Cold Calls (14 page)

“The first part, yes, about the caller not knowing us. Why it's important, not so much.”

“And we don't know if that part's even true,” Eric said.

Shelly ran her left hand through her hair. Her right hand was on her lap, and she stabbed her stubby thumbnail into the side of her index finger, holding the outburst back. Instead she said, “It's my fault. I'm not explaining myself very good.”

“You got that right.”

Another stab. “Let me try again.” She unrolled a sheet of paper, using her phone to hold down one end and a paperback to hold the other, then she drew three intersecting circles on the page.

Fatima perked up. “Ooooh, a Venn diagram. Love 'em.”

“Yesterday we were looking for a person that we all knew in common. Somebody in this space here.”

“You mean an element within the subset of S union F union E,” Fatima said, leaning over to label the circles with their names and shade the spot. “And you'd write the equation like this, with an upside-down
U
for
union
.” She paused and read the looks they were giving her. “Sorry, math-geek genes run deep in my family.”

Shelly tapped the shaded area where the three circles crossed. “We thought the person we were looking for would be in that spot. Like somebody I knew from church who was also somebody you knew from, I don't know—”

“Soccer,” Eric said.

“Okay, soccer. Who was also someone Fatima knew from, say, her neighborhood. Make sense?”

“But we didn't find anyone,” Fatima said. “There were a few people I knew that Eric
maybe
knew from sports, and there was that one girl from his school who had a job near my uncle's store, and you only had, what, like, ten names on your list?”

“I just moved here this summer.”

“Still, you'd think you'd know more than ten people—”

“Fine, whatever,” Shelly said, changing the discussion with a flick of her hand. “The point is that we didn't find anyone in common with all three of us. But we were looking at it wrong. It's not
us
that has a person in common, it's them.”

“And them—I mean
they
—are the ones the caller told us to pick on?”

“Exactly. They each have something in common with her.”

Fatima looked at the Venn diagram. “Yeah, but that doesn't mean that the three victims have anything in common with each other. Their connection to the caller could be something unique to each one of them.”

“It's possible,” Shelly said. “But since all three of the victims were getting the same treatment, I believe all of them—the victims and the caller—have one thing in common.”

“You believe,” Eric said, the doubt clear in his voice.

“It holds up logically,” Fatima said. “To a point, anyway.”

Eric crossed his arms. “So what you're saying is that to solve our problem, all we have to do is figure out everything that three people have in common with each other so we can find a fourth person.”

“That's it.”

He smiled at her. “Three people we barely know. Who hate us. And who we can't even talk to if we wanted—”

“To find a
fourth
person,” Fatima said, “who you're suggesting none of us have ever met.”

“You guys are making it sound harder than it is.”

“Harder? I don't see how it could
be
harder.”

“He's right,” Fatima said. “I mean, what do I know about Katie?”

“Who?”

“The girl I was supposed to go after. Katie Schepler.”

“Supposed to? You didn't do anything to her?”

“I tried. Turns out she's a lot tougher than she looks. She punches like a guy,” Fatima said, making a balled-up shape that was nothing like a fist. “Of course, I got in more trouble than she did.”

Shelly nodded. “Because you're a Muslim.”

“God, you sound like my mother. No, I got in more trouble because I started it. What I was trying to say is that I don't know anything about her.”

“I don't know much about that Stark kid. Connor. The one I dumped the plate on. I didn't even know he was in my school.”

“And I didn't know anything about Heather Herman, either. But still we all figured out enough to know who to go after.” She looked at Fatima. “Where'd you look?”

“Where else? Facebook,” Fatima said.

“Me too. And that's where we start again.”

“No way,” Eric said. “I hear they can check to see who's been looking at your profile. I go to his page and I'm screwed.”

“I'll go instead,” Fatima said. “And you can go to the one for Shelly, and Shelly can go to the one for me.”

Eric thought about it. “What if they're all blocked now, or restricted to friends or something?”

Shelly pushed her chair away from the table. “Only one way to find out.”

 

Fatima bumped open the glass door of the study room, a small stack of papers in her hands.

“You print out his whole Facebook life?”

“Maybe,” Fatima said. “I thought I hit ‘print page,' but I guess not.”

Shelly cleared a spot on the table. “Is Eric coming? We've only got this room for another twenty minutes.”

“He just got on now.” Fatima glanced through the glass wall to the cluster of computers in the center of the library. “What is it with old people coming here to look stuff up? My grandparents are online constantly. Skyping with family in Egypt, mostly. That and watching a
ton
of stuff on YouTube. They've got a thing for cat videos.”

“Is that where you're from, Egypt?”

“My family, yeah,” Fatima said. “Alexandria. They moved here before I was born.” Then, after a pause, she said, “You go to St. Anne's.”

“I did. They're still deciding if they're going to take me back.”

“Are you Catholic?”

“More or less.”

“What, you don't believe in it?”

“Parts. The Jesus stuff, yeah, that I believe. It's the other things—the rules on birth control and gays and women priests. That's where the pope and I agree to disagree.”

“Do you go to church a lot?”

“Enough,” Shelly said, and for a second she thought about adding something on how going to church was better than having to talk to her father's hookups, but it sounded strange in her head, and besides, she knew that wasn't the reason.

Fatima drew circles around random words on the top page. “Is your family really religious?”

“My family isn't really anything.”

“Divorced?”

“No, I've never been married.”

Fatima laughed. “Duh. I meant your parents.”

Shelly smiled and kept it simple. “Yeah, they're divorced. I live with my father.”

“Does he make you go to church?”

“He can't make me do anything,” Shelly said.

Fatima nodded, and the way she nodded—slow, her head angled down to an empty spot on the table—Shelly could tell there were more questions coming. And that was okay. She had forgotten how good it was to talk. Already it was one of the deepest conversations she had had with a girl her age since the night the police took her away. It felt almost normal. So she waited.

After a minute, Fatima said, “What would happen if you told him you didn't want to go to church anymore?”

Shelly shrugged. “Nothing.”

“He wouldn't care?”

“He wouldn't know. And even if he did know, he wouldn't care.”

More nodding.

Fatima scooted her chair closer. “Okay, what would happen if you told your parents you didn't believe in it anymore?”

“In what? Going to church?”

“No, not that,” Fatima said, her voice just above a whisper, glancing around as she said it. “What if you told them you didn't believe in God?”

Shelly leaned back to think. She knew the answer to the question—they wouldn't care one way or the other—but what she didn't know was why Fatima had asked. She looked across the table at her, at her white hijab and her espresso-dark eyes.

A second later, she had it.

Shelly leaned in and said, “That's your secret.”

Fatima's mouth dropped open.

“That's your secret,” Shelly said again. “You don't believe in God.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“Oh, please, you all but said it.”

She reached out and gripped Shelly's hand. “Promise me you won't tell anyone. Not even Eric.”

“Don't worry,” Shelly said, chuckling as she said it, working her hand free. “I won't tell anybody. But seriously, it's no big deal. A lot of people don't believe in God.”

“I didn't say that I don't,” Fatima said, sighing, shaking her head, looking down at her hands. “The truth is, I'm not sure what I believe anymore. I'm still trying to figure it out. And I'd appreciate you not laughing at me.”

“Sorry,” Shelly said. “I just think it's funny that
that's
your horrible secret. Everybody has times when they have doubts. I know I did. I still do.”

“Yeah, well, you're not a Muslim.”

“I bet some doubters are.”

She looked at Shelly. “You have no idea. In Islam it's, like, this major sin to even
question
if God is real. You're not even supposed to
think
about it.”

“I'm pretty sure Christianity has something like that too. It's how religions keep you in line.”

“But you believe in God, right? You're
sure
God is real.”

Shelly nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

“See, that's just it. I'm
not
sure. And the more I think about it, the
less
I believe. And I can't
stop
thinking about it either.”

“So what? So you don't believe in God. Or you're not sure. Whatever. It's a personal thing between you and God. Or you and nothing.”

“Easy for you to say. You said yourself your family doesn't care.
My
family . . .” She let it trail off, and in the silence that followed, Shelly gasped.

“Are you saying your family would . . . would . . .
hurt
you?”

It was Fatima's turn to laugh. “Like an honor killing, that kind of thing? You're watching too much
Dateline.
”

“Sorry,” Shelly said again, “but the way you made it sound, it was like, you know . . .”

“Yeah, I know,” Fatima said. “And I suppose it
does
happen, so I can't really blame you for thinking that. Plus, you don't know my family. They would never hurt me. Ever.”

“So they'd be okay with it?”

“
No way.
It would
kill
them. My parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles . . . they would be
devastated.
”

Shelly could relate.

“You have
no idea
how it would hurt them to know that I even had
tiny
doubts. I mean, that's, like, the number-one thing a Muslim parent has to do: raise their kids to be good Muslims. Having one of them turn out an atheist?”

“You don't know that you are.”

“The problem,” Fatima said, “is that I don't know that I'm not. And that I'm even
thinking
about it.”

Shelly looked through the glass wall. Eric was still at the computer. They were running low on time, but they needed his results to solve anything, so there was nothing to do but wait. Then she remembered something she had written on one of the big sheets of paper the day before. She flipped through the pile till she found it. “You said your secret was a book.”

“It is. Two books, really. The secret's in one of them.”

“Like a diary?”

“No, it's a regular book,” Fatima said.

Shelly shrugged. “I don't see a problem with that. I mean, you just had the book. It's not like you wrote it.”

“No, but I wrote
in
it. In the margins, on the blank pages . . .”

“Yeah, I noticed you do that a lot,” Shelly said, nodding at the papers on the table already crammed with notes.

“And of course I highlighted the best parts.”

“That'll make it easy for someone to know what you're thinking.”

“It gets even easier. There were a bunch of papers in it too. Sort of letters to myself.”

“Like a diary . . .”

“Fine, a diary. All in my handwriting. My parents read those?” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Thinking about it gives me a headache.”

“What you wrote or what you believe?”

“Both.”

“What's the other book?”

“It's a little address notebook. I've had it forever,” Fatima said, her thumb and forefinger stretched to show the size and shape. “It's got the names and addresses and phone numbers and email addresses for every person I know.”

“An address book? Seriously?”

“I know, I know. But I like to write things down, remember?”

It got quiet, and they sat at the table, looking out through the glass wall to the rest of the library, enjoying the semi-soundproof silence. A few minutes later, Eric stood up, and they watched him watching the papers spit out of the printer by the resource desk. Hand on her chin, Fatima said, “You think he's cute?”

“Eh. Okay, I guess.”

“That's it? Okay?”

“He's not really my type.”

“Hello? Good-looking, kinda jacked, dresses nice?” Fatima laughed. “What's
your
type?”

Shelly grinned. Postapocalyptic razor beat, dark-industrial, techno-goth punk, with brown eyes and black hair and a shy smile. Not that she'd dated someone like that or even met a guy her age who came close, but even with all the shit she was dealing with, the million more important things on her mind, a girl could dream.