Hollow Fires: Part III

I’d been silent, listening to him go off on editorial responsibility and slipshod management and inappropriate pranks and accountability.

A wave of annoyance passed over Hardy’s face as he narrowed his eyes at me, making the wrinkles on his forehead even more prominent.

“Don’t play coy with me, young lady. This is not how I hoped to start the winter quarter, but here we are. No surprise that you’re involved with this mess.”

She was a new teacher and didn’t have tenure.

And Hardy had the uncanny ability to make everyone around him uncomfortable, no matter how big or small the crowd.

I didn’t mean for him to glare at my scuffed Docs, ripped jeans, and blue-and-green-plaid flannel shirt, which he did, without amusement.

But perhaps this was a way to create drama. To stir some cancel culture fervor.

“The site doesn’t go back up until it’s been scrubbed and appropriate content is put up and approved by me. Have I made myself clear, Ms. Mirza? Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go deal with what I can only assume is a barrage of parent phone calls about this.”

After my column on the administration last semester, he’d called me a “thorn in his side.” He was not big on being subtle.

News stations edited and spliced the footage to make it seem suspicious.

His dad had been a translator for the American military; Jawad and both his parents were American citizens. But that didn’t matter. They weren’t from here. That was enough for haters, for xenophobes, for the alt-right.

I know what you’re insinuating. Like all the people who called me a racist.

We bury our dead within twenty-four hours, she'd explained, after we cleanse the body and shroud it in clean cloths.

It’s delusional trolls spinning conspiracy theories about pizza places and kidnappings and female presidential candidates.

I dug my heels into the uneven wooden floor, in the well-worn grooves from all the students before me.

I’ll talk to IT. Maybe they can figure out where that screed was posted from.

In a 2018 update of a declassified, still heavily redacted 2006 report, the FBI found an alarming increase in systematic attempts by the KKK and neo-Nazis to infiltrate law enforcement and attain elected office by “passing” for mainstream by hiding their racist ideology.

“Infiltration or recruitment,” the FBI notes, “can lead to investigative breaches and can jeopardize the safety of law enforcement sources and personnel.”

Further, the FBI warns that local police departments must be on the lookout for ghost skins, who have been trained to avoid overt displays of their beliefs so that they can covertly advance a white supremacist agenda.

Well...when I Googled, it seemed like the phrase ‘ghost skin’ was mostly used for neo-Nazis or KKK who infiltrated law enforcement or military.

I tried to come up with some witty bon mot or scathingly sarcastic remark, but all I got was cotton mouthed.

I tried to come up with some witty bon mot or scathingly sarcastic remark, but all I got was cotton mouthed.

•“Free speech” diatribe

•Possible member of a white supremacist org? Or posers?

•Angry at social justice/multicultural curriculum

The hack was on Monday, and it was now Thursday; it was already old news to everyone besides us—the few, the nerdy, the journalistically inclined.

My story got returned with the words NOT RELEVANT scrawled across the front page in red Sharpie, like his words were bleeding into mine.

“Besides our Ghost Skin maybe being a nihilist, I’m not sure,” Usman said.
“Nihi-what?” Rachel asked the question I was thinking.
“Nihilist.” Usman took in our blank faces. “A person who believes existence is useless and everything sucks, so destruction without any purpose is necessary. Did none of you take philosophy last year?”

The school admin hasn’t been keen to talk to me, so I couldn’t get them to verify.

Safiya: It was surreal. And pretty impressive, considering the chattering teeth. [chuckles]
Rachel: [pauses, sighs loudly] It was so brazen. So stealthy.

Almost daring to be caught, like mocking the school’s incompetence.

And Hardy getting the custodians to block everyone’s view of it, making them scrub it off so fast. Before the police even came? I don’t think he cared about how traumatizing it was; he didn’t want anything marring his beautiful, perfect school. Or his reputation.

Now, a few days later, there’s a red swastika spray-painted on the facade of our school.

Maybe I’m too cynical. Too hard. Maybe it’s ridiculous for a seventeen-year-old to be so pessimistic and angry.

Meanwhile at DuSable Prep we have a state-of-the-art media center donated by a media mogul, and multiple nurses, and my biggest class this year has fifteen students in it.

I posted that renegade column and walked right out of school. I knew I was going to get suspended anyway, so why give Hardy the pleasure of doing it to my face?

It was chaos in the halls, everyone talking about that swastika, teachers trying to corral students back into classrooms.

My parents may be on the quiet side, but their eyes are wide open. They were the ones who taught me about complicity and finding the courage to speak up.

She had a smile on her face, and her navy-blue chiffon scarf was gently drawn over her shoulders and around her salt-and-pepper bun.

One of my favorite things to do when I was helping around the store was to refill the tea testers—the small round containers that held a couple teaspoons of loose leaf tea so customers could take a whiff. After a while they would lose some potency, and my parents always liked them strong.

If any customer was willing to listen, he’d wax on about, say, different types of Darjeeling teas.

Why his recommended temperature for steeping a fresh first flush was lower (195 degrees) than a later first flush (205 degrees). The oxidation! The bitterness! And how steeping his beloved Darjeeling for over five minutes was a crime against tea tradition.