Am I not your friend?
I thought you were into Matt? Or did you realize, like the rest of the world, he’s completely unattainable? And so you decide to help yourself to what you saw in my heart?
Whatever’s happening between Tats and Jeremy must be developing at drama club.
The rest of the morning disappears in an intense exam-preparation lecture by Mr. Pape. There’s exactly one school week left before exams, as next Friday is the official designated day off to study, so he tells us that he’s going to cram the history of war into four days. He’s a pacifist, so he spends a lot of time on ethics, standing by the window with one hand on his hip and the other hand ready to tousle his own hair when his speech gets too tragic. I sit in the back and write three different letters to Tats. They contain Amu’s overused favorite words: “unethical” and “merciless.” I tear each one up.
At lunch, I avoid the cafeteria, where Tats would be waiting at our table, and log on to a computer in the library. Dad’s e-mail says Those who can’t bear to look a bear in the eye are already dead. Stand and look before you fight or flee. It makes winning, and even failing, sweeter.
I don’t get that one, but I do know the bear is either Tats or Muhammad.
? ? ?
I decide to corner Tats in the locker room after gym, second-to-last period, the only class we share. I’m in an enriched stream, and she’s trying out all the artistic avenues open to her. Which I’m kind of envious of. What would it feel like to want to become only a photographer, I wonder. But that wondering is very rhetorical because no way would I give up my straight-A+ report card to risk a dabble in hobbies.
Besides being artsy, Tats also has tawny hair. Have you ever seen long tawny hair? It’s like the mane growing on your favorite fairy-tale horse, the kind your seven-year-old self dreamed about, frolicking through that meadow, underneath that rainbow.
It would be easy for Jeremy to fall for her is what I’m trying to say.
And me? I’ve got hair. It’s just that since I started hijab, no guy other than Dad or Muhammad or Amu has seen it. So my hair has succumbed to the lack of maintenance that exists when the world doesn’t judge you by it. I wear a celebratory halo of intercultural marriage, free to be, on my head: the tight curls of my Egyptian mother with the blue-black shine of my Indian father, amassed in a tight bun under my scarf.
Actually, I’d be lying if I said no guy has ever seen it. Tats has taken my pictures after makeover sessions in her bedroom. She said her brother once asked who her hot friend was after he’d accidently seen one of the pics. I pretended to get upset but secretly thought, Really? Someone thinks I’m hot?
We still do makeover shots occasionally. Then stop for long periods when the guilt gets to me. Or when Saint Sarah leads another session at the mosque on the powers of being free of societal beauty judgment—that my logical mind completely understands.
It’s hard sometimes to move in obscurity when everyone else around you is so Instagram worthy. Even the person who’s telling you not to care so much about looking great: Saint Sarah.
But gym class is girls only. I get to go hijabless for a glorious forty minutes. I’m partnered up with Simone, athlete extraordinaire, for our weights unit, so there’s no opportunity to talk to Tats in class. Besides, I’ve been avoiding her bearish eyes until the opportune time in the locker room, pretending I’m really into perfecting my squats.
After class, people do their hair thing in front of the mirrors while I tuck it all in with one sweep of a scarf and a strategically placed safety pin. I’m always done first. And because Tats has that hair to maintain, she’s usually done last.
I come out of the bathroom stall where I’ve been practicing my unaffected look and stand by the hand dryers to watch her toss the mane around. I’m readying myself to ask her a composed, nonrhetorical question—Do you like Jeremy too?—when the weirdest thing happens. She turns to me before I speak and takes a deep breath. Her eyes are wide and ingenue-like. If her favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn, had a younger, slightly less delicate-looking sister, Tats would be her, face-wise. Audrey is her favorite actress precisely for that reason.
“Jan, will you promise not to get mad at me?” she says. “It has to do with Jeremy.”
I turn to the mirror and look at the ceiling lights through it.
“It’s exciting news,” she continues. “Just promise me you’ll be all right with it.”
The only response for that is to pick up my backpack and mumble, “Math class, late,” before exiting the locker room. Before she sees my self-sabotaging, brimming eyes.
I’ve known Tatyana for a long time, standing by her to fend off stupid boys who’ve called her Tityana since sixth grade, because, somehow, she’s scrawny (not slim but scrawny, as in kiddylike) yet amply endowed, like those things you spin and match up the different body parts of different people. In eighth grade I even put in detention time for a week, unrepentantly, for unscrewing the valve stems on one really uncouth boy’s bike tires myself and then painstakingly deflating them, for her.
And now I’m fed up with her.
It’s not like Jeremy’s mine, so why am I so upset?
Don’t answer that. It’s totally rhetorical.
? ? ?
Enriched math class is all guys except for Soon-Lee and me. That would be okay if it were full of normal dudes. Instead it has people like Robby and Pradeep. Guys who make it a point to remind us we’re the only two females in the class.
A whisper as I go up to answer a question on the whiteboard: “Look at that. I can’t believe they let the only two girls in school without any booty into this class.”
A note tossed to Soon-Lee after she works a formula aloud when no one else could solve it: U sure you’re not a guy? Wanna check again?
And when Soon-Lee and I ignore their taunts: “I think some people are on the rag today.”
MONSTER
After school I take the bus to Fizz’s. She opens the door before I ring the bell and grabs the present from my hand as I’m about to yell happy birthday.
“Salaams. Sh. Get downstairs,” she says. “Everything’s set up.”
I copy her stealthy walk, following her down the hallway, lowering each foot gingerly before lifting the next one. She lets me go ahead of her at the basement door, then shuts and locks it before scrambling down the stairs.
Fizz’s younger sisters, Hana and Hadia, the twins, are sprawled on a love seat from the 1970s (pristine from being mummified in plastic wrap for most of its life), watching Project Runway. The oldest sister, Aliya, is cross-legged on the carpeted floor, folding a massive load of laundry. She’s the most domesticated eighteen-year-old I have ever met.