Nadine froze. The girl phased in and out, her movements stitched together with unsteady thread. Tight curls fell past her shoulders, and she had brown freckles by her temple.
A shadow? But—why was she so blurry?
“Who are you?” Nadine demanded. Her heart beat a frantic staccato, warning her away from the specter, but Nadine was not easily intimidated.
The girl shoved her feet in a pair of slippers at the door and squeezed outside, closing the door with a click behind her.
A sharp, piercing pain shot through Nadine’s stomach. She gasped, catching herself on the wardrobe. What on earth? The pain blossomed into agony, and she doubled over.
Nadine stumbled to the mirror, shoving her blouse up to expose her stomach. As she watched, little hands took shape beneath the thin layer of skin covering her womb. Pushing. Scratching.
Nadine coughed, spattering the mirror in red flecks. Engorged red veins formed over her belly, pulsating ropes of flesh throbbing an inch high.
Another cough. Blood ran down Nadine’s chin, syrupy thick.
The baby. Something was wrong with her baby.
Nadine limped outside, leaving wet red handprints in her trail. Where had the girl gone? She needed to follow the girl.
“Nadine?” her mother gasped. She caught Nadine as she stumbled, laying her gently onto the ground. “Safa! Get over here!”
Her mother smoothed the sweaty hair from Nadine’s forehead. “Darling, it’s time. Your child is coming.”
Nadine shook her head, arms wrapped protectively around her middle. “No, no. No, it’s too early. She’s not finished yet. She needs more time.”
Pain ricocheted through Nadine. She screamed, clawing at the marble floor. A nail snapped, but she didn’t feel it. The pain in her stomach was a vortex, subsuming all else.
The baby couldn’t come now. They were leaving for California tomorrow. Nadine would give birth to this child far away from her mother and sister. Far away from the door and that horrible orange light.
Safa knelt at her feet, laying out towels and pots. The sight of a baby blanket with a paisley pattern sent Nadine rolling to her side, vomit bubbling forth and mixing with the blood in her mouth. Her daughter couldn’t be born here. Her mother would lay her daughter—Hatem’s daughter—at the door on the third floor. If Nadine’s daughter passed, her family would never let her leave this villa. Nadine’s daughter would be marked for life, as surely as Nadine was marked.
A million wails shredded the inside of Nadine’s brain. She tossed her head back and forth, trying to expel the heinous noise. They belonged to the parents of the children she’d offered. The mothers of the kids she’d laid at the door. Their howls would mix with her baby’s birth cries.
Safa shoved Nadine’s knees apart. The towels went under her hips. A maniacal glee shimmered in her sister’s black gaze.
“Take a deep breath, Nadine,” Safa said. “This will hurt.”
Jesse hasn’t replied to any of my calls or messages, so I’ve resorted to setting up camp on the living room couch and peering out the window every few minutes. He’ll have to leave his house eventually, right?
Steam curls from my mint tea. A quilted throw blanket Lucia thrifted for my fifteenth birthday covers my legs. My journal lays open over my knees. Every entry since the curse has been dark and depressing, so I filled five pages with the joy of yesterday’s shopping trip. I described watching my friends’ faces light up when they found their favorite dresses; Rainie and Lucia’s argument when Rainie flipped the price tag and tried to return her dress only for Lucia to offer to pay the difference; Aida’s little smile as she ran her fingers along the stitched bodice of her pink mermaid gown.
I grin into my shoulder. No attacks, no orange eyes, no rotting smell. For a whole day, I got to pretend none of this was happening.
A car speeds by, headlights shining through the window and trailing across the living room like a pair of yellow eyes. They illuminate Jesse’s car parked in his driveway. I know he’s home, and I knowheknows I’m home.
Setting the journal aside, I open the window and offer my hand to the punishing bullets of rain.
I have never minded that Ward is a stagnant place. A collection ofdots on a map for tourists to skim past on the hunt for somewhere better. A town where the dust never stirs.
Even when I dreamed of living outside Ward, part of me knew it would never be anything but a dream. I couldn’t abandon Baba. He had no family here, no hobbies, no true friendships. Not even his wife’s tombstone to visit. On our anniversary last year, I told Alex my doubts, and he laughed. He thought I was joking. His parents had existed before him. They would exist after. I didn’t know how to explain that the day my father left Masr for me, he reached into the future and changed it. He created a debt I would pay, lovingly, forever. He left for me, and I will stay for him.
Still, I don’t mind the dream. Reality can’t cast its shadows there. In it, a phantom version of me gets to live a thousand different lives. Golden lives full of sunshine and colorful gardens. Lives where I go to Masr again and sip fragrant espresso at one of the cafés facing the endless blue of the Mediterranean Sea. Where I meet Baba’s side of the family and show off the paltry local knowledge I’d acquired during my first visit.
It is safe to rest my hopes there, in these dreams where no shadow stays.
A knock comes at the door, startling a yelp out me. I forgot to keep watch over the driveway, but it couldn’t be Baba. Baba would just use his key to enter, and he isn’t due home for another hour or two.
Another knock. “It’s me. Open up.”
