Chapter 1 #2
“Over a thousand,” I answer, remembering the crammed space and the wobbly desks.
It was a good school, and the teachers tried their best, though, just like in any other school, there were some bullies here and there.
We came from a huge variety of backgrounds, and it wasn’t rare to have financial issues.
Looking at Alexis’s classmates with their different shades of white faces and smug expressions, I know I’m going to be the exception. The one sticking out like a sore thumb.
This is why I liked my public school. I didn’t stick out.
I could sit in the back, away from everyone.
I never knew how to make friends on my own, so I was either alone or hung out casually with my classmates during lunch.
It’s so much easier to be by myself. No one will miss me when I transfer to Braxton, and I doubt anyone will be asking for me. It will be like I never existed.
Alexis flips through the pictures, telling me the age and hobbies of every person and the rumors surrounding them.
“This is Jenny Wilson. Her dad is this hotshot lawyer who makes all her parking tickets go away. She used to date Luke Davis, one of the football players, but then he dumped her in a text message while he was hooking up with Jennifer Harris. Like, at the same time. And guess what? Jennifer’s nickname is also Jenny. It was so messed up.”
I morph my face into the appropriate expressions, but it feels like I’m in a play, trying to be the person I was before. There’s nothing inside my soul that I can hold on to. Nothing she says that lights up any spark of feeling. It’s been this way for so long.
At first, I couldn’t cry. Not for the first few weeks. Then, just as suddenly, the morning I lost the ability to see colors, I broke down. Then the tears dried up, and in their wake was the hollowness. I’m not sad. I’m not angry. I’m not happy.
I’m nothing.
I mimic. I make myself show whatever emotion is needed depending on the person talking to me.
And when I’m on my own, I suspend myself back into the void.
It’s become so familiar; I don’t know who I was before it.
This numbness that overtakes my brain. The only light in the center of it all is the beaches of San Francisco and the redwoods of California.
The only real thing I’m dreaming about. That I want.
Because I think if I get away from here, if I wash New York off me and all the memories sticking to me, I can, maybe, become someone who feels again. Maybe I’ll see the colors in California.
Linda, Alexis’s mom, knocks on the door an hour later, interrupting Alexis’s detailed explanation of what happened at Ruby Rowell’s birthday party in July. Apparently, it changed the whole school dynamic.
“Ah, how are you?” Linda says sweetly when she sees me. She flicks a perfect curl out of her face and stares at me as if she’s performing an X-ray.
“Good,” I reply with a smile that feels like nothing on my lips.
“You’re staying for dinner, Jihad?” she asks.
I never thought of it much because I didn’t want to, but my name in her mouth has always sounded odd.
Like she’s intentionally mispronouncing it in case the very mention of it alerts the FBI.
She says Jee and then loses her bravery at the had part, turning it to Jeehaa.
As if the d is silent. Or she can’t pronounce it.
Or pretends she can’t. She wasn’t always like this, not when she lived in our building.
My name wasn’t something she was afraid of then.
Or maybe it always was, but my memories are distorted.
Despite her hawklike gaze and scarce smiles, I know she’s not bad. She visited Mama twice at the hospital when she was first diagnosed.
“Yes, please do!” Alexis exclaims, grabbing my arm. “We haven’t seen each other in so long!”
“Yes, do stay. We’d love to have you,” Linda says, allowing one small smile. “I made roast chicken knowing you were coming over today. You can eat chicken, right?”
I hesitate before nodding. “Is… is it halal?”
My insides constrict, feeling like I just embarrassed her with this question.
Even though she knows I eat only halal. This isn’t the first time I’ve come over to their house, and when they lived in our building, Mama and Linda used to go out together.
But it feels like I’m giving her brand-new information.
Linda blinks. “I don’t think so. I got it from the grocery store down the street. They don’t have halal, do they?”
I shake my head.
“Hmm.” Linda purses her lips. “Well, we have salad and bread. That works for you?”
My stomach is still queasy. “Yeah.”
“And what’s more important than food is you hanging out with Alexis, isn’t it?” She winks.
I nod again.
Alexis looks between us, and I can see the guilt and embarrassment in her expression. For some reason, it validates me. That I’m not overthinking this.
Alexis’s experience in my apartment is very different. When she went through a cucumber- and rice-hating phase in elementary school, Mama made her spaghetti every day and used the marinara sauce to sneak in her vegetables.
Linda tells us to come down in ten minutes and leaves, closing the door behind her.
Alexis looks sheepishly at me. “I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. I’m not hungry anyway.”
And it’s true.
“I told her, by the way,” Alexis continues. “She said she would make, like, a vegetarian dish if she had time.”
“It’s fine,” I repeat, sounding like a broken cassette. “You gotta show me the rest of the class.”
She grins. “Where were we?”
I nod at the photo of the football players huddled next to one another, posing for the camera.
“Ah, yes,” she says, and starts rattling off their names and if they’re rumored to be bad or good at sex. I space out, not following. Mostly because they all look the same in their uniforms.
“They’re not…” I say when she takes a deep breath. She looks at me quizzically. I clear my throat. “There are no Muslims at school, right?”
She crinkles her nose, thinking. “Nope. You’ll be the first.”
Thought so.
She notices my dejection and pats my arm. “You’ll have me. And Jenny, Nicole, and Hayley.”
I tilt my head. “Which Jenny? The original who dated Luke?”
She snaps her fingers. “The original. Good, you’re paying attention.”
We laugh, and for one tiny second, I don’t feel hollow inside.
“So everyone at school has known each other their entire lives?” I fold my legs toward my chest.
Alexis nods. “Some have been at Braxton since kindergarten, but most have been attending since middle school. Like me. Oh, there was one transfer at the start of high school.”
“Who?”
“Jamie Murphy. He moved from Wisconsin with his family in tenth grade. They work in tech or something else, I don’t know.”
I nod.
“But he’s so hot.” She sighs dreamily. “He’s got that corn-fed build like he spent his time there dragging logs across his family farm or something. His shoulders. Oh my God, don’t get me started on his shoulders!”
“I won’t,” I say, amused. “He’s a crush?”
She shrugs, batting her eyelashes. “Maybe. I mean, half the school has a crush on him. He’s…”
“Not like other boys?” I say dryly.
She chuckles. “No. He just has this charisma. When he talks to you, it’s like you’re the only one who matters. He gives his full and undivided attention. It’s… nice.”
“A good Midwestern boy,” I muse.
“Oh, yes. Always says his pleases and thank-yous.”
We fall quiet.
“I think that’s all.” Alexis closes her laptop. “We should head down for dinner.”
I nod, already planning to stay for only half an hour. Thankfully, the days are still long. I don’t want to go back when it’s dark. My fingers tingle, and I hide them in my pockets.
Alexis touches my arm, and I look at her. “Are you okay? Like, not just the colors. But… you know?”
I swallow hard. I’m not sure how to tell her about this void inside me.
I don’t want to be her weird friend at school.
I don’t want her to look at me like I might shatter at any second.
I want to be fun and interesting, even though I have no energy.
I’m sure Alexis knows she’s my only friend, and even in this friendship, there are things I can’t bring myself to say. To show.
I know there’s an unspoken divide between us. We live on two separate planets, and I don’t want to make the distance between us wider. I don’t see her as much as I want to. She has her own life, and I am a childhood friend who’s still running after her.
“Yeah,” I finally say with a smile that feels anything but genuine. “Everything’s okay.”
She pulls me into a hug. She smells like a strawberry. “This is going to be good for you, Ji. This year is going to change everything.”
I make it out of Alexis’s house within a half hour. The dinner was awkward with me, Linda, and Alexis engaging in small talk or sitting in silence. As soon as I step out the door, the air becomes sweeter. On the bus, I open the text chain I have with Amal.
Me: how’s baba gonna pay for the school?
She answers after a minute.
Amal: it’s none of your business
Me: yeah it is
My phone lights up, ringing.
“No, it’s not.” She sounds tired. It must have been a long day at the office. She’s an architect at a firm that doesn’t think breaks or sleep are basic human needs. “You’re seventeen. Please, just focus on school. Get the grades. And go to college. You’re not a parent.”
“Did you talk him into this?” I say, speaking in a mix of English and Arabic. “I’m doing fine, okay? I don’t think it’s right he should be spending thirty-something grand on this.”
Amal scoffs. “You’re not fine. And don’t you want to leave New York?
You know colleges on the West Coast will want excellent grades.
You… well… you have good grades. And you have your talent in drawing.
But you’re not in any extracurricular activities or anything like that.
You won’t stand out. Braxton can give you a leg up. ”
I chew my tongue. Amal is the only person I’ve breathed a word to about my plans to go to college out of state.
On the other side of the country. Baba still thinks I’m applying to NYU, and I know it would hurt him if he knew I couldn’t live at home anymore.
It feels like a far-fetched dream when getting to Opus all hangs on scholarships.
There’s no way I can afford an out-of-state college, but there is no place for my art like Opus.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
I can practically see my sister roll her eyes. “You’re changing the subject.”
“I don’t want to argue. It’s not like I have a say in this anyway.”
She seems to consider this for a second before saying, “Trying out a new recipe.”
“Where’s Marwan?”
Marwan is Amal’s husband. They met through a blind date, Muslim edition.
One of her friends set them up during the iftar the Muslim Student Association organizes every Ramadan.
Amal and I grew up with parents whose love for each other only grew stronger.
Who wanted us to find that love for ourselves one day, and so they weren’t surprised when Amal came home and told them all about the tall, nerdy boy who stole her heart with his knowledge of game programming.
That was back in the day when we had a life within the Muslim community.
Then the weight of the cancer took that away from us.
There was no time to go to meetups or to the masjid if not for prayer. Then one day, we were all alone.
Now after her marriage, Amal has moved to SoHo, where her ironclad working hours are a barrier to us seeing each other.
“Vacuuming,” she says. “It’s his turn to clean and mine to cook. That’s enough changing the subject.”
“You think I can leave now?” I murmur, closing my eyes, and I see myself barefoot on the beaches of San Francisco, a pink sunset bathing me in her glow. The gulls are crying, the water is rumbling, and I feel alive.
“Yes,” Amal says simply. “You’re wasting away here.”
“At least Baba will have you.” I can’t imagine him working at the gas station alone, coming back home to an empty apartment where Mama’s ghost haunts him and the echoes of Amal and me linger in the air.
“Yes,” she says, and her voice is a bit strained. Before I can ask what’s happening, she exclaims, “Crap. I burned the rice. I have to take care of this. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay, love you.”
She hangs up before saying it back, and I sigh, looking out the window. My skin itches, and I wish I could see the colors of the sunset. I take a picture of it so hopefully I can see it one day.
The bus reaches my stop, and I grab my bag, walking toward the front. As I pass, a man hisses out, “ISIS bitch.”
It’s a split second, but it shakes me to my core, and I nearly stumble.
I rush forward instinctively, worried he’ll grab my arm and twist it.
Or slam me down in the narrow aisle. Pull a gun and point it at me.
This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in blue New York. But it does. Blood… there was blood…
I’m off the bus, clutching my knees and breathing, but the air isn’t going in. There’s no room in my lungs for oxygen. They’ve shriveled like raisins, and I think I’m going to die.
People pass me, not one sparing me a glance, and those who do just raise their eyebrows and hurry on. My vision blurs, and I reach out to lean on a pole. The metallic smell sears my nose.
I’m okay. I’m okay, I keep chanting in my head. There’s no blood.
I think of everything I’ve read about panic attacks.
I close my eyes.
I force myself to breathe slowly. It doesn’t work at first, until it does.
My fingers dig into the metallic post, and I focus on that. On what I can touch and smell and feel.
My lungs expand. Oxygen finds its way.
I open my eyes and press my hands to my chest.
I don’t realize I’ve been shaking and crying until I’m back in my room with the door shut. The deep-boned trauma in my marrow is alive and painful.
I collapse onto my bed, wishing for the numbness to take over my brain. For the void to grab me by my ankles and wrists and drag me away down, down, down to where there is no fear, no pain, nothing. Just nothing.