“Blue and yellow? Like the Pacers, his favorite team?” I look at Sarah. “Is he talking about his bachelor party?”
She presses pause on the recording and leans against the massive shelving units lining the walls of the storage room. “He’s talking about the wedding. This is from our phone call on Monday.”
I lift my eyebrows. I really had no idea that Muhammad had actually been running the show.
I swear I thought Dad had hired a wedding planner.
“Oh my God. No wonder he asked me and my mom to wear blue. It’s to go with his color scheme.” I shake my head.
This is bad.
“He asked Haytham to wear blue too, and God knows how many others. But the true worst is that he hired the ’Arrys to perform this weekend. At my wedding,” she says, scrolling through her phone. She turns it to reveal a YouTube video of three guys in matching plaid shirts and plaid pants with Civil War–era bushy beards. One of them has side whiskers jutting out so long, you can see them sticking out from the back.
“Oh my God. No.” I grab the phone and watch in mortified fascination as the three guys call out random people sitting at tables, addressing them with cringey jokes. “They make fun of guests?”
“Muhammad thinks they’re hilarious.”
“So weird.” I give her back the phone. “I’m sorry you’re marrying him, Sarah.”
She lets out another sigh that sounds like it’s being strangled by a growl. “Janna, you have to help me take this wedding back from your groomzilla brother!”
I look at her. And see her pain.
But the wedding is in two days. “Isn’t it going to be a lot of work?” I whine, thinking of my plans to dedicate all my time to hanging out with Nuah when he arrives.
“I’ve organized it all. How we’re going to take back this thing,” she assures me.
“Don’t tell me you brought a clipboard.” I turn to stare at her. Clipboards are Sarah’s thing. Because they help her Get Stuff Done.
“Hell yeah. Five clipboards, five colors to divide up each task area.” A smile spreads on her face. Obviously at the thought of clipboards.
I like seeing that smile return.
I want Sarah to be really happy.
“Are you excited? I mean, besides this stuff, are you excited about getting married?” I ask, wanting to keep that smile of hers going.
“Of course! Other than his bad taste, Muhammad is seriously the best, and I can’t wait to make it forever. Insha’Allah.” Her wide grin and slightly blushed cheeks assure me of the truth of her statement as she peers at her phone and starts texting someone. “The minute we met, I knew he was the kindest person I’d ever encountered.”
Okay, that’s true. Muhammad is extra kind and caring, maybe even over-the-top caring, and he and Sarah make a good match—because they’re both extroverted do-gooders.
But the part of “making it forever” is giving me pause. Mom and Dad weren’t forever. Dad moved on to Linda, which, to be fair, seems to be headed to forever. Maybe.
Mom is still single. I don’t know what I’d do if Mom decided she was seriously into someone. This one time, a couple of years ago, I found a flyer for a Muslim singles meet-up in her dresser drawer, but nothing came out if it.
Sigh of relief.
I don’t want to be alone. And the thought about everyone pairing up around me gives me anxiety.
The thought of Nuah cures that anxiety right away too—because I know he likes me.
But then what happens next? Once I tell Nuah I’m interested in him, too? My plan only goes as far as telling him tomorrow before the henna party, before all the other guests arrive.
But I don’t think I want the next step to be to actually marry him.
More like I want us to be connected before I go to college. So that I feel—safe? I guess?
I know that in Islam, you don’t try things out with people—like there’s supposed to be no sex before marriage, so making out and things that potentially lead to sex are a no-no without a nikah—and that you’re supposed to find someone who suits your nature, has your values, and the same goals, and then, voilà, just make it work. That’s how Nuah wants things.
And I do too. I think.
So Nuah and I make sense.
I think.
Gah, things always make better sense in my head.
Muhammad and Sarah are lucky. They just happened to meet each other, fall for each other, and make sense to each other immediately. And now they’re making it real.
I look at Sarah as she continues texting with a frown again, and a sudden burst of love for her takes hold of my heart. “Okay, I’m in. I’ll help you.”
She looks up, face beaming. “Love you, girl. Welcome to Team Take Back the Wedding. We’re having a meeting in that gazebo in ten minutes, when Muhammad goes to get groceries. Me, you, and Dawud. And Haytham, of course.”
Chapter Four
For the gazebo meeting, just to prove I don’t have a thing for anyone (except Nuah, of course), I wear my ol’ raggedy black scarf, flung on my head, the ends lopsided, over an oversize but thin sweatshirt instead of the nice top I’d originally thought of wearing with my super-faded, almost-white jeans.
I brought a notebook with me for “notes.” But I snuck a copy of the latest Ms. Marvel inside.
I open the comic now to the first page as Sarah lectures to catch me up on what she, Haytham, and Dawud already discussed on their drive up.
Once in a while she paces the gazebo and then pauses to look out into the distance at Dad’s house, the huge white behemoth with columns in the front and back that everyone in our family unironically calls the White House.
I can see Sarah so well as the professor she’s studying to become.
Phrases like “color intervention at the party-rental place” and “paying off the ’Arrys” and “changing the balloon artist’s task to entertaining the children and not doing the decorating” float around me as I move my capped pen across the comic panels describing Kamala Khan’s latest escapades.
It’s a good distraction, because once in a while Haytham tries to include me in the proceedings, and I’m studiously avoiding looking at him.
Because he’s dangerous.
He came to the gazebo meeting holding Sarah’s five clipboards fanned out to serve as a tray for a plate of more cupcakes.
“Hey, Janna,” he said. “I saw that you liked the cupcake, so I brought the rest. These have messed-up icing. But now that I’ve won you over to my baking, you’ll overlook that, right?” His eyebrows had curled up almost against each other in eagerness.
I nodded, my heart sinking at his uncalled-for cuteness, and, thus compelled, I reached out for another cupcake, glad I had brought comics to read as a shield against him.
At the end of the meeting we get a clipboard each with instructions—Sarah gets two—and I scramble out of the gazebo in my eagerness to go read quietly in my room. I have a bit of time before I go see Mom in town.
* * *
In my room, I fling my green clipboard on the bedside table and flop into bed. Immediately two books fall off the other side.
I’m okay admitting I sleep with books. They collect in an almost-body-shaped mass beside me, one that I can hug, and I love it.