“You doing anything fun for Thanksgiving?” Cooper asks you.
“Not really.”
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, but it’s also the Day of the Covenant, which means another big celebration and potluck at the Bahá’í Center.
You don’t tell Cooper about the Day of the Covenant, though. You’re not even sure why. It’s not like you’re ashamed or embarrassed, being Bahá’í. Your parents brought you across an entire ocean so you could worship freely, but somehow “freedom of religion” never seems toquiteapply to you, not when everyone gets Christmas off but you have to take an excused absence for nearly every holy day that you actually celebrate.
“Just eating a lot,” you finally tell Cooper.
Actually, now that you think of it, you’d better skip the cookie after all. Maman is sure to guilt you into eating off-plan, which is bad enough on its own, but the gym will be closed, too. You’ve been saving up your allowance, but you can’t afford the weight set you want yet, and even if you could, Baba still doesn’t want you to put it in the garage because he’s worried about the dumbbells falling over and damaging one of the cars.
You don’t think two days off is enough to sabotage your gains, but two days off combined with a bunch of starches and sugars? That’s going to be tough. And even on Saturday, when the gym opens up again, Coach Nico will be off, and none of the other coaches are as good.
“What about you?” you ask Cooper.
He shrugs. “Checking out the Black Friday sales probably. My mom loves them.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
He laughs. “Yeah, for the other shoppers.”
He’s got a little gap between his top front teeth, and they’re not as big as most people’s, which makes his face very interesting as he laughs, makes you laugh along, too.
“What about you, Nour?” he asks.
You shake yourself, weirdly surprised that she’s walking right beside you, because she has been the whole time, you were just talking to her, but somehow you had forgotten while Cooper was talking to you, and what is that about?
Maybe you need that cookie after all, need a bit of food to get your brain back on track until you can get home and drink your protein shake.
“We’re all going to my grandma’s in St. Louis.”
“Oh, do you stuff your turkey with toasted raviolis and ooey-gooey butter cake?” Cooper asks.
You snort another laugh, and Nour gives you a look that could cut if she wasn’t so obviously trying to suppress a laugh herself.
“As a matter of fact—” she begins as you round the corner back to RC’s meeting room, but then she stops.
Cooper stops, too, and you almost bump into him. You look past his shoulder into the room, where other RC members are already staring at the whiteboard.
Someone came in while you were all out working.
Someone grabbed one of the dry-erase markers.
Someone wrote something on the board.
One word. Six letters. Well, seven this time, to make it plural.
You want to run and hide. You want to hit something.
You can’t get away from that word, can’t get away from the hate in people’s hearts. Not hate for you, because you’re not that, you’re not one of those, but hate for your friends in here, yourfriends who spent all afternoon packing up food for hungry people, for children without homes, for grown-ups fleeing from bad situations, for people trying to start over because life dealt them a never-ending combo right to the heart and the soul and the wallet.
One word.
There’s no escaping it.
PART 3january
15DAYTON
