Chapter 10 Maya #2
I manage to finally get everything unpacked and put away, shoving my old football shirt to the very back of my wardrobe, where it will never, ever see the light of day again.
Unpacking, sorting through my belongings and going out with a purpose to my day at least seems to put a smile on my parents’ faces.
Our dinners become less punctuated with awkward silence and tension, where nobody deigns to speak a word for fear of upsetting me, and more like the way they used to be.
We actually speak to each other about what we’ve been up to, now that I actually have been up to something more than sulking in my bedroom, feeling sorry for myself.
Laila still comes to every practice a little distracted.
She’s seemingly the weakest of all the players, but I’m not sure if I totally believe that she is weak.
Her heart just doesn’t seem to be in the game.
Instead, every chance she gets she sneaks glances at her phone, but she doesn’t even seem happy about that.
After practice one day, I ask her to stay behind, and as the rest of the team slink away, she comes up to me, a pink flush colouring her cheeks.
‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asks, her voice meek. She doesn’t look at me, instead toeing the grass with her football boots.
‘No, you did nothing wrong.’ I feel a tug at my heart at the idea that I’ve made her think she has. ‘I was just wondering … if everything was OK. Your heart doesn’t really seem to be in football.’
Laila shrugs, not giving anything away. I know that I can’t force her to tell me anything. Maybe her parents are forcing her to be on the team, and she really doesn’t like the game. Even though I don’t believe that’s true.
I’m about to dismiss her when her phone buzzes loudly in her pocket. She freezes, her shoulders tensing. But it’s not the nervousness of someone who’s been caught with a phone she’s not supposed to have. It’s something else.
Laila finally looks at me, barely, out of the corner of her eye.
‘Sorry … I know I shouldn’t have it on during practice,’ she says.
I frown. ‘It’s OK. Were you waiting for an important message?’
Laila shrugs again, but there’s still a terseness in her demeanour.
‘If something is wrong, you can tell me,’ I say.
‘I’m fine,’ Laila insists. ‘Can I go?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ I offer her a smile.
She shuffles off and I take a deep breath. There’s definitely something wrong, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to figure out what it is.
I clear up our corner of the park and begin to make my way back home slowly, all the while thinking about what I should do. I take out my phone, navigating over to Instagram. A bunch of the girls from the team have started following me, even though I’m barely active on it anymore.
A quick scroll through my follower page leads me to Laila’s account.
It’s nothing out of the ordinary: there are pictures of Laila with her friends, grinning at the camera, posed pictures with her family, and even a couple of shots of the Westbrook football team.
I click onto one of them, smiling at the posed picture of the team in their matching kits, grinning from ear to ear.
But when I scroll down to the comments, my stomach drops.
Girls suck at football!!
Such an ugly uniform!
Are Muslims even allowed to play football?
All comments from what seems to be anonymous accounts.
They’re the same kinds of comments that I see about me, though some of mine are more personal.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The internet can be a terrible place, especially when you’re a woman.
And especially when you’re a young girl.
It probably doesn’t help that Laila is one of two brown girls on the team.
An overwhelming feeling of sadness settles into my stomach.
I’m at even more of a loss now as to what I should do. How can I help Laila deal with internet bullies, when I can’t even deal with my own?
My thoughts are interrupted when I spot a familiar figure in the distance.
I blink, wondering if I’m seeing her because I’ve been thinking about her so much since the last time we ran into each other.
But no, it’s definitely Dina. She’s dressed in a T-shirt and joggers, trying to shift a bag full of shopping into the basket of her parked bike.
I freeze on the spot, watching her for a little too long.
I know that I should look away, make a run for it before Dina notices me, but it’s like my legs have suddenly forgotten how to walk.
All I can do is take Dina in, properly for the first time.
How her black hair falls across her face, the wrinkle of her brow as she concentrates on budging everything into place.
As if she can sense me, her eyes snap up to meet mine. Surprise registers on her face. For a moment, the two of us just stare at one another, my heart beating so loud in my chest that I’m surprised everyone around us can’t hear it.