Huda. No matter what happens, she still thinks of me.
‘Okay, ice-cream first, and then spaghetti and meatballs.’ Martin grins and heads off again down the aisle.
There’s silence between me and my sister. I don’t know whether she wants to talk about it. I don’t know what to say.
She speaks first.
‘Don’t worry about it, Akeal. He was just a dumb kid.’
‘Yeh, he is dumb. Don’t be upset, Buds.’ I only call her Buds when she’s feeling sad or when she’s done something really cool, like got an A in sports class.
My sister nods and sniffs. ‘He was mean. But it made me feel better that he was wearing those ugly white runners Mum was gonna get you before Dad bought you these cool ones.’ Huda points down to my feet.
Something clicks in my brain. The question comes like an itch that I need to scratch. ‘What did this kid look like, anyway?’ I try to sound casual.
My sister thinks for a moment. ‘He had big blue eyes, brown hair – shorter than yours. He was wearing a grey T-shirt like the one Omar has …’
I don’t hear the rest of what my sister is saying. Because I already know.
It was Michael.
The Plan
I heard my bedroom door creak open. My shoulders tensed, but it was just Huda. She shut the door quietly behind her.
‘Undie folding, hey? You’ve always had a problem with that.’ My sister watched me for a second before picking up two pink pairs off the pile on my bed and shoving them in her pocket. ‘I’ll be needing these.’
‘What happened last night?’ I asked her. ‘What did she do to you?’ I hadn’t been able to talk to Huda since she’d jumped out the bathroom window.
My sister rolled her eyes and plonked herself onto my bed. ‘Ugh, it was the worst! She told Mr Kostiki I had a fever and it was making me sleepwalk. Then she gave me a lecture for like six hours about how the police could’ve picked me up and taken me to a kids’ home if they’d found me running around in the night without shoes.’
I noticed a bulge under my sister’s red school jumper. Huda tapped it. ‘It’s a special day, Akeal.’ She was grinning. And she was also using my name.
‘Yeh, a special day to get us both caught by Aunt Amel. C’mon, you’d better get changed and get on with your jobs before she does her check-in.’
‘I have something special for the special day.’
Huda wasn’t grinning as much anymore. She was still smiling, but I could tell from her eyes that she was sad. So I stopped folding.
‘Okay. Tell me. What’s so good about today, and what’s that weird lump under your uniform?’
Huda swung her legs around to face me and looked around my room. She took a deep breath. And then another.
‘Earth to Huda! What’s going on?’ I threw a pair of undies at her.
‘It’s my birthday.’ She threw them back and hit me in the face.
My eyes widened. We don’t celebrate birthdays, but for some reason Huda celebrates hers, and we just go along with it.
‘I don’t blame you or anyone else for forgetting,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I know Aunt Amel has everyone stressed out and working all the time. So don’t feel bad. I just feel a bit down that Mum and Dad aren’t here.’
‘I’m sorry for forgetting. You’re right, everyone is stressed out, but we shouldn’t have forgotten.’
A little pain went through my chest thinking that my sister had spent her ninth birthday feeling sad.
‘It’s okay. I got us a donut from the canteen today to celebrate.’
Huda pulled a small brown paper bag from under her T-shirt. The donut was squashed and the paper had gone greasy, but this was Huda’s birthday. Plus, I was starving.
Huda was smiling again now and licking her lips. ‘When I told Mrs Mustafa it was my birthday she gave me an icy pole and a donut for free. I saved it to share with you.’
It was stuff like this that made me like my little sister. She grabbed the donut and ripped it in half. Her fingers looked a bit grubby, but I wasn’t going to complain. Not today. She looked at both halves of the donut, and as she passed me the bigger bit, the door swung open.
Suha and Layla never knock – they barge in. Omar and Kholoud followed behind them.
Kholoud closed the door and lifted her finger to her lips. ‘Shhh. She’s just started watching her favourite soap opera. We don’t have much time.’
My older sisters joined me and Huda on the bed while Omar sat on my desk chair. He pulled a phone from his pocket. It was Dad’s – the one he’d left behind for us to use as the family phone. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
‘Oh, no way! How’d you get that?’ Huda’s mouth was half filled with jam donut.
‘Suha and Layla pinched it from her robe pocket when she chucked the robe on the couch,’ Omar told us.
‘Took ages to make sure she wasn’t looking,’ Suha chimed in.
I knew what this meant. It meant we could tell Mum and Dad everything.
Kholoud kept her eye on the door. ‘Hurry up and call,’ she whispered.
Omar scrolled down to Mum’s number. Before he hit dial, he looked at each of us. ‘We’re gonna be okay. Once Mum and Dad know, they’ll be packing their stuff.’ Then he tapped the screen and held the phone to his ear.
We knew numbers overseas took ages to connect sometimes, but there was no connection at all this time. Just three long beeps, and then the phone cut. We could hear it from my bed. Omar swallowed. Then redialled. The same. He redialled again. Three long beeps, then cut.
‘Why aren’t they answering?’ Huda whispered, holding her hands up to her mouth.
My big brother sighed deeply. ‘They haven’t turned on the international roaming setting. I showed them ten times how to
