CHAPTER FIVE PRESENT DAY
From his seat on the second step, Jesse waits patiently while I stare at him.
At this point, I could probably draw his eyes from memory. Steal Aida’s sketchpad and re-create the sooty, unfairly long lashes around his dark brown eyes. The half-moons of exhaustion shadowing them. Two eyebrows that curve down at the ends and a cut at his jawline where he’d cut himself shaving.
It’s dangerous, how misleading Jesse’s looks are.
On the outside, he might strike you as an angel.
Elegant hands kissed by tiny white scars.
Red knuckles chapped from the cold. A full, languid mouth.
Effortlessly messy black hair most of the male student body would trade their spare kidney to replicate.
Half the time, I think Jesse dresses like a rebel from an old sixties movie to overcompensate for how beautiful he is.
Most importantly, there isn’t a hint of orange to be found anywhere in his indolent gaze.
Another full minute ticks by. Jesse raises his brows. “Does it usually take this long?”
Never. The thing keeps to a tight schedule. Carefully, I say, “I don’t understand exactly how it works.”
If he’s immune, maybe other people are, too. Maybe Baba is.
Shaking the perilously hopeful thought loose, I cross my arms over my chest. “What do you think you know about what’s going on with me?”
“I think I know a lot.” Jesse shifts, long legs stretching over the steps. “Happy to break it down for you inside. These stairs are wet. My ass is numb.”
I gnaw on my lip. What harm can he really do with his shoelaces tied and his arms stuck in his jacket?
One last time. I will try hope one last time.
“Alright.” I throw out my hand to stop him when he rises. “Stick to your side of the room and don’t untangle your shoelaces.”
My room is barely bigger than an office. The options for hiding consist of my closet and under the bed, neither of which are particularly conducive to conversation. After a moment of thought, I push the dresser away from the wall and hunker behind it.
Jesse arranges himself at the farthest point in the room, which ends up being the head of my bed.
The sight is so bizarre it’s almost otherworldly.
Jesse Talbot lounging in my bed, arms tangled in his jacket, the laces on his work boots clumped into a massive knot. He rests his head against the wall.
His shoes are on my bed, I think, aggravated. I’ll need to wash the sheets while Baba’s asleep.
The walls groan under the rain. “Start talking,” I bark. Baba could be home any minute.
The command amuses Jesse. “Damn, who knew little cheer captain Mina Mansour had such a big bite?”
“Dance captain. For the last time, the cheerleading team is an entirely different extracurricular body. Different funding, different training, different rules—”
I cut myself off, shooting him my most scathing glare.
Jesse chuckles. “Bottle that glare back up, Sour Patch. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself.”
Sour Patch?
It takes me a beat to piece it together. Mansour, Man Sour, ha-ha. What a comedian. He knows my last name isn’t pronounced with hard vowels.
“Listen, if you’re just plotting some elaborate joke …” My voice wobbles, and I stop to collect myself. I will not break down in front of him. He already thinks I’m softer than a charred marshmallow.
Heaving a disappointed sigh, Jesse tips his head to the side. “Well, if you’re going to cry about it.”
The side door rattles, hinges whining beneath the wind.
“You’re cursed, Mansour.”
I blink. “Sorry? I think I misheard.”
“I doubt it.”
Oh … oh, no. I glance at the door, gauging the distance between myself and the exit. I never put much stock in the rumors about the Talbot family, but that was clearly a mistake. A curse? Like in Scooby-Doo?
At my strained silence, Jesse’s brows furrow. “Why are you acting so shocked? What the hell do you think that thing is?”
I wave my hand, accidentally knocking over a plastic bottle of strawberry champagne perfume. “I don’t know, some kind of ghost? Demon, maybe?” Our family isn’t religious, but I’ve watched enough horror movies to glean the general gist.
“Right. Look, can you come over here? I think it’s safe to assume your curse doesn’t affect me.”
My cramping calves readily agree with Jesse. My whole body has gone through the ringer, and the thought of flopping on my queen mattress is very, very tempting.
“Have it your way,” Jesse mutters. He maneuvers a hand into his pocket and pulls out a small, black object. With a flick of his wrist, a gleaming blade slides free. A switchblade.
I hurriedly check his eyes, but they’re still a flat, flinty black.
“Use this. If it takes me, do what you gotta do.”
Aghast, I sputter, “I’m not going to stab you!”
“Good. I’m not exactly in the mood to bleed out on a floral bedspread. But it’s there if you need it.”
Emerging from around the dresser, legs shaking like a newborn foal’s, I hop onto the foot of my bed. When I refuse to take the switchblade, Jesse leaves it next to my hand. Up close, the force of his full attention is nearly too intense to bear. I try not to squirm.
“Do you wear sunscreen?” he asks, apropos of nothing.
Um. “Yes?”
“You have a lot of freckles.”
I touch my temple, the freckle point of concentration. “I napped in the sun a lot when I was a kid.” Mama thought it was hilarious. Though she named me after a jasmine flower, she wasn’t expecting I would soak up the sun every chance I could.
“Huh.” Jesse taps the handle of the switchblade. “Tell me what happened over spring break.”
I play with the fringe at the bottom of my bumblebee sweater.
A giant wad of apprehension sticks to the roof of my mouth, leaving my tongue flat and boneless.
Outside, the storm howls. The paltry rays of sunshine from this morning are long gone.
Ward residents will be unplugging all their appliances in case the electricity falters and fries their wirings.
Calls will be made to family to check in, jokes exchanged about how this isn’t a Ward Wailer, it’s practically swimming weather!
Tucked away in a two-story house on Eighth Street, I glance at the rain and wonder why standing in a storm seems a thousand times safer than my own bedroom.
“You can’t repeat it to anyone,” I say. I can’t believe I’m about to share my worst mistake with Jesse of all people. But I have to tell him, don’t I? If there’s even a chance he can help? If he knows about the possessions, maybe he knows how to stop them.
Jesse makes a crossing motion over his heart.
“Three weeks ago, I told my dad I was camping with a friend and went to Masr instead.” At his puzzled frown, I clarify. “Masr means Egypt in Arabic.”
Rather than lighten the weight pressed stubbornly over my heart, recounting the tale only lodges it deeper. I force myself to tell Jesse everything: how my parents left Masr when my mother became pregnant, how they never spoke about their parents or their childhoods.
“When people like Mr. Clay look at me, they see Masr. All my life, I was defined by a country I never even knew. Every time I asked Mama or Baba questions about our history, they’d change the subject.
” I tug on my fingers one by one. A habit I had developed to replace chewing on the ends of my curls.
Before, whenever I would start pulling at my fingertips, Alex would gently take hold of my hand and draw my knuckles to his lips.
“Baba hates Mama’s side of the family. I mean, like, seriously despises the whole lot.
Mama herself rarely talked about them. I think they’re super rich—the kind of wealth that owns a fourth of the country or something. ”
Baba’s bizarre anger to any mention of Mama’s family only spurred my curiosity. Hatem Mansour isn’t a man prone to dramatic fits of emotion. I’ve seen him show less reaction after getting doused by a cup of scalding coffee.
“My mom died when I was nine, during a visit to Masr. Her first visit.” I still remember the day in brutal, painstaking detail.
Trying to make a dress out of stained bed linens in the living room while SpongeBob played on the television.
Fishing out the pink animal crackers from the bag and hiding the rest under the coffee table.
I fancied myself a seamstress, using the measuring tape I found in the garage to snip and fold the linens into a ballgown.
I heard Baba make a sound from the kitchen.
I’ll never forget that sound. A hoarse, guttural cry, torn straight from the depths of his soul.
I rushed into the kitchen to find him on his knees, forehead pressed to the heels of his hands.
He wasn’t crying, wasn’t breathing. He’d gone still as stone, utterly unresponsive to my nervous touch to his shoulder.
The phone dangled from the cord, a tinny voice speaking on the other side.
“A car accident in Tanta, they said. Funerals work differently in Masr, so her body was prepared and buried the next day.” In less than twenty-four hours, I went from having a mother and semi-functional family to asking Baba a question three times because he forgot I was in the room.
Jesse’s still listening. I know I shouldn’t, know it’ll only make me seem unhinged, but the words rush out before I can stop them.
“The thing is, my mom landed at Borg Alexandria Airport. I just don’t understand how my mother was near Tanta unless she was on her way to Cairo. She doesn’t even like Cairo.”
I chance a glance at Jesse. I almost never talk about Mama, even to my friends. The pity rakes poison under my skin, makes me get overly bubbly and cheerful to compensate. Look at me, well-adjusted Mina Mansour. Save your sorries. Save your sympathetic smiles.
But pity isn’t what I find lingering in Jesse’s gaze. He waits for me to continue, a subdued understanding in his silence.
I forget sometimes, that under all the different rumors, is a single truth: Jesse lost his mother, too.