittery to sleep in. “When I told him what I’d found about the glasses, he said they were looking into every possible lead. Kinda cut me off.”
“Can I believe the police are giving you the brush-off? Yes. Can I believe that Nate is a white supremacist? Yes. A murderer, though? That is terrifying. He’s freaking in school with us.” Asma’s face blanched as she spoke.
“Allegedly. Allegedly a murderer.” I’d never said that word out loud, not in that way, about someone I knew. About someone I was in class with. Someone who seemed incredibly pissed off at me.
“Listen, did your parents or anyone suggest that you talk to someone? Like a therapist?”
I wondered if a therapist could help me understand whether the empty feeling inside my body would ever go away. If the sudden gaping hole in my middle would ever fill up. “Yeah. The nurse mentioned it to my mom. She called a few people. But right now… I think finding the truth—all of it—is the only thing that can help me.” My mouth went dry as sawdust. I needed to know if all my fears were true. Even the ones I wasn’t ready to say out loud yet, not even to Asma.
“I still can’t believe the detective didn’t seem interested in the information about the optical shop. It’s a major lead! All he said was I should leave the detective work to them,” I scoffed.
Asma shook her head. “Maybe you should send anything else you know to the anonymous tip line?”
“What’s the point? They’d probably know it was me, anyway.” I shrugged and leaned back into the soft leather seats of Asma’s BMW. It was nice of her to drive, but every time I was in her car, it was a reminder of exactly where I went to school and how I didn’t belong. We’d ordered from the drive-through of the local coffee shop and were sitting in the parking lot with our lattes and breakfast: a croissant for me, an egg-white-with-spinach English muffin sandwich for Asma.
“No one is taking this seriously,” Asma said, taking a swig of her coffee. “I scanned the local news, and only Channel 13 did a full segment. The rest were tiny updates, like they were adding a footnote to a tragedy. A kid was kidnapped and murdered! And that’s not interesting enough to cover?”
“It totally sucks,” I said, my entire body feeling unsteady. “His story can’t get them enough clicks, I guess. No one cares about a murdered Muslim kid. A refugee. An Iraqi…”
“Well, his family wasn’t connected. Or—”
“Rich. They weren’t rich. Immigrant and poor is not a good lead story.” I saw Asma bite her lip as she tightened her grip around her coffee. When you know, you know.
I scratched my head through my knit cap. “If Nate had anything to do with it, it means he’s dangerous. He could hurt someone else. I don’t want to wait and see if the police actually do their job. Jawad deserves justice.”
“Jawad… deserves… justice,” Asma repeated slowly, tapping the pads of her fingers against the steering wheel. “Justice for Jawad… That would be a good podcast name. Good podcast material.”
Justice for Jawad. Those words hung in the air. “That’s it,” I said.
“You want to do a podcast?”
“No. I want justice for Jawad, and if the police are moving too slowly, then we have to force them to move faster. Make people care. Get the word out on social. It happened right here. In this neighborhood. In Chicago. Someone has to know something.”
“#JusticeforJawad. Yes! I can make accounts with that handle right now—it all has to be anonymous. Oh! Some crime podcasts get info from Reddit boards and set up their own anonymous tip lines.”
“Reddit? I thought that was for, like, weird old men and conspiracy theorists.”
“It is. But there’s, like, multiple subs for missing people and unsolved crimes. That’s how police figured out cold cases like Grateful Doe and the Strongsville Skeleton, tips from Reddit users.”
“Seriously? Whoa. Okay, let’s do it. We can’t upload the photo of the glasses, since the police would know it’s me, but we can give details about the murder that have been in the news already. Maybe I should write an article?”
“No way is Ms. Cary going to let you write a piece accusing Nate of murder.”
“Obviously. I’m going to write it anonymously and post it on Medium. I can pull this all together, since I’ll be home anyway. I need something to keep my mind…” I trailed off.
Asma reached over to grab my hand. “Send everything to me when you’re done, and I’ll link it on social.”
“We have to be careful. No information connecting us to it. And we can’t tell anyone else. Even Usman or Rachel, okay? In case… anything goes awry.” I still didn’t like dragging Asma this far down the murder rabbit hole, but I couldn’t do it all alone. I didn’t like hiding things from my friends or my parents, but it felt safer for everyone. “Maybe we can get Nate to trip himself up?” I suggested, then paused to take a deep breath.
Asma looked at me. “I dunno, maybe it’s a bit of a stretch. It seems foolish and—”
“Dangerous,” I whispered. “I know, but sometimes you need a hail Mary pass in the last seconds of the fourth quarter.”
Asma glanced at me, her eyebrows scrunched together. “Did you correctly use a sports metaphor? Hanging around Richard has had a heck of an effect on you.” She gave me a small grin.
I didn’t tell her, but her words kind of winded me. My hands got shaky. I steadied them around my coffee cup. I’d been wondering how well I knew Richard. But I wasn’t ready to share my questions, and that’s all I really had. “Look, maybe we can get people to pay attention. To remember Jawad. The actual him, not #bombboy. People should know his real name. Jawad deserves that. It’s the least we can do for him.”