This is why I liked my public school. I didn’t stick out. I could sit in the back, away from everyone. I never knew how to make friends on my own, so I was either alone or hung out casually withmy classmates during lunch. It’s so much easier to be by myself. No one will miss me when I transfer to Braxton, and I doubt anyone will be asking for me. It will be like I never existed.
Alexis flips through the pictures, telling me the age and hobbies of every person and the rumors surrounding them.
“This is Jenny Wilson. Her dad is this hotshot lawyer who makes all her parking tickets go away. She used to date Luke Davis, one of the football players, but then he dumped her in a text message while he was hooking up with Jennifer Harris. Like, at the same time. And guess what? Jennifer’s nickname is also Jenny. It was so messed up.”
I morph my face into the appropriate expressions, but it feels like I’m in a play, trying to be the person I was before. There’s nothing inside my soul that I can hold on to. Nothing she says that lights up any spark of feeling. It’s been this way for so long.
At first, I couldn’t cry. Not for the first few weeks. Then, just as suddenly, the morning I lost the ability to see colors, I broke down. Then the tears dried up, and in their wake was the hollowness. I’m not sad. I’m not angry. I’m not happy.
I’m nothing.
I mimic. I make myself show whatever emotion is needed depending on the person talking to me. And when I’m on my own, I suspend myself back into the void. It’s become so familiar; I don’t know who I was before it. This numbness that overtakes my brain. The only light in the center of it all is the beaches of San Francisco and the redwoods of California.
The only real thing I’m dreaming about. That I want.
Because I think if I get away from here, if I wash New York off me and all the memories sticking to me, I can, maybe, become someone who feels again. Maybe I’ll see the colors in California.
Linda, Alexis’s mom, knocks on the door an hour later, interrupting Alexis’s detailed explanation of what happened at Ruby Rowell’sbirthday party in July. Apparently, it changed the whole school dynamic.
“Ah, how are you?” Linda says sweetly when she sees me. She flicks a perfect curl out of her face and stares at me as if she’s performing an X-ray.
“Good,” I reply with a smile that feels like nothing on my lips.
“You’re staying for dinner, Jihad?” she asks. I never thought of it much because I didn’t want to, but my name in her mouth has always sounded odd. Like she’s intentionally mispronouncing it in case the very mention of it alerts the FBI. She saysJeeand then loses her bravery at thehadpart, turning it toJeehaa. As if thedis silent. Or she can’t pronounce it. Or pretends she can’t. She wasn’t always like this, not when she lived in our building. My name wasn’t something she was afraid of then. Or maybe it always was, but my memories are distorted.
Despite her hawklike gaze and scarce smiles, I know she’s not bad. She visited Mama twice at the hospital when she was first diagnosed.
“Yes, please do!” Alexis exclaims, grabbing my arm. “We haven’t seen each other in so long!”
“Yes, do stay. We’d love to have you,” Linda says, allowing one small smile. “I made roast chicken knowing you were coming over today. You can eat chicken, right?”
I hesitate before nodding. “Is… is it halal?”
My insides constrict, feeling like I just embarrassed her with this question. Even though she knows I eat only halal. This isn’t the first time I’ve come over to their house, and when they lived in our building, Mama and Linda used to go out together. But it feels like I’m giving her brand-new information.
Linda blinks. “I don’t think so. I got it from the grocery store down the street. They don’t have halal, do they?”
I shake my head.
“Hmm.” Linda purses her lips. “Well, we have salad and bread. That works for you?”
My stomach is still queasy. “Yeah.”
“And what’s more important than food is you hanging out with Alexis, isn’t it?” She winks.
I nod again.
Alexis looks between us, and I can see the guilt and embarrassment in her expression. For some reason, it validates me. That I’m not overthinking this.
Alexis’s experience in my apartment is very different. When she went through a cucumber- and rice-hating phase in elementary school, Mama made her spaghetti every day and used the marinara sauce to sneak in her vegetables.
Linda tells us to come down in ten minutes and leaves, closing the door behind her.
Alexis looks sheepishly at me. “I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. I’m not hungry anyway.”
And it’s true.
