I had not. I’d tried instead to forget him entirely, and I’d not succeeded.
“Listen,” he said, but his voice had gone cold. “If you already have a ride, I’ll leave you alone. But if you don’t, let me drive you home. You’re bleeding. You’re shivering. You look terrible.”
My eyes widened at the insult before the rational part of my brain even had a chance to process the context, but Ali registered his mistake immediately. Spoke in a rush.
“I didn’t— You know what I mean. You don’t look terrible. You look—” He hesitated, his eyes fixed on my face. “The same.”
I felt death bloom bright in my chest. I’d always been the kind of coward who couldn’t survive even the vaguest suggestion of a compliment.
“No. You’re right.” I gestured to myself. “I look like a drowned cat.”
He didn’t laugh.
I’d learned, recently, that some people thought I was beautiful. Moms, mostly. The moms at the mosque loved me. They thought I was beautiful because I had green eyes and white skin and because a huge swath of Middle Eastern people were racist. They were blithely unaware of the fact; had no idea that their unabashed preference for European features was shameful. I, too, had once been flattered by this kind of praise, just until I learned how to read a history book. Beyond this select group of undiscerning moms, only one person had ever told me I was beautiful—and he was standing right in front of me.
With some difficulty, I got to my feet. The pain in my knee had begun to ebb, but my body had stiffened in the aftermath. Carefully, I bent my joints. Rubbed my elbows.
“Okay,” I said finally. “I would appreciate the ride.”
“Good call.”
Ali stalked off; I followed.
He led me straight to his car without so much as a backward glance, and suddenly it was right there, right in front of me: the silver Honda Civic I’d seen before.
The one that nearly killed me.
Last Year
Part II
My concerns over the hoodie had been mostly forgotten. The steadily plummeting temperatures forced me to abandon my reservations and focus, instead, on my gratitude for the extra layer.
I shivered when the lunch bell rang.
I stood up, gathered my things, pulled on my backpack. It was much warmer inside the school than outside it, but even with artificial heating I remained on the edge of uncomfortable, huddling deeper into the soft material. I pushed into the crowded hallway and tugged the too-long sleeves over my hands, crossed my arms against my chest. It seemed unlikely that the sweatshirt belonged to anyone but Mehdi, but even if it didn’t—who would know? It was the most ubiquitous variety of black hoodie. I was definitely overthinking this.
Still, I couldn’t deny the frisson of feeling that moved through me at the thought of the alternative: that the sweatshirt belonged to someone else, to someone I knew, to someone strictly off-limits to me.
I took an unsteady breath.
Zahra and I had only one class together this semester, and since I’d been running late this morning, we hadn’t yet crossed paths. Our parents still carpooled a couple days a week, but our previously braided schedules had begun, slowly, to part, and I wasn’t sure what that meant for us. More than anything else, I felt uncertainty.
Every day it seemed like she and I were teetering on the edge of something—something that wasn’t necessarily good—and it made me nervous. I often felt like I was walking on eggshells around Zahra, never certain what I might do to upset her, never certain what kind of emotional turbulence she might introduce to my day. It made everything feel like an ordeal.
I didn’t know how to fix it.
I didn’t know how to say something about the tension between us without sounding accusatory. Worse, I worried she might leverage any perceived slight into an excuse to shut me out. There was a great deal of history between us—layers and layers of sediment I dearly treasured—and I didn’t want to lose what we had. I wanted only for us to evolve backward, into the versions of ourselves that never caught fire when we collided.
I cried out.
Someone had slammed into me, knocking the air from my lungs and the thoughts from my head. The stranger muttered an insincere Sorry before shoving past, and I shook my head, deciding then to stop fighting the tide. I needed to drop off some books at my locker before I joined Zahra in our usual spot, but it felt like the whole school had a similar idea. We were all of us heading to the locker bays.
I was still moving at a glacial pace when I became aware of a gentle pressure at the base of my spine. I felt the heat of his hand even through the hoodie, his fingers grazing my waist as they drew away. The simple contact struck a match against my skin.
“Hey,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was smiling into the crowd, watching where he was going.
“Hi.” I could no longer remember feeling cold.
Ali glanced in my direction. His hand had abandoned me but he leaned in when he said—without meeting my eyes—
“Are you wearing my hoodie?”
I nearly stopped in place. Twin gusts (pleasure, mortification) blew through me, and then, dominating all else—
Panic.
Eventually, the bottleneck broke. We’d arrived at my locker. I dropped my backpack to the floor, spun around to face him, felt the metal frame press against my shoulder blades. Ali was staring at me with the strangest look on his face, something close to delight.
“I didn’t know this was yours,” I said quietly. “My mom found it in her car.”
He touched one of the bright-blue drawstrings, wound it around his finger.
“Yeah,” he said, meeting my gaze. “This is mine.”
A wash of heat colored my cheeks and I closed my eyes as if
