Omar eyed the bleachers, looking for Peejay’s magnificent face in the stands. Those dark eyes of his, that unblemished brown skin, the softness of which would be apparent even from across the gym. There were plenty of people, many holding up poster board signs in support of Amira and a handful for Omar, with a few more scattered signs for other competitors unlikely to succeed against the two front-runners. Others had signs advertising their team or club’s event or booth at the lock-in. Some held signs simply in support of lock-in night itself. Omar couldn’t see Peejay there, but right before the whistle sounded he thought he saw his younger sister, Joy, fiddling near the exit to the gymnasium, holding something shiny.
* * *
While her brother checked the ball to his opponent, Joy Ng tried to remember Marisa’s exact instructions. Loop twice, then over and through, or over and through, then loop twice? She’d lost the notebook paper where she’d written it down. Joy didn’t want to disappoint Marisa by messing up the chains and not having everyone properly locked in.
She pushed her glasses farther up the bridge of her nose and fixed her hair back up into its usual messy bun, figuring it would be enough to simply make the metallic knot as convoluted as possible. The steel clinked satisfyingly in her hands, and she smiled as the gym burst into cheers around her (Amira had scored her first basket of the tournament, a beautiful pull-up jumper from the elbow). Joy felt like she was making Marisa proud, but right at the moment she clicked the locks into place, she realized she had forgotten to use the bathroom. Longingly, she looked across the gym, where at that moment Celeste Rollins emerged from one of the two unisex toilets.
* * *
Unlike most everyone else, Celeste was not enjoying lock-in night.
A new student at CIS, Celeste had never lived outside of the US before, and had struggled to make friends. Struggled is too generous a word. Celeste had failed to make friends for the past eight months. No one was mean to her, nor did they hold her Americanness against her. But no one made a space for her, either.
She could at least partially understand. It was what she came to think of as her unfortunate singlehood—single passport, single language, single previous home. All these other kids knew the world up close, knew its histories and beautiful nooks, knew the nuances between regional versions of Spanish, could name the king of Thailand. Celeste had not known Thailand was a kingdom. She had seen the world only in textbooks and on TV, in news segments that whittled down foreign countries to the dangers they presented.
Even the other American kids at CIS were more worldly than Celeste. They had bounced from embassy to embassy, continent to continent, as their parents were transferred or sought to be missionaries or chased their whims. And while these kids wore American sports jerseys to school and hung around together, speaking only in English, they knew how to wield the local slang, how to maneuver the metro system, where to go on weekends, how to live abroad. They didn’t remember what life in the States was like, if they had ever been there at all. They lived in walled-off country clubs or came to school in a van straight from the Mormon church. Even the two other black American kids—Casey and Jay Robinson, originally from New York—offered no easy welcome, though they were instinctively the first people she would have sought out, had they not been elementary students.
Whenever Celeste had tried to squeeze herself into a group of Americans—at lunch while they sat by the soccer field bleachers, in the chatty minutes before their remedial classes meant to teach them the local language (though many of these students followed their parents’ leads and barely bothered to attempt learning)—there had seemed to be no room for her. They were drawn to each other’s Americanness, not hers. Whether it was racism or a lack of shared experiences in upbringing, it did not ease the pain of loneliness.
Celeste loved people. She loved their company, at least when she’d had it in Glen Ellyn. She loved their mannerisms, loved their voices and their laughs, loved when her former babysitter, Erin, came by unannounced just to see her, or when her friend Jamie texted every morning, even though they always met in front of the park district pool—where almost everyone they knew, including the two of them, had spent at least one summer lifeguarding or working the snack bar—to walk to school together. And she loved, more than anything, her place among all these people. With the younger kids from the suburban neighborhood, she was the girl with the trampoline whose parents let them come by whenever they wanted to. In swim class, she was not the fastest or the slowest, but the one who knew everyone’s name and stayed up late with her mom the night before meets baking cookies. She was the Colsons’ babysitter, Jamie’s best friend, Mrs. Silver’s newest (and briefest) employee at the kitchen supply store on Main Street. She was Celeste Rollins of Forest Street in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a student of Glenbard West High School (Go, Hilltoppers!). She was one of the few black students there, yes, and that had come with its share of microaggressions and difficulties. But it had been home.
Glen Ellyn was all Celeste had ever known, but when her parents decided to leave the US, she had allowed herself to grieve only until the flight to her new home. Yes, she would miss all these people—the way they fit into her life in the most comfortable of ways, like a play she knew by heart. Not just her lines, but everyone else’s, too. But there would be a new play for her to step into, a new, rich cast of characters, and she would learn her lines quickly. She was sure of it.
That wasn’t how it had happened.
Celeste thought she’d been prepared for the language barrier, but she definitely had not. After six months her brain was still struggling to retain words, because her mouth had not yet managed to grasp on to the different sounds it had to make, sounds it had never attempted before. Vowels! Who knew they could elude her? An i was not an i here.
That wasn’t all. The toilets were different, the times people ate. Celeste had no idea these things could vary among nations. Noon was lunchtime. She thought that had been universal.
Still, she had been hopeful that when she met the kids of CIS, she would find her place among them. Her first day of school she woke up well before her alarm rang. She texted Jamie for support, but across the world, Jamie was at after-school soccer practice. Or was she sleeping? It was hard to do the math of time zones. Celeste practiced what she would say while she showered, while she brushed her teeth, while she had her usual Glen Ellyn breakfast of oatmeal and a banana (the oatmeal would have to be rationed out; her favorite brand was nowhere to be found). She did her hair up into a pineapple pony, and it had cooperated beautifully, the curls in her bangs perfectly springy. And when the nice, air-conditioned city bus that served as a school bus came to pick her up, she put on a smile and tried to make eye contact with the people already seated.
They had earphones in, or were dozing with their heads against the glass. Two black girls sat and spoke with each other, their hair in admirable, intricate braids that gave her an in to comment on. But they did not look up when Celeste approached. Toward the back there was a tall, curly-haired boy in a hoodie reading a book. Celeste smiled at him and he looked away immediately, shy and skittish. She thought, Ah, I know my lines here.