Love from A to Z(43)

Ok, then you HAVE to come with us tomorrow to the souk.

Oops, I just went today.

Oh, come again. Please! Emma P. and Z. and Madison are getting henna done. Meet us there at one?

I thought about it. I did like Emma D. a lot. Even if she wasn’t like my squad back home. Ok.

I put my phone back on the night table and saw the burkini from this morning in the pile of clean laundry. One closed eye of the clamshell peeked out from underneath pink underwear.

I pulled the swimsuit out and took it with me to the kitchen, where I’d sighted a promising-looking junk drawer yesterday.

I needed the big black Sharpie I’d seen.

I grabbed it and snapped the lid off and went back to my bedroom.

When I finished, the sleeping, sad clamshell had turned into a wide awake, widely happy, slightly high-looking clamshell.

There, this will be a sign of good things to come.

? ? ?

This Is What You Missed, Bulletin IV by Kavi Srinivasan, filed as FYI for Zayneb Malik:

I have nothing to tell you.

That’s new. Any news about Ayaan?

The action is happening offscreen.

So there IS something happening?

Offscreen.

Off MY screen?

She sent me a speak-no-evil-monkey emoji.

Okay why send me ANYTHING at all then? Some bulletin. Some friend you are.

Exactly. Because I’m a FRIEND. I want you to enjoy yourself.

But you’re excluding me. I thought we were a team. Tight.

Exactly again. You already took one for the team. So now it’s our turn.

OUR turn? Who is OUR? There’s the two of us. That’s our team. Ayaan is our sage. She’s beyond teamness.

We have new members. Noemi.

Oh.

So Kavi was including her in this.

I pulled up Instagram and checked Kavi’s account. She had three stories I’d missed, but only one of them included Noemi. They were gawking at an open locker. The video panned the interior. It was covered, literally every inch, with stickers of a smiling white man with an Afro, sitting with a raised paintbrush in front of a painting of trees. Then we saw a quick shot of the inside of the opened locker door, which was covered with pictures of an angry-looking Picasso. Noemi: Picasso on the outside, Bob Ross on the inside was the text Kavi had added to this story.

I didn’t even know what that meant. It was something artsy. That they, Noemi and Kavi, got.

One out of three of your Instagram stories are with Noemi?

Zay? Why are you looking at my stories in the middle of our chat?

Noemi and you?

And Ms. Margolis.

The librarian? But she’s a teacher?

Noemi relies on her for art research. They’re friends. She came as a package with Noemi. Listen, you already got more out of me than I wanted. Stop.

I don’t like it. Not knowing what’s happening. Standing by. Actually, shoved aside.

So let it be my turn now. I sat in class quietly listening to you taking on Fencer for eons, not saying anything.

It wasn’t your fight.

How could you even say that? You who took on Rosie in gym class? Then the rest of the year? I’m crying.

? ? ?

Oh, yeah. Rosie in gym class. That’s how Kavi and I met.

In second term, first day of eighth-grade gym, I’d had a cast on my left leg due to a fractured tibia, so I made my home on the bench. A thin girl with flawless dark brown skin, long, silky black hair tied in a single ponytail that hung on one side, over her left shoulder, and huge eyes, came over and asked me if I’d be okay watching her EpiPen pack—that she, with a severe peanut allergy, was supposed to wear in a pouch on her at all times but couldn’t do gym properly with.

I’d been faithful to her EpiPens for the week I was benched, keeping the pack in my lap, my eyes following Kavi as she moved. I even hobbled over with it once, on my crutches, when she got knocked down during a game of basketball.

That’s when I heard someone mutter, “Kebobi can’t play ball.”

I whipped around.

A tall girl, even taller than me, was laughing into the shoulder of a friend, her body half-turned, eyes away, the dropped comment barely traceable to her.

But I knew the way these girls worked. I’d made it my life mission to find and destroy stuff like this, from my angry-baby self onward, so I homed in on the girl like I had a whack-a-mole mallet in hand.

Because the gym teacher was close by, racist girl had already turned all the way around in her attempt to hide her bullshit.

She didn’t see me limping over, stepping forward with my good leg, dragging my cast behind, crutches where I’d left them on the floor beside Kavi.

“Excuse me? Her name is Kavi.”

She turned to me, sizing me up. “That’s what I said.”

“That’s not what you said. It’s my leg that’s broken, not my ears.” I moved closer, doing an awkward half step, almost losing my balance. I wanted to close the gap to look straight into her blank, blue eyes. “You called her ‘kebobi.’ Claim your racism.”

“Oh God, what’s your problem? Go back to where you came from, bench bitch.” She turned away again. Her friend, short but strong-looking, snorted a laugh and crossed her arms, attempting to stare me down.

“Bitch whose ancestors stole this land, telling me to go back?” I looked at her friend. “You better collect her, staple up her mouth hole before I do it.”