Love from A to Z(74)
“Forgive me. I just don’t want you to stay a virgin all your life, dude.”
“Ass.”
“You’re lucky I’m turning the crass down, ’cause I like you. Only ’cause you used to save my math grade all the time.”
He laughed and turned to his game.
I finished playing “Seasons in the Sun.”
? ? ?
After a couple of hours of him gaming while throwing out song challenges for me to play on the guitar, he packed up to leave.
I made myself walk downstairs with him, walk him to the door. And then out the door too.
I sat on one of the pair of white rocks right at the entrance to our pathway and just looked at the back of his car as he drove away, down the avenue of sprawling white houses, “Spanish villa” type houses, as Zayneb had called ours.
The sky Connor drove off toward was a vivid, distinct blue, and I stared at it, wondering if I noticed everything blue suddenly because of the blue scarves she wore. Zayneb.
I wondered what was under the scarf.
What she was like, completely at home, somewhere.
I could almost imagine it, but it was like a dream that you wake up and try to remember but only have the wispy fringes of.
Like a face that you’ve seen so much—but when you try to conjure it to hold in your head, it’s too ethereal to stay still and clear.
Maybe it was Connor bringing up sex before, about Madison and Jacob, them in their hotel room, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
I went inside and back to bed.
? ? ?
Hanna had been at her friend’s house down the street, but the minute she got back home, I knew it. My door was closed, locked, so she knocked a pattern on it, politely—first. I knew it would get incessant soon, so I immediately called out to get her to stop. “Yeah?”
“Can you open this thing?”
“What is it?”
“I wanted to see if you’re okay. Because, you know. The MS thing.”
Dad and I had talked to her last night about it. And though she’d reached for Stillwater and one of Mom’s photos while listening, she’d been surprisingly strong on hearing the news.
But then the checking on me started. Like this morning when she woke up, then before she went to her friend’s, and . . . now.
I sighed. “I’m okay.”
“Can you open it?”
“Hanna, I’m okay. I’ll come down soon.”
“How soon?”
“Soon soon.”
“Okay, I’m waiting then.”
She left and I sighed again.
Maybe she was spoiled.
Or maybe she just cared too much.
There are two ways to see everything, I guess.
Maybe lately I’ve been seeing things only in one way. Only in the hopeless, helpless way.
I grabbed my Marvels and Oddities journal off my desk and flipped through it.
Yeah, sure enough, everything had become oddities.
I went back farther and saw that I’d always been a marvel-heavy observer.
Maybe that’s how I’d kept myself afloat, all those years.
Everyone told Dad that he was “lucky” that I was so “good.” How he’d done a “good” job, given the circumstances.
Of Mom passing away.
And being in another country.
And converting to a new religion as a family.
What they’d meant was that I was easy to handle, didn’t talk back or push limits.
But maybe it wasn’t that I was just good or that Dad had done a good job.
Maybe it had been this journal.
This way of noticing that even during the suckiest moments in life there was something marvelous to be seen, heard, touched. Or just a tiny awe felt in the heart.
Maybe it was going out of my way to try to notice something, this noticing, that had saved me all along.
And now I couldn’t see anything good.
Because I had stopped trying.
? ? ?
Before I went down to show Hanna I was okay, I picked up a pen and wrote three marvels to make up for the ones I’d missed the last few days.
MARVEL ONE: CONNOR
Yeah, Connor. Because when he’d thrown out random songs for me to play on the guitar, he interspersed them with repeated requests of “Leaves from the Vine.” From Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Because it was the first song that I’d ever learned.
The first one I picked up a guitar for.
He knew this and remembered it, and it was like the I love you, man that I’d needed today.
MARVEL TWO: HANNA
Because the minute she got home, she came up to check on me.
MARVEL THREE: BLUE SKIES
What I meant was Zayneb, because that sky had reminded me of her so fast, and now she was still in my head.
ZAYNEB
TUESDAY, MARCH 19
ODDITY . . . AND MARVEL: PLOTTERS
KATARA TURNED OUT TO BE magical. We arrived at the golden hour, with the sun setting, and it was like stepping back in time, into another world, pristine and protected.
The first thing we saw was the dazzling mosque, covered with geometric designs and calligraphy in dark and light blues, interspersed with gold.