His eyebrows shoot up.
“What?” Why is he acting so surprised? “I wanted to try something new. I mean, I know I’m not a fun person to be around. Afrin said the alcohol would loosen me up.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
I feel myself bristle. “You don’t have to lie. I know you think of me the same way.”
“I did. For a while.” Malcolm sighs. “But maybe that was a mistake to begin with. Me thinking about someone in a certain way doesn’t always make it right. Sometimes it makes me judgmental.”
Shame rises, hot across the back of my neck. “I judged you, too.” Might as well admit it. “And I’m sorry for that.”
He stares at me for a long moment, as if weighing the sincerity of my words. “It’s okay. You were upset.”
“There was no excuse for me to—”
“Susan.” A step forward and he’s inches away, his breath warm against my cheek. His hand slides around the back of my neck, gently nudging my head upward. “Stop apologizing.”
* * *
Noses collide. Faces tilt. The world narrows to a pair of lips. Breath. To heat unfolding under cold hands.
The earth pauses for a brief second. Then spins a tiny bit faster.
* * *
The sky rumbles over our heads. A drop of rain plunks on my head, then two. We break apart, gasping like we’ve been kissing for hours, when it was probably only a few minutes. I retrieve my fingers, which were buried in his hair.
“Do you know there’s a smell that they associate with rain?” I tell him.
“Really?” His nostrils flare and I would laugh at his reaction if not for the way he’s staring at me. Like he would devour me whole if he could.
Before I can answer, it begins to pour down on us, the wind swirling the drops like a secret dervish. We run for cover, under the branches of a big oak on the perimeter of the field, Malcolm’s wet hand in mine, his breath warm on my neck when we finally stop under the branches, not entirely out of range, but still less exposed to the elements. His other hand slides down my elbow and lightly clasps my wrist, as if feeling the pulse there. I wonder if he knows how quickly it’s going. Eighty-two, maybe a hundred now that I can feel his chin resting on my shoulder.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out shaky, but I’m determined to answer the question. “It’s called petrichor. ‘Petra,’ which is Greek for rock or earth. ‘Ikhor,’ which means the blood of the gods. It’s probably just sweat,” I add. He laughs softly, then presses a kiss behind my ear that nearly brings me to my knees.
“In North India, they bottle the scent up and sell it as perfume. ‘Mitti attar,’ they call it.” A rain scent encapsulated by the soil, by the boy whose arms now bracket mine.
His hands move up to my shoulders and turn me around. “Susan,” he says.
“Yes?”
“I really want to kiss you again.”
“Okay.”
The word barely slips out before his lips are on mine, and I imagine that he’s found a way to capture it with his tongue. It gently traces my lower lip, while his right hand slides up my neck and into my hair.
Malcolm isn’t as tall his friend Ahmed, who is at least six four. But to kiss him, I need to tilt my head up, need to balance on my toes so that I can fully reach his lips. As if sensing this, he presses my back to the tree and slides his other hand under my wet jacket, under my T-shirt, resting cold against the dry skin of my stomach, which goose bumps at his touch.
When we break free, our mouths hot, nearly as wet as our clothes, he brushes a thumb over my cheek and grins. Raindrops cling to his lashes, turning them into spiky clusters.
Amma may not have punished me for getting drunk at Afrin’s party. But I am not foolish enough to think I will be so lucky a second time around. Not when it comes to a boy. A boy who isn’t Malayali or Christian.
As if sensing my turmoil, Malcolm gently taps the center of my forehead. “Stop overthinking,” he teases. “This is not a math problem. Just go with the flow.”
And when he kisses me again, that’s what I do.
Malcolm
It’s funny how easily we fall together after that kiss. Holding hands. Sneaking kisses between classes. I smell hints of cardamom, coffee, and freshly cut grass on her skin.
Susan refuses to see me outside school: “It’s my parents. I’m not allowed to date.”
But I know there’s more to it than that. I saw it in Mrs. Thomas’s eyes the one and only time I took Susan home, the hard lines of disapproval on her face, which looks so much like Susan’s. I can sense it in the stiffness of Susan’s posture whenever I tease her about inviting me home as her English project partner.
So I kiss Susan every chance I get. I kiss her until her lips are swollen and pink. I pour everything into our kisses: anger, frustration, longing, and something else, something that skips and pulses under my ribs whenever I see Susan waiting for me by our lockers or giving me a shy smile.
When I kiss Susan, I can, for a few brief moments, forget our differences, wipe away every bad memory.
The Friday after our first kiss, we’re making out (again) in the empty hall next to the art classroom. “Want to skip school?” she asks, once we catch our breath.
“Don’t you have classes?” Based on how things blew up between us last week I’m surprised that she’d want to miss a single minute of them.
“It’s only art. It’s not that important.” She frowns slightly at the wall behind us: a mural of Arthur Eldridge painted by some students years ago. “But if you have something important to do—”
“I don’t. It’s only phys ed.” When it comes down to choosing between bouncing a basketball around the gym and kissing Susan, I’ll know I’ll choose the latter. Always.
“Want to come over to my place?” I ask at the bus stop. “I have a new game on my Xbox.”
Okay. I have no plans for us to play video games. But everyone will be out at this time of the day and we’ll have the place to ourselves to … do whatever. Even though I doubt we’ll go any further than kissing. Unlike Justin and some guys on the basketball team, quick hookups aren’t my thing and I’m pretty sure our kiss on Tuesday was Susan’s first. In fact, I expect Susan to refuse me right now, but surprisingly, she doesn’t.
Not that it helps because when we do reach my house, we find Freny there, standing right next to the mudroom, taking off her leaf-caked boots.
“What are you doing home so early?” My stepmother glances at Susan and then stares at me. “Shouldn’t you both be at school?”
“School let out early because of a fire alarm.” Susan raises her eyebrows disbelievingly behind Freny. I shrug. Someone has to say something, especially with Freny back home way earlier than I expected her to be.
“This is Susan,” I tell Freny now. “My—”
“Girlfriend!” Freny’s lips form an O and she claps gleefully. “Of course! I should have known from the dreamy way you’ve been acting all week!”
Dreamy? Me?
I glance at Susan, whose eyes have widened with alarm. But neither of us bothers correcting Freny. In fact, it’s probably one of the few times that one of my stepmother’s instant assumptions about my life doesn’t exactly annoy me.
“So sorry, dear.” Freny turns to face Susan. “Look at her, she’s terrified of me! Let’s start over again, shall we? I’m Freny. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you, Aunty.” Susan, who seems to have recovered from her initial shock, gives Freny a shy smile.
The way she greets Freny startles me for a second before I remember that Susan wasn’t born here. She knows that every desi adult who isn’t a parent or teacher must be called Uncle or Aunty, even if they’re unrelated to you.
Freny’s normally nonexistent cheeks pop up like plums on her bony face. “Are you from India?”
“Yes, Aunty. I was born in Mumbai, but our family is originally from Kochi.”
It’s like the floodgates suddenly open and my plans of kissing
Susan dissolve into an hour-long journey of recollecting Mumbai—the markets, the food, the landmarks—even though Susan has only ever visited India during vacations and Freny hasn’t been back since she married the old man.
“God, I thought she’d never shut up!” I tell Susan later, when Freny leaves the living room to take a phone call.
“Sorry we bored you.” Susan’s mouth trembles as if suppressing a smile. “She isn’t that bad, Malcolm.”
“Tell that to someone whose family she didn’t destroy to make a place for herself in,” I say bitterly.
There’s a pause before Susan speaks again. “What happened? To your mom, I mean.”
“Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer. It hit her shortly after I was born. When I was a kid, I didn’t know why she used a cane or why she took so much medication. It was only later that she told me. By the time I was fourteen, though, the tumors had spread through most of her lower leg and they had to amputate it.”
I’ll get better, she used to tell Mahtab and me before every new treatment plan, before every surgery. I’ll beat the cancer and we’ll be a family again.
“She always blamed herself.” My tongue feels too thick. “For her marriage breaking down.”
Susan’s fingers link through mine and tighten. Freny’s voice echoes in disjointed fragments from the kitchen.
“At least I have Mahtab,” I say now. Speaking of which—“Crap, it’s Friday!”
“Is this a new version of TGIF?”
“No, it’s my sister. She has another meeting today for that fund-raising concert. I totally bailed on her last week. And…” I glance at the date on my phone and groan. “I’m supposed to be working at Michelle’s later this afternoon. I can’t believe I forgot to fix my schedule this week with Jay!”
“Can you get someone else to switch shifts with you?” Susan’s calm voice cuts through my panic.
I think for a bit. “I guess I can ask the other barista, Meg. She’s a pain to deal with. But it’s worth a try.” I send Meg a text and after some negotiating—u cover for me for the whole Sunday not half, she insists—an agreement falls into place. I grimace. Not like I have much to do this weekend anyway.
I turn to Susan. “Come to the meeting with me. Mahtab says there’s still room for more fund-raising directors.”
Susan draws her socked foot in a line across the carpet. “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask my mom for permission. Besides, I’m not like you or Mahtab. I can’t think quickly or talk to people the way you guys do. I’ll probably only end up doing more harm than good.”
“That’s bull. You’re, like, the smartest person I know.” But even as I say the words, I know that they’re not going to convince her. “I’m sure there’s other stuff you can do.”
Susan’s still staring at the floor. “Maybe I’ll come to the next meeting.”
A pause before I say, “Sure.”
I can tell she isn’t going to come. But I don’t want to get into a fight right now. Not when I’ve discovered what she tastes like. Or how it feels to have a girl like me for being myself—Malcolm—without any calculation.
“I should get going.” Susan rises to her feet. She waves at Freny, who’s still busy talking on the phone in the kitchen. Freny waves back.
I follow Susan to the door, where she slips into her sneakers. “I guess, I’ll, uh, show you my video game another time.”
Susan finally turns to look at me. “Malcolm.”
“Yeah?”
“I think we both know I don’t play video games.”
Before I’ve had time to fully register that statement, she presses her lips to mine. The world shifts. Stops. I feel the kiss long after she pulls away and flashes me a wicked, un-Susan-like grin before running to catch the bus back home, ponytail flying behind her.
* * *
What I learn from my first meeting for the benefit concert Ronnie and my sister are organizing:
(a) There are more people on the committee than I expected—including my two best friends.
(b) The art director’s Vincent Tran. Ace athlete. Ace student. Tran has so many aces up his sleeve and so many chicks on each arm that most guys I know secretly hate his guts.
(c) The committee still doesn’t have the funds needed to rent a decent venue for the concert.
“Some of you have been wondering what the VIP liaison position entails.” Mahtab picks off exactly where Ronnie left off, and I wonder if it’s a couple thing or if they practiced this in advance. My sister grins. “I’m happy to say that we’ve been working with a couple of aid organizations and they’ve agreed to bring in twelve special guests, ten of them kids between the ages five to ten—from Syria!”
There’s a moment of silence and then a “Whoa!” Laughter and applause break out.
“That is really a great idea,” Vincent Tran says, his dimples flashing. “I’d love to help—if no one else wants the position!”
“That’s wonderful!” Mahtab’s eyes take on that sickeningly dreamy look every girl I know gets whenever Tran speaks. “In fact, I think you and Yusuf Shire would be perfect for this job!”
As she continues to talk, I notice Ronnie—normally the most cheerful person in the room—glaring at Tran. It’s probably why when my sister’s boyfriend approaches me a moment later, I don’t react with my usual sarcasm.
“Malc. Great to see you here.” Ronnie pinches the bridge of his nose under his glasses—a thing he does when he’s nervous. “Mahtab’s so excited.”
I nod. “What do you want me to do?”
“Get more sponsors. Look, there’s Isabel Abanda.” Ronnie points out a pretty girl with black curls and deep brown skin. “Her mom works at the Board of Trade. She got a couple of member organizations to sponsor us and cover the fees of the high school choir and some of the admin costs. But we still need cash to rent the venue. Can you approach the coffee shop you work at?”
Talk about direct. While I’m a tiny bit annoyed that Ronnie specifically targeted me with Michelle’s in mind, I have to admire him for his pushiness.
“Michelle’s Coffee House isn’t Tim Hortons. You’ll probably not get the big bucks that you need,” I warn him. Also, the owner, Michelle is notoriously stiff with money. The biggest raise I’ve ever seen her give anyone was Jay—a single dollar added to his hourly wage after he had worked there for five years.
“Can you ask her, though?”
“I can try.”
“Great! That’s all we want really.” But the worry lines don’t disappear from Ronnie’s forehead and I’m flooded with a strange sense of guilt. I’m about to ask him if there are other places, other people he’d also like me to approach, when Mahtab calls for everyone’s attention again.
“Okay, so we still need a name for the concert! A good one, please!” She glares at Steve who gives her a sheepish grin. “We need to vote on this today so that Vincent can start designing the posters.”
Steve’s the first to throw out a suggestion, probably trying to make up for whatever he said at the last meeting: “A Night of Music!”
“That’s too generic,” Isabel points out.
“A Helping Hand from Canada to Syria!”
“Too long,” Ronnie mutters next to me.
“Songs for Syria!” Ahmed shouts.
“Homecoming!”
I can see from Mahtab’s face that she’s not entirely happy with any of these suggestions, though she doesn’t strike down any of them. I glance at the newspaper Ronnie brought in again, thinking about the images that flash on our screens nearly every day. It’s not propaganda, I told the woman in the coffee shop. It’s someone’s life.
“How about To Syria, with Love?” I say when there’s a brief lull.
I know I’m on the right track when I see the smile on Ronnie’s face, the nods from the others, including Vincent Tran.
“That one’s perfect, actually,” Isabel says. “Simple and effective.”
It’s Mahtab I’m looking at, though. My sister, who
se beaming gaze finally meets mine when the votes are cast and my suggestion wins by a landslide.
Susan
Somewhere, I’m sure there is a rule set by the universe—or maybe it’s in a chain email—where you get ten years of bad luck if you don’t tell your best friend absolutely everything about your very first kiss.
A part of me still wants to hold on to the girl Alisha knows, the one who called boyfriends overrated. What’s happening between Malcolm and me is so strange, so new, that I barely understand it myself. It’s why I keep the first kiss (and the others that follow) secret for four whole days, terrified of the minefield of questions that my best friend will likely bombard me with: Is it a casual thing or is he your boyfriend? Are you going to go on birth control? Does Aruna Aunty know?
Amma knows nothing about the kiss, of course. By luck, I even managed to intercept the school’s recorded call about my absence from art class on Friday, telling my mother it was a wrong number. But I know I can’t keep such a big secret from my best friend.
When Alisha and I finally fix a time to Skype on Saturday, an hour after my morning driving lesson with Joseph, my palms are sweating, even though a part of me is looking forward to seeing Alisha’s eyes bug out and her jaw drop when I tell her.
“Hey!” I say when Alisha appears on-screen. “What’s new?”
“Not much.” Alisha’s voice, far from bubbling over with its usual energy is flat. Dull. “Oh, you know. The usual.”
I hesitate before asking the next question. “How are things with you and Isaac? You met him again yesterday, right?”
Alisha’s lower lip begins to tremble—usually a sign that she’s going to cry. My heart sinks even further. “I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again.”
“What happened? Did the meeting not go well?”
Alisha laughs shakily. “Something like that. I guess in a way it’s my fault for getting too hopeful and thinking we were talking exclusively to each other. I found out yesterday that he’s also simultaneously talking with four other girls. He told me himself. Right before he said that he didn’t think we were well-suited to each other.”
The Beauty of the Moment Page 16
