I flounder for a good lie and settle on a flimsy truth. “I’m … sick.”
“Sick?” Lucia’s eyes widen. “Sick how?”
“It’s a kind of virus. Not contagious, necessarily, but still not super safe for me to be around people one on one. I spent spring break getting treated down in SF. Jesse is … he’s immune, because he had it when he was a kid. He’s helping me get better.” Not a perfect explanation, but it covers enough that I’m simultaneously proud of myself and annoyed I didn’t think of it sooner.
Rainie stares at me for a long beat. “That is such a load of—”
“Oh, Mina.” Tears spill down Lucia’s cheeks, and guilt stabs me straight through the chest.
“No, it’s okay! Really. The virus will pass out of my system soon enough. I just don’t want to risk any of you guys getting sick, and I knew if I told you the truth you’d never give me space.”
“You got that right,” Alex mutters.
“Please don’t tell anyone. My dad doesn’t know, and if the town catches whiff of this, they’ll be knocking on our door at all hours of the day.”
On the screen, the opening credits of the movie roll. I spot the attendants waving at people to shush and asking them to put their phones away. Mist curls between the scattered seats, drifting low over the grass. I pull my coat tighter around me, tucking my chin into my collar.
Alex, ever the rule-abiding golden boy, quiets down. “You’re not making any sense. How can your dad not know?”
“I still don’t see why you have to hang out with Jesse just because he’simmune.” Rainie shoots the attendant a dirty glare when he tries to shush her, and he quickly moves on.
“I’d say she traded up,” Aida mumbles, and I make a mental note to figure out how long our quietest member has harbored a crush on Jesse.
The screen goes black. Two spotlights flicker to life on the edges of the field.
The camera pans out, and I sit ramrod straight in my chair. An image of a house appears where a cartoon Amy Adams should be.
The Haikal villa.
I raise a hand to my mouth as Khalto Safa appears on the second-floor balcony, a cigarette pressed between her red lips. She’s young, twenty-six or twenty-seven. An older woman joins her on the balcony.
“Is she really coming?” Khalto Safa asks in Arabic. Ash drifts from the end of her lit cigarette, catching on the breeze. She and the old woman watch the street.
“So it seems,” the woman clips. The frost in her eyes could revive the polar ice caps. “Is she bringing the brat?”
Khalto Safa laughs. “Hatem’s brat? Of course not. When are you going to realize your precious Nadine is gone? Whoever drives through those gates is an imposter. I’m the only daughter you have left.”
“Quiet,” the woman—my grandmother—orders. “You still don’t understand why it favors Nadine over you. Why Nadine’s offerings were always accepted. Nadine sees everything, Safa. She sees the hearts that hurt from beating, the hands tired of lifting. The cleanest path to every end. She is meticulous. Crafty. You’re a worthy attack dog, darling, but Nadine?” She smiles, the kind of smile a war commander wields over a battlefield littered with his fallen foes. “Nadine has always been a hunter.”
Below, the gates creak open. Khalto Safa furiously stubs her cigarette on the ledge. “Your hunter has returned at last. Let’s not keep her waiting.”
Khalto Safa walks straight through my grandmother.
A shadow attaches itself to Khalto Safa’s heels, trailing her as she ventures into the house.
The camera pans to the villa’s entryway. I ignore my friends’ outstretched hands as I lift myself from the chair. My mother is at the Haikal villa. My mother, who supposedly died in a car wreck in Tanta during this visit.
The woman stepping onto the Haikal property grounds resembles my mother in appearance alone. There’s a hardness to her, a detachment, as though someone chiseled life into a statute. Her heels click against the granite steps, echoing between the peeling pillars.
At the top, she halts. A cold finger of dread traces along my neck.
“Bad girl.” My mother tsks, her back to me. “You cheated.”
Slowly, Nadine Mansour turns around. Except she’s not Nadine Mansour. She’s Nadine Haikal, a stranger.
And her eyes are a bright, glowing orange.
I trip over the chair, a cry tearing free from my frozen mouth. My mother watches me from the screen, head tilted in idle curiosity. Rot burns my nose, strong, so strong. How hadn’t I noticed the scent growing?
