Hence my perfect hammer but my unidentifiable reciprocating saw.
“But,” she says, “we are not sideshow freaks. Our ability to harness the light and energy of this world allows us to manipulate the environment in ways two-bit charlatans can’t even fathom. We can access laws of nature that humans don’t even know exist. Until you ground all your magic in nature, your skills will be limited.”
My instinct is to dismiss her, but the tingle in my fingertips won’t let me.
She tucks a loose strand of hair back into her impromptu updo. “At least one benefit of Yasmin’s visit is we learned all you needed was a little encouragement.”
“Encouragement, condescension, fine line,” I say.
“Whatever works,” she says with a teasing glint in her eye.
A childhood of watching my mother perform magic made me fear I wouldn’t be any good at it, certainly not as good as her, someone who long ago earned the nickname “model Jinn” from her Zar sisters. But she’s always said that being descended from a long line of Jinn means magic lives inside me. Once I received my bangle, all I’d need to do is access it. Or as she’s been insisting all day, allow myself to access it. I hate proving her right.
Fanning her face with her hand, she says, “How about you prove just how encouraged you are by putting out the rest of the fires? I fear I’m on the verge of perspiring.”
I’ve never seen my mother sweat, literally or figuratively. But if she were going to, today would be the day. The house is stifling, even for us.
My magically ignited fires churn in the rest of the house’s nine fireplaces. Nine because we live in Massachusetts and hate to be cold. Nine because my mother, though no longer a wish-granting Jinn, still has her magic and can install fireplaces at will.
Though my hands still shake, all I have to do is think of Yasmin’s smug face and I’m able to conjure water instantly at the dining room fireplace. I make my way to the second floor, extinguishing all the flames that have transformed our house into a two-thousand-square-foot sauna.
My bedroom being last, the air is thick with heat. I raise the double-paned glass window all the way up before kneeling in front of the fire.
“I’m flying, Henry!”
I jerk upright, dousing myself and the hearth with my conjured water as the sound of the little girl from across the street penetrates my bedroom. I cross the room and pull the curtain aside.
The open back of the Carwyns’ small SUV is crammed with beach chairs, towels, one, no, two coolers, and an overflowing bucket of plastic toys. Mr. Carwyn, a bit rounder and grayer than the last time I saw him, shoves a bright green tote bag in between a large umbrella and a thickly folded plaid blanket as his six-year-old daughter, Lisa, soars down the driveway.
Head bent against the wind, arms straight out behind her, Lisa makes airplane noises as she circles the car. A shiver travels up my spine as she yells again to her older brother, “I’m flying, Henry!”
Ducking his head to get a glimpse through the open back, Henry yells, “Jumbo jet or single prop?”
“Jumbo!” Lisa comes in for a landing next to his passenger-side door.
The top of Henry’s sandy-brown-haired head pokes out of the car. He leans down, picks Lisa up, and hauls her into the backseat. “I thought you looked like a 747,” he says.
A tired-sounding Mrs. Carwyn calls from the front passenger seat, “Ready, Hank?”
Mr. Carwyn’s grunt precedes him slamming the cargo door shut. He steps back, his flat palms aimed at the car, ready to shove the door closed again should it fail to latch on account of the family of four’s mountain of gear.
Mr. Carwyn’s halfway to the driver’s seat when the door begins to rise. All four Carwyn heads face forward, away from me.
Should I? Can I?
The “can” overcomes the “should,” and I test out my range. Click. The latch catches. Henry turns around. My heart catapults to my throat. But there’s no way he saw. Heard? Doubtful. Even so, he wouldn’t know what he heard.
Henry pushes a rainbow-striped beach chair to the side and cranes his neck to see out the back. He cocks his head and smiles. At me? Can he see me? Just in case, I smile back. We haven’t talked in a while. Not that when we do talk we say all that much. But still, some days, he’s the only one in school I have more than a “hi,” “hey,” or “’sup?” conversation with.
The thumbs-up he gives his father answers my question as the SUV then backs out of the driveway, headed for a day at the beach. There was a time, long ago, when I would have been strapped into the backseat, Henry on one side of me and Jenny on the other.
Before I release the curtain, I let myself seek out the “A+J” scrawled in the bottom right corner of the garage door. Faded as it is, I’m probably the only one who knows it’s more than a series of black scuff marks.
I know because I wrote it. I’m the “A,” and Jenny was the “J.”
For the first nine years of my life, Jenny Carwyn was my best friend. Jenny and I were born on the same day but not in the same place. As Mrs. Carwyn gave birth in a sterile hospital room ten miles away, my mother expelled me out into her jetted bathtub, surrounded by her Zar sisters.
Our entries into the world marked one of many differences, but Jenny and I were inseparable from the moment we became mobile. Before I could even talk, Mrs. Carwyn would find me on their doorstep, having somehow escaped my mother’s eye long enough to wander across the street.
Jenny, too, would have turned sixteen today.
“I’m flying, Azra! I’m flying!”
I close my eyes and see Jenny’s fingers wrapped around the metal chain next to me. Higher and higher, we rode the swings on the set in my backyard, me promising her that just a little more and we’d be able to touch the tulip-shaped cloud in the sky.
“I’m flying, Azra!”