Love from A to Z(3)

Fencer jumped off the desk and awarded us with his you-got-it stance: hands on his corduroy hips, legs apart, face beaming. “Yes, or, to put it more precisely, you can say that it looks like the majority of those countries follow Islam. Anything else? Zee-naab?”

He deliberately mispronounced it that way. I’d told him it was Zay-nub many times. Even writing it phonetically on worksheets for him: ZAY-NUB.

I now bent down over the sheet of paper on my desk and pressed hard with my pen. Fencer is not going to be here. I’m going to make sure of it.

The dream: get Fencer fired.

The reality: raise my hand, challenge his BS, get my words twisted, sulk, and, to finish off, pen my anger on a piece of paper.

When Fencer went to the projector, I tossed the note to Kavi behind me. She added something and passed it back to me.

#EatThemAlive.

I smiled. She was talking about the online movement our friend Ayaan had recently joined, #EatThemAlive. Its primary function is to take down your regular neighborhood-variety racists and supremacists through Internet sleuthing. But Ayaan is in student council, so she does everything underground. Her way is to collect receipts quietly until she has enough to dismantle someone in a foolproof, methodical manner.

She’d told me she had some stuff on Fencer. Though she hadn’t shown me anything.

But at this moment, I let the glee light me up inside—Ayaan has stuff—which meant we’d be taking Fencer down soon. I’d already told her I wanted a part in it.

Fencer is not going to be here. I’m going to make sure of it.

I stared at Kavi’s words underneath mine. #EatThemAlive.

A doodle of a pair of hands holding a fork and a knife would go well on either side of Kavi’s contribution. She’d appreciate my attempt at art, her forte.

I began drawing a sharp-looking butter knife with exaggerated jagged edges and a slender, spiky tip.

A hand clasped the paper from my desk and yanked so hard, my pen trailed ink off it onto my desk.

I looked up at Fencer, my eyes wide, brain registering what I’d just drawn.

A knife. A fierce-looking one.

“Zee-naab, office. Now.” He had the calm face of someone who already knew they’d won before the game had started. “I’ll be there in five with this threat of yours.”

? ? ?

It was easy for Principal Kerr to suspend me. It was a two-step process.

1. After repeatedly asking Why would you do something like this? and getting nothing out of me, Kerr called Mom. She promptly left the travel agency where she works.

2. Holding up my “threatening” note, Kerr outlined, for Mom’s benefit, what I’d done, while I stayed mute, staring so hard at Fencer’s shoes, willing two holes to be burned in them, that he shifted uncomfortably a few times.

Kerr repeated “Eat them alive?” two times, the second time in a higher-pitched voice, and I pictured Kavi’s face, dark hair parted at the side, thin brown arms crisscrossed over textbooks affixed to her chest, her lips doing that barely there smile she does.

I saw her by my locker, waiting for me at lunch, as she’d done almost every day for the past few years.

I’d never give her away.

“Miss Malik, do you realize this could be considered expulsion worthy? A threat, with a weapon, directed at a teacher?” Kerr stared at me.

The anger inside me got switched, without my permission, and traded places with worry.

I want to go to UChicago in the fall. That’s where my sister, Sadia, goes, and she promised to move out of her dorm so we could get a place together.

I wilted in the chair beside Mom. She glanced at me, worry flitting her own eyes, so I shot her a pained look: Say something.

But she was a people pleaser, so she nodded at Kerr, almost groveling-like.

My stomach clenched. Mom wasn’t going to help me out.

I dropped my gaze and saw Fencer’s dark brown loafers again.

The sight stilled the tears that had begun pooling. I blinked them away and concentrated on boring more holes in Fencer’s shoes.

But maybe Kerr saw my wet eyes. Because suddenly she cleared her throat, and when she next spoke, her voice was calmer.

“The only reason we’ve decided to give Miss Malik a week’s suspension instead—which will go into her records, by the way—is due to her exemplary academic record over the years. I’ll see this as a terrible, terrible decision she’s made. Mr. Fencer agrees with me on this.” Her voice hardened again. “But give me one more thing to make me reconsider, Miss Malik, and we may be seeing your college future at stake. I will not hesitate to make that so.”

Beside Mom, Fencer sighed as if he were pondering college-less me.

Anger welled and churned inside.

Eat them alive.

I’m going to get him. I’m going to get Fencer.

? ? ?

As soon as we got in the car and she turned the ignition, Mom began. “I never thought we’d have this sort of trouble with you, Zayneb. A threat against your teacher? A knife?”

“It wasn’t a threat! It was about getting him fired. And the knife was a butter knife. I was just about to draw the fork.” I frowned at the front of Alexander Porter High with its ugly green double doors.

“We didn’t bring you up like this. I’m ashamed.” Mom’s voice was small, which meant it was going to be the crying kind of lecture.