Chapter 33 Navy Blue
Navy Blue
I lie awake in bed, my brain churning through thought after thought.
Jamie and I talked for a long time until sleep laced his voice, and he mumbled his words before snoring quietly. I smiled when I heard him breathing softly. The sky was a lovely periwinkle then, my room flooded in blue hues, and it felt like a moment outside of time.
It felt like my color.
But now, I’m thinking of the days ahead.
There’s no pain in my heart over what they did, because it didn’t end with my dignity in shambles.
Despite everything they tried to do, I still won.
I’m breathing. I’m alive. And for brief moments, my murals are all over the city.
This school is not the end of my story. This year isn’t the final brushstroke on my canvas.
My black eye will fade, and the pain will disappear.
But I will be here. I have so many years ahead of me.
And in each one I will be looking for Mama, looking for myself.
My heart thrums in my chest at all the possibilities laid out before me.
At what Jamie says becoming a possibility. My art laid out all over the world. Murals I would paint by my own hands rather than through a sketchbook. My name no longer a whisper but a roar.
It could happen. It could.
Rolling to my side, I take out my phone and open the last text-message chain between me and Alexis. The keyboard is alight, waiting for what I’ll type, and I try a couple of sentences before backspacing.
Closure from this friendship will be its own trial. I’ll always be reaching for it, but it’ll never be there, like a phantom limb. It makes me feel queasy; I know in my head she was no friend, but my heart still hurts.
It was Jamie who showed me how I’m a priority. Made me realize I’m important. And because of that, I need to fight back.
I’ve barely slept a wink when my alarm rings for Fajr. I pray and call Amal without thinking it through.
She picks up on the fifth ring.
“What?” she says, voice hurried, and I hear the snap of her shoes on the floor. “I have an appointment. Can we talk later?”
“No, we can’t.” I don’t sound like myself. It’s an out-of-body experience, and I’m watching someone who looks like me, sitting in the middle of my room with her earphones. “I need to talk to you.”
Amal stops walking. “Okay. Let me cancel the appointment. I’ll call you in a minute.”
The minute stretches on forever and ends in the blink of an eye.
I pick up and she says, “What happened?”
Warmth spreads over me and tears prick my eyes.
I tell her everything that happened, taking moments to gather myself and breathe.
Amal listens and doesn’t interrupt me. I tell her the murals in New York are mine because of the blessing our great-aunt left for us.
She’s stunned, doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t try to challenge it.
My voice breaks when I detail what happened to me with Mason and Adrian.
I even tell her I think Adrian may have assaulted me by my locker, but I’m not sure. Amal’s silence becomes deadly.
“That’s all,” I say, and a load of bricks I didn’t realize I was carrying on my shoulders falls.
“That’s all?” Amal repeats in a strange tone, and I think she’s crying. “That’s all.”
“I’m okay,” I whisper.
“No, you’re not.” I hear a low thud like she sat on the floor. “I can’t—this fucking school.”
“Don’t swear,” I joke, and she lets out a choked laugh.
She takes in a deep breath. “All right. Do you want my help, or do you know what you’re going to do?”
I tell her my plan, and she hums in agreement.
“That could work. But it could also lead to a lot of unwanted attention on you.”
“InshAllah, I’ll be accepted to Opus and won’t have to deal with it for long. In any case, I’m visiting you in June.”
“Really?” Amal exclaims. “Oh my God. Okay. I’m booking your and Baba’s flights right now.”
“Wait!” I say, laughing. “Don’t you want to check with Baba first?”
“Fine. But I’m calling your asshole principal.”
I groan. “What good will that do?”
“It’ll make me feel better,” she says fiercely. “He can take his stupid monocle and shove it up—”
“Oookay, that’s enough.” I glance at the clock. It’s nearly time to go to school. My phone lights with a text from Audrey, and I smile. “I should get dressed. I’ll tell you how it goes.”
“I’ll tell you how it goes,” she replies, and then her voice softens. “I love you. And I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
I don’t want to cry. Not now.
“You’re here now.”
Baba noticed my black eye during the weekend. I didn’t have it in me to tell him the truth yet. Telling Amal was more than enough for me, so I said I hit a pole while walking. He didn’t look like he believed me, but didn’t press any further.
For the rest of the weekend, I spend my time healing bit by bit and getting my thoughts together. Still going to school knowing Jamie won’t be there feels different. He sent me a message apologizing for going to sleep on me on Friday, and I told him I recorded his snoring for blackmailing purposes.
Jamie: wait I’ll send you a higher quality snoring dot mp3 audio tonight
It makes me laugh.
There are fewer reporters by the school today, which is still good. Even one is enough.
But when I approach the gate so the security guard, a burly man in his fifties with an oversize newsboy hat, will let me in, he stops me. “You’re wanted at the principal’s office.”
He darts furtive looks at the reporters, worried whether they heard him or not.
I nod. This makes my life easier.
The school is in a somber mood, not much of the usual loud chatter that I heard the first morning here. Could be the looming AP exams, could be what happened yesterday.
As soon as the administrator sees me, she gestures for me to knock on Dr. Mérieux’s office door.
“Come in,” he says, sounding tired.
His expression doesn’t change when he sees me, and he gestures for me to sit. His office still looks like it always did. The old books, the mahogany shelves.
“I’m sure you know why I called you,” he begins.
I feel nothing of the anxiety or fear from when I was first here. I don’t feel like a lamb sitting in front of a lion. There’s no embarrassment or shame at my nuisance of an existence. And I know this feeling will come and go in waves. But for now, I hold on to it.
I am brave.
“Yes,” I say in a clear voice. “Because of the price Mason and Adrian paid for what they did to me.”
I didn’t bother applying foundation to my black eye this morning.
His gaze flickers to it, and a sliver of trepidation flashes on his expression.
“You didn’t report it.” He folds his hands in front of him. “So you must pardon me if I have trouble believing you.”
I shrug. “I’ve reported the other stuff they did, and you didn’t believe me. So why should I report this one?”
“And that’s why you decided to take justice into your own hands? Goaded Mr. Murphy to ‘exact punishment’” he says, using air quotations.
He’s giving me a way to take blame for this. And I would for Jamie. But I won’t let Dr. Mérieux get away with it. I won’t let the school make me its personal punching bag. I won’t let my future pay the price.
“There were multiple witnesses who saw what Mr. Murphy did to those two boys,” he continues, emboldened by my silence.
“But Mr. Murphy has a spotless record. Frankly, I’ve never seen him in this office, and his teachers have nothing but glowing reviews.
So do his peers. But you”—he gazes down at the papers in front of him—“abrasive, rude, unfriendly, and not very bright. Most of all, forgettable by your teachers.”
My skin itches, and I want to scratch it off. I doubt my teachers said any of that.
“Who said that?” I ask.
“Pardon?”
“Which teachers said that?” My stomach hurts from speaking above a whisper. “Because I have excellent attendance. I answer every question they ask me, and I ace my quizzes.”
He peers at me, annoyed. “Not everything is as it seems. We looked into your background before you were admitted to school. There were no red flags from your old school. Your father has held a job since you’ve been living here, albeit a… low-paid one, and with your mother passing away—”
“Murdered,” I interrupt, my blood heating.
He lowers his chin to stare at me. “Excuse me?”
“My mother was murdered in a hate crime.” I hold his stare despite how erratic my heartbeat is. “She didn’t pass away. She was murdered.”
He shifts in his seat, eyes narrowed, and there’s a slight discomfort in the way he’s pulling his lips together.
“All in all,” he says, as if I hadn’t said a word, “I felt this school would be a second chance for you. I thought we’d be doing good letting you in.
Your father boasted about you and your artistic talent.
Showed me a couple of examples of what you drew.
But now I know these were just the ramblings of a parent.
You’ve made a mockery of this school with the mural you drew.
Yes, Miss Williams told me what she overheard what you said. ”
I knew she’d tell him, but this still feels like a knife to the heart.
He looks vindicated at whatever my expression is.
“Because of this, I have no choice but to suspend you as well until the board decides whether to expel you or not.”
He waits, and I realize he’s expecting me to beg. He has nothing but Alexis’s word, which is why the police aren’t here.
“All right.” I still feel hollow, even though I expected this. It’s incredible how knowing something will happen never translates to how you feel about it when it actually happens.
“I was told Nicole will be filing a restraining order against you,” he says, and I think he’s trying to get a rise out of me, but this just makes me want to laugh.
It dawns on me that anger has its moments, but so does being calm. Anger was justified when Jamie used it against Mason and Adrian. But in Dr. Mérieux’s office, my calm is maddening him.
“Will I still be taking finals?” I ask, and he looks befuddled at me not caring about what he said.