CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE PRESENT DAY
“How do you know it wasn’t a dream?” Jesse asks, drawing his boot up onto the seat.
He balances on the back of the bench, his boots landing next to my thighs.
The morning breeze batters us, coiling around my puffy pink sweater and seeping through the seams. Brown leaves shake loose from the trees whispering above.
“I could feel it. It was like I was in the house with them.” I draw my sleeves over my knuckles.
My cheeks redden from the cold, and it isn’t lost on me how completely out of place I must seem next to the harshly gorgeous, leather-clad Jesse.
Neither of us bothered to attend class today (“Maybe miracles are real,” Jesse said when I announced I was ditching, proceeding to dramatically fall to his knees in the middle of the sidewalk), but Rainie had threatened to show up at my house if I didn’t show proof of life.
Meeting them for lunch in the school quad was our diplomatic middle ground.
There was no question of whether or not Jesse would join me. The incident in the mortuary had clearly spooked him more than he was letting on, because he hadn’t left my side since this morning.
Teta—Nadine’s mother—was wrong, I think bitterly. Mama raised a butterfly after all. Iridescent and empty-headed, fluttering desperately after others. I foolishly landed on Jesse’s shoulder, and he’s borne the weight of my problems ever since.
“So you’re saying your mother killed your grandmother at the same door that opened during your visit? And you still don’t remember what you saw behind the door?”
“You think I wouldn’t tell you if I remembered what was behind the door?” I snap. The bandage on my head shifts, and I smooth the sticky edges back down. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Jesse’s knee knocks into my shoulder, and I glance back to find him frowning. “You know this isn’t forever.”
I almost laugh. In what world would anyone think Jesse Talbot would be the one encouraging me to be more positive?
Nadine Haikal was a completely different person than Nadine Mansour. When my mother left my grandmother to die in front of that accursed door, she’d left her old self behind, too. Two dead women, but only one kept going to start a new life here in Ward.
“I was born the same night my grandmother died.” I’ll never forget the seething hatred in Khalto Safa’s eyes as she stared at my mother. But she didn’t stand a chance against Mama, not then. Not until Nadine Mansour flew to Masr nine years later.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” I ask. Toneless. “My mom didn’t die in a car accident in Tanta. Someone hurt her.”
A Haikal can only end in blood.
“Or something,” he murmurs.
What I can’t understand, what I’ve been unable to stop thinking about since my dream, is why Mama went back. She willingly returned to Khalto Safa and the Haikal villa, despite the fate she must have known awaited her.
Why?
Reading my mind, Jesse taps his backpack. “At least the shadow means we have another entry in your mom’s journal. It might give us more answers.”
“For once,” I mutter.
The bell sounds, scattering my attention to the flood of students entering the quad.
“The graduation speech tryouts are at one today, right?” Jesse asks.
I narrow my eyes. “Yes. How did you know?”
He hops off the table, dusting himself off. “You’ve only forced me to listen to you practice half a dozen times. I checked to see when my torment would end.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m not trying out, so you won’t have to listen to any more speeches.”
Jesse ignores this momentous news in favor of tapping at his phone. “I’ll see you after tryouts.”
“Didn’t you hear me? I’m not trying out.”
He strides away. Over his shoulder, he calls, “One o’clock!”
He must have helped himself to an extra scoop of delusional this morning.
As soon as Jesse hops the fence, my friends emerge alongside the flood of students leaving for lunch.
Lucia spots me first, and her features slacken with surprise before rearranging themselves into a beaming smile.
Rainie is busy with her phone, maneuvering without looking up, but Aida maintains a hand on her shoulder to prevent her from walking into a beam.
Lucia throws her arms around my shoulders, nearly knocking us to the ground. “I am so, so glad to see you. When Rainie said you were coming, I didn’t believe her.”
Aida takes a seat across from me, spreading her lunch in its usual configuration. From left to right, it goes drink, meal, dessert, sketchbook.
“Lucia, could I see Mina’s shoulder for a sec?” Rainie says.
Lucia and I exchange a bewildered glance. Rainie isn’t exactly the hugging type.
The instant Lucia’s arms are back at her sides, Rainie pinches my shoulder.
“OW!” I holler. “What was that for?”
She pinches me again, this time right next to my armpit. I flail, smacking at her torso.
“Why did Talbot text me to say you’re not planning on going to tryouts?”
My jaw drops. That traitor!
“What?” Lucia gasps. “Mina, you’ve been wanting to speak at graduation since we were freshmen.”
“I would blame Talbot, but I don’t think this one’s on him,” Rainie adds. “What’s the deal?”
“You love speeches. You’re practically a walking three-part structure,” Lucia agrees. “What changed your mind?”
“How about you guys leave Mina alone?”
Three heads swivel to Aida. She doesn’t flinch, intent on sticking her straw into her strawberry banana juice box.
“Do you think she should skip tryouts?” Rainie crosses her arms over her chest.
“I don’t care about tryouts. I don’t care about graduation, either.” The straw successfully impales the container, and Aida immediately clamps the end between her teeth.
“But Mina does,” Lucia argues. She turns back to me. “At least, you used to.”
I dig my knuckles into my eyes, leaning my forehead against the flat of my palms. In an academic sense, I understand why my abandonment of a long-held dream frightens them. I understand why they would see it as more evidence of some fundamental shift.
“But I don’t, though,” I say. “I don’t care anymore.”
I can’t tell them the only reason I’m here is to maintain appearances for Jesse.
“Oh,” Lucia whispers. She looks crestfallen. Rainie sets her phone down on the table and watches me, an inscrutable furrow in her brow. Only Aida doesn’t react. She squeezes the bottom of her juice pouch until the thing is completely desiccated.
“Stop giving me the puppy dog eyes.” Resigned, I cross my arms on top of the table. “If it means that much to you guys, I’ll try out.”
Lucia whoops, but Rainie’s stare continues to bore into the side of my head. I brace myself for another round of questioning, but Alex’s arrival effectively quashes that conversation.
Alex slides into the empty space opposite me. “Hey.”
I straighten. The sight of my golden-haired ex brings with it a twinge of nostalgia, but nothing else. I broke up with Alex as a preemptive measure against the curse. Leaving him was awful, but I knew it was temporary.
Now, it may as well be a gulf between us instead of a rickety lunch table.
“Hi.” I give him a small smile.
I hope he’ll remember me fondly after he leaves Ward.
“What happened to your head?” Aida asks, bluntly asking the question everyone’s thinking.
I touch my bandaged temple. The lie flows easily, water gliding over a timeworn stone. “Let’s just say trying to stargaze from your roof is a bad, bad idea.”
All of them except Alex buy the lie instantly, shaking their heads and muttering about my ridiculous impulses. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d taken advantage of the metal door to sneak to the roof and people watch.
Despair bursts in my chest. Have I always been such a talented liar? What else did I inherit from my mother?
A beast cannot raise a butterfly.
I’m the child of the Terror of El Agamy. That’s what Khalto Safa called Mama.
Alex leans forward, his forearms pressing on the table. “Be honest. Did Talbot do it?” He gestures angrily at the bandage.
“Dude!” Rainie explodes.
“Alex, honestly.” Lucia sighs, exasperated.
Aida pinches the bone in Alex’s wrist, nearly earning herself a knuckle to the nose.
I wait until they fall silent. “Jesse would never hurt me,” I say coldly.
“Because he’s such a paragon of stability and calm?” Alex shoves his lunch away. I’ve only seen him this upset a handful of times. “Wake up, Mina! He has a disciplinary folder the size of France.”
“So what?”
Alex’s lips part. He stares at me as though I’ve announced my intention to dance buck naked in a pit of gators.
“Do you want to rehearse your speech?” Lucia interrupts, visibly quivering under the tension. She handles confrontation about as well as Rainie manages small talk.
“Not really. Can you believe prom is this weekend?” I say, rerouting Lucia’s attention to her favorite topic.
The tactic works. Lucia launches into the game plan for Saturday, starting with the driver she hired to pick us up for dinner. “I made a reservation at Hathaway’s for six, so don’t be late.”
Rainie cuts Lucia off. “Hathaway’s? Isn’t that the Italian restaurant with forty-dollar meals?”
“Oh, don’t worry about the cost. My folks already paid for everything,” she says.
On cue, Alex and I exchange a familiar glance of exasperation. I look away quickly. It’s too easy to forget I’m not part of the group anymore.
“I can pay my own way,” Rainie snaps. “Just don’t force us to eat at hoity-toity restaurants.”
At this point in the argument, Lucia would usually sigh and pull out her phone to make the requested change.
To my surprise, Lucia’s lips purse into a blazing line of determination.
“If I didn’t plan prom, nobody else would.
I asked you a dozen times where you wanted to eat, and you just blew me off.
You don’t get to complain after the fact. ”
“Maybe I would’ve paid more attention if I knew our options were starvation or bankruptcy.”
“Give it a rest, Rainie,” Alex groans. “Can’t you just say thank you and move on?”