24FARSHID
“We missed you yesterday.” Nour hands you a piece of Scotch tape from the roll, even though she has a collection of strips dangling from the tip of each finger, like inverted fingernails.
You stick the poster for next week’s Movie Nite to the wall and shrug, not because you didn’t miss her (and Cooper) but because you’re not sure why it’s spelledNitein the first place. You’re also not sure why you—well, the RC—is doingThe Babadookin March, instead of in October, which would make more sense. And now that you think of it, you’realsonot sure what makes it queer cinema in the first place.
You’re coming to terms with that word, even if you haven’t told anyone other than Maman. And Baba. And Nadeem and Jina. And you only told everyone else because Baba and Jina came home while you were still crying and hugging Maman and she was telling you it was okay, and then you told Nadeem on Sunday because it felt weird to leave him out. But you haven’t mentioned anything at school, not even to Nour. You don’t think you’re scared. Well, notthatscared.
Nothing feels as scary as it had been telling Maman, even though now that it’s done you’re not sure why you were so scared to beginwith. You’re not scared anymore, but you don’t know if you want to deal with it, at least not yet. Not for a while.
So instead of saying something at RC, you just kept quiet and volunteered to help Nour put up posters for (misspelled) Movie Nite.
“I missed you, too,” you say. “But at least me and Dayton finished our presentation.”
It took another two hours of work, mostly in silence, but now it’s finished and you don’t have to spend any one-on-one time with Dayton ever again. Well, unless you count actually giving the presentation, in which case you’ll be one-on-one with him at the front of the class, but Ms. Suchecki will be there at her desk, and the rest of the class will all be out in front of you, and it’s only an eight-minute presentation anyway.
“You missed all the drama,” she says, following you down the hall until you find another good spot for a poster. “Guess who broke up?”
“I don’t know.” You’re not even sure you could say who in RC was dating. “Who?”
Nour mentions two juniors, both white girls, one with blue hair and one with green hair, and truth be told you never could tell the two of them apart because they were basically inseparable, but you’re grateful to have Nour talking, because that means you don’t have to.
You don’t feel anxious, at least you don’t think you do, but you do feel quiet. This new normal still feels strange and alien and fragile, yet this part, Nour talking about everyone else’s drama, is familiar.
“—go yesterday anyway?”
“What?” you ask, taping up a poster next to the water bottle–filling station, but high up enough it won’t get splashed by people being clumsy with their bottles. You missed most of what Nour said.
She snorts and hands you more tape. “I said, how’d it go yesterday anyway?”
You blink at her.
“With Dayton.”
“Oh. Fine.” You shrug. After you apologized, he seemed… subdued, maybe. Or at least a little quiet. He didn’t bother you about Hope anymore. Didn’t bother you about anything. Just focused on getting your slides in the right order, and thankfully he didn’t insist on doing them in Papyrus, because that might’ve been another fight actually.
But Nour shakes her head. “I can’t believe you got stuck with him.”
You shrug. Yeah, it wasn’t great, but you’re tired of running, and you realized something yesterday:
You’re bigger than him.
Not just physically (though you definitely are), but inside, too, like you could feel him shrinking away from you, and it’s weird but some small part of you feels a little bit sorry for him.
Just a little bit.
You don’t know how to explain any of that, though, so you just say, “He wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
Nour’s eyebrows shoot up so high they nearly launch themselves off her face. “Are we talking about the same Dayton here? The one that shouted a slur in the middle of an assembly? And then wrote it across our board when no one was watching?”
“I don’t think that was him. The board, I mean.” You’ve seen his handwriting. “I’m not saying Ilikehim, just that he could’ve been worse.”
Yeah, he shouted that word at the beginning of the year, but as far as you know he hasn’t said it again, so you’re still mad at him but not as mad as you would be if he kept doing it. Then again, he’s still friends with Brody, who you’re pretty suredoesuse that word, and often, if the frequency ofno homosis any indication.
So, no. You don’t like Dayton, and you’re certainly not going to forgive or forget. You meant what you told him, that he’s never really done anything to make things right. But he hasn’t done anything to make them worse, either. He seems to hope everyone will just forget it sooner or later.
You can’t decide what that makes him.
Nour looks like she’s sucking on a lemon wedge. “I still don’t like him.”
