“HERE,” HADIA SAYS and stops, and the three of them stand still before a tiny street with old buildings and hand-painted signs, pots of flowers decorating the sidewalk. The place is oddly familiar. They have walked for half an hour just to get to it. Hadia explains that the street has an antique store, a barbershop, a stationery store, and an ice cream shop she wants to try.
“I don’t have any money,” he remembers.
“That’s okay,” Huda reassures him, “we do.”
The ice cream parlor door makes a funny “moo” sound when they open it instead of a bell, and a mural of cows in a pasture is painted on the wall. He scans the room to make sure no one they know is inside. They look to each other as if to acknowledge this lucky fact. He remembers what it was like to pretend to be in a jungle when they were little, the bedsheets draped over the kitchen table their cave, and the three of them huddled beneath the table like a pack, alert to every noise outside that could be an animal’s howl. They are a pack again now as they press their faces to the glass and pause to take in all the ice cream flavors. Huda asks for samples and Hadia squeezes his shoulder and says, “You can get anything, okay? Even a sundae.”
He orders quickly and takes a seat in the red leather booth by the window, while Hadia opens up her wallet and counts dollar bill after dollar bill. She is a great leader for their pack. He will miss her. He licks his pistachio ice cream in his sugar cone, regretting that he opted for a cone and not a cup when he sees his sisters walk toward him with their mature cups and purple spoons in hand.
“So,” he tells them, “the police came to our school last week, with a dog.”
He has won their attention. His sisters lean in to listen. The police had come to every class to check for drugs. Hadia’s eyes are wide at this, and she shakes her head and says to Huda, in middle school? And Huda says, come on, have you already forgotten? Every single backpack was lined up against the wall. Amar was terrified. Hadia asks him why he would panic. Amar says that the dog just nudged every bag with its nose but when it stopped at his it sniffed for a while and he thought, oh no, oh no, what if another kid put something in there for jokes? The police stopped the search and opened the zipper of his backpack and began to empty it of its contents. They brought out brown bag after brown bag bunched in the bottom, and with disgusted faces and white gloves they peered in each one.
“What was in them?” Huda asks.
“All of my lunches from the past month. Including a really rotten banana and a sandwich that basically looked like a bag of mold.”
“Amar, that is so disgusting.” Huda sits back in her seat, shakes her head.
Maybe it had been the wrong story to share with them.
“You are so embarrassing,” Hadia says, but she is laughing. Then they both are. And soon he is laughing too.
Hadia pulls back her sleeve to check the time. One hour, she tells them. She is wearing Dada’s watch. It is hers now. She is going to be a doctor. All their life she has made Mumma Baba so happy and she is only going to make them happier. Baba never talks about him to his friends the way Amar has overheard him speaking of Hadia, so he was not surprised when the watch went to her. It didn’t even hurt to see her wear the watch. He wanted Hadia to have everything she wanted. But what did hurt was the feeling that he had always known it would never be his.
When they step outside the breeze is cool and he wants to tell Hadia he is thankful, and Huda too, but they are eager to rush to the antique store. The lady behind the counter is old and does not look pleased to see them. It is as if she knows that they have very little money and are only curious. He wants to tell her this is his first time in an antique shop, but she resumes the paperback book in her hand after telling them not to touch anything. They disappear into the aisles. He can hear his sisters move through the store together, and he feels safe to leave their side. There are shelves of dolls with glass eyes. Board games he does not recognize. Who buys these things and what do they do with them? A typewriter black and a typewriter blue. No one is behind him so he touches a key. He presses down on the button that says A and jumps back when a metal rod flies up and hits the paper, and when it returns there is a tiny letter, and a little bell rings. He likes the impression the letter made on the page. He wants to put down another letter, m, then realizes it is not his name he is trying to spell, but hers, and he steps back abruptly. What if the shopkeeper follows the sound of the bell and kicks them out? What if his sisters come back to see him, typing her name? He is mortified, even at the possibility of it.
He leaves the typewriter to sit in a corner where there are boxes piled on the floor. One of the boxes has not been touched in a long time. It is black and old. He runs a finger across the leather surface, wiping away a thin layer of dust and making his fingertip gray. The box has a combination lock but it is open. The inside is deep and lined with soft maroon velvet. There is a zipper in the back and along the sides a bunch of tiny compartments. How much he could fill it with. Drawings. Basketball cards. Maps. Video games, if he ever got one. He snaps the lock shut and studies it. How everything about it suggests a secret.
Huda’s hand on his shoulder startles him.
“We’re leaving,” she says, then looks at the box. “What’s this?”
“I want it.”
He did not know he wanted it until he said it. But now he feels like he needs it, that he would be happier if he had it in his life, filled it with his favorite things.
“You like this?” she asks, incredulous.
“Why can’t I?”
“Just. I didn’t expect it. The typewriter maybe, but a box?”
“With a lock.”
“How much?”
He has not thought to check. He doesn’t want to leave without it. He would show it to nobody. He would hide it beneath his bed or in his closet. The piece of paper taped on it has the price and instructions for the lock and he sighs.
“Fifty.”
“Whoa. Well, we can’t carry it out with us today anyway.”
He stands up. As he follows her he looks back at it, the streak of darker leather he made.
“Don’t look so moody. Your birthday is coming up in a month.”
“So?”
“So. I’m just saying.”
Before they step outside the elderly lady at the counter tells them about the soda she has for sale. Hadia looks at Amar and he nods. Hadia pools quarters and nickels and the coins clink onto the glass surface. The lady counts with her fingernail, painted a blood red. They are fifteen cents short but she gives it to them anyway: three sodas in glass bottles. It is so cold in his hand and satisfying to drink under a sun that promises summer is coming. They sit on the sidewalk, their legs splayed out and into the gravel street.
“Tastes better like this,” Amar says, lifting the glass bottle to the sky and examining it from all sides. He is not sure if it is the bottle that makes it taste better or that they bought it for him. “Thank you,” he says to them, “for everything.”
“Don’t be so nice,” Huda jokes. “It doesn’t suit you.”
He has been rude to them lately, to everyone, angry all the time without really knowing why. He should try harder. He loves them. He knows that. It is easier to feel it here, after this walk, drinking soda in the sun, than it is when they are home.
“Do you remember how we got here?” Hadia asks.
“Of course,” he says, and he hopes how he feels with his sisters today will last long after they’ve returned home.
* * *