The only thing scarier than a terrorist is the moment you decide not to be one anymore. On the day of our Blessed Event, I finally made the decision to abandon my cell along with the mission we’d been planning for months.
It was a Friday. A crowd that gathered on the lawn in front of the state capitol building would suspect nothing when our yellow school bus pulled up. The five of us would push our way through the crowd and storm the grand staircase that led to the capitol building. Once we reached the final landing, we would block the entrance, so that no one could get in or out. Just as the security guards came to drag us away, we would detonate the explosives that we’d taped to our bodies, killing ourselves and anyone around us. (“What it lacks in casualties it makes up for in symbolism,” is what N. said, but I knew he’d hoped that the people above him in the network would have come up with something a little flashier.)
I was to wait outside a highway rest stop. When the bus arrived, I would get on and we would make our way to the state capitol to complete our mission. The explosives were on the bus. After boarding the bus, I would pull up my shirt while N. would tape a belt made from plastic milk jugs and nails to my skin. We’d spent weeks in the basement of N.’s cafe, surrounded by stacks of coffee cans and expired muffin mixes, designing, constructing, testing and redesigning the belts.
As I waited for the bus to arrive, I watched the cars driving by on the highway, people going about their normal day, not knowing how soon their lives would forever change. A small red car pulled into one of the parking spaces. A woman in pink shorts and a white tank top got out of the car. She opened the back door and two small children got out: a girl and a boy. The boy had a blue lollipop in his hand. When he opened his mouth, his tongue was blue too.
“Oh, Liam,” his mom complained, “you’re all sticky. Let’s go wash up.” She took them both by the hand. As they passed me, the boy looked up and smiled, showing me all of his tiny blue teeth. I smiled back.
I suddenly felt a bolt of anxiety go through me: the bus would be here for me any minute now. I followed the woman and her children into the bathroom and searched for a place where I could hide. At the end of a long row of stalls, there was a door marked ‘private.’ Above the stainless steel trough sink, there was a long mirror. At a certain angle, I could see the parking lot and cars approaching as they exited the highway.
The woman and the children came out of a stall. As she helped them lather up their hands, I saw a flash of yellow in the mirror. My spine rattled and I gritted my teeth as I waited for the woman and her kids to leave. As the mom fiddled with the silver button on a hand dryer that clearly didn’t work, I could see the school bus getting larger and larger in the mirror.
The woman took the children back out to her car, and I rushed over to the door marked ‘private’ and picked the lock. Inside there was a plastic mop wringer, jugs of Simple Green and stacks of boxes full of paper towels and cheap tampons. I slipped into the closet, maneuvering the mop wringer in front of the door so that it would block anyone who tried to get in. I arranged the paper towel boxes into a wall that I could hide behind. I tucked myself into the darkness and waited. The cinder block wall was cold against my back. I couldn’t hear any sound coming from the highway or the parking lot, so I didn’t know how close the bus was to the rest stop, or if it had already come and gone.
Silently, I counted seconds. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three…I remembered the summer storms that churned the lake in front of my grandfather’s cabin. One afternoon, the dark clouds blotted out the sun and lightning snapped like camera flashes. My grandfather taught me to count the seconds between the lightning flash and the sound of thunder, then divide by five. The answer to the math problem told us how far away the lightning was. Three seconds meant the lightning was less than a mile away. Zero seconds meant the lightning was on top of you, but you didn’t need math for that.
As I sat on the broom closet floor, I wished I was at that cabin so that I could vanish in the woods, go somewhere N. and the rest of them wouldn’t be able to find me. If they found me in the closet, they’d drag me out, slap duct tape over my mouth, and make a video of them slitting my throat. My palms sweated against the cold concrete floor. My mouth flooded and I swallowed hard so that I wouldn’t throw up.
When I had counted ten minutes worth of seconds, I slowly crawled out of my hiding place and reached for the corded plastic phone that was bolted to the closet wall. I held it to my ear but there was no dial tone. I moved the mop wringer away from the door and dashed out into the hot sun. I looked for the bus but it was nowhere to be found. A man wearing neatly pressed black slacks and a shiny leather belt got out of his car, clutching a brand new iPhone.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Did you see a school bus go through here?”
“Uh, yeah, it drove off a minute ago,” he said, a slightly puzzled look on his face. “You look a little old for school.”
I looked up at him. His sandy hair was gelled back and his blue polo shirt had a little horse on the chest. He looked like he had a good job and spent his Sundays watching football. He was the sort of person who would have made N. clench his jaw and stare. People were bound to recognize N. once his mugshot hit the news. Whenever we went to the all-night diner after staying up past four assembling milk carton bombs, he’d always find someone to stare at. And they’d always notice.
“Can I use your phone? It’s an emergency.”
The slacks-and-belt man hesitated but he handed it over. I pressed ‘emergency’ and dialed 911. I turned my back to him, hoping he wouldn’t hear.
When the operator asked, “Where’s your emergency?” I told her that four men would be arriving at the state capitol on a school bus.
“They’re suicide bombers,” I said. My voice shook. Every muscle in my body tensed and sweat gathered at the back of my neck. “They’re going to blow themselves up on the steps of the Capitol building.”
When she asked me for my name and location, I disconnected the call, handed the phone back to the slacks-and-belt man and ran.
N. ran a coffee shop on a block where every third building was boarded up. The cell used to meet there in the evenings after he’d stacked the chairs onto the tables and shut off the lights in the pastry case. We would sit in the booth that was furthest from the door, next to some hipster abstract paintings, and discuss our plans.
“We’re the bravest warriors on Earth,” he’d say. “Military people launch missiles miles from their enemy. They wage war without putting themselves in harm’s way. On the day of our Blessed Event, our sacrifice will show these cowards what true bravery is.”
Before I met N., I saw a TV show about terrorists that showed the cell leader as a swarthy guy in tight pants and sunglasses, who flashed a smile at people as he shook their hands and told them his fake name. Even though he was an evil guy, you still wanted him to like you.
N. wasn’t like that at all. He hardly ever smiled and he had a habit of loudly sucking snot backward through his nasal passages. The TV terrorist lived in chic hotel rooms and drove luxury rental cars. N. couch-surfed, staying with people for a while until they finally kicked him out for being a pig. He liked to buy rotisserie chickens from the grocery store, eat as much as he wanted off of them and leave the picked-over carcass sitting out on the kitchen counter, sometimes for days. If the meat rotted and needed to be bagged and tossed or if the kitchen needed to be cleaned and aired out, N. was content to let someone else do it. He said few words to anyone who was outside the cell. The coffee shop had several negative reviews online -- mostly complaints about the “weird guy behind the counter.”
I don’t think any of the other cell members liked him any more than I did, but we never talked about it. I knew if I told them anything, they’d turn around and tell N. I would’ve done the same thing. Our fealty was to the cause, not each other. Not even to N. He was our link to the cause, but he could’ve been anyone as long as he hated the people we hated.
The coffee shop was where I first met N. I’d just come from a meeting with the dean of my university. I’d been on academic probation for a semester and they’d given me one last chance to pull up my grades, but instead, I failed my final exams.
“I’m sorry,” the Dean said as he handed me a letter to sign. “I’m sure you’ll find the path you were meant to be on.”
With the expulsion letter in my backpack, I walked away from the campus without turning back to look at the ivy-choked brick buildings. I put my head down and kept walking until the verdant campus gave way to graffitied walls and vacant lots surrounded by chain-link. At a bus stop, one of the bus shelter’s glass panels was shattered, leaving a spray of blue-edged shards all over the sidewalk.
After I’d been walking for what seemed like miles, I was sticky from the early-summer humidity. I saw a coffee shop with a sign over the door with painted letters that were faded and streaked as if the rain had tried to wash them away. I went in for an iced tea. The man behind the counter looked at me blankly as I counted out change. He handed me a cold glass of iced tea without saying a word.
I sat at one of the tables and took the letter out of my backpack. The letter cited my failure to respond to the initial letter informing me of my academic probation. I knew I was supposed to offer some kind of written apology for my lousy GPA, but what apology could I offer? My grades didn’t suffer because I was caring for a sick grandmother, or going through a pregnancy scare, or suffering some kind of mental health breakdown. They were bad because every time I opened a book to study, the words all ran together, forming an ugly black blob that I couldn’t disassemble. I tried putting video game soundtracks on in the background to help me study, and a friend slipped me some of his Adderall. But the little blue pills just made me feel sick to my stomach.
“We are dismayed by your lack of academic progress,” the letter said, “because your high school dossier showed exemplary grades and test scores. We can only conclude that your performance at the University is reflective of a lack of effort, which is in opposition to the stated values of this institution.”
My throat tightened as I re-read the letter and tears trickled down to my chin. A shadow fell across the page and I looked up to see the man standing next to my table. He had a square jaw and a long crease in each cheek -- like laugh wrinkles, only I could tell he wasn’t much of a laugher. He handed me a napkin. He asked me why I was upset. His voice was flat and his expression was blank, but I answered his question.
He sat in the chair across from me and read the letter.
“Didn’t you study?” he asked.
“I studied every night,” I said, “but I just couldn’t focus.” I paused. He was staring at me and a chill ran down my back. I said: “I don’t know why.”
“I can tell you why,” he said. He re-folded the letter and handed it back to me. “Because that is not your true purpose.” He fixed his eyes on me, and I thought there was something weird about his eyes -- like they had no pigment. No irises, just pupils -- two little black abysses staring at me.
“It’s not?” I picked up my glass and sucked hard on the straw even though there was barely a trace of tea left.
“Your purpose is not to sit in a classroom studying useless facts,” he said. “Your true purpose is to fight for justice.”
He put his warm, dry hand on top of mine and for the first time -- the only time -- the look in his eyes softened. He showed me a smile I would never see again. As I walked home from the cafe, his words went round and round in my mind. Your true purpose. Fight for justice. Your true purpose.
My shoulders felt lighter as the weight I’d felt ever since my meeting with the dean began to drop away. My body surged with new energy. I bounded up the stairs to my bedroom, closed the door, opened my laptop and visited the websites that N. had told me to check out.
A week later, I took a fealty oath in front of N. and the other members of the cell.
After I called the police and ran from the truck stop, I walked along the shoulder of the highway, hoping someone would pick me up. I saw a semi-truck and tried to flag it down because I knew it was likely headed out of state but it rumbled past. As I walked, I saw helicopters flying in the direction of the state capitol. I hadn’t heard any explosions, so the police must have caught N. and the others before they got off the bus. Were those helicopters looking for me?
It was dark by the time someone finally pulled over. I was miles outside the city, where the road was narrower and lined with tall pine trees. A pickup truck with a horse trailer flashed its high beams and pulled to the side of the road.
I opened the door to the extended cab and climbed up. A man sat behind the wheel. The woman next to him had blond hair and wore a denim shirt.
“Where are you headed?” the man asked.
“Aitkin,” I said, spitting out the first town I could think of.
“That’s lucky,” he said, “we’re heading to Crosby. We can drop you in Aitkin.”
The truck sped along the highway, its lights revealing the glowing eyes of a deer that stood on the side of the road. The doe turned and vanished into the woods.
They asked me questions about who I was and what I was doing hitchhiking at night. I tried to stay as close to the truth as I could (something N. taught me to do): “I just finished college and am just trying to decide what to do next.”
They told me that they ran a horse-and-carriage business, giving rides to tourists and engaged couples.
“Those two horses in the trailer are prize-winning Belgians,” the man said. “They are happy to be heading home -- they’ve had a busy week. Lots of bookings.”
I did my best to show interest as they talked, but all I could think about was the cell. Had they been arrested? Were they sitting in a jail somewhere, working on a new plot? Were they -- or anyone in the network -- looking for me? I wanted to ask the couple if they’d heard anything, but I didn’t want to raise their suspicions. I kept hoping they would put the radio on, but instead, a Reba Mcintyre CD played on repeat.
Two hours later, they dropped me off at a motel that was made to look like a long log cabin. I waved goodbye as their trailer disappeared and stepped inside the motel lobby. A teenage clerk set down her iPhone long enough to type something into a computer and hand me a key. I went back outside and walked down to my room. I unlocked the door and locked it again as soon as I got inside. I closed the curtains and found the TV remote. My hand shook as I turned on the small TV that was mounted on the wall. I clicked through channels until I found one that was showing the news.
There it was: a photo of N. in a square just above the news anchor’s shoulder. The chyron read “Capitol bombing plot foiled.”
“Four men were arrested at the state capitol today after an anonymous tip,” the newswoman said. Then I felt as if the air had been kicked out of my chest: I heard my own voice coming from the TV speakers as the broadcast played the call I’d made to 911 just a few hours prior.
Caller: They’re going to blow themselves up on the steps of the state capitol. They’re suicide bombers.
Dispatcher: What’s your location? Ma’am? Your location?
“The caller has not been located or identified. Anyone with any knowledge of this event or individuals involved is urged to call the FBI at…”
I switched off the TV.
I tried to sleep but I couldn’t stop thinking about the coffee shop, who might have seen me coming and going from there. The authorities and the press were sure to know by now that N. ran that shop and they’d be asking everyone around it who they’d seen come and go.
I did manage to get some sleep, but I dreamed that N. and the rest of them crashed through my hotel room’s picture window, showering me in broken glass. I sat up in bed, sweating, staring at the stiff, dusty curtains that covered the window. I got up and went to the door. I opened it and stepped outside. Everything beyond the lights of the motel parking lot was black. Though it was early in the morning, the air was warm. It would be a hot day when the sun finally came up. In the distance, I heard the call of an owl. In the grass, crickets raged. I went back inside.
It was the History Channel that started me doubting the cell’s mission. Late one night, after I’d returned home from the cafe, my mom was in the living room watching TV.
“Your volunteer work sure takes a lot of your time,” she said. I still hadn’t told her that the University had expelled me. “But it’s better than all those video games you were playing, I suppose.”
I didn’t answer her. Even if she was right -- that video games put me on academic probation, not the word-blobs in my textbooks -- it didn’t matter anymore. I had a higher purpose. A true purpose. I was an idiot for crying when N. yelled at me after I’d spilled the gunpowder. It was like N. always told us: “Any mistakes will cost us our mission.”
The History Channel was showing a documentary about the Vietnam War. I half-watched the thing until the screen filled with the image of the Buddhist monk sitting in the middle of a busy intersection, flames consuming every part of his body.
I immediately thought of the suicide belts we were building in the basement of the coffee shop. N. kept talking about how, once we’d detonated our belts, we’d be “martyred instantly.”
The documentary used the same word for the monk who burned himself: a martyr. He sat there in a prayer position while the fire ate every one of his skin cells. He died in slow agony. He died alone. His last thoughts couldn’t have been about anything other than pain. I suddenly felt hatred for N. and his suicide bombs. I wanted to tell N. that the monk’s self-immolation was true bravery, that the network’s plan was an act of cowardice.
But I didn’t. The next day, I went back to the coffee shop basement and finished my belt.
In the morning, I turned the TV on again. The news showed footage of the coffee shop. The camera followed a police officer down the dark basement stairs and he showed them the tell-tale signs of our cruel plot.
“These buckets are full of nails -- that’s what they used for shrapnel. Over here, you see what remains of bottle rockets that were ripped apart. They tore open bottle rockets to get to the black powder inside -- that’s an explosive.”
I flashed back to the hours I spent in the basement, ripping small cardboard tubes and carefully emptying the powder into an old coffee can.
The news report said that the men who were arrested have been identified but would not tell authorities any information about the origin of their plot. It also said that the anonymous caller still had not been found.
“Police believe that the anonymous caller is a member of the group and may have additional knowledge,” the anchorwoman said. She had a helmet of blond hair that never moved, even when she turned her head. “They are urging the individual to come forward as soon as possible.”
I shut the TV off and chewed my thumb. I was hungry. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything for two days. I left the room and asked the receptionist where I could get breakfast. I walked half a mile down the road to a roadhouse diner where I treated myself to a large stack of buttery pancakes.
As I ate, I glanced at the TV behind the counter. The sound was off, but it was playing the same news report that I’d seen in my motel room. Over and over, it showed N’s mugshot and the rain-streaked sign that hung over the coffee shop door.
When N. first announced the plan, I loved the idea of going out in a flash, of leaving the Earth in one loud burst of rage. As I mopped up maple syrup with a piece of pancake, I tried to decide what I should do next. I could keep running, maybe make it to Canada. The network had operatives there. If they found me, they’d kill me. I could turn myself in, but the network had even more operatives in the prison system.
I could still go out in a flash. I could light up the sky without any help from N., and without hurting anyone else.
After breakfast, I left a big tip for the waitress and I walked to a gas station. I bought a red plastic gas can and told the clerk I needed five gallons. He asked if I’d stalled nearby. I lied and said yes. He offered to help me but I told him I didn’t need help and set a box of matches on the counter. As I filled the red jug with gas, I looked out at the empty highway. There weren’t many cars, but maybe at least one person would see and take a picture that would make me immortal.
I breathed in the heavy scent of gasoline as I watched the ancient pump’s split-flap numbers roll. I felt the gas can get heavier. A large murder of crows swerved overhead and settled into a row of trees across the street. Their cawing drowned out the radio that was playing inside the gas station.
I wondered where N. was right now. Was he in a holding cell in a local jail? Was he in some windowless room, sitting tight-lipped while the FBI bombarded him with questions? Had they handed him off to the Army to be shipped off to some remote base where he’d be held until he was an old man with a back too bent to walk?
Wherever he was, I hoped he’d hear about me and what I was about to do. I hope he’d watch a video of my body burning and feel something: admiration, envy, maybe even shame.
When the can was full, I put the nozzle back on the pump and fastened the lid on the can. I turned around and saw a man standing just a few feet away from me. He wore a brown shirt with a shiny brass star pinned to his chest and an American flag patch on his arm. He clutched a pair of handcuffs in his right hand.
He was looking right at me.
“Put that down,” was all he said.