Maybe I wasn’t ready to talk.
In the two months since Zahra and I had parted ways, I’d been eating lunch alone. I was too tired to drum up the enthusiasm needed to strike up conversations with people who didn’t know the intimate details of my life. I chose instead to sit far from the crowds, alone with my optimistic thoughts and my optimistic newspaper. Only recently had my innumerable attractions lured a stranger to my lunch table: a foreign exchange student from Japan who smiled often and said little. Her name was Yumiko. We were perfect for each other.
Dramatic tenebrism.
It hit me suddenly, like a slap to the head. The answer was B. Dramatic tenebrism. A less intense chiaroscuro.
Damn.
I sighed as I followed the sea of students down the hall. I had one more class before lunch, and I needed to switch out my books. Miraculously, my body knew this without prompting; the autopilot feature had flickered on in my brain and was already guiding my feet down a familiar path to my locker. I pushed my way through a tangle of bodies, found the metal casket that housed my things, spun the dial on the lock. My hands moved mechanically, swapping textbooks for textbooks, my eyes seeing nothing.
It took very little for Zahra to ambush me.
I turned around and there she was, brown curls and almond eyes, perfectly manicured brows furrowed, arms crossed at her chest.
She was angry.
I took a step back, felt the sharp edge of my open locker dig into my spine. It was all in my head, I knew that even then, but it seemed to me that the world stopped in that moment, the din dimmed, the light changed, a camera lens focused. I held my breath and waited for something, hoped for something, feared so much.
When Zahra first cut me out of her life, I had no idea what was happening. I didn’t understand why she’d stopped eating lunch with me, didn’t understand why she’d stopped returning my calls. She plucked me from her tree of life with such efficiency I didn’t even realize what happened until I hit the ground.
After that, I let her go.
I made no demands, insisted on no explanations. Once I understood that she’d ejected me without so much as a goodbye, I’d not possessed the self-hatred necessary to beg her to stick around. Instead, I grieved quietly—in the privacy of my bedroom, on the shower floor, in the middle of the night. I’d learned from my mother to hide the pain that mattered most, to allow it an audience only behind closed doors, with only God as my witness. I had other friends, I knew other people. I was not desperate for company.
Still, I had violent dreams about her. I screamed at her in my delirium, sobbed while she stood over me and stared, her face impassive. I asked her questions she’d never answer, threw punches that never landed.
It felt strange to look at her now.
“Hi,” I said quietly.
Her eyes flashed. “I want you to stop talking to my brother.”
A cold weight drove into my chest, punctured a vital organ. “What?”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking or why you would even think it, but you have to stop throwing yourself at him. Stay away from him, stay away from me, and stay the hell out of my life—”
“Zahra, stop,” I said sharply. “Stop.” My heart was racing so fast I felt it pounding in my head. “I’m not talking to your brother. I saw him yesterday by accident, and he drove me t—”
“By accident.”
“Yes.”
“You saw him by accident.”
“Yes, I—”
“So you saw him by accident, he gave you a ride home by accident, you left your backpack in his car by accident, you were wearing his sweatshirt by accident.”
I drew in a sharp breath.
Something flickered in Zahra’s eyes, something akin to triumph, and my composure broke. Anger filled my head with stunning speed, black heat edging into my vision. Through nothing short of a miracle, I fought it back.
“I’ve told you a hundred times,” I said, “that I didn’t know it was his. I thought that sweatshirt belonged to Mehdi. And I don’t know why you refuse to believe me.”
She shook her head, disgust marring the face that was once so familiar to me. “You’re a shitty liar, Shadi.”
“I’m not lying.”
She wasn’t listening. “Every time I asked if something was going on between you and my brother, you’d always act so innocent and hurt, like you had no idea what I was talking about. I can’t believe you really thought I was that stupid. I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t figure it out.”
“Figure what out? What are you talking about?”
“Ali,” she said angrily. “My brother. Did you think I wouldn’t put it all together? Did you think I wouldn’t notice what you did to him? God, if you were going to mess around with my brother the least you could’ve done was not break his fucking heart.”
“What?” I was panicking. I could feel myself panicking. “Is that what he told you? Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to tell me. It was pretty easy to put the whole thing together.” She made a gesture with her hand. “One day he comes home looking like he got shot in the chest, and the next day he stops speaking to you forever.”
“No.” I was shaking my head, shaking it so hard I felt dizzy. “No, that’s not what happened. You don’t unders—”
“Bullshit, Shadi.” Her eyes were bright with an anger that scared me, worried me. I took an involuntary step back, but she followed.
“You lied to me for years. Not only did you hook up with my brother behind my back, but you broke his heart, and worst of all—God, Shadi, worst of all, you pretended to be so perfect and good, when that whole time you were actually just a slutty, lying piece of shit.”
I felt, suddenly, like I’d gone numb.
“I just wanted you to know,” she was saying. “I wanted you to know that I know the truth. Maybe no one else sees through all your bullshit—maybe everyone at the mosque thinks you’re some kind of a saint—but I know better. So stay the hell away from my family,” she said.
And walked away.
I stood there, staring into space until the final bell rang, until the chaotic hall became a ghost town. I was going to be late to my next class. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to breathe.
I wanted, desperately, to disappear.
Zahra and I had been friends since I was eleven; I met her and Ali at the same time. Our family was new in town and my parents wanted us to make friends, so they sent me and Shayda and Mehdi to a Muslim summer camp, a camp none of us had wanted to attend. It was our shared loathing of spending summer afternoons listening to religious sermons that brought us all together. If only I’d known then that we’d usher in our end with a similar emotion.
Zahra had always hated me, just a little bit.
She’d always said it like it was a joke, a charming turn of phrase, like it was normal to roll your eyes and say every other day, God, I hate you so much, to the person who was, ostensibly, your best friend. For years, her hatred was innocuous enough to ignore—she hated the way I avoided coffee, hated how I took the evil eye seriously, hated the sad music I listened to, hated the way I turned into a prim, obedient child when I spoke Farsi—but in the last year, her hatred had changed.