A Universe of Wishes

by A Universe of Wishes (epub)

  It’s tough, tho, cuz you gotta ride the Blue Line to get there and niggas be gettin in trouble for not havin a ticket. That’s one of the first cases I caught. Ridin the train without a ticket. Then they give you a ticket that’s like $500 and I can’t pay that cuz I’m 12 years old. Where I’ma get the money to pay that off? So, boom, I got a warrant. And if you already on probation on some other shit, boom, straight to jail.

  How I’ma be a hero if that’s part of my origin story?

  But I like what you said about not bein a hero that destroyed things but a hero that saved things. That’s how I be feelin these days. It’s weird. I thought bein in the Box would make me more selfish, you know? Make me think more about myself and about survivin. But I seen what happened to dude across the hall and one of my first thoughts was “what could I have done to keep him from doin that,” you know?

  Sometimes I be hearing things and seein things that ain’t there. Feelin them too. On the dead homie, I swear the other day I swear I musta transported myself to some other nigga hood I ain’t never been to before. I know it wasn’t no kinda memory or nothin because it was all strange and new and different.

  Shoes dangling from power lines like some kinda ballet over this potholed street with cracks makin a spiderweb from one small crater to another, and they was gettin made bigger from the wheels of Camaros and Hondas and beat-to-shit Subarus, all these worndown four-doors takin kids to and from school or this local park with a green-and-orange jungle gym for a afternoon where they’ll learn how to ride bicycles and where they’ll fall while speeding down that hill by the parking lot and realize that the natural way to deal with pain is to cry. There was weeds poking out above freshly mowed grass where the men in tanktops was maintainin their yards, and there was these gates of green and white and yellow, with grasshoppers playing tag, in front of two-story brown and black brick project towers where extension cords tangle and hang, pulled by gravity into a slump around their middles, between windows, and people siphoning power, sharing it, experiencing the same electricity that sparks the small satellite dishes on top of certain roofs and the bootleg cable boxes in other windows, and some other ledge was taken by an air conditioner, and it was groanin beneath the weight of this oppressive heat that just sits on your shoulders and bends your knees and soaks your shirt and makes everything too heavy. And the kids was comin out with their magnifying glasses to aim the sun on the ants scurrying out from under their badass attentions, intentions, and a crow’s head is gettin all moldy in the middle of the yellow-striped street, its body lost somewhere in the weeds of a nearby hill where other kids had tossed it. Beer cans lost in the tall grass, half-eaten chicken with the meat smoldering at each end of the wing’s bones.

  And I swear on the dead homie that I was there. It was just for a second, but I was out. I was out of my cell.

  Maybe, next time, I could take someone else with me. If I can figure out how to do it again, maybe I can take you with me.

  Dear Quincy—

  I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your latest letter. What you described sounds magical. Through your words, I could feel the heat on my chest. And I could feel the beginnings of a breeze on my face. I could smell the grass. I could hear the sizzle of electricity and the hum of the air conditioners. You say that it is difficult to imagine yourself a hero, but perhaps Allah has gifted you with abilities beyond our comprehension.

  I have been seeing things too, but I don’t know that it is because of any gifts.

  The hunger strike has entered its second week, and everything hurts. My entire body sometimes feels as though it has been swallowed by fire. My throat is a desert as I have also refused water. There is talk of forced feeding. It is when jailers bind you to a chair and insert a tube through your nose into your throat and inject liquid nutrients so that you do not die. They say it is to protect us from ourselves, but I have heard from some of the older prisoners that it is the most painful thing a man can endure. Many have been left weeping and broken by the end of it. They say it lights your brain on fire, and the whole world explodes into whiteness. It is like dying, but there is no release.

  I’m scared.

  I don’t know what I’ll do if they come for me. I will try to pray if they ever put me in that chair, but I fear my thoughts will become too scattered for me to form the words. I fear I will already start crying before they begin.

  I am sorry for how messy my writing has become. My hands have begun shaking. I don’t know if it is because I am afraid or because my body is breaking down.

  There is no real way for me to communicate with the others. We have our secrets, but they are all coded messages with instructions. I have not seen my family in over six months. I don’t know who is alive and who is dead. I don’t know who has celebrated a birthday. I don’t know who has married. The world moves on outside this cell, and I feel like the only way for me to rejoin it is to die. And I’m scared. I wish that just once I could receive a message from another one of the hunger strikers that was not a set of instructions or a number for how many days we have been doing this for already. I wish I could receive from them a poem. Or a photograph.

  All I have is you.

  Omar—

  Whatchu look like?

  I’m asking because when I take you to where we’re going, I want to recognize you. I don’t know if I’ll meet you alone or if you’ll be in a crowd, and this might sound mean but I don’t know if I’d really KNOW it was you. Even with all of what’s been happening to us. Like, you think that with this thing we got, we’d know each other instantly, but, like, I have no picture of you. I ain’t never seen you before. And before that first letter, I had no idea you even existed.

  But now sometimes when I close my eyes, I try to picture you. I try to put your face together. At first, it’s kinda like a Mr. Potato Head thing where the lips are too big and the nose is way too big and the eyes are kinda googly, but then it starts to come together, you know?

  Here’s what I picture, and you can tell me if I’m wrong.

  I never met a Middle Eastern person before and I don’t think I know any Palestinians, except DJ Khaled. He’s a Palestinian, right?

  But I picture you having this straight nose that juts forward a little bit with tiny down-facing nostrils. And your bottom lip is a little plump, but you got your lips pursed together in this straight line. And your eyebrows are bushy and curve sharp-like towards the ends. And your eyes are shaped like almonds. Like the kind Mama was always eating. And your skin is dark but not dark-dark like mine. More like when water wash up on the shore but the sand ain’t dry yet. Like, dark but not dark-dark. It’s the type of brown that’s nice to look at. And you got this sloping jawline. It’s smooth and curved. I think you’re my age so you don’t got no baby fat left. Maybe you hit your growth spurt. Some of the cats who play basketball around the way call it your Mango Season. Maybe that has somethin to do with the South, I don’t know. But maybe you’re tall. And maybe you could hoop too. When you get out, you should think about playing ball.

  You ain’t gotta say what you think I look like or nothin. Ur a good writer but my face too pretty for words. Haha, I’m just kiddin. I’m just a regular nigga. Regular-degular. Nothin special.

  But I think that’s what you might look like. It’s what I think a hero might look like.

  Quincy—

  Do your hands have long fingers? Like those of a piano player?

  I imagine you with strong hands. Your grip isn’t bony, it’s iron. You hold tightly to what is dear. I imagine your skin dark as seabed on the backs of your hands and your palms are the color of milky coffee, and I can now imagine every line, every crease, every crevice. Once upon a time, your knuckles were cracked, and I think they have bled often. You have broken the skin of them on many things, trying to survive. But what has grown over that broken skin is rough and
safe and secure. That’s what I imagine when I imagine your knuckles on my cheek. Security.

  It is more difficult to see your face. I think that my sight is failing me. It took me a long time to read your last letter. The words themselves were slipping away right before my eyes. I cough now and when I cough, I can feel the blood moving in my chest. If I cough into my hands, they come back red. They have started trying to force feed us, but I have remained resilient, and I find the occasional message of support and congratulations waiting for me in my cell. I can barely lift my arms, and I have stopped trying to walk the length of my cell for exercise. My legs no longer support me. Sometimes, I feel nothing at all. I don’t feel my bed beneath me, nor do I feel the heat of this cage on my forehead. Sounds come as though from far away. I sometimes hear screams, but I tell myself I am only dreaming them. If it is a lie, then let it be mine.

  When I try to imagine you, I imagine your hands, but I also imagine your arms. They are thin and sinewy. Strong but light. Running is easy for you. And your legs are the same, and I can see them kicking behind you as you dive into the water. You are an arrow fired into it.

  We are just off the shore, swimming into the Mediterranean. The sun is shining so bright it turns the rippling waves into a bed of diamonds. And I see you swimming and swimming.

  I hope you get this letter. My stomach has stopped working. I don’t know if I can pass anything through it anymore. I think I’m dying.

  I am sorry if my writing is messy. My tears are falling on the page, and I can’t stop them. You told me that crying helps, so I am trying it now.

  Habibi, come to Gaza some time when you are able. You will find me.

  Now that you know what I look like.

  Omar—

  Bro, I’m not gonna lie. Your last letter had me shook. Your eyes aren’t getting bad. It’s just these new pencils they’re making us use. They’re all made out of rubber and they don’t have any led in them so that we can’t hurt ourselves. You’re good. You gotta you gotta stay. I can’t

  The other day, I was waiting. Trying to see if I just needed to take a shit and get another letter from you but nothin was comin and I just kept tryin and tryin and nothin was happenin and I got so mad I couldn’t eat and when they tried to bring me more food I took the tray and threw my food everywhere and started bangin the tray on the doors and on the walls and I couldn’t stop. I knew what I was doing. I saw myself doing it, but I couldn’t stop. It was like my old self took over. My out-there self.

  That Quincy was always angry. Even when I was laughing and havin fun and all of us was hangin out at that abandoned house on Pico and one time we locked the homie in a shed and he was poundin on it for like hours and we finally let him out and we was laughing our asses off, even at that time I was angry. Then there’s the Quincy that did everything he could to take care of his mama. Maybe I go to school but that don’t work so maybe I slang on the corner and that don’t work so you just fall into the gangbangin and everybody already go into that angry so it ain’t nothin to pop somebody or to give them the whoop-dee-whoop. Then there’s the Quincy that loves reading and kinda likes writing and is tryin to get good at it but they make it so hard for a nigga to learn in here, and it’s like there are all these Quincys inside me and they all tired. They all tired. And the only time they all feel glued together is when I’m readin your letters.

  I don’t know that I can stick it out in here if I ain’t got your letters. You’re saving my life, man. You can’t go. I’m beggin you. Please.

  I been trying to see if I can do that trick again. Where I see a place I ain’t never been to before. But I haven’t been able to do it since that one time. Sometimes I wonder if it was really real. Like I musta dreamt it. But it was the realest dream ever. And it wasn’t no part of Cali I’d ever been to before. That’s the thing. It was a new place. So I been tryin. Like, I tried it with the Rimal place you told me about. And I could almost get there but not quite. It still felt like there was this fence between me and that spot.

  (Sorry, I had to take a walk. I almost ripped up what I wrote so far, but I want you to get all of this if the letter gets to you. I’m sorry. I can’t keep you from doin what you need to do. You fightin your fight is inspirin me and all. But you know what too? It’s like the songs say: if you love somethin, you gotta be able to let it go. I just…I just don’t want you to die, homie. On the set, you the best thing that ever happened to me and I don’t know that this coulda happened if I didn’t wind up here in solitary. Someone catches me shittin out a whole piece of paper they gon take me straight to the hospital, you feel me? Haha. But you a real nigga for what you doin. That’s on the set. Out there, niggas die over all sorts of petty shit and it’s like we don’t see the bigger things that’s above us, you know? Like the homie who got asthma because his house is right by that coal plant and that’s why the property value low enough for black families to buy it in the first place. And his mama and em was always tellin him to sleep with the window shut but he liked the breeze on his face so he’d always open it every night till one night he fell outta bed and couldn’t breathe and they took him to the hospital and told him he had asthma. See, I wasn’t thinkin bout none of that before I got in here. I was seein it. I was seein kids get jammed up over ridin trains without payin the fare then windin up behind bars over that shit and I just figured it was normal, but I wasn’t seein the bigger thing hangin over it. I don’t know. You opened my eyes to thinkin that kind of way. And that’s why I’ma get out. That’s right. I’ma get outta here. I’ma get outta the Box and I’ma beat my case and I’ma be clean on probation and I’ma make it so kids don’t be gettin locked up over bullshit fare evasion and so kids don’t get asthma from living to close to the coal plant and so ppl stop getting shot over bullshit. I’ma get out.)

  And when I get out, I’ma find you, and we’re gonna go swimmin.

  And I’m gonna ask you what that last word meant. Habibi. It sounded important but it didn’t translate in my brain when I read it. I hope that don’t mean my powers is fading. Haha. Cuz I still gotta make it to you. And I think Gaza’s a long way from Cali.

  There’s another reason I need to see you. And I wasn’t even sure I was gonna write this, but whatever.

  When you were talkin about my hands…I felt…I don’t know. I felt Good. Like, Good good. Ain’t nobody ever told me about my hands like that. And it ain’t feel weird either. It felt right. I don’t know. I just wanted you to know that.

  Quincy—

  Beloved. Habibi means beloved. I hope this letter gets to you in time.

  Find me.

  Habibi—

  I’m coming.

  Samira Ahmed is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Love, Hate & Other Filters; Internment; and Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies including Take the Mic, Color Outside the Lines, Ink Knows No Borders, Who Will Speak for America?, and Vampires Never Get Old. She was born in Bombay, India, and grew up in Batavia, Illinois, in a house that smelled like fried onions, spices, and potpourri. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Samira has taught high school English in both the suburbs of Chicago and New York City, worked for education nonprofits, and spent time on the road for political campaigns.

  samiraahmed.com

  When she was in high school, Jenni Balch decided she wanted to grow up to be a physicist, like her grandfather, and an author, like her favorite storytellers. So she did. Jenni double-majored in physics and history, and wrote her first novel-length story while writing her honors thesis in physics. She earned a master’s in mechanical engineering and now lives and works in western Massachusetts. While in college, Jenni was diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenic purpura, an autoimmune disorder where platelets are targeted as foreign antibodies. One of the main characters in her story shares this diagnosis.

  jennibal
ch.com

  Libba Bray is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Diviners series, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist Beauty Queens, the Printz Award–winning Going Bovine, and the acclaimed Gemma Doyle trilogy. She divides her time between Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California.

  libbabray.com

  Dhonielle Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of The Belles and the coauthor of the series Tiny Pretty Things, on which the Netflix show is based. She is the COO of the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books and CEO of the diversity-focused story kitchen Cake Literary. She’s a former elementary and middle school librarian. She earned an MA in children’s literature from Hollins University and an MFA in writing for children at the New School.

  dhonielleclayton.com

  Zoraida Córdova is the author of many fantasy novels for kids and teens, including the award-winning Brooklyn Brujas series, Incendiary, Star Wars: A Crash of Fate, and The Way to Rio Luna. Her short fiction has appeared in the New York Times bestselling anthology Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, Come On In, and Toil & Trouble. She is the co-editor of Vampires Never Get Old. Zoraida was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and raised in Queens, New York. When she’s not working on her next novel, she’s finding a new adventure.

  zoraidacordova.com

  Tessa Gratton is the author of the science fiction fantasy titles The Queens of Innis Lear and Lady Hotspur for adults, as well as several YA series and short stories that have been translated into twenty-two languages. Her most recent YA novels are the original fairy tales Strange Grace and Night Shine. Though she has lived all over the world, she currently resides alongside the Kansas prairie with her wife.