I sit, bouncing Luke on my knees, in the formal living room while Dad and Linda listen to Muhammad’s elaborate introduction of Sarah.
I learn quite a few things listening to him. Firstly, Sarah wants to do her PhD. Secondly, my brother’s choosy about what he says. Like, he never tells Dad about Sarah’s Islamicity. About how she moved to Eastspring and took over the mosque’s youth committee. How she quotes Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet in a cheery voice whenever she can, like in the middle of conversations, like when you least expect it. He never tells Dad that as a daughter-in-law she’ll be a thorn in his secular side.
Instead, he tells Dad about her career aspirations and how she doesn’t want kids until she’s become a professor. He makes her seem like a totally modern gal.
Sarah sits with her legs crossed, holding a glass of water with two hands, listening and occasionally interjecting to downplay the hype.
The laddoo screws up his face and throws up on me as Dad begins asking questions about Sarah’s parents.
“Here, let me take him. You get cleaned up,” Linda says, scooping up the laddoo and thrusting a box of tissues at me. “It’s my fault. I should have told you he’d just eaten.”
I stand up, blotting at the mess on the front of my shirt. “It’s okay. It’s lucky I brought extra clothes.”
“Why don’t you get cleaned up in the bathroom downstairs? Your friends are already there.”
She takes the laddoo back upstairs. I open the door to the basement, hoping I don’t reek too much of baby vomit. Stepping onto the dark landing, I feel for the light switch, but they turn on a second after the door closes behind me.
He puts a finger to his lips and his other hand out to still me, but I flinch.
He slips the hand to the doorknob, holding it tight.
“I just want to talk to you,” he whispers. “Just talk.”
And not attack me?
“Why are you avoiding me?” he asks. “I can tell, you know.”
I look down, thinking of my stupidity in slipping my phone into my backpack pocket before I fell asleep in the car. Now it’s downstairs.
I don’t even want to give him my gaze.
“That thing before, what I did, I’ll admit it, it was a mistake,” he says, voice low. “But you admit something too. You wanted me, before you got this thing for Jeremy. Which is so wrong. A non-Muslim guy. Admit it.”
I back into the wall and then realize my mistake too late. It gives him the idea to step closer and prop one hand up against the wall, blocking me from the stairs.
“Showing off your hair to him?” he says. “He’s playing you. He wanted us, me and you, set up, not you and him. He got caught up in it, he told me.”
I want to scream because he’s now less than a foot away from me. But everything is twisted in me—what he’s saying, what he did before, what my dad would think of me. What Muhammad would do. I can’t even find my voice among my emotions.
“You’re playing with fire, this thing with Jeremy,” he says, coming closer, lowering his head. “You think it’s so easy to do what you want?”
He draws his hand away from the doorknob and—
The door opens and Nuah is on the other side. Farooq turns to him, taking a step back, and I flee down the stairs.
“Is everything okay?” Nuah calls. “Bro, why are you here? You said you were going down to get water.”
I run to the nearest open door and close it, my heart hammering like it’s fled down hundreds of flights of stairs. Leaning my forehead against the door, I work on stilling my breathing. That only results in me sobbing, shoulders quaking.
“I can tell you’re not crying because we got trashed at the Quiz Bowl, in front of our own supportive home-state audience,” a voice says.
I turn and see Sausun, lounging in a tank top and huge track pants with a laptop on her flat stomach, on one of the twin beds in the room. Her hair is glossy black and hangs to her waist. There are candy wrappers littered around her on the bed.
I open the door to go. The last person I need to see right now is a know-it-all grim reaper.
“Wait it out in here,” Sausun calls. “You want Sarah to pounce on you? Or Aliya to laugh at you?”
“Sarah’s going to her cousin’s,” I say. “And Aliya’s an early sleeper.”
“I heard her shuffling around right before you got in here,” Sausun says, selecting a piece of candy from a bulging paper bag that says SWEET NOTHIN’ on it. “Just lie on that bed and calm down a bit. I won’t be nosy. I’m YouTubing anyway.”
I look at the other bed. It’s up against the wall opposite the door, and I’ll be able to turn away from Sausun, so I get in.
It’s like Nuah was waiting outside the door, how he opened it as soon as Farooq let go of the knob. What if he hadn’t? What was Farooq planning on doing? Why couldn’t I stop him? The last question is pounding in my head, threatening to send me over the edge into losing control of my emotions again, so I dig my face into the pillow, trying to force myself to think of something else.
As I’m clearing my mind, quieting it, I become aware of the sounds coming from Sausun’s computer. She’s shrieking with laughter at times. The girl must be crazy, I decide, before turning over and arching myself to peek at her screen.
It shows two girls in niqab, vlogging, accompanied by really simple, ugly white doodles and words scratched on top of almost every image. It’s not easy to take my eyes off of the YouTubers’ antics, which include going to a haunted roller-coaster-ride attendant to ask for a job haunting the place. The words I’m afraid to see their resumes float above the attendant’s head.
“Who’s being nosy now?” Sausun says, not taking her eyes off the screen. She holds out a small, clear bag of licorice candy.
I lean over, take the bag, and pick out a couple of pieces, hanging off the bed, a strange compulsion forcing me to stare at the screen.
“Who are they?” I ask, chewing slowly. “They’re weird.”
“They’re the Niqabi Ninjas,” Sausun says. “You’ve never heard of them?”
I shake my head as the Niqabi Ninjas hand out big smiley stickers at some corner in New York. Only a few people take them, and those who don’t get a sad-faced doodle drawn, digitally, on the back of their heads as they get away.
“Why are they doing this?” I say. “Are they making fun of people?”
“They want people to not be scared of niqabis, girls who cover their faces,” Sausun says. “So they try to lighten people up. Give them another image of niqabi girls.”
She sits up and slides off the bed, holding the laptop high. Placing it on the carpet, she pats a spot beside her and puts the candy bag between us.
We watch the back episodes of the vlogging Niqabi Ninjas. I eat candy and slowly, bit by bit, tell her about Farooq.
Sausun listens without once looking at me, just lowering the volume on the vlogs and handing me a big red jawbreaker when I break down again. I take the candy and roll it around in my hands until it mixes with my tears and runs red over my palms. That gets me to stop crying.
I throw the jawbreaker into the fake soil of a fake tropical plant by the window and turn my blubbery self to Sausun.