search, and that given the state of your house and the disappearance of your family, foul play is suspected,” she said. “At least we’re not in Morocco any more, but I mean...”
“We’re bounty now! There’ll be bounty hunters! Like Boba Fett!”
“The police will definitely get it if they can. That’s a lot of money back home, but it’s a hell of a lot of money over here. The cops would never let Boba Fett even try to claim the reward. We’ll have to watch our asses. Keep an eye out for cameras.”
“Shit,” I said. “People find missing kids all the time.”
“Well, and a lot of kids stay missing, too.”
“Because they got murdered or whatever. Christ. If we—”
“Anyway, we’re not kids. We’re adults.”
“You’re still a kid. And I’ve only been, technically, an adult for three fucking months! Rutger fucking sold us out,” I said. “We didn’t say it before. But it was him.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Yes necessarily,” I said, stopping to face her, too close, watching as she backed up. “He was the only one who knew you weren’t just going on a business trip. And he’s the only one who would report it to the police. And that’s why we got caught at the goddamn airport, and again in Fes.”
“Oh, so it couldn’t have been buddy in the blue jacket?”
“He couldn’t even talk! He was dead!” I spluttered.
“If it was Rutger, he was just doing what he thought was right. We didn’t say that before, either.”
“Who cares? He promised. We all promised. You made him promise. And he said yes. And now we’re worth money. He broke his promise. Not breaking your promise is the whole point of making one!”
“What do you want me to do about it?” she snapped, her eyes bright with tears. “It’s done!”
“I want you to say you were wrong for once! That you trusted the wrong person!”
“We both did!”
“I never trusted him!”
“It’s done! All right? Will you just shut up, because it’s done!”
“How about you don’t tell me to shut up again, and we could maybe have a civilized conversation about this?”
“How about you try to understand something about him?” she shouted. “Like, I’m sorry that you never liked him, that you never trusted him, but you don’t know anything about him. Do you even know what it meant for him to—to leave his family, and come work for a six-year-old? Not just personally, but I mean how that looked to his parents, how that looked to the other students, his professors. Everything! And for him to come with me after succeeding year after year, acing all his entrance exams, getting into the university, getting his PhD, and then being homeless, do you know what that means? They ask him about it in interviews and he always just says, ‘I could no longer live at their house, I could no longer,’ and his face, Nick, his face is like...”
“What do you know about any of that? And who cares what they do back home? You can’t take your country with you when you go!”
“I suppose you’d know a lot about that! You were born in Canada!”
“And what does that have to do with him selling us? Please explain, because clearly you got saddled with the dumb guy again! Like always! Why don’t you just get rid of me and do this on your own? Why did you let me come with you? Why did you even ask me to come?”
“Why do you think?”
Someone from another house shouted something even I could understand, demanding that we either take it inside or shut up, and the bang of their shutters was like a pair of scissors cutting off the fight. I stared at her for a second, chest heaving just as hers was. I knew it. I knew I was a liability rather than an asset. She hadn’t brought me along because she thought I could help. Not even to keep me ‘safe.’ She just wanted me to do what I was told, like always.
“All right,” I said after a second. “Let’s go.”
“Fine.”
I had to trot to keep up with her, our shoes still silent on the cobbled street, surrounded by low graceful one- and two–storey houses with geraniums spilling out of their windows behind brightly-coloured curtains. Dozens of dark doors nestled under curved and carved arches, some hosting small kids that waved at us as we passed, unafraid. The air smelled of frying food and the leaves of the low, grey-green trees lining the street. It was so