this. There are undercovers everywhere, believe. If you’re jamming, be open-eyed and get ready to run when problems happen. If you get caught try to wait it out they’re so busy they’ll maybe just let you go.
> We made them that busy! All those people in that truck were there because we’d jammed them. So jam on!
I felt like I was going to throw up. Those four people — kids I’d never met — they nearly went away forever because of something I’d started.
Because of something I’d told them to do. I was no better than a terrorist.
The DHS got their budget requisition approved. The President went on TV with the Governor to tell us that no price was too high for security. We had to watch it the next day in school at assembly. My Dad cheered. He’d hated the President since the day he was elected, saying he wasn’t any better than the last guy and the last guy had been a complete disaster, but now all he could do was talk about how decisive and dynamic the new guy was.
“You have to take it easy on your father,” Mom said to me one night after I got home from school. She’d been working from home as much as possible. Mom’s a freelance relocation specialist who helps British people get settled in in San Francisco. The UK High Commission pays her to answer emails from mystified British people across the country who are totally confused by how freaky we Americans are. She explains Americans for a living, and she said that these days it was better to do that from home, where she didn’t have to actually see any Americans or talk to them.
I don’t have any illusions about Britain. America may be willing to trash its Constitution every time some Jihadist looks cross-eyed at us, but as I learned in my ninth-grade Social Studies independent project, the Brits don’t even
And the surveillance in Britain makes America look like amateur hour. The average Londoner is photographed 500 times a day, just walking around the streets. Every license plate is photographed at every corner in the country. Everyone from the banks to the public transit company is enthusiastic about tracking you and snitching on you if they think you’re remotely suspicious.
But Mom didn’t see it that way. She’d left Britain halfway through high school and she’d never felt at home here, no matter that she’d married a boy from Petaluma and raised a son here. To her, this was always the land of barbarians, and Britain would always be home.
“Mom, he’s just wrong. You of all people should know that. Everything that makes this country great is being flushed down the toilet and he’s going along with it. Have you noticed that they haven’t
“I know this all, Marcus. Believe me, I’m not a fan of what’s been happening to this country. But your father is —” She broke off. “When you didn’t come home after the attacks, he thought —”
She got up and made herself a cup of tea, something she did whenever she was uncomfortable or disconcerted.
“Marcus,” she said. “Marcus, we thought you were dead. Do you understand that? We were mourning you for days. We were imagining you blown to bits, at the bottom of the ocean. Dead because some bastard decided to kill hundreds of strangers to make some point.”
That sank in slowly. I mean, I understood that they’d been worried. Lots of people died in the bombings — four thousand was the present estimate — and practically everyone knew someone who didn’t come home that day. There were two people from my school who had disappeared.
“Your father was ready to kill someone. Anyone. He was out of his mind. You’ve never seen him like this. I’ve never seen him like it either. He was out of his mind. He’d just sit at this table and curse and curse and curse. Vile words, words I’d never heard him say. One day — the third day — someone called and he was sure it was you, but it was a wrong number and he threw the phone so hard it disintegrated into thousands of pieces.” I’d wondered about the new kitchen phone.
“Something broke in your father. He loves you. We both love you. You are the most important thing in our lives. I don’t think you realize that. Do you remember when you were ten, when I went home to London for all that time? Do you remember?”
I nodded silently.
“We were ready to get a divorce, Marcus. Oh, it doesn’t matter why anymore. It was just a bad patch, the kind of thing that happens when people who love each other stop paying attention for a few years. He came and got me and convinced me to come back for you. We couldn’t bear the thought of doing that to you. We fell in love again for you. We’re together today because of you.”
I had a lump in my throat. I’d never known this. No one had ever told me.
“So your father is having a hard time right now. He’s not in his right mind. It’s going to take some time before he comes back to us, before he’s the man I love again. We need to understand him until then.”
She gave me a long hug, and I noticed how thin her arms had gotten, how saggy the skin on her neck was. I always thought of my mother as young, pale, rosy-cheeked and cheerful, peering shrewdly through her metal-rim glasses. Now she looked a little like an old woman. I had done that to her. The terrorists had done that to her. The Department of Homeland Security had done that to her. In a weird way, we were all on the same side, and Mom and Dad and all those people we’d spoofed were on the other side.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Mom’s words kept running through my head. Dad had been tense and quiet at dinner and we’d barely spoken, because I didn’t trust myself not to say the wrong thing and because he was all wound up over the latest news, that Al Qaeda was definitely responsible for the bombing. Six different terrorist groups had claimed responsibility for the attack, but only Al Qaeda’s Internet video disclosed information that the DHS said they hadn’t disclosed to anyone.
I lay in bed and listened to a late-night call-in radio show. The topic was sex problems, with this gay guy who I normally loved to listen to, he would give people such raw advice, but good advice, and he was really funny and campy.
Tonight I couldn’t laugh. Most of the callers wanted to ask what to do about the fact that they were having a hard time getting busy with their partners ever since the attack. Even on sex-talk radio, I couldn’t get away from the topic.
