The Henna Wars(17)

She slides onto the bench next to me, a question pasted onto her expression.

Right.

She asked me a question.

“My sister and I aren’t always together.” I don’t know why my voice comes out defensive—apparently Flávia does something to me that makes my mind react in the strangest ways.

“I know.” She chuckles, somehow not totally put off by my defensiveness. “Just … I feel like I haven’t seen you without her. Chyna says the two of you are joined at the hip.”

I’m not sure how to feel about that—first, that Flávia has been asking Chyna about me, and second that she might believe whatever Chyna tells her.

I cross my arms over my chest and glance at Flávia out of the corner of my eye, like that’ll tell me exactly what Chyna has been saying about me.

“So … where is she?” Flávia asks after a moment.

“After-school study. She’s doing the Junior Cert this year, so.” I shrug.

“Wow,” Flávia says, leaning back against the glass on the back of the bus stop. “She must be just like you, huh?”

“What?”

“You don’t remember? When we were in primary school, your favorite thing was sneaking off into the library when we were supposed to be in the schoolyard.” She turns to look at me with amusement flashing in her eyes, and I can feel heat rising up my cheeks.

I can’t believe she remembers that too. I’d almost forgotten.

In primary school, I was so terrified of the other girls. They already made fun of me for my slight accent, and for the fact that it took me a few tries to understand them because of their accents. They also pointed out that my food was weird, and smelled bad (though how anybody can think daal smells bad is still beyond me).

So instead of spending lunchtime in the schoolyard, hanging around by myself in a corner and alerting everyone to the fact that I was utterly alone and friendless, I would slip into the school library, hide behind a few bookshelves and bury myself in whatever I could find.

“That was different,” I say to Flávia now, even though I don’t want to explain how it was different. I was just trying to find a safe place for myself in that school.

Priti is just a nerd.

Surprisingly, Flávia sighs and says, “yeah,” like she totally understands. “You know, it’s even worse outside of Dublin.” She says this like I know exactly what she’s talking about.

Weirdly, I do. Because I don’t think it was easy for either of us in primary school, with our pronounced differences.

“Like … if you think our school isn’t diverse, you should see the school I went to before.” She chuckles, but there’s a hint of sadness to it. I can’t imagine what it must have been like. Dublin is—weirdly—cosmopolitan. Maybe not so much in our little corner of it, but it is. If you go into town, the place is full of people from all parts of the world. A lot of them are Spanish students who love to block every doorway in existence—because apparently Spanish students don’t come here to study English or tour Ireland, they just come to stand in front of doors and inconvenience the rest of us. But there are people from other places too—from Poland and Brazil and Nigeria, and so many other countries.

“That … must have been difficult,” I offer, but immediately I regret it. The words don’t sound like enough. Maybe they even sound a little condescending. Unhelpful.

But Flávia shrugs. “It is what it is.”

“Can I ask you something?” I say after a moment of silence passes between us.

“Didn’t you already ask me something?” Flávia says, raising an eyebrow. I roll my eyes, but I have to smile. It’s the kind of joke I can imagine Abbu making.

“Seriously, can I?”

“Sure.” She sits up, like she’s ready for a serious question. She makes her face all scrunched up and somber. I have to bite back a smile.

“Why did your mom take you away?” I ask. “Why … didn’t you stay here?”

Flávia’s expression shifts—from mock serious to almost blank. Unreadable. My stomach plummets. I think for a moment that maybe I’ve asked a question that’s way too invasive and now Flávia will be annoyed with me.

But then she says, “I think it was hard for my mom.” She’s looking down at the ground, toeing the dirt with the soles of the regulation black shoes that we all wear as part of our school uniform. “She came here when she was younger, and fell in love with my dad, and she thought that was it. She’d made it. She says Brazil isn’t always an easy place to be in, even though she misses it. After the divorce, I think she just wanted to go somewhere where the fact that her goals had fallen apart didn’t stare her in the face.”

“Oh,” is all I can say. I don’t know why, but I’d never attributed Flávia leaving to something to do with her mom, even though obviously I heard about the divorce. We were a small class so nothing was kept under wraps for too long.

Flávia’s lips quirk into something resembling a smile. “You know, she actually wanted to take me and my sister back to Brazil.”

“Wow.”

“I was all for it.”

“Really?” I can’t help the fact that my voice rises an octave. It’s just that I’m not sure if I would want to go back to Bangladesh permanently, or even semi-permanently. Aside from the fact that being gay there is punishable by death, I’m also not sure where I would even fit in. I don’t fit in here, but would I fit in there any better? I don’t think so. I’ve already lost most of my Bengali, and when I sometimes talk to my cousins from there, it seems like the differences between us are akash patal—like the sky and earth.