Her father scowled as he searched his memory. “The tall black boy or the shorter white boy?”
Her jaw dropped again. She had no idea that he paid attention to such things. “He’s the white boy.”
“With the long brown hair. The dreamy, thick long brown hair.” He laid on that last part with exaggerated passion.
“Father!”
“Handsome boy.”
“Father!”
He laughed. Truly, this was a far more effective punishment than any lecture on bad behavior. “And what about his new kissing partner. Merilee, is it? Do I know her?”
“No.” She could say that definitively. “She’s a cheerleader.” She hoped her tone conveyed her level of disapproval.
“And what is wrong with being a cheerleader? Do you not like to cheer?”
Oh, please let this ride end.
“Who would not like to cheer?” he goaded. “Rah, rah, sis-boom-bah.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “What was that?”
“Isn’t that how one cheers?” He took his hands off the wheel and shook a pair of imaginary pompoms. He repeated his stupid rhyme. “That’s it, is it not?”
“Maybe a hundred years ago.”
“Then I must have it wrong. I am old, but I am not a hundred. So, what is wrong with Marilee being a cheerleader?”
He wasn’t going to let this go, was he? At least they’d breezed through the long traffic light. Getting stopped there could have added five whole minutes to the torture. “There’s nothing wrong with it exactly. It’s just that those girls can be really mean.”
“Is Merilee mean to you?”
The question startled her, made her feel bad. “No,” she said.
“So she’s a nice cheerleader. That must mean that some cheerleaders are nice, right?”
Aafia rolled her eyes. He was such a parent. Clueless.
“And if she’s nice, and she’s friends with other cheerleaders, then it only makes sense that the other cheerleaders can be nice, too.”
She looked out the side window. If he was going to be this dense, she had nothing else to say to him.
“Aafia, look at me, please.” It sounded like a real request, not a demand.
She turned and faced him.
“It’s wrong to treat people as if they are a group instead of as an individual. As my daughter, you must know that better than most.”
Her face grew hotter as shame nudged embarrassment out of the way. “Yes, Father.”
“You’re a beautiful girl, Aafia. The handsome boys will kiss you, too.”
She rolled her eyes. He didn’t really just say that, did he?
He went on, “You have to trust me when I tell you that these issues with your friends-the gossip and the giggling and all the rest-will seem so unimportant ten years from now. Crises come and go. But the only thing that lasts forever is education. It is the only important thing, and everything good that happens in your life will flow from your education. Do you understand this?”
Finally, the lecture had arrived. And finally, they were in sight of the school. “I understand, Father. I’ll try harder.”
They’d arrived with the buses, it turned out. The U-shaped driveway in front of the school was packed with hundreds of students streaming from dozens of buses. That meant her father would be stranded here even longer.
“I’m so sorry, Father.”
He made a gentle waving motion with his hand. “You go on inside,” he said. “Have a nice day, and try to think of all the gifts that God has given you. Now, give this old man a kiss.”
This was the father she’d known before-the one who laughed and teased. He seemed to be trying not to be so angry, and his effort pleased her. She unclasped her seat belt, leaned across the center console and planted a kiss on his cheek.
“I love you, Father,” she said, and the words felt strange. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him; it was just that they rarely talked of such things in their house.
The bitter Michigan air assaulted her cheeks and hands as she hurriedly shrugged into her coat and closed the door behind her. As she joined the stream of classmates making the way to the front door, she cast a look back over her shoulder to see her father inching the minivan through the sea of children as he disappeared between the two ranks of yellow buses.
She was just turning back to face the school when the explosion split the air.
CHAPTER SIX
By morning, Christyne had grown jealous of her son’s ability to sleep anywhere and anytime. Within seconds of crashing on the bed, his breath had become rhythmic and even, and as far as she could tell in her hours of wakefulness, he’d never so much as stirred.
Between the unrelenting cold, though, and her crushing sense of guilt for having gotten them into this, sleep was nowhere in her future.
In those quiet hours, she’d reasoned that if their captors had meant them harm, they’d have done them harm. Clearly, they had a plan, and while she had no idea what it might be, it only made sense that if she and Ryan made every effort to get along-to do as they were told, just as they’d been instructed-then their captors would have cause only to treat them well.
Jesus, it was cold. Even with her coat on, and the blankets pulled all the way to her nose, it seemed impossible to get warm. It had to be warmer than freezing, she figured, because the bottled water they’d found was still liquid, but it had to be close.
Until about an hour ago.
The rising sun had just begun to lighten the darkness beyond the tiny windows at ground level, near the ceiling, when she heard the sound of a shovel scraping concrete, a sound that propelled her back to her childhood visits to her grandparents’ house on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, where coal fueled everything that produced heat, from the stove to the furnace. It wasn’t just the timbre and pitch of the scraping that made her think coal; there’s a rhythm to coal shoveling that is unique.
The shoveling continued for about twenty minutes, she guessed, and by the time the noise had ceased, the temperature in their little room had risen dramatically. Now, as the sky beyond the windows glowed pink, the heat had driven her out of her covers and caused her to shed her coat, and she was still sweating. She pegged the temperature at maybe eighty degrees now, and rising-high enough to cause Ryan to stir.
He bolted upright with a loud gasp. “Jesus!” he proclaimed. “Why is it so hot?” He stood and shrugged out of his coat. “I’m soaked.” His sweater came next, leaving him bare chested. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. “I stink.”
“I already knew that,” Christyne teased.
Noise outside their cell distracted them both, the unmistakable sound of the lock being removed and the bolt sliding open. An instant later, the door crashed open with enough violence to slam it into the perpendicular wall and a team of men, all wearing black with masks covering everything but their eyes streamed into the room. There were four of them, and they all carried machine guns locked against their shoulders and ready to fire.
Ryan yelled and darted over to his mom.
“Up, up, up!” they yelled, followed by a stream of orders yelled by all of the gunman, some of them contradictory. “Up! On the floor! On your feet! Hands up! Hands on your heads!”
The effect was utterly terrifying. The contradicting orders froze them in place. As the men yelled louder, Ryan stood with his hands out, as if warding off an angry dog.
Christyne yelled, “Ryan! Put your hands up, for God’s sake.” She demonstrated by raising her own.
Finally, the message got through and he raised his hands.
The gunman settled down, too, to the extent that only one man now shouted orders. “Both of you step away from your beds.”
The gunmen never broke their aim as the Nasbes did as they were told.
The man in charge pointed at Ryan. “You,” he said. “Step away from the woman.”
The woman? Christyne thought. What an odd way to refer to her.
“Now turn around and face the beds.”
As Ryan complied with the order, he shot a look of pure terror to his mother.