CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE PRESENT DAY #2
I’ve known Rainie longer than any of them.
Telling her she’s overreacting is the equivalent of throwing gasoline on a forest fire.
Before she can try to French braid Alex’s earlobes together, I press a quelling touch to her shoulder.
When her glare lands on me, I hold steady against it. We communicate in terse silence.
“Fine. Thanks,” Rainie grunts at last. The table lets out a collective breath.
The conversation flows seamlessly. I stand outside the tide, occasionally wading in with a comment or chuckle. In a few months, they’ll be attending the senior banquet and walking the stage to accept their diplomas. Brimming with excitement at the prospect of steering their lives to new horizons.
I smooth the torn corners of the graduation speech I’ll never get to give and try to be happy for them.
At the bell, Aida says, “I’ll walk with you to the admin building, Mina.” She hoists her backpack over her shoulder.
Lucia grabs my arm. “We’ll see you on Saturday, right?”
I squeeze her wrist. “Try and keep me away.”
Cheered, Lucia wishes me luck on the tryout and dashes to her class across campus. Rainie elbows Alex, but he shakes his head, retreating into the current of students headed for sixth period.
“I’ll make sure he’s less annoying on Saturday,” Rainie says, sighing. “Are you bringing Jesse?”
I scoff. Jesse attending a school dance is beyond even my formerly vast scope of optimism. “Jesse wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near prom.”
“Shame. Would have loved to see someone force Talbot into a tux.” Rainie runs off at the warning bell, leaving Aida to walk with me toward the admin building.
“Don’t you have physics right now?” I ask.
Aida is jittery, restless. She shudders, scanning our surroundings with a care that skirts close to paranoia. “Can’t you feel it?” She rubs her arms, nails biting into the creases in her elbows. “It’s always near you. Waiting. I don’t know how you can breathe.”
I go still. Aida pays me no mind, focused on the dull brown of the admin building ahead. Lunch monitors mill around the quad, ushering loitering students toward their classes.
“Aida, what …”
Without slowing, Aida reaches into her backpack and pulls out the battered sketchbook. At the building door, she pivots. “Here. Take it.” The sketchbook hits my chest.
She may as well have handed me a grenade. I hold the sketchbook at arm’s length, gaze flying between it and Aida. “Are you seriously giving this to me? You haven’t even let me take a peek in all the years I’ve known you.”
“My sketches aren’t always safe,” she says cryptically. “If you’re not meant to look at them, they can hurt you.”
“Aida.” I massage my forehead. “What the absolute living hell does that even mean?”
“It means these are for you. Just for you.” Aida’s gaze strays a few inches to my left before she blinks hard.
“Do you see them, too?” I whisper. “The shadows?”
She tangles her fingers in the gaps of her crocheted sweater, as if she doesn’t know what to do with her hands now that there’s no mysterious sketchbook between them. “I always see shadows, Mina. Always have, always will.”
Before I can give voice to the myriad of questions rushing for freedom, Aida continues, “I’ve felt something attached to you since spring break. I thought I was imagining it. But the drawings …”
Dread curls in my belly.
“Whatever this thing is … it’s so angry.
Beyond any menace I’ve ever felt.” Aida draws a ragged breath.
I can hardly comprehend the fact that Aida knows.
Not everything, but enough. “Every second, it moves a little closer to you.” Faintly audible, she whispers, “I can barely tell where it ends and you begin anymore.”
“My mom.” I swallow hard. “Did you feel it around my mom?”
Aida flinches, as though struck. After a minute, she offers a reluctant nod.
Aida had only met my mom once before she died.
On a random Tuesday in the fourth grade, Mama came to pick me up after school.
She’d stepped out of the car to wave me over from my perch beneath the jacaranda tree.
Aida, who had yet to befriend anyone other than the librarian, had taken one look at my mother and screamed her little head off.
She’d thrashed and wailed until Mrs. Watts carted her off to the nurse’s office.
I’d forgotten about it until now. All Mama did at the time was shake her head in disapproval and mutter something about the chemicals in our school lunches.
The curse had claimed my mother. If Aida could sense it over me now, it could only mean one thing.
The curse claimed me when I opened the door. It added me to the row of Haikals bound to serve it.
I slide my speech over the front of Aida’s sketchpad. “You should get to class,” I say quietly. “I’ll see you at prom.”
“Will you?” she whispers.
My teeth click shut. Heartbreak swims in Aida’s eyes, and from her, it’s more than I can handle. I hurry into the admin building, heart racing sickeningly fast against my ribs.
The tryouts are being held in the counselors’ conference room, and I peek through the window to make sure I won’t be alone with anyone. Principal Bess lifts her head at my entrance. Her blond brows rise. “Miss Mansour.”
Miss Diaz beams. “Hi, Mina!”
The other two teachers haven’t had me in their class, but they’ve clearly kept up with the drama. Is that the captain of the dance team who quit without warning? The one with dropping grades and a ruined social circle? “Are you here for the graduation speech tryouts?”
I nod. Miss Diaz gestures at the seat near me, and I slide into it quickly.
“Go ahead, Mina,” she encourages.
I unfold my speech and smooth the edges of the paper. Damp spots form on the margins, softening beneath my sweaty palms. I can’t bring myself to look at Miss Diaz. Yet another person whose life I almost torpedoed.
I tuck my curls behind my ears and take a fortifying breath. “My name is Yasmina Mansour, and I’m auditioning to speak at graduation for this year’s class of seniors.”
As soon as I start to read, my nerves settle. I’ve rehearsed these lines a dozen times. Before spring break, I was mumbling them in my sleep.
My imagination drifts, and I picture myself standing behind a podium in May, facing the students I grew up with as we gather for the last time.
Rainie would give me a standing ovation, partly out of pride and partly to spite the school event coordinator one final time.
Lucia would wipe her tears on the dangling sleeves of her robe.
Not because my speech is especially moving, but because Lucia tends to get stuck in sad moments.
She needs someone like Rainie to pull her loose and remind her to keep moving.
Aida won’t clap. Instead, she’ll aim a secretive smile my way. The Aida version of shouting at the top of her lungs.
If we were still together, Alex would command the basketball team to stand on their chairs and sing my name in an embarrassing, wonderful display.
Jesse wouldn’t attend graduation as a student.
He’d ask them to mail him his diploma and use the money he saves on graduation regalia to buy another slew of bizarre T-shirts.
But I like to think he’d still come to hear me speak.
He’d linger by the edge of the bleachers, twirling his car keys around his index finger.
And best of all, Baba would be there. He’d be in the front row, holding bags full of those cheesy grad gifts they sell in the parking lot. Despite his deep disdain for speaking to strangers, he would tell everyone within earshot, “That’s my daughter” as soon as I came onstage.
In the torn, rumpled page of my graduation speech, a bright future unfurls. One where everyone I love is happy and whole, and I’m around to see it.
When I finish, I find tears glistening in Miss Diaz’s eyes. Even Principal Bess’s reserved frown falters.
“It’s a little too personal,” one of the teachers says. “Graduation speeches should generally be relatable to the whole student body.”
“It’s not an ad for car insurance, Linda,” Miss Diaz returns.
“Thank you for coming in, Miss Mansour,” Principal Bess interjects. “We’ll get back to you with our decision shortly.”
I close the door behind me to the tune of Miss Diaz saying, “I know her grades have dropped, and she’s been acting a little strange, but—”
Outside the admin building, rain plinks against the crooked awning.
The quad has emptied out, with only a handful of stragglers taking shelter from the rain beneath the canopy enveloping the lunch tables.
In the sea of gray cement and grayer skies, I stick out like a sore thumb in my bright blue coat, its bronze buttons shinier than a polished coin and matched to the pink sweater underneath.
Paired with my striped leggings, it’s an outfit Rainie once referred to as the manifestation of a twelve-year old’s Pinterest board.
As soon as I step out from under the awning, water soaks into my hair, dripping against the back of my neck. I walk fast, barely watching where I’m going. Aida’s sketchpad weighs heavily inside my coat. All I want is a warm shower and a blanket three times the length of my bed.
Mid-shiver, I slam directly into a firm body. I careen backward, my ankle twisting painfully beneath me, but a quick grip prevents me from cracking my head open on the concrete.
Jesse frowns down at my ankle, still holding tight to my arm. “We’ve gotta set up some kind of traffic signal around you.”
“Or,” I growl, shaking him off, “you could start watching where you’re going?”
Like a switch, my aggression summons Jesse’s wicked smile from its storage unit in the depths of hell. “Maybe I am watching where I’m going.”
Despite the fact that my toes have surrendered all feeling and the moisture in my hair has unleashed my frizz quicker than sticking a fork in an electric socket, I still summon the energy to glare.
“I know what you’re doing.”
Jesse clicks his tongue. “Don’t have a clue what you mean, Sour Patch.”
A raindrop runs down his cheek. Shoring up my courage, I step close to Jesse and catch the raindrop with my thumb.
In the same movement, I sweep the skin over his cheekbone, trailing my fingers over the regal line of his jaw.
A shudder goes through Jesse, and my stomach tightens.
So many invisible fault lines in this contradictory, beautiful boy.
One tiny shift, one wrong collision, and the quake would break him apart.
And here I am, pressing. Trying to see what it would take to break him. Gouging, piercing, looking for the cracks in the layers of protection between him and the world.
My fingers travel as far as his throat before he seizes my wrist.
Rebuke burns in his eyes, disappointment close behind it. He swallows.
“I get it, Mansour. I understand how it feels to be furious with the world. To want to lash out and claw back some of what it’s taken from you.
” His grip on my wrist softens, and he twines his fingers with mine for half of a heartbeat.
With the same hold, he tugs me closer. Even a drop of rain would struggle to squeeze between us, finding itself trapped between my pounding heart and Jesse’s.
“Don’t turn me into collateral damage,” he murmurs. “If you want to hurt me, choose another way. Choose something I can recover from.”
He releases me and steps back, tucking his hands into his pockets. “How did it go?”
It takes a minute to process the array of shame, confusion, and disappointment clashing inside me. “The audition? It was fine.”
Jesse seems prepared to press for more, but his gaze catches on something over my shoulder. His features slacken in disbelief. “Unbelievable,” he snarls, with such menace that I nearly step away.
When I try to turn and see what he’s glaring at, Jesse grabs my coat’s lapel. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He pulls me forward, holding on to my coat like a leash.
“Wait!” I swat at his arm, wriggling in a futile effort to dislodge him. What doesn’t he want me to see? “Jesse, let go!”
As a last resort, I pull my arms out of the coat, leaving him with an armful of empty blue cotton. I spin around. Squinting through the gray haze cast over the half-drowning campus, I search for the culprit behind Jesse’s sudden rage.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Everyone is in sixth period, so only the athletes mill around the quad.
The basketball team runs laps on the track fenced in next to the parking lot. Tucked behind the bleachers, Alex puts his arms around a tall blond I vaguely recognize as Diane Rigmore.
“Huh,” I remark. I probe around for any hurt and come up empty-handed. My relationship with Alex seems like a relic from a lost age. Honestly, I’m glad he moved on. The girl he was waiting for doesn’t exist anymore.
Jesse, usually eerily adept at reading my mind, misses the mark by a mile. “He’s been going around playing the heartbroken puppy, you know that? And then he pulls this crap with you? In front of everyone? The little prick.”
Pushing my coat into my arms, Jesse stalks toward the fence.