Farah Rishi - I Hope You Get This Message

Behind Samuel’s buckled form stood a boy in glasses, sweat dappling his brown face, eyes wide in surprise like he couldn’t believe what had just happened. What he’d just done.

Samuel growled and got to his feet. Jesse heard the angry thump of his footsteps as he approached the boy and girl. But then there was a familiar blur and the sound of an impact: a fist against skull. Another thump. Samuel was back on the ground. This time, he didn’t get up.

Ms. K. She was breathing hard. Then shouting instructions.

The girl brushed her bangs out of her round dark eyes. Even in the dark, and with the dizziness blurring his vision, Jesse recognized her as the pushy girl from UFOs & U. She was breathing hard, too, but still, she smiled, hesitatingly, and reached out her hand toward him.

Jesse caught a flash of something glinting off her purse. A key chain. Shaped like a crow.

It was only a few hours before dawn by the time they made it back to UFOs & U; Adeem and Cate had to hoist Jesse up on their shoulders, sharing the weight, to carry him back.

Adeem almost felt bad for Jesse’s attackers. Cate had been intent on pepper-spraying them both in the face—twice for good measure.

And then Leyla—

She’d shown up out of nowhere. Protected them. And then tied up the attackers with freaking extension cords.

There’d been a moment when their eyes locked in place, and the world around them froze. This was their moment, their big reunion. Adeem couldn’t move.

But then Leyla started giving orders, telling them to get Jesse to safety so she could go get help, and Adeem, balloon-headed and dazed as all heck, listened.

They hadn’t meant to follow Jesse, exactly. But Cate kept going on about some hunch she had that the boy knew something about her father and she didn’t want him to get away. Plus, it hadn’t taken Adeem very long to fix their little radio problem.

The answer was Rosie. He used the shortwave radio to reach her. She was listening to her radio all the time, and relaying the messages she heard from those who couldn’t reach their loved ones in time. Adeem knew which frequency she picked up, so all he had to do was broadcast to her so she could, in turn, hear him . He’d been so relieved to hear her voice again.

“You left your beautiful little radio here!” she scolded as soon as she’d realized it was him.

He smiled from ear to ear.

With some coordinating, the UFOs & U radio channel would tap into her network and get a wider reach. With her resources, they could reach the entire country. It’d been done before, with people all throughout Europe sending messages to one another via radio to keep tabs on one another’s locations during World War II; Adeem had read about it in some book on the history of the radio.

It was Tom who’d given them the tip that Jesse would probably be at his house, and he’d freely given him the address. Adeem got the impression Tom had mixed feelings about Jesse.

Nonetheless, he cleaned up Jesse’s face, and Jesse was now resting in the corner of the room. Meanwhile, Adeem had taken the helm at the radio, rather gratefully, in fact—he needed something to distract himself from the fact that he’d just seen his sister for the first time in nearly two freaking years.

He’d just finished broadcasting a message for, to his utter amazement, Mia Jimenez in Texas, and was about to start another—this time for a Cecilia Eaton in New Jersey—when the door to the station opened.

It was Leyla. Still holding the extension cords.

He stood and cautiously approached.

Leyla looked away. “Hi, Adi.”

He was filled with such an overwhelming sense of nostalgia that it physically hurt. Everything he’d been through for the past week—the blisters and the hunger and the race against time—it had all been for her, for this moment.

He held her tightly, somewhere between a hug and a choke hold.

“How could you leave me?” His voice cracked.

He was nearly half a foot taller than she was now. She felt so small in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why couldn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready yet. Couldn’t be.” She trembled and pulled away. Her eyes were red. “I was so scared of disappointing you, Adi. I thought you’d never look at me the same way. I couldn’t bear it. Even the thought of it killed me.” She wiped at an eye with the back of her hand. “I kept thinking about Qasim Uncle and his son Tahir, when he came out and it became such a huge thing at the mosque. You know I heard Mom and Dad talking about it? Dad said, ‘I can’t even imagine what we’d do in Qasim’s shoes.’ As if there was something to imagine besides accepting your kid is gay.”

She let out a half chuckle, half sob that stoked a warm ache behind Adeem’s ribs.

“So when I—when I finally told you guys, when I came out, and I saw your reaction, I thought you hated me. You were so crushed, and I panicked. Like you’d had this vision of the future and you’d just watched it all come crumbling down, and I’d done that to you. Me, your big sister. I couldn’t deal with that weight, with the thought that I’d disappointed you somehow. God, it hurt. It hurt so badly that I realized I’d rather be alone and free to live the way I needed to than risk living under our parents’ roof and watching them pretend they’re perfectly fine with it.

“And then you found me.” She ran a hand through his hair affectionately. “I’m so sorry I didn’t talk to you sooner. I should have had more faith in you, and I know I screwed up. But by the time I realized how much I missed you, I thought it might have been too late to reach out, to find out if you still, I don’t know, hated me.”

“I never hated you. Even if you did make me track you down through a freaking radio message.” He groaned and squeezed at his throbbing temples. “So is that why you told Reza and Priti not to tell us anything? Out of guilt ?”

Leyla nodded slowly. “I thought that if I could erase myself from your lives, you’d have an easier time. You know how people can be. One bad apple can ruin the barrel, and all that.”

“Being gay is not a fruit-borne disease, you idiot.”

“I know. I know it’s stupid. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that fear”—she gestured around them—“makes people kind of lose their heads.”

Adeem rolled his eyes. “Is that why you’re a counselor now?”

“What better way to deal with my own problems, huh? Ignore them and deal with other people’s.”

“I think your stupid poetry was at least a healthier method.” Then Adeem remembered: “Wait, what about the poetry book? And Priti—why does she have it? I saw it in her car, and are you guys even together anymore? I mean, it’s clear she’s still all about you. And then the radio message I heard—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Leyla interrupted. “Easy there, tiger. One question at a time.”

“I just need to know what’s going on. Everything.” He took a step closer. He was almost afraid she’d run away again. “Please.”

Leyla looked up at the sky and slowly exhaled. She looked at Adeem and gave him a small, embarrassed smile. “After I ran away with Priti,” she began slowly, “we went to Las Vegas. Priti had an internship lined up, and some family there, and they’re a lot more… open about things. She let me live with her under the condition I talked to you guys again when I was ready. Otherwise, Priti wouldn’t have supported me running away.

“But”—she bit her lip—“it took me a while, and I guess Priti realized I might never be ready, even though the guilt of leaving was eating me up. I started to depend on her too much, because in my head, she was all I had. It wasn’t healthy. Priti kept begging me to reach out to you guys, said I was only hurting myself. Had a big fight over it. Typical Reza got himself involved and tried to play mediator.”