Chapter 16
It’s been only a day since the picnic, but I’ve felt like a new Zahra since.
A braver, bolder, reborn Zahra. A Zahra who isn’t afraid to dream.
It’s as if I’m Ariel from The Little Mermaid , and the dashing prince kissed the girl—actually, I kissed him —to return my stolen voice.
After walking home with Nayim tonight, I sit at my desk and type up more of my novel, ignoring Amma’s warnings about staring at screens for too long or staying up too late. Several new chapters pour from my fingertips, quieting only when Nanu comes to bed, so the clacking keys don’t bother her.
It’s a book I’ve been working on since before Baba died. Struggling with for a long time. I’m shocked how quickly the story comes now. Before long, I somehow end up with forty thousand words of a manuscript.
A whole half!
Most of it is from before and probably not particularly good, but it feels so nice to be able to create anything after such a long time.
This progress, combined with my lack of sleep, persuades me to call out from work to visit Passaic County Community College during its open house on Monday. Mr. Tahir is so shocked, he doesn’t even complain about being left shorthanded. Before my friends can panic, or Nayim can think I’m avoiding him, I text them an update.
All of their encouragement keeps me from chickening out on the bus ride downtown, but I can’t help fidgeting once I reach Broadway, gripping the straps of my backpack, a pamphlet from the school crumpled in one fist, my dinosaur of a laptop inside the bag. A cheery welcome banner hangs over the glass door a few feet away, framed by bright red columns.
Nervousness makes my sneakered feet tap the sidewalk. More than once, I have to move over so another pedestrian can pass me.
I’m going in.
I am .
I just… need a minute.
Or maybe that minute is only giving me more time to doubt myself. My imposter syndrome sounds a lot like my mother. I grimace, recalling how she asked what kind of jobs an English degree would get for me when she read my acceptance letter from Columbia in the spring.
She didn’t say no, exactly, but she didn’t have to. The exorbitant cost to attend, the scholarship I lost since I could only study part-time, and the four years of splitting myself between school and a job… only to get a degree in a language I already spoke.
She didn’t think it was worth it. That I was worth it.
I didn’t want to worry her just to prove her right.
I’m so lost in the whirlpool of my fears that I don’t notice the tiny woman standing next to me until she says, “I suppose it is a nice building, but not so nice that I could look at it for four and a half straight minutes.”
“Wh-what?”
She frowns at the smartwatch on her wrist. “You’ve been looking at it for, ah , five minutes now.” Her dark eyes shoot up to my face. “Will you be coming inside or do you need more time to etch it into your memory? No judgment either way, dear.”
“N-no, I am.”
My eyes dart from the top of her head, which only reaches my ear, to the bottom of her feet. She’s dressed in a gray blazer, a matching skirt, and heels that do little to rectify her height situation, with a leather briefcase gripped in one hand, but neither her minuscule size nor her drab outfit nor even her youthful demeanor do her justice. She feels larger than life, somehow.
My gaze freezes at the lanyard and ID badge hanging from her neck, and I realize why. CECILIA LIU , it reads under the college’s logo, surrounded in the same bright red as the columns ahead. She’s a professor here, and oh God, what a first impression I must be making.
Professor Liu smiles at me. It’s friendly, but utilitarian. “Here for the open house?” I nod, unable to manage much else. Undeterred by my reticence, she continues, “Very well. I’m on my way there. You may as well come with me.”
She sets off at a brisk pace into the building, not giving me a chance to respond. My legs move of their own volition to catch up with her surprisingly quick strides, but I slow as our surroundings attract my attention.
The reception desk gives way to red walls lined with framed artwork created by past and present students, circling a much grander mural that displays the school’s name and its mascot. Inside some of the classrooms we pass along the way, there are plush beanbag chairs and circular tables strewn with art supplies.
“The child development center,” Professor Liu explains.
Farther down the hall, we enter what must be the main academic center. It’s teeming with potential students around my age and quite a few adults who must be going back to school after a long break. Waiting in the midst of them, between signs welcoming people to the open house, are peppy-looking students in their late teens or early twenties, with clip-on badges that read STUDENT GUIDES on their school apparel.
There’s a genial girl with cupcakes on her lanyard who waves at us, but before the professor can pass me off to her, I ask, “What do you teach, ma’am?”
Professor Liu stops in her tracks so fast, I almost bump into her. “I’m the co-chair of the English department. In fact, I’m due to give a presentation on degree requirements in five minutes.” She studies me. “Is that something you might be interested in?”
“Um, yes.” I nod so vigorously, she smiles. “I’d love to study English.”
“Then I’m the woman for the job,” Professor Liu says. “Follow me.”
We lope through linoleum halls past the rest of the campus tour to our destination. There’s a sign outside the lecture hall and an assortment of prospective students waiting within. I enter and seat myself at one of the long tables in the very back.
Professor Liu offers a nod as she passes. Beneath the steady weight of her regard, my shoulders unhunch and I sit up straight. One corner of her lips twitches in approval.
As she discusses the requirements for an English certificate with me and other potential students, I become completely engrossed. Some appear skeptical, flipping through the pamphlet to seek other options. But hearing Professor Liu discuss different genres of literature and fields of writing buoys me, particularly when I discover she’s going to be teaching the creative writing course in late summer and fall. My own pamphlet ends up littered with notes.
At the end of her session, I hover next to her desk while she packs. Without turning to me, Professor Liu says, “I hope that was enlightening.”
“Oh, er, it was. Thanks, Professor.”
She evaluates me, eyes shrewd. “You have something to say. Tell me.”
I suck in a deep breath, reminding myself: Be a braver Zahra. Be a bolder Zahra.
“My name is Zahra Khan,” I tell her. “I don’t know if I can do it next semester or even in the spring, but I’d like to enroll in your creative writing course someday.”
Now she smiles, pleased. “You’re a writer. I should have known.”
“C-can you tell?” I wonder, awed at the possibility.
She nods. “There’s something in the way we writers look at the world. I could tell as I watched you staking out the campus. At once observant and lost in your own head.”
We, she said.
My heart does a merry flip. Her words are a shot of daring in my veins. I bob my head. “That happens to me a lot. I, um, taught myself to write.”
“Very impressive,” she replies, eyes alight.
I’m not sure she’d feel the same way if she knew it was because a popular show pissed me off so much by fridging its only brown character that I ended up writing a hundred-thousand-word fanfic to rectify the loose ending and get my one true pairing together. That eventually led to more and more fanfics and a Wattpad account with original work.
“But I’d love to learn from you and other real teachers one day,” I tell her. “There’s so much I still want to know.”
“A hunger for learning is important for writers,” she agrees. “But what’s stopping you from enrolling in September? We have rolling admissions here, and you can sign up anytime.”
I lower my head, clenching my backpack straps tighter. “I don’t think I can afford it yet….” Not if Amma doesn’t pay me back. “But that’s okay. Hopefully by spring or the following fall, I’ll have finished my novel and be able to enroll so I can learn how to revise it.”
“You have a novel?” Her eyes go round, and now she sounds excited.
My cheeks flush. “It’s a work in progress. An incomplete first draft. No biggie.”
“My dear,” she replies, “we are all works in progress. I’m sorry to hear you can’t attend in the fall. It’s been ages since I had such a driven young writer in my ranks.”
“I’m sorry too,” I murmur. “But I will be back. I know it.”
For once, I genuinely believe it.
Once the summer goes by and Harun and I “break up,” I can take on more hours, save up again, get a second job if I must. By the time I need to start working less to attend school, we’ll have enough. We will.
Then I can take Professor Liu’s class.
“I know you will,” she says. “Until then, would you be willing to let me read any of your work? I’m off for a few weeks and have time to offer constructive feedback.”
My head jerks up. “Really? You’d do that, even though I’m not your student?”
“You will be,” she replies, “so of course I would.”
Before I can talk myself out of it, I pull out my laptop and share a copy of my manuscript with her on Google Docs, rambling all the while. “I’m super sorry in advance if there are lots of typos and plot holes. My feelings won’t be hurt if you end up not finishing. I once tried and failed to finish The Hobbit four times before deciding it just wasn’t for me, not that you have to suffer through my writing four times or anything, once is more than enough, and I’m no—”
A hand closing my laptop interrupts my babbling. I glance up to find Professor Liu grinning from ear to ear. “You truly are a writer, Miss Khan. I’ll be in touch.”
The words are at once dismissal and reassurance.
I skip out of her classroom and down the hall with a renewed pep in my step, feeling for the first time in a very long time—perhaps even ever —that my dream to be a writer someday isn’t out of the question.
Perhaps it’s time for this work in progress to become a final draft.