Hollow Fires by Samira Ahmed

Author:Samira Ahmed [AHMED, SAMIRA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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