The Terrorist by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page B

nothing but a date! It doesn’t matter! He’s not dead!
    Eddie had the nerve to fondle her hair, in the old way, as if life were still ordinary. “Laura, I want you to come to the dance with me,” he said.
    “Eddie, I’m going to have you arrested if you touch my hair once more.”
    “Oh,” said Eddie sorrowfully. “Does this mean you aren’t coming with me?” In spite of the warning, he tried to touch her hair again.
    That settled it. Laura was wearing her hair up from now on. It would give her mother something to do in the morning. Braids and twists.
    Lunch chatter went on, and Laura found herself sliding into it after all. Perhaps normalcy lurked everywhere. The moment you relaxed your defenses, up it stood, trying to make you forget your mission: finding Billy’s killer.
    “Thanksgiving confuses me,” said Mohammed.
    “The turkey and the Pilgrim and the cranberry. Where does it lead, and why are we dancing?”
    Mohammed was a Ten and a Half. Possibly even an Eleven. Nobody could better fit the horoscope ideal of a tall, dark, handsome stranger. Laura had often imagined herself dancing the night away with Mohammed.
    Now she could see that Mohammed was excellent in all ways, but she could no longer see why this might matter.
    She wanted very much to speak to God. How did you decide that a Mohammed or a Kyrene gets to go on living, but not Billy? she would demand of God.
    The answer came as clearly as if He had spoken. A terrorist made that decision, Laura, not me.
    She thought of the terrorism that had happened in Oklahoma City, and the bombing of the Federal Building, where vicious, selfish, evil doers had murdered tiny children and ordinary office workers. She looked at her ordinary classmates. She could not see them clearly.
    What Laura saw, instead, were those who had left L.I.A. Guilty people fled. Were the absent kids, therefore, guilty? Did they know something? Or not want to know something? Or were they just prudent—going while they could?
    Is who left important? she thought. Or is who stayed important?
    The collection of kids at this table was most unusual: Con, Andrew, Tiffany, Jehran, Eddie, Kyrene, Mohammed, Jimmy, and Bethany. Jimmy had a different set of friends; Jehran wasn’t fond of Americans; Tiffany was too snobbish; Kyrene had always been with Michael.
    “You don’t usually dance for Thanksgiving, Mohammed,” said Con.
    What a lot of thinking Laura had accomplished between Mohammed’s question and Con’s answer. She must be getting her thinking capacity back. That was good; she had a terrorist to find—but where to start? There were no clues here, just people whose routines had been interrupted, whose friendships had ended, and for whom crowding together for lunch felt better than sitting alone.
    “I’ve never heard of a Thanksgiving dance, actually,” Con continued. “It’s because we aren’t home, and turkeys are hard to find in London groceries, and not everybody can go over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house, so on Friday they’re having a dance to make up for it.”
    The Americans grinned because they knew what Con was saying. Nobody else understood a word. Foreigners would never sort Thanksgiving out. It was an All-American secret.
    The old sweet tune sang in Laura’s head: “ Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go … ”
    Grandma was begging them to come home for Thanksgiving. She herself wasn’t well enough to fly to England. Grandma had to use a walker now because her knees buckled. Every morning she gulped down trays of medication to keep her ailing heart and lungs and joints working. And now her only grandson was dead, and Laura’s parents refused to leave London.
    “Because,” Thomas would say hopelessly. “Because … Billy’s still here, somehow.”
    Jehran was listening intently to the Thanksgiving discussion.
    Jehran had fascinated Billy. Not her perfume, hair, clothing, speech—all of which were exotic