“So I say, ‘Yes, that’s me, but how do you know Janna, ’cause she never mentioned it,’?” Tats says. “Isn’t that funny? You mention him like four times a day. But I had to move carefully, right?”
I stay quiet because I’m about to explode. Either from the agony of waiting as Tats meanders through her story, the agony of finding out that it had something to do with Farooq, or the agony of carrying around so much potential happiness.
“He said, ‘Actually, I don’t know her; I’ve just seen her places.’ Like a wedding he went to, his friend’s brother’s wedding. He said you were the only one from Fenway High there besides his friend,” Tats says.
Farooq’s brother’s wedding in the fall. I’d been there with Fizz. He’d been there? He’d noticed me?
“And, Janna, he had this in-ter-ested look in his eyes, soooo . . .” Tats pauses. “I couldn’t hold it in. I said, ‘Oh yeah, I think Janna mentioned you being there, at the wedding. Yeah, actually, she’s mentioned you a few times. Actually, lots of times.’?”
“TATS!” I yell.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Tats says patiently. “Because then Jeremy said oh.”
I wait. I want to give her a few minutes before I push her off the roof.
“Then he looked down, looked up, looked around, looked down again, and said . . . drumroll, please,” Tats says.
I stand up to get ready to push her off before walking back to the hatch, to get away from the scene of the crime.
“He said, ‘Is she with someone? Like going out with anyone?’?” Tats stands up and beams. “He likes you, Janna! You, you, you!”
She grabs my hands and we shriek. Then I stop.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“I said you were engaged to this guy from back home from when you were three, but otherwise no,” Tats say.
“Funny. Tell me what you really said,” I say, proud of the way I’m controlling my excitement.
“I said, ‘No, she’s not with someone. Have anyone in mind?’ And then we both laughed. That’s why you’ve seen him around, dude,” Tats says, picking up her bag. “We have to go. This is around the time the smokers come up here.”
“Wait,” I say. I bend down and arrange the gummy bears into a heart. In the middle, I put a green bear (Jeremy) and a yellow bear (me) looking at each other.
? ? ?
After school I head to the kitchen and pour cold chocolate milk into the quaint old teacup with roses that Teta, my maternal grandma, presented to me last Eid. I stick in one of those long wiggly plastic straws that Mom kept from when I was four and sit on the window ledge in the living room, sipping slowly while smiling at the birds. I swear I can hear Snow White yodeling that lovely song she does somewhere off in the distance. (So, yes, I start humming along.)
I forget Muhammad is home, and, while he’s not too sharp in the intuition department, he wanders into the living room for some reason to stand and watch with nary a sound. When I stand up to add some graceful actions to the soundtrack, he snorts that laughter that he reserves solely for me. It’s the kind of laughter that makes one want to act like a three-year-old and throw a tantrum—precisely because it is how an unkind grown-up would laugh at a three-year-old doing the Disney-princess thing with all due seriousness. It’s a let-me-puncture-your-balloon-of-happiness laugh.
But, like I said before, Muhammad is not too intuitive, so he accepts my excuse that I’m practicing for some school play and not experiencing serious pangs of love. He goes off to pour himself some chocolate milk too.
Fizz calls, and I have a moment of uncertainty. I haven’t practiced keeping the J excitement from my voice yet, and she’s too good of a friend not to notice something so uncharacteristic of me: cheerful, enthusiastic hellos/salaams followed by comments observing the wonderful things around us humans. She’d definitely see through the fairy magic enveloping me, and I have absolutely no plans to update her, so I let the phone ring.
When it starts ringing again after a pause of three seconds, I pick up. It’s Aliya, using Fizz’s phone.
Aliya lets me know that Muhammad has dropped off my permission form for the regional Quiz Bowl and that two cars are going to Chicago on Saturday. Saint Sarah’s tiny car has already filled up (let me guess: Muhammad is one of the passengers) and do I want to go with her, Nuah, and an extra guy to keep Nuah company (no idea who)? I say sure, sure.
Then she reminds me to brush up on more seerah, to be really ready, as there might be an audience for the competition. I say I’ve already reviewed stuff. Then she says we’re meeting on Friday at Saint Sarah’s place for a last practice. I say okay. Then she asks if I want to talk to Fizz. I say no and hang up quickly.
I’m afraid.
How did Fizz morph, in my mind, from a best friend with a no-nonsense attitude into this stern, judgmental person in the span of a few days? I can see the look she would have given me if she’d materialized on the roof when I was shrieking with Tats. She’d have reached into her bag for the green book with the gold title and flipped through the pages, her eyes never leaving me, and found the page on fornication, zina:
A Muslim is not to long for the things that lead to zina, such as kissing, being alone, and touching, for all these things are haram and lead to the greater evil which is zina. Do not come close to it.
But I won’t, I tell Fizz in my head. I won’t do it, come close to it. I just don’t know how to tell my heart to stop. Or to not choose Jeremy.
And I don’t know how to tell it to stop smiling now that he chose me back.
? ? ?
For the rest of the evening, I study The Tempest. I fall asleep with a smile on my face even though I’m doing grim work. When Mom wakes me up for evening prayers, I’m clutching an old Franklin Covey agenda, one that contains a series of arguments to prove Caliban’s depravity.
MISFITS
Ms. Eisen blows her whistle in the gymnasium. “The weights challenge comprises the first part of your exam. I want to see records of everything. Get your clipboards, girls.”
Simone lets me go first. I pick up the weights and begin my squats.
After watching me for a while with her pen poised, Simone lowers her clipboard. The blank spaces on the chart tell me that she hasn’t recorded anything.
“You know you can go up, right? It’s better to do heavier weights and fewer reps,” she says. She’s one of those natural athletes who can do any sporty thing under the sun.
“But this is what I’ve been doing since we started weights. I don’t want to change it now when we’re getting marked for it.”
“Are you feeling it? Tell the truth.” Simone scrutinizes me as I extend my arms, having come up from a long squat.
“Not right this instant.” It’s true I haven’t broken a sweat since we started.
“Do you feel it after class at any point?”
I think about it. “I’m not sure.”
“Then you’re settling for lighter weights, because the answer to that should be It kills me.” Simone walks over to the rack of weights and points at two of them. “Here, this should do it.”
She’s pointing at ten pounds. Five times more than my regular weights.