Laila hops off the couch and grabs my hand. “Want to help?”
Maybe maintaining my resolve is getting easier, because I kinda do. Let’s say it’s that and not the fact that my stomach is rumbling, begging for more than just the mint chocolate chip ice cream I fed it today.
“Sure, in a minute,” I say, which elicits an approving nod from my mother. She follows Laila and Samara into the kitchen while I roll up the sleeves of my tunic.
The house still radiates warmth from the morning’s fires. I kneel on the couch and lift the window behind it as the Carwyns’ SUV pulls into their driveway. Lisa pops out first, a pink-and-white-striped beach towel tied around her neck like a cape. Mr. and Mrs. Carwyn exit the front seats. Henry is the last to appear.
He waits until his sister has completed her circuit of figure eights across the front lawn and unties the towel. He shakes it, folds it in half, and adds it to the bag his father unloads from the back of the car.
It’s a normal Saturday in the Carwyn household.
Mrs. Carwyn carries a red-and-white-checked doggie bag. The styling is instantly recognizable as that of the seafood shack that makes the best fried clams and oysters in our coastal town. The Carwyns must have spent the day at the beach followed by dinner at the Pearl. They spent my birthday the way I wanted to.
Before the family enters the house, each member leaves a pair of sandy flip-flops by the hose on the side of the garage. The four pairs sit there, each representing its owner: mother, father, daughter, son. When my family returns home from the beach, there are only two pairs of flip-flops. And they aren’t even sandy. My mother vanishes the sand before we get in the car.
I’m still staring at their house when Henry emerges from the garage. He turns on the faucet and uses the hose to wash out a bucket shaped like a sandcastle. The patches of sun-bleached white on the blue plastic make me certain it’s the same one Jenny and I used to play with.
Henry leans over to pick up a pair of flip-flops and his glasses slide off his nose. He digs them out of the slightly too-tall grass and tucks them into his back pocket. The post-beach, sun-touched pink of his cheeks and windblown tousle of his light brown hair suit him better than the fluorescent lights and prison gray walls of our French classroom. He looks directly at me. I freeze. The day at the beach and dinner at the Pearl was surely his family’s way of trying to forget what today would have been for Jenny.
I flop down and hide behind the couch cushions. I can’t think about that on top of everything else. When my rapid heartbeat slows, I inch back up and peer over the pillows. Henry is turning off the spigot. He wipes his glasses with the end of his shirt before he returns them to their perch on the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He couldn’t have seen me. I sit back up. He looks right at me. And waves.
Though I’m technically an adult, at least in the Jinn world, my childish response is to duck behind the cushions again.
“Azra!” My mom enters the room with a bowl so full of chips that she needs to levitate the top ones to prevent them from cascading over the side. “It’s freezing. What are you doing with that window open?”
Henry’s still standing there when I shut the window. I turn around to see a bottle of wine hovering above the coffee table.
“Care for a glass?” Samara says.
Four wineglasses swoop into the room, landing underneath the bottle of wine just as the cork shoots out of the neck. The red liquid flows in an arc into the suspended stemware.
I grab a curtain in each hand and draw the fabric over the front windows.
It’s a normal Saturday in the Nadira household.
6
Wine is delicious.
Samara persuades my mother to allow Laila and I half a glass each, a small indulgence to celebrate my entry into Jinn adulthood. She presses my mother on why human rules should apply. “It’s bad enough they have to go to their schools, why should they have to do everything like them?”
This marks the first thing I have no objections to all day.
Traditionally, along with sweets, Jinn love alcohol. My mother has never allowed me a single taste before today. By the time I finish my glass, I have an inkling why. The warmth of my cheeks penetrates my whole body. It’s like apping in place. Which, apparently, I’m not allowed to do.
“No apporting,” my mother says.
I make a face. Normal high school kids get the lecture about not drinking and driving.
“I’m serious, Azra,” my mother says. “I gave in, at least do what I ask, okay?”
I mumble a “fine” and lick the last red droplet clinging to the rim of my glass. Laila places her own empty glass on the table. She drank as fast as I did.
The knock on the door prevents me from angling for a refill.
Laila climbs across my lap and scrambles over the arm of the sofa. She seizes the doorknob but doesn’t turn it. Instead she waves me over with her free hand. “Come on, Az. Let’s open it together.”
The alcohol appears to have dulled my groan reflex. If my mother knew that, she’d probably change her tune and make me use wine instead of milk in my morning cereal.
Positioning myself by the door, I let Laila fling it wide open. I stumble back when, instead of the members of our soon-to-be Zar, before me stands Henry holding a string in his hand. I follow the string up to the balloon it’s tied to, the balloon that reads, “Happy Sweet Sixteen!”
Ah, Henry doesn’t know that for me, the only thing sweet about turning sixteen is the slowly digesting wine in my stomach.
Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck prickles, and my “thank you” lodges in my throat. The room hums with static electricity. Thanks to Yasmin and Hana’s earlier visits, I know exactly what this means. Laila begins to move out from behind the open door, but I shove her aside in the same instant that a glass shatters behind me.