He shakes his head.
“Did you really believe you could do this, become who you needed to be, send a proposal properly one day?”
He sighs. And then, “I tried harder to do that, be that, than I’ve tried to do anything before.”
“Did you want to?”
“I wanted you.”
“But that life—did you want it?”
He says nothing. She nods slowly.
“Do you believe in God?” she whispers. Her voice is so small.
They had asked each other a hundred questions. How had they missed this one. He looks from the dewy grass to her bare feet and searches his heart for an answer, his honest one.
“Not like this,” he says at last. “Not my father’s God.”
He is not sure what he means, but instead of stiffening, her face softens to him.
“Now you don’t have to try, to pretend.”
He was never pretending about wanting to be with her. That was exactly, unequivocally, the one thing he wanted. But he cannot deny the exhalation in him—that he has spoken aloud what he so feared to be true, that he could speak the words and still continue to exist.
“Amar, maybe I’ve been keeping you from becoming yourself,” she says, and he can tell she is being very gentle with him.
He stares at the tops of the trees, black this time of night, and feels how he had that one night years ago, as though he were venturing out from his old world into a new one, where he would be entirely alone.
“Say something?” she asks him.
“What will it be like?”
It had been their game since the note she left on his pillow: one of them would ask the other, what’s it like, and the other would give a response, never specifying what “it” was. Tonight he has altered their line. What he wants to know now is how he is going to live without her. She says nothing. She reaches her hand up and touches the side of his face. She has never done this before. She has never initiated touch. The strongest wind through the tallest branches makes a sweeping sound. The longest silence is hers.
And then, after a while, after he leans his face into her warm hand, she says to him, bravely and without a hint of uncertainty, “Amar, I know this will mean nothing to you now. But I do believe that even your father’s God, even He, would forgive you. To know you is to want to let you in.”
* * *
“I’M SORRY, REALLY I am,” Kyle keeps saying as they drive back to the party. Amar isn’t sure what about his demeanor is making Kyle look over at him at every stoplight. Amar is just quiet. Mumma had begun to look at him in that way too. Like he was disappearing right before her eyes. He had been eating very little and sleeping in very late. Anytime Simon called him with a plan for the night he agreed without asking any questions. Kyle parks the car and Amar tells him he wants to stay at the party. He has nowhere else to go.
He does not love her any longer.
He only loves her.
He will leave and never return.
He will wait, by the door, until he is invited inside again.
On and on he thinks in opposite extremes, until he is not sure who he is or what he wants. Once inside, he sinks into the couch beside Simon and the guy from the basement. The dancing is over. People speak slowly and laugh easily in the dim light. He asks the guy from the basement what coke feels like.
“Like flying,” he says.
Amar does not care for a thrill. He turns to Simon and flicks one finger against Simon’s chest pocket, where Simon keeps the smallest bag of pills.
“What’s it like?” he asks.
Simon thinks for a moment.
“Like nothing exists. Not even you.”
Kyle watches him from the doorway. His eyes are gentle and big. Amar cannot look back at him, he is not quite sure why. He looks instead at the knuckle that he has been kneading with his thumb, the one that is now redder than the rest.
“How much for nothing?”
Simon throws his arm over Amar’s shoulder and pulls him close for a moment before letting go.
“For you my brother, your first time, nothing will not cost you anything at all.”
When he looks back at the doorway, Kyle is gone. Simon drops a round pill in his palm, white and weightless. Amar thinks that at least with this he is certain there will be no smell.
* * *
LAYLA PARKS IN the empty cul-de-sac, and though she knows Amar is in the middle of his chemistry exam, she still looks around before stepping out from the car. Slowly, the Ali house comes into view. The trees surrounding their property sway so that the house with its balconies and rows of glinting windows stands like a rock in comparison. Every jashan and majlis hosted by the Alis was a production, and it was no effort for Seema—she was calm when the guests arrived, her hands soft—having hired people who did the work and catering for her. Sparkling Christmas lights wrapped around every pillar and curved banister during their jashans, and even the trunks of trees that led up to the driveway twinkled. Those nights it looked like stars had fallen from the sky. Now it looks like any other home. Layla pauses at the edge of the driveway. She had not anticipated feeling anything other than determination, but as she approaches the house that impulse to tuck the car away, enter and leave without being seen, unnerves her.
Seema said she would be home alone and seemed surprised when Layla wanted to meet. Their friendship was one born of circumstance and routine, and because of this, they rarely met outside of mosque or an event, and never alone. There had been a hint of worry in her voice and Layla wondered, bitterly, if she was afraid that a proposal would be sent on Amar’s behalf for the girl, and Seema would have to bear the discomfort of denying her. The Ali girl received ten proposals after any event she went to. Seema would complain in the way that people would when they wanted to brag but disguised it as a burden.
“And yet Amira says she’s not ready,” Seema would say, lifting up her hand in frustration and shaking it. “What has gotten into the girls these days—saying they are ‘not ready’ as if there is something else, something more important they’re waiting for, and only after that will they consider marriage.”
Layla would give Seema a hollow laugh. Her daughters also received proposals. But the Ali girl was only eighteen; Layla’s daughters were already twenty-three and twenty-four, and getting older every month. She dreaded the thought of their prospects dwindling as they aged. They insisted not only “not yet” but also “not him”—with no reason given. Every night she prayed God would continue to shower them with the blessing of respectable proposals and then would immediately pray for her daughters to develop some common sense. What was the use in one if they so lacked the other?
An hour ago she packed walnuts in a clear plastic bag for her son. She sliced a green apple. She filled his water bottle with cold water.
“For your test,” she said as she handed him the brown bag. “For you to have energy to do well.”
He was nervous. She had never seen him so driven, so concerned about his education. The sight of him with books in the crook of his arm filled her with pride. Her prayers for him had been answered. He had finally developed ehsas—an understanding of his actions, of the impact of them. She wanted him to do well. She wanted nothing to hinder him from becoming the man she believed he could become. As she wondered what to say to him she remembered the purple light of an old classroom, and Amar’s sweet teacher who had succeeded, albeit temporarily, in encouraging him.
“Don’t worry, it’s just a test. As long as you do the best you can, we will be happy.”
He nodded slowly, considering her words. Then that dark look of his took over and he said quietly, “It’s not just a test. I have to do well.”