Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,39

sweatshirt, and huge gold hoop earrings. A skinny, good-looking kid with dark hair had an arm around her, wearing a red soccer jersey, grinning at whoever was snapping the picture.

The shock started small, somewhere at the bottom of Wara’s spine. But by the time it raced up her back, she nearly choked, sucking in a horrified gasp.

“Please give me the picture, Wara,” Paulo was saying with a tight smile, but Wara had frozen, realizing that she knew the face of the girl with ringlets in the picture. In fact, she knew that face so well she felt it was part of her own family. Paulo snatched the picture away and Wara felt the tent wall shimmer around her in waves of hot and cold.

“You’re Alejandro Martir!” she croaked. She stared at the face of the guy in front of her: square, coffee- colored jaw, pretty hazel eyes.

Those were the eyes! All seven of the Martir kids had them, inherited from their mother, Noly.

Wara’s jaw dropped, then snapped back shut. Paulo was blinking at her, obviously shocked. “Your sister, Nazaret,” she forced herself to say numbly, “is my best friend in Cochabamba.”

Paulo’s clear hazel eyes widened and then closed, very slowly.

His face confirmed everything.

13

olive green

IT CAN’T BE.

Wara really couldn’t believe it, couldn’t wrap her mind around this being anything other than the worst nightmare ever.

“You’re the brother…” she forced herself to say the awful words out loud. “The one who’s been missing.” She could see it now, that faded photograph on Nazaret’s white dresser, surrounded by threadbare teddy bears and little jeweled vials of nail polish.

It was him, that skinny kid from the missing brother picture. He was the same guy sitting next to Nazaret in the ice cream shop, arm slung around her shoulders.

And here with Wara in this tent, holding her prisoner.

Alejandro.

She couldn’t believe it. One of the Martirs was a criminal? Or a Muslim terrorist?

Paulo—no, Alejandro---was looking at her with deliberation, as if deciding whether it was worth insisting on the previous lie about his identity. Then he erased his pained expression and scooted closer to her. “Actually I go by Alejo. How is my sister?”

Wara was furious, horrified. “Why don’t you find out yourself?” she snapped at him, voice bordering on hysterics. “Your family has, like, adopted me in Cochabamba. They pray for you all the time. They’ve been wondering for years where you’ve been!” Now Wara was sputtering, and she tried to calm down. Her nerves were beyond frayed, and her hands trembled on her lap.

Nazaret’s brother looked stricken, a marked change to his former aloofness. “Nazaret has been doing really well, actually,” Wara glared at him. “Until now, because she’s going to find out that two of her best friends are dead! The good thing is, though, that it looks like she’ll never find out that her brother killed them. So I’m sure that someday, she’ll go back to being ‘fine’!”

Tears filled Wara’s eyes, and she felt furious for crying in front of this man. But she was also afraid. Nazaret’s brother or not, this guy had kidnapped her and bombed the bus. He hadn’t contacted his family in all these years. The fact that Wara knew the Martirs wasn’t going to keep Alejandro from killing her so she wouldn’t give away information about whatever he and his fellow terrorists were doing.

It wasn’t the first time she’d let that word float through her mind. Wara swiped at the tears with her sleeve and tried to control herself.

“Are you a terrorist?” she asked warily, fixing her runny eyes on Nazaret’s brother. Alejandro actually had the gall to draw back in surprise, screwing up his face as if offended by her insinuation.

“What? No!” he insisted, waving his hand at her. “We are not terrorists, ok?”

It could have been Wara’s overactive imagination, but Alejandro did not appear completely convinced of his own words. Brief memories crossed Wara’s brain of various news articles she’d read online recently, accusations from the United States that Bolivia was harboring fundamental Muslims and allowing them to use their country as a base for radical Islam’s cause. In fact, one of Bolivia’s former presidents had foreseen something similar when he commented, “Bolivia is going to be the next Afghanistan.”

She remembered the web page Noah had found that day in the coffee shop, the one about Islam being the only hope for Latin America. “I’m not sure I believe you, Alejandro,” she said.

Alejandro watched her guardedly. “Actually I go by Alejo. I really hate Alejandro.