The wind is picking up, and it makes my eyes water. I step closer to him. “Anywhere. I don’t care.”
“Then let’s just walk,” he says, taking my hand.
Walking should be the last thing my sore feet want to do right now, but his fingers lace their way through mine, and my blisters no longer matter. I lean into him, and we set off for nowhere in particular.
He’s chatty, telling me about a funny typo that made it into the school paper’s latest edition when I feel a raindrop. I can’t help but laugh.
“What’s so funny?” He smiles sideways and holds my eye.
“It’s just like in the movies. You know, the young couple caught in the rainstorm. There’s always a bridge or something for them to stand under. Where’s our bridge now that we need one?” As the words exit my mouth, I feel my cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. Rainy-day bridge scenes all end the same way. With a kiss. And not just a polite little peck. No, rainy-day bridge kisses are always melodramatic, capital-K kisses, drawn out and accompanied by orchestras.
He’s blushing too, a shade of pink to match my own. Oh yes, he understands me. The scorching feeling spreads from the base of my neck to the roots of my hair. His hand drops mine and moves to my waist.
We keep walking, hips touching, not speaking.
I hope for more rain.
Ian’s presence leaves me giddy and wanting and utterly ridiculous. I laugh again, first at my own ridiculousness and then because I feel another raindrop, then another.
“Look what you’ve done,” Ian whispers in my ear, grinning, as the sky opens up.
“Run!” Now I’m the one to grab his hand. “Over there!”
We jog to the nearest shelter, a convenience store awning, not really caring a bit that we’re getting drenched. When we get there, we’re wet and gasping, as much from laughing as from running. “It’s not a bridge,” he says, “but this’ll at least protect us from the rain.”
I’m blushing again, this time because our closeness under the narrow awning unsettles me. I avoid looking directly at him, but I can’t help it for long, and when I finally look up, he’s staring back. My legs turn to jelly. From running, I tell myself.
“So … how was the rest of your weekend?” Ian’s attempt at small talk is stilted and clumsy—Hollywood’s expectations weigh heavily upon us. His clothing is sodden, a droplet of rain is coursing down the bridge of his nose, but his eyes look golden and inviting, and more than anything I want to push my fingers through his rain-slicked hair while he kisses me.
He kisses me.
It’s not quite a Hollywood kiss. It’s tame and sweet—chaste, even—and it’s over too soon. I want more. So I kiss him.
Ian seems surprised at first, but then he’s kissing me right back, and there’s nothing chaste about it. I wait for the kiss to erase the day before, to wipe away Amir’s words. It doesn’t, though. It just makes them even more complicated. Kissing Ian makes my here even more different from my there, and the nagging feeling that I don’t deserve this sweet respite from my past pricks at my brain. I press against him harder, and the guilt grows fainter.
“Wow,” says Ian when we finally pull apart. He’s grinning again.
I don’t blush this time. I grin back. “Was that okay?”
“Uh, yeah?” He’s warmly sarcastic, teasing. “Actually, it was more than okay. I guess I was taking it too slow, huh?”
“You’ll do better next time,” I tease him back. There’s a pleasant sort of tension between us, and now we’re off balance in a good way. We lean toward one other, always touching, but just barely, like we’re held together by invisible rubber bands. I’m not myself around Ian—I’m behaving like a flirting, reckless stranger.
For the moment, this feels like a very good thing.
COLLISIONS
I am buoyant as Ian walks me home, and I catch myself grinning idiotically as we talk about everything and nothing. Well, perhaps not everything. But we talk about so many things, frivolous and serious alike, that it feels like it could be everything. We talk about everything that matters to the not-Laila I become when I’m with him.
He’s the human equivalent of Bastien’s cereal—a sweet, easy indulgence totally unlike anything back home. He satisfies a craving I didn’t know I had.
“What’s your mom going to say when she sees me?” Ian’s fingers brush against mine, but they don’t grab hold; the tease is more thrilling than the act.
“Nothing,” I say, “since she’s not going to see you. She’s not ready for that yet.” I’m not ready for that.
He feigns offense. “But moms love me! I make a great first impression.” He sees my reluctance and stops in the middle of the sidewalk to bow with a gallant flourish. “Just to your door, then, Lady Laila. Your wish is my command.”
But we don’t make it that far.
Amir is waiting outside my building. He’s stern, standing like a sentry, but for once I’m only witness to his venomous glare. Today, Ian is the victim.
Just the sight of him causes my stomach to clench. After our conversation yesterday, his presence cannot mean anything good. “Amir? What are you doing here?” Why do I feel guilty, as if I’ve been caught doing something wrong?
“I need to talk to you.” Not in English.
“Hey, I recognize you from school. I’m Ian.” Ian sticks his hand out, unaware that he has already been excluded.
Amir is the picture of contempt. He’s an angry statue ignoring Ian’s hand.
Ian shrugs and drops his hand. “Laila?”
They’re both looking at me. What am I choosing here? The moment feels inexplicably important. “I’m sorry, Ian. I have to speak to Amir. Family business. Thank you for walking me home, though.” My smile is self-conscious and dim.
Ian’s eyes narrow just slightly—the tiniest hint of irritation directed at Amir. But he shrugs again, rejecting my rejection. “Okay, no problem. I’ll see you at school.” His tone is neutral, his wave is taut, and he’s walking away before I can respond.
Somewhere inside me a spark flickers, then vanishes. Our new connection deflates, and so do I.
“Bye, Ian,” I say to his back.
LINKS
“You didn’t have to be so rude.” My words rush out before I remember that I am in no position to chastise Amir. I duck my head so he can’t watch me hopscotching between indignation and shame.
Amir relaxes as Ian disappears. “You need to be careful. Things aren’t as easy here as they seem at first.”
I can only stare at him, confused. What is that supposed to mean? What does he want? “What are you doing here?” I ask again.
“I wanted to talk to you, but your brother said you were out. So I waited.”
I feel like a dog bracing for a second kick.
He pulls an envelope from a pocket inside his jacket and thrusts it toward me. “Here. It should be enough.”
I don’t have to ask him what it is; the flap has come unsealed. It’s money. American money. The envelope is bulging with wrinkled bills. Some are torn; all are dirty. These are not the clean, crisp bills of Emmy’s ATM visits. This is money hard-earned and well hidden.
“But …” Questions collide on my tongue, but no words come out.
“Your mother called us late last night. You didn’t know?”
“No,” I whisper, embarrassed. “What did she say?”
He looks as confused as I am. “She said that she needed money to pay the rent. She asked to borrow it from us.”
“No!” I’m repulsed by the idea of taking his money. “We can’t. I mean, you can’t afford it anyway.”
“Why would you think that? That we can’t afford it?”
I can see in his eyes that this is a test. His questions are challenges. “I’ve seen where you live, Amir.” I say it softly. I force meekness into my voice to lessen the insult.
But he doesn’t take it as an insult. He responds as if he were teaching a small child, patronizing and slow. “We hav
e plenty of money, Laila. Everyone living there works at least one job, and sometimes two or three. Except Nadeen, of course.”
My face grows hot at the mention of his sister. Her very name feels like a rebuke, even if Amir does not intend it that way. “You work? When?”
“Nights. Weekends. Weekdays during lunch period sometimes if they need me. Though there aren’t many busboy emergencies at the restaurant.”
My brain calculates his schedule. No wonder I never see him at school. He’s racing to his job the moment the bell rings. “Then why—” I search for a polite way to phrase my question. “Why do you live like you do? With so many of you crammed together? With those horrible neighbors?”
“We have better things to do with our money, Laila.”
I can see that he wants me to ask the question, so I do. “Like what?” I’m more dutiful than I am curious, since I already know that the answer will sting.
It does.
“I’m saving to get my father out of prison, first. But everyone in that apartment has someone back home who needs rescuing. Airfare, travel visas, medical care, food. We’re a needy family. We come from a needy place.”
“You heard from your father?” I perk up at the reference, hungry for good news.
But Amir wilts when he answers. “Not exactly. Not directly from him, anyway. But he is alive. That alone is worth celebrating. And we’ve discovered that your uncle’s regime is more open to bribes than your father’s was. I suppose that’s worth celebrating, too. If we can get enough money to the right people to pay for my father’s release, that is.”
I hold up the envelope. “Then why this? Why would you give us money that you need far more than we do?”
“We were up most of the night discussing this, and for once they included me. Do you want to know why, Laila?”
He wants me to nod, so I do, slowly.
“They wanted to know about you. You and Bastien, really, but since I haven’t spent much time with your brother, they mostly wanted to know what I thought of you.”
I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry. “What did you tell them?”
He leans closer to me, every bit as close as Ian was just before he kissed me. “I told them you didn’t know. That you had no idea what your father was doing. That you and your brother are innocent. I saw it on your face, Laila, when I told you about my village. I saw how painful it was for you to hear. I’m right, aren’t I? That you didn’t know?”
He’s studying me, not even breathing, and I realize that this truly matters to him. He needs to be right. He wants for me to be innocent.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper, and a part of me crumbles. I’m admitting—what, exactly? I’m admitting something, to Amir and to myself. I’m acknowledging the monster I never saw in my father’s shoes. “I didn’t know,” I repeat, and this time I’m able to look at Amir as I say it.
He nods, satisfied. “I didn’t think so. But even so, my cousins aren’t giving this to your family as an act of kindness. This isn’t charity. It’s more like an investment. Or maybe a gamble. We expect to be paid back and more.”
I feel myself shrink as I understand. This is no rescue, no lifeline. This is another noose around my family’s neck. If we take this money, we are doubly indebted—first to Darren Gansler and now to Amir’s family. I’m certain we’ll pay a steep price for both of these debts.
I hold out the envelope. “Take it back,” I say. “We don’t want it. Not from you.” It’s pride mixed with fear making me reckless, and even though my voice sounds firm, I know deep down that we need this money.
Amir doesn’t take it. “This is a long-term plan. Your family has a way of coming out on top, Laila. This time you need us. Next time we might need you. Besides, you should know by now that neither one of us really has a vote here.”
For a moment we’re frozen like this—me holding out the envelope, Amir not taking it. Out of nowhere it occurs to me that if Ian and I tilt toward one another, off balance and light, then Amir and I are welded together. Our pasts, our shared strangeness here, and our connected fates give us a weighty bond.
Slowly, I lower the envelope, silently accepting his conditions. I don’t like it. I don’t like accepting money from him, both because he has better uses for it and because, as I learned yesterday, my family is already so deeply indebted to his. This loan will cost too much either way. He knows it, and I know it.
But welded together as we are, if I sink, he does too. I take the money.
INTENTIONS
The envelope is warm. This repulses me—it makes the money feel like a living, breathing burden, even though I know it’s only because Amir was carrying it inside his jacket.
I steam-train up the stairs, prepared to confront my mother. How dare she? Surely she didn’t know what she was asking.
Bastien sits in the hallway in front of our door, carefully sorting glass from paper. He learned about recycling in school, and he’s been a fanatic ever since. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I saw the building maintenance crew toss all the bins into one giant Dumpster, mixed together and headed to the same place as the rest of the trash. His intentions are noble, and the end result is out of his control.
“That’s a lot, right, Laila?” His brow is pinched.
I inspect his handiwork. Four clear and three green glass bottles. All alcohol except for a single empty jar of mayonnaise. Wine and gin and whatever else my mother now drinks in place of tea. “This is from just this week?”
Bastien nods. He looks worried, and I mentally commit to pay more attention to him.
“No, it’s not so much,” I lie. “Come on, I’ll help you take it downstairs.”
He only lets me carry the lightest pile, a small stack of newspapers. Bastien insists on carrying the bottles, stuffed into plastic grocery bags, by himself. I feel protective of him as he clinks down the stairs, and I wonder if that’s how my mother feels too. I hate that she asked for money from people so wounded by my father’s actions, but I can understand her instinct. She’s trying to keep us safe in the only way she knows how.
After Bastien finishes putting his recycling into the proper bins, we trudge back upstairs. My resolve to confront Mother is fading. I’ll give her the money without argument, I decide. But I will do everything I can to make sure she pays it back. It’s time our family repaid our debts.
III.
MIRRORS
Tori and Morgan exchange glances while I pretend not to notice. They’ve never been alone with me before, and I think I make them nervous.
Barbaric. The word has gone unspoken since the night of the dance, but it is surely contained in those looks. Why else would they be tossing silent secrets back and forth like that?
“Emmy should be here soon. Her mother is driving her back after her dentist appointment.” They know this already, but I say it to reassure them.
We’re sprawled across the sidewalk, painting signs for a school fund-raiser. “No! It’s all one word. Like this.” Tori dips her paintbrush into the blue and splatter-writes in giant capitals: WALKATHON.
Morgan sighs. “Uh-uh. That’s wrong. Look, I’m copying it directly from the announcement.” Her orange letters are tidy and compact: WALK-A-THON.
I avoid the debate and stick to drawing decorative swirls and flourishes on the signs they’ve finished lettering. The concept of asking strangers for money in exchange for walking sounds like an inefficient form of begging, but I know better than to say so.
“Did you guys hear about Asher?” Tori asks. “He’s such a loser.”
Morgan snorts. “I know!” She pitches her voice low and pantomimes scooping something off the ground and waving it in the air. “Oops, look what I dropped. No, really, everyone. Look. Look at what I dropped! Can everyone see? Did you all see it in the back there?”
I smile. Their laughter is infectious, and for once I am in the loop. A boy made a big show of dropping a condom from his wallet as he paid for lunch, and when he picked it
up, he put it into his pocket so that part of the foil package was still visible. He swaggered around the cafeteria like this, advertising his virility, though not with the desired effect.
“Maybe he doesn’t know what they’re for,” Tori jokes. She switches to her own version of the cartoony male voice. “Look, it’s a water balloon! Or maybe a finger glove.”
“A very small shopping bag?” Morgan giggles.
“An itty-bitty rain poncho!” Tori shrieks back.
“Yeah, a poncho for his, his—” Morgan is laughing too hard to say it.
“For his little soldier?” I offer.
“His little soldier?” Both girls howl this at the same time. Tori has tears leaking from her eyes, she’s laughing so hard. “Yes, that’s what we call it in my country. One term for it, anyway. Or rooster. Just like here, right?” I’m enjoying this, enjoying being in on the joke.
Morgan is laughing so hard she can’t catch her breath. “Little soldier? Oh my god, Laila. You kill me!”
Tori chokes back her giggling, trying to look serious for a moment. “I think you mean cock, Laila.” She whispers the word and then dissolves back into shrieking laughter.
I’m laughing as hard as they are now, my face stretched from the unfamiliar exercise. “Yes, that’s it—cock. Not rooster. I always get those two words confused.”
A teacher glares as she steps into the grass to walk around our howling group. We’re holding our sides, snorting and crying in hysterics.
“I swear I’m going to pee my pants,” Morgan says as our moment tapers off. We’re all out of breath, and she has the hiccups, which makes us giggle even more. “His little soldier. That’s too perfect.”
We go back to our painting. I finish one poster and I’m reaching for the next when I realize that the mood has shifted again.
“Um, Laila?” Tori is hesitant. “There’s something we’ve been wanting to ask you.…” She looks to Morgan for reinforcement.
“But we totally don’t want to offend you or anything,” Morgan adds.
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