…whose child is best friends with your own is picked up on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing.

We were all mystified when we got the news.  People were confused and outraged that something like this could happen in our neighborhood.  Everyone kept talking about how Clint was such a sweet quiet boy who never showed any signs of anti-social behavior.  Straight A student with a free ride to university, he was the main reason why my son was able to graduate with honors, with long nights of studying and tutoring.

Phil was taken it hard.  Nobody wanted to talk to him really.  The police questioned him, wondering if he was connected somehow.  His wife left him, angry about the media circus their life has become.  I felt bad for him.  He’d always been helpful, lending me a hand whenever I needed to fix or move something.  It was hard to watch.

All the neighbors wanted to know what led up to it.  Nobody had seen Clint for days now and rumors were flying.  He was shipped off to a government facility.  He was being tortured for information.  He was already dead.  He’d escaped and was now hiding with an anarchist group plotting their next attack.

My son was taking it the hardest though.  He refused to come out of his room for days.  It was devastating for him to learn something so horrible about his best friend.  All the suspicions on him didn’t help.  Lots of people thought he was in on it too.  Which was ridiculous, really.  He would never go along with something like this.  Then again, I suppose everyone thought the same thing about Clint.

The only thing I wondered at the end of the day.  One unasked question I didn’t dare voice.  How in the hell did my plans got into his backpack?  Now I have to start over from scratch while the law watches over us even closer.  This doesn’t make things easier, but the job must be done.  The establishment must fall, even if I have to die to do it.

Behind the Random: Not much to say on this one.  The twist came to me just a few minutes before I started writing it and it feels a little obvious.