I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.
Even now I could feel Ali’s lips against my throat, could smell him as if he’d been trapped here, against my skin. My eyes flew open.
I had finally proven Zahra right.
I’d finally crossed the line she’d always feared I’d cross. I’d finally ceded control, given in to myself. I had no intention of telling anyone what happened between me and Ali tonight, but I pictured Zahra’s face nonetheless, imagined her outrage.
For the very first time, I could not bring myself to care.
Last Year
Part IV
It had been a strange, exhausting day. I’d woken up late, rushed to school, worn the wrong sweater, fought with my best friend, fumbled my way through classes. I’d started the day wrong and spent the rest of it trying to catch up, hoping to salvage what was left of the afternoon. And up until fifteen seconds ago, I thought I’d done just that. I thought I’d survived the worst of it. But now—now I wondered whether this day might kill me after all.
Can we talk?
I’d been staring at his message for the last fifteen seconds. I just stood there, frozen in the middle of my room, paralyzed by indecision.
Today, after months of tension, Zahra and I had finally managed to find our way back to something like normal. Things had been shaky between us for so long—her mood swings were particularly hard to navigate—but I was beginning to hope we could fix things. Zahra had been, at times, shockingly cruel to me, but it wasn’t difficult to forgive her lapses, especially not when I understood why she was struggling.
We were all struggling.
It was an awful time—politically and emotionally—for everyone in America, but there was a special pain in being made to feel like we weren’t allowed join in, like we had no right to mourn alongside our fellow citizens. American Muslims had a great deal to mourn—more than most people bothered to imagine. We were gutted not only by the horrible tragedy that had befallen our country, but by the disastrous fallout affecting our religious communities, and the personal losses we suffered—friends and family dead, missing—in the wars overseas. But none of that seemed to matter; no one wanted to hear about our pain.
Most days, I understood why. Some days, I wanted to scream.
It was a lonely, isolating time. I didn’t want to lose Zahra; I knew too well how difficult it was to find a true friend, especially now.
But Ali was my friend, too.
I looked up then, looked out the window. My phone vibrated.
I can come by
Zahra was wrong. Her accusations were baseless. There was nothing going on between me and Ali, we had never hooked up, had never done anything inappropriate. But the truth didn’t seem to matter. It had become increasingly clear to me that the only way to keep both siblings in my life was to keep Ali at a distance—a task proving harder to accomplish than I’d ever imagined. A low-voltage charge had existed between the two of us for as long as I’d been old enough to understand it, and some time last year that charge finally sparked, caught fire. I’d been trying desperately to ignore it. Ali had not.
Just for a few minutes? I wrote back.
Okay
Another buzz.
Same spot?
Guilt briefly seized my mind, paralyzed my fingers.
Twice. Twice we’d met up before. Only twice, and only in the last month, but somehow we’d already acquired a spot. Ali and I had spent a lot of time together over the years, but we’d never arranged it, never aligned our lives with the express purpose of being alone together. Not until he’d texted me that first time—
Can you come outside?
And I’d run out the door.
“What’s going on?” I’d said, racing toward him. I was out of breath and confused, trying to read the look on his face. “Is everything okay?”
“Wow.” Ali shook his head, smiled. “Okay, I didn’t realize someone had to die in order for me to have a minute alone with you.”
I’d gone suddenly, unearthly still. “What?”
“I just wanted to see you,” he’d said. “Is that okay?”
“Oh.” I could not seem to steady my breathing. “Oh.”
He’d laughed.
“You just”—I frowned—“you mean you don’t have anything important you need to tell me?”
He laughed again. “Not really.”
“You just wanted to see me?”
He smiled at the sky. “Yeah.”
“But we see each other every day.”
Finally, he looked me in the eye. Took a deep breath. “Shadi.”
“Yeah?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, nodded toward the sidewalk. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Walk with me.”
That was the first time.
The second time—I had no good excuse for seeing him the second time. The second time was probably a mistake, the kind of decision born of simple, reflexive desire. I liked to tell myself that nothing happened, because nothing happened. I’d been doing homework while shaking a box of Nerds into my mouth when he texted me, so I closed my binder and tucked the box under my arm.
We went on another walk that day, passing the candy between us as we went. We didn’t mean to go anywhere in particular, but ended up at the library near my house, which was where I always told my mom I was going anyway.
I quickly lost track of time. We were sitting on a bench outside the building, talking about all manner of nothing. At one point I laughed so hard at something he said I nearly choked to death on Nerds, after which I tried harder to be serious, an effort that only made me nervous—and that forced into stark relief the unnamed body of truth that sat between us.
Ali didn’t mind the quiet.
He stared at me, unspeaking, and I felt it, felt everything he did not say. It was there in the way he breathed, in the way he shifted beside me, in the way his gaze dropped,
