“Sorry!” I shout. “I should have called.”
I don’t know why I say that since I did call, well, text, basically the same thing, but someone has to say something, and neither of them are talking. Guess their lips are too sore.
Waving awkwardly, stupidly, I hightail it out of there, retracing my steps through the gate. I’m in the middle of the street when Henry catches up.
“Hey.” He clasps a hand on my shoulder.
I spin around, and he gasps, taking in my dress, heels, and general nine-foot-tall edge.
We hold each other’s gaze, neither of us speaking. What is there to say? It’s not like Henry’s doing anything wrong. His parents are away. Most guys would be having some huge rager. All he’s doing is making out with some girl.
Not some girl. Chelsea.
Does it really matter that it’s Chelsea? Would this feeling of … of … oh, let’s just say it, betrayal be any different if it were some other girl? Betrayal? Really? Nate’s smiling face is in the palm of your hand. What nerve, Azra. Oh, and why don’t you ask Laila if her feelings of betrayal would be any different if it were some other Jinn?
Smack in the middle of the street, halfway between my house and Henry’s, I suddenly have nowhere to escape to.
“Azra,” Henry says, “I’m sorry.”
He truly has nothing to be sorry about. That’s what I should say. He deserves … deserves whatever this is … especially after what he told me today about Jenny, about moving … but somehow Laila’s wounded eyes and Chelsea’s naked stomach lead to me simply shrugging. “If you want to be another one of Chelsea’s lovesick puppies, that’s your choice. Go ahead and strap on a collar. Just make sure it’s a flea-and-tick one.”
It is then that I hear Henry’s thoughts: Some best friend.
My heart crumples like a piece of paper.
He kicks the ground and tosses his hands in the air. “You’re impossible!”
Wearing down the asphalt, Henry paces between me and the sidewalk in front of his house before finally stopping and facing me. He shoves his fists into his front pockets. “I don’t know what more you want from me.”
More. As if I’ve asked so much, I’ve drained him. I probably have. While he’s made my life easier, I’ve made his harder. It is only now that I realize the pressure he must feel to always be on guard. To not slip up. To not reveal who I really am. Maybe it’s time for me to let him go. Let him out of all of this. All this lying. All this Jinn stuff. All this me.
“Nothing. I want nothing more from you.” Though I mean this in the most altruistic way, in that “if you love something, set it free” way, the nuance is lost on him.
“Damn it, Az, you’re too much. Maybe everyone’s right.”
Everyone?
“I heard the way the guys at school would talk.” The muscles in Henry’s face tense. “Half afraid to talk to you because you’re so freaking pretty, they knew they didn’t have a shot, and the other half choosing not to talk to you because you’re so freaking pretty, they figured you must be a total bitch.”
At the start of the summer, Nate had mentioned gossip about my “vibe,” but I couldn’t imagine being a topic of conversation for anyone at our school. This being true stuns me almost as much as the bitch part stings me.
I say softly, “Which camp were you in?”
Henry sighs. “Neither. Because I … I figured you were lonely. No one ever visited except Laila. Course, that was before I knew why.”
I rest my trembling hands on my hips. “And now?”
I’m still waiting for a response when a fully clothed Chelsea appears on the front lawn. At the sound of her tentative, “Henry?” he turns and replies, “I’ll be right there, promise.”
I snort at his sugary tone before I can stop myself.
His nostrils actually flare. “Now,” he says in a tone lacking even one molecule of sucrose, “now, I’m squarely in both camps.”
He walks away from me, wraps an arm around Chelsea’s waist, and tucks a finger (which is all that will fit) into the waistband of her cutoffs.
I’m standing in the same spot watching them disappear through the fence gate when the full weight of Henry’s answer hits me. He thinks I’m a bitch. He also thinks I’m so pretty, he didn’t have a shot with me.
Didn’t or doesn’t?
Didn’t. It has to be. Because if he still wanted a shot with me, how could Henry be groping Chelsea?
Then again, if it’s Nate’s legs I want to be intertwined with mine, why am I this rattled to discover Henry groping Chelsea?
Clichés exist for a reason. Somewhere inside lurks a hidden truth. Turns out one of the truths behind the cliché that romance ruins a friendship is that it can apply even when the friends remain platonic.
A trick without any magic involved.
*
When I hit my front yard, I wrest the heels from my aching feet. The cool grass tickles my toes as I walk in circles. I move slowly, trying to absorb what just happened with Henry. That was our first fight. But friends fight, don’t they? And we’re friends, aren’t we? We are. We always have been. But maybe we’re more. Maybe we always have been more.
Just like with me and Laila. My heart pounds as I struggle to find the words to say to her to make her understand. To make her forgive. She will, right? I mean, if Mrs. Pucher’s sister could forgive her, Laila has to forgive me for this. Then again, it took Mrs. Pucher’s sister thirty years and a genie to get there.
As I approach the fence to our backyard, I see Mrs. Seyfreth out of the corner of my eye. The lilac bush still blocks most of her view. She doesn’t brush a single leaf aside. She just stands there in her little world, peering into ours. But there’s nothing to see here. Not even the tent. I force my dirt-smudged feet back into the high heels to get a better view over the top of the fence. All I see is our normal backyard.