THEN
Maybe you can’t become a different person in one summer, but you can definitely look like one. I can’t stop checking myself out in the mirror with this wig on. “Holy cow.”
“I knew that was the one.” Jasmine comes up behind me, momentarily pulling my gaze away from myself with her flame-blue blunt-cut bangs. “That color is perfect.”
It is. It’s strange because it isn’t mine, but itfeelslike me. Even in this short, curly wig, this is a look I could get used to, a look I’d love to keep seeing in the mirror. But it’s a big change, and my palms keep itching to send a selfie to my friends for their approval.
Instead, I change the subject. “Have you ever colored your hair?”
“Nah, not for real.” She takes off her wig and replacesit with a shaggy lavender one. “My friend Laila—the only other Syrian at my school—used to love putting chalk in our hair before shows, but our moms would’ve killed us if we did more than that.” She affects a melodious, lightly accented tone that’s even lower than hers. “Y’haram, Jasmine! What did you do to your beautiful hair?! Steta would be rolling in her grave!”
“I thought your mom was super into fashion.”
“She is, but pastel hair isn’t exactly her idea of it. My mom is Gucci and Chanel, not Manic Panic. Her idea of letting loose is wearing sunglasses with blue-tinted lenses. She’s very classic. All earth tones and whatnot.”
“Hmm, I can see that with your dad.”
Jasmine snorts. “She dresses classy, but she’s the loudest human you will ever meet. My dad used to wear literal earplugs when her family was visiting. Honestly, I can’t believe they lasted six years.”
“You weren’t exactly shocked by the divorce, huh?” I tug on the wig’s curls a little to see how it’d look a tiny bit longer, but it ruins the effect.
“Not at all. They fought about evvvverything. And my mom’s parents hated that she married a gentile while my dad’s parents hated that he married a Jew, and it was not great. My mom kept the house, my dad moved his business up to the city and got that huge-ass house in Stratford while keeping this one for the summer, and by the time my bat mitzvah hit I had nothing left to ask for because I was already spoiled to death.”
“That explains so much.”
She grins. “Doesn’t it? How about you? What’s your single mom story?”
“Not much of a story,” I say with a shrug. “My mom was waiting tables to put herself through college. My dad picked her up. A few dates later, I happened. My mom wanted to keep me, my dad didn’t, and they compromised on him paying child support and otherwise disappearing. Ta-da! You have the beautiful, well-adjusted teenager you see before you today.”
“Youarepretty well-adjusted for someone who knows her dad didn’t want her to exist.”
I smile into the mirror, poking dimples into my cheeks. I learned a long time ago that it was entirely his loss, and my mom is enough awesome for three parents. “Why yes, I suppose I am.”
“I could never.”
“Please. She who laughs in the face of divorce.” I turn to face Jasmine, who’s pulled the wig from her head and is slumped against the wall, letting the lavender strands dangle. “Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” A slight, forced smile drifts across her face as quickly as the ocean breeze. “But are you? For real? Because yeah, maybe I was cool with them getting divorced, but not so much with my dad moving to New York and dropping me to only Christmases and summers.”
The shop is empty except for us, and the older woman behind the counter is sitting with her feet up and a small TV turned on to soap operas, so I imagine she won’t mind if we make ourselves comfortable. I drop onto the floor across from Jasmine and take the wig from her hands before she can twist off all the artificial hair with her anxious fingers.
“I am,” I say, and I mean it. “My mom has had to be double the parent, but she’s amazing, and I couldn’t ask for better. Is that why you never talk about home and your school friends? I’d never even heard of Laila before today.”
She shrugs and slides down the wall onto the linoleum. “I guess. It just feels like two different worlds—there and here. It’s like it isn’t even part of the same life.”
For a second, my mind flashes to when we were feeling each other up under the watchful eyes of Constance Wu and Gemma Chan, and I know exactly what she means.
“What are Laila and your other friends doing this summer? I’m surprised you don’t have any other school friends here.”
“Asheville’s pretty kick-ass during the summer, so most people stay home and go hiking and to festivals and whatever. Laila and our friend Kendall work at a day camp together. I get to come back at the end of every summer and listen to two months of private jokes before everything gets back to normal.”
I pull off my blond curls and toss the wig to her. “You can’t win, huh?”
She spins the wig on her finger and exhales into a self-deprecating laugh. “God, I sound like such a brat. Boo-fucking-hoo that I spend the summers in a gorgeous, expensive beach house with a pool and hot tub.”
“You get to boo-fucking-hoo that you’re lonely, Jas,” I say softly, because I realize that’s exactly what she is. Her friends at home feel conditional, her friends here feel like surface-level entertainment, she isn’t with theparent she knows wants to spend time with her, and sheiswith the one she feels doesn’t give a shit.
She is lonely and hurting and has been for a long time.
