Books are tidy and contained and bring closure. Sometimes not full closure, but there’s an arriving at a destination that’s perfect.
Why can’t life be like that? And, really, why can’t love be like that?
School is, and that’s why it makes sense to me. It’s ordered and has a beginning and an end, and the in-between is split up by studying for this or handing these three assignments in to make up this much of your grade.
I can’t wait for college to start, to bring that order back into my life.
I reach for my phone and scroll through my personal guest list for the wedding.
Arriving on Saturday are some of my people and their plus-ones:
1. Sandra and her date: her grandmother, Ms. Kolbinsky. Sandra is good without having the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing going on in her life. And Ms. Kolbinsky is the best. (She already promised to bring me a container of her spicy Polish samosas.)
2. My partner-in-nerd, Soon-Lee, and her boyfriend, Thomas, the only forever couple from middle school that has lasted. They already have their own wedding date “circled” ten years from now.
3. Coming on Friday for the henna party: Sausun, this girl (way older than me, already done college) I edit YouTube videos for, for her extremely popular Niqabi Ninjas channel, and her plus-one, her older sister. Basically, Sausun saved her sister from a nightmare marriage, and now Sausun is not into marriages or coupling for herself at all, only into making sure her sister heals.
(Though Sausun did say in a recent Niqabi Ninjas episode that she wants to find someone in this vast universe—and she emphasized universe because she wasn’t ruling out aliens or jinns—who one day could be worthy of her. Someone who loved her personality, didn’t care that she covered her face as a niqabi and so didn’t put an emphasis on how she looked, who would be a good parent to the four kids she wants to have one day. “Thus far, I’ve never met worthy parent material. Truly. But there are unexplored parts of the ever-expanding universe, so I continue holding out hope—but only a sliver of it,” she ended the segment with.)
4. Also coming on Friday, of course, is Tats, short for Tatyana, my best friend, and her mysterious plus-one. Who I’m super confused about. I haven’t seen Tats for the three weeks I’ve been at Dad’s, but there’s no way she hooked up with someone new who I don’t know. Whenever I text her WHO WHO WHO, she changes the subject or replies with something wedding related (like we’re picking out a suit now) but random at the same time. And I just want to pull her long, glorious hair in retaliation for each cryptic message. But she’s in Eastspring, and I’m enjoying the good life under blue skies, so she’s too far away to beat up effectively.
I prop two pillows behind me and get comfortable to scroll and tap slowly through all of Tats’s social media stories and posts in another attempt to suss out information on this date of hers. A knock interrupts me while I’m rewatching her latest TikTok ode to Billie Eilish, this one for “Ocean Eyes.”
“Janna?” Sarah’s voice.
It’s Sarah and Dawud. He blinks at my unhijabbed head as I swing the bedroom door wide for them to enter.
“Can you give Dawud a ride when you go into town? He’s already made an appointment with the florist Muhammad hired. To ask about the flower ceiling.” She pats his head, and he beams while still staring at my uncovered hair. “I’m proud of him.”
“Sure.” I grab my scarf from the foot of the bed, where I’d thrown it. “We’d better leave now then. But is he okay with me staying in town for a while? I wanna hang with Mom for a bit.”
Sarah shoots a questioning glance at Dawud. “You okay with that?”
“As long as we get back here for the movie night Uncle promised us.” He continues staring at me, almost unblinkingly. “You guys have such an awesome theater in the basement!”
“Oh yeah, my dad. I have to actually check with him if it’s okay we use one of his cars. He’s sometimes not cool with it.”
“Just use Haytham’s.” Sarah holds out the keys. “He’s okay with it.”
I take them and slide them into my tiny backpack purse. “That’s nice of him.”
“I’ll talk to Muhammad to get the rest of the wedding details. He and Haytham are hanging out on the front porch right now. Perfect place to tease out information!” She lights up. “I already found out the ’Arrys are free tomorrow, so maybe we can get him to switch them to perform at the bachelor party instead of the wedding!”
Dawud scrutinizes me as I wind the scarf on my head. Geez, hasn’t he seen Sarah put on her hijab before?
I shoot him a scowl. I hope he’s not one of these creepy eight-year-olds who has a thing for older women. Ugh.
“You have purple icing on your forehead,” he announces. “And I don’t even know why. Because none of the cupcakes we had at the meeting had purple icing.”
I look in the mirror. There is purple icing on my forehead. So weird.
“There was pink icing and blue icing, so they must have mixed together. On your forehead.” He breaks out into a big grin and turns to leave, clipboard in hand.
I grab my own clipboard and head to the en suite bathroom to take care of my forehead before Haytham sees it.
Tats texts me while I’m in the bathroom.
I’m changing my dress for the wedding! When we were looking for a tie for my date I found a dress JUST LIKE THE ONE LINDSAY LOHAN WORE TO THE MTV EUROPE AWARDS!!! But it’s yellow not metallic gold.
Tats is going through a huge Lindsay Lohan moment. We’ve been watching Lindsay movies every weekend since May. She even dyed her hair ginger. Which means there’s a lot of ginger around her, because Tats has huge hair.
Can I see a pic of you in the dress? And your date in his tie? I smile at the way I slid that in so deftly. Maybe I’ll finally find out exactly who Tats is bringing to the wedding.
Is it okay that the dress is above my knees and off my shoulders?
Avoidance in action.
Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?
Because when I go to the mosque with you I don’t dress like that?
It’s okay. We’re not at a mosque. Something dawns on me. OMG, you and I are going to match the wedding decor now. Blue and yellow.
Blue and yellow? That’s kinda ew, tbh?
Don’t worry, Sarah’s here and we’re working hard on the ew factor. Really hard.
* * *
Haytham’s car is a Honda Civic, which I’ve never driven in my short six months of driving, so I’m kind of nervous.
As I prepare to ease it out of the long driveway, he saunters over from the porch and approaches the rear passenger’s-side window, which Dawud has rolled down all the way. “Would you guys be able to pick up some Gatorade? Need it for after bench-pressing. Cool gym your dad has by the way, Janna.” He holds out a fifty. “The blue kind or, if they don’t have it, white. And only Gatorade, please. I’m a purist.”
Dawud snatches the bill. “Perfect. This leaves enough for ice cream after.”
“You guys are getting ice cream, too?” Haytham raises those compelling eyebrows at me, and I fiddle with the keys in the ignition. “I love ice cream.”
“We are?” I say, shrugging, turning to Dawud.