Let's Go Swimming on Doomsday, page 29
The waves hit the stones. Over and over and over.
Sam doesn’t say anything. She just lets me cry, and after a while my sobs turn to sniffs. I rub at my swollen eyes. I’m hiccoughing and snot is dripping out of my nose. But I’m empty. I feel like an old rag, wrung out and limp.
We sit silently like that for a long time. I can smell brine and seaweed. I can hear kids somewhere up the beach playing, and the mewling of gulls. Distant traffic drones on the highway, and somewhere a radio is playing an old song.
The sun is directly behind us now, making the light hazy gold and pink, throwing our shadows out onto the water. The tide is going out, and the waves are no longer pounding. They make a slushing noise, rocks being ground down into sand over thousands of years. I find myself thinking that if time had a sound, that would be it.
“Sam?” I finally say.
“Yes?”
“I lost the yo-yo you gave me.” I look at my bad hand. “No, that’s not true. I threw it away. I’m sorry.”
Her face goes soft. “It’s fine. We can get a new one.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“You know how you said you could help me trace my family?”
She nods, waits.
“I need to give you different names.”
She only looks surprised for a second. Then she says, “Of course. I understand. No problem.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before.”
She swallows, her eyes going red again. “You have to stop apologizing for everything all the time.” It takes a beat, but she gives me a little smile.
I watch the waves. “I’ll try.”
We get up and walk back to the car. The sound of the water follows us.
It echoes softly, filling all my empty spaces.
FIFTY-SIX
NOW: DECEMBER 15
SANGUI CITY, KENYA
We pick up Kuku Express on the way back to Sam’s apartment. While we eat, Sam gets on her laptop and enters my family’s information into the tracing registry. Even if we find them, I’m still not sure I can contact them. Jones’s warning that I could put them in danger that way rings in my ears. But I have to know where they are, at least. I have to know that they’re okay, that they made it, and that maybe they’ve got a chance at starting over.
Sam’s going to look for my dad too. Maybe I could contact him. I wonder if he knows about any of this. Maybe Hooyo’s been able to get in touch with him and he’s on his way to join them. Maybe he’s already there. I try to keep my mind from running away with crazy ideas, but I even wonder if maybe Sam will find Dahir. Maybe he’s alive, maybe he left the Boys. Maybe he’s in some refugee camp somewhere far away. Or maybe he’s even here in Sangui City, looking for me.
It’s a lot of maybes. But things don’t feel entirely hopeless anymore.
On the way home Sam told me about something called “survivor’s guilt.” It’s a real thing, she told me. A lot of people in situations like mine feel it. They survive something, but can’t get better mentally because other people didn’t make it. She says she learned about it when she went to therapy after her dad took her out of the doomsday cult when she was a teenager. She’d felt the same way about leaving her mother and brother there. She says she’s going to make an appointment with a counselor she knows. I can try talking some more, and see if it helps. I told her I’d give it a shot.
“What time do we meet Mama Lisa and the girls at Paradise Island tomorrow?” Sam asks.
I look up at the puppy calendar and my stomach lurches. How did I not put it together until now? “Tomorrow is . . .”
“Doomsday,” Sam says. She keeps her eyes on her computer screen. I wait for her to say more, but she only asks, “How do you spell Zahra?”
I put down my chicken and spell out my sister’s name. “Are you sure you want to go?” It’s the day she’s been counting down to for basically her entire life.
“Of course,” she says. “Don’t you?” She’s watching me with a funny expression on her face. It’s almost like she’s challenging me.
Maybe if she’d asked me an hour ago when we were sitting by the water, I would have said no, that going to Splash Land at Paradise Island was the last thing on earth I felt like doing. But now I remember how Muna reacted when I assumed she didn’t want to go swimming the day after the bombing. They don’t own me, she said. She wasn’t going to let her fear of the Boys control her life anymore. I look at Sam, and I see the same sort of thing in her, and I hear her say, I want that day back. Tomorrow is the last day at Sam’s before I go stay with the foster family. My last day with the Maisha girls. Am I really going to mope around here feeling sorry for myself? If they can be brave in the face of their worst fears, can’t I go to a water park?
“Yeah,” I say, starting to smile. “Let’s go swimming on doomsday.”
* * *
• • •
PARADISE ISLAND is swarming by the time we get there at eleven o’clock. We join the line of cars waiting in a hot haze of exhaust for a parking place. Steady waves of foot traffic are being swallowed through the outer gates. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s a Saturday or because people are doing Christmas shopping, but it’s like all of Sangui City has descended on the shiny new mall.
“There aren’t enough spots,” Sam says, inching the car forward into the lot.
It’s the first time she’s looked anything but euphoric all day. I woke up to the sound of her singing (really badly but with enthusiasm) and the smell of something burning. When I rushed out of my room, I found, to my shock, that she was cooking. She gave me a triumphant smile and slapped down a tower of what she called her “world-famous silver-dollar pancakes.” They were mushy on one side, burned on the other. They tasted terrible. I ate the whole stack.
“Why don’t you go ahead?” Sam says. “I’ll park and be there in a minute.”
“Are you sure?”
She grins, like she just can’t contain it any longer, and hands me some cash, waving off my protests. “Go! Have fun! I’ll be in soon.”
As I hurry toward the mall, my nerves start to jangle. I was such an asshole to Muna and Alice yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t want to talk to me ever again. For a second my steps falter. Maybe it was a bad idea to come here after all. Maybe I should go back to Sam, tell her I’ve changed my mind and ask if we can just go back to her house and watch CSI: Miami. But then I tell myself, No, today is not the day for running away. You just have to apologize to them and hope for the best.
Once I finally make it through the line for the metal detector at the entrance, a rush of air-conditioning ushers me inside. Clean blocks of light filter down from the high reaches of the cavernous, sky-lit ceiling. I follow the signs pointing toward Splash Land, which is in the opposite direction of the food court, where we went last time. As I make my way through the crowds, I’m struck again by how huge this place is. Between the store windows full of plush fabrics, the white marble tile and well-dressed shoppers, it feels like the court of some modern palace.
There’s another long line for Splash Land, and by the time I pay the entrance fee and finally make it through the park’s doors, it’s almost noon. I keep looking back over my shoulder, but if Sam is in line, she’s way back there.
I pass under the Splash Land sign into heat and noise. Huge squiggly shapes fall out of a fake hill: tubes and slides and pools, everything in bright blues and yellows. The sun shines hard, and there are people, so many people everywhere. Children shout and splash and run and come hurtling out of tube slides into the water. Parents lounge under red-and-white-striped umbrellas, and kids my age huddle to gossip and flirt near a grass-roofed hut selling snacks and drinks. There are at least three pools. It is huge and loud and awesome. No wonder the girls were so excited about coming here.
Aiming for the deck full of lounge chairs and tables, I scan for familiar faces. There are lines for everything—the slides, the food, the bathrooms. They snake through the crowds and between high screens of palms, creating human mazes to weave in and out of. It takes a hell of a lot of effort to not get distracted and stare at what the girls my age are wearing. Or what they’re not wearing. It’s a different world in here, I realize. Most of these girls don’t wear bathing suits like this on the public beaches, or at least not that I’ve seen, but they’ve paid good money to come to Splash Land, and it’s a safe, contained space. The old rules don’t apply. There are a few Muslim girls wearing long, form-covering suits and headscarves that make them look like scuba divers, but they’re the exception.
I walk by a shallow pool for little kids where water cascades off plastic umbrellas the size of small trees. Past a winding staircase cut into the fake rocky hill that must lead to the top of the long slides. Finally I spot them, twenty or so Maisha girls sitting under umbrellas near the deep end of the pool. I see Alice, but where’s Muna? For a moment I think that maybe she hasn’t come with them and my heart sinks. But then I hear a familiar laugh coming from the pool.
And there she is. I didn’t even recognize her. She’s wearing a new suit, not just her normal clothes like she would swim in the ocean with. It still covers everything, down to her wrists and ankles, with a sort-of dress over top, but it doesn’t hide how beautiful she is. But that’s probably because she looks so happy. She floats on her back, her belly an island in front of her. For a moment I can barely breathe. I can’t do anything but stare at her with a fierce kind of joy in my heart and a big dopey smile on my face. She’s swimming. In the deep end. I did that. Or, well, I helped.
She waves her hands in circles underwater, keeping her chin up like I taught her. After a little while she rolls over on her stomach and shouts something at Adut. They both laugh. She dog-paddles over to the edge. Not gracefully, but comfortably. The water is nothing to be afraid of.
Suddenly a blur of bright green bathing suit comes hurtling from one side as Alice leaps over Muna, pinches her nose, and jumps in feetfirst, making a huge splash. Muna and Adut squeal, and the wave gets them both. Muna comes up sputtering and laughing, while Adut shoves off the wall toward Alice, ready to splash her back. Muna watches them, but then, like she can sense me, she turns her head and looks straight at me. I freeze. The corners of her mouth turn down.
My smile fades. My heart begins to hammer again. Just go apologize, I tell myself. I take a deep breath and make my way over. Muna swims to the ladder and slowly pulls herself out. She grabs a towel off a chair and wraps it around her shoulders as she totters over. Her belly looks almost comically large, like it’s ready to jump off her frame and run away on its own. How much longer does she have? It must be only days.
“You came,” she says, when she’s finally in front of me.
“Yeah,” I say. My hands feel floppy by my sides.
“We thought you were gone for good.”
Some of the Maisha girls have noticed me. They bend their heads together and whisper.
“Can I talk to you?” I ask. “Alone? Please?”
She pulls her towel tighter around herself. “Fine,” she finally says, and leads the way to a table behind some plants that’s at least half hidden from the stares of the other girls.
“What I said yesterday, before I ran off . . .” I hang my head and look up at her, hoping she’ll understand.
She crosses her arms over her chest and waits. She isn’t going to let me off that easily. So I take another deep breath, and before I can lose my nerve I blurt, “You’re right, I was a jerk. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean any of that about not wanting to do lessons and you being a bad swimmer. You’re a great swimmer. I don’t know why I said all that. I mean, I guess I do. I think . . . I think I wanted you to feel as bad as I did, which is horrible, I know. I found out yesterday morning that I’m leaving to stay with a foster family. I was really mad about it. But it’s no excuse. It was wrong to say all that stuff, really wrong, and I know that now, and I— Well, I’m just sorry.”
I should probably leave it at that, but now that I’ve started talking, I can’t seem to shut up. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk to me anymore, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Because I think you’re really great. You’re a really cool girl, Muna, you and Alice both, and I just . . . I want you to like me too.” I wince. That last part didn’t come out right. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re the only friends I have. You and Alice. And I don’t want to lose that—I don’t want to lose you. I’m sorry.”
My face is on fire. The silence between us is so awkward that I have the urge to do something crazy—jump in the pool, turn a somersault—just to break it.
Muna takes a deep breath and lets it out very slowly. “You really hurt my feelings,” she says finally.
I grasp for her words like a drowning man grabbing at a rope. “I’m so sorry, Muna.”
“You have to apologize to Alice too.” She presses her lips together and frowns, in a way that makes me wonder if maybe Alice took what I said even harder than Muna.
“Yeah, I will,” I say eagerly.
“And I don’t know what she’ll say. She doesn’t trust boys to begin with, and the way you talked to her . . .”
“I know, I know,” I groan. “I’m a jerk.”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute. I want to melt into a puddle right here where I stand. How could I have messed this up so badly? I start to open my mouth to try again, but she stops me. She has something in her hand that had been hidden under her towel. She holds it out to me.
My yo-yo.
She must have gone and found it after I threw it over the wall.
I take it from her. My eyes start to burn, and I have to swallow before I can speak. “I’m sorry, Muna.”
She sighs. “I know. It’s just . . . you can’t throw things away and expect them to always come back.”
“I won’t. Ever again.”
I see the start of a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth. “Now go find Alice before she sees—”
But the rest of her words are sucked out of the air.
There’s an instant when there is nothing but the absence of noise, like a vacuum. The air thickens, expands in my ears, and becomes something else entirely. Not sound, but blistering, brain-piercing pain.
I find myself flying toward Muna, flailing and bracing my arms, terrified I’m going to land on her stomach. I end up sprawled over her, my back pelted with what feels like rocks. We stay hunched over and frozen until everything goes still and horribly silent. I look up, blinking. Muna’s saying something to me, but I can’t hear out of either ear now. They both feel like they’re plugged with clay. Dust as fine as flour fills the air and makes us both cough.
“Are you okay?” I ask when I can get a breath, barely able to hear my own voice. Muna nods, shaking. Little bits of rock or concrete fall off of me as I push up and turn around to the pool deck to see what’s happening. My vision starts to slide sideways.
The park is unrecognizable. I can see only half the deck through the haze of dust and smoke. A crater looms on the edge of the pool where the cafe stood. Now there’s only a black and burning absence, smoke chugging into the air. Figures rise, pale with dust, limping or crawling in slow, jerky movements. With everyone nearly naked in their bathing suits, the water and the fire, it looks apocalyptic. I hear Sam say the word in my head: doomsday. I can see a body half in, half out of the pool. Red clouds seeping into the blue water. The stark wail of a baby somehow pierces the ringing in my head.
And then I see them.
Five figures moving through the chaos in tight formation like knife blades.
Their guns bristle out. Their eyes sweep the scene.
A low moan escapes my lips.
It’s them. The Boys.
I’m both shocked and not surprised at all. It’s like a dream, a nightmare, where you know the monster is coming, and when he finally catches you it’s almost a relief.
But I’m not prepared for what happens next.
One of them turns our way, and I see his face. Even half covered under a keffiyeh, I would know him anywhere.
Because he’s my brother Dahir.
FIFTY-SEVEN
NOW: DECEMBER 16
SANGUI CITY, KENYA
For a second I can’t move. I can’t do anything but stare.
He’s alive. My brother is alive. Joy and relief swell inside me for one brief moment. And then everything else comes smashing back into focus: the Al Shabaab uniform and gun he wears, the bloody chaos he’s helped create.
Muna stirs, trying to get up. I move quickly to help her.
“What happened?” she asks. I can hear her better now out of my good ear. “Was it a bomb?”
“I think so.” Was there just one explosion, or did I hear another? Gunfire pops from deep inside the mall. I peer past an overturned table and through the plants that hide us from the Boys’ view. We haven’t been noticed yet. I don’t think so, anyway. The Boys have come inside and they’re moving through the pool deck, nudging at limp bodies to see who is alive. I can’t tell who the other Boys are, not from here, not with their faces covered. But I see one of them grab a woman up by the arm, pull her to her feet. Something in the way he handles her is familiar, and I’m suddenly positive that the Boy is Nur.
“Oh my God, they’re here. They’re here.”
I turn back to Muna. Her eyes are wide, her breath coming in short, jagged bursts.
“Shh,” I tell her. “I don’t think they can see us from here. But we should be quiet.”
She nods, shivering. Her face shows everything that’s going through her mind. Everything she lived through. The possibility that it could all happen again.
