All We Have Left (10 page)

“Hey.” Adam’s voice floats from below me. “I’ve got you, okay? I won’t let you fall. Just concentrate on the next move.”

I put my forehead against the ice, feeling the rough, cold edges, and then I look back up at the top.

“You can do this, Jesse.” It’s the first time he’s said my name, and something about the way he says it gives me the strength to kick in another foothold, and push myself up. Step by step, with Adam yelling encouragement, I make it to the top and collapse.

“You okay?”

“I’m okay!” I force myself to get up and secure an anchor for him.

He comes up, and it’s like he
flows
up the mountain, like a waterfall going backward, and then he’s at the top with me, and we’re both laughing up at the sky, not thinking about anything but right here, right now.

I’m almost running as I head toward the subway. I pass a group of kids being ushered along by a nanny pushing a stroller, and sidestep a deliveryman feeding boxes through a metal hatch onto a conveyor belt that slides deep into the bowels of a shop. I feel reckless and impatient, like I’ve left something important unfinished, and the permission slip crinkles in my pocket. It’s a constant reminder of the dream that I am letting slip away.

Because it’s my fault I did not make my parents hear me. I let so many opportunities pass when I could have told them what this NYU program means to me.

What can I do though? Both my father and my mother have said no, but if I don’t turn the permission slip in today, then I won’t be able to go to the NYU program. Maybe it’s
not the end of the world, but if I let them do this to me, what else will I let them talk me into? Will I wake up one day in college, studying to be a doctor or lawyer and wonder how I got there?

I drop an absentminded pat on the head of a coin-operated horse outside a shop. I remember there was one like it down the street from where we used to live in LA. I would beg Ayah to drop quarter after quarter into it and sit in the saddle and clutch the reins while it bounded up and down.

Ayah is the one I need to convince. As in-your-face as my mother is, she listens to my father. Like when I chose a creative arts high school, instead of one of the more academic ones, and my mother and I screamed and yelled for an entire week. Finally I went to Ayah and told him how much it meant to me. He somehow poured water all over my mother’s raging inferno, and in the end I got to go to the school I wanted.

Ayah didn’t listen to me this morning, but all of a sudden I don’t want to give up.

Maybe he will listen, if I try one more time.

I barely catch the crowded express train going to Manhattan. A girl, older than me, probably in college, gets on and stands across from me. She’s dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved blouse, with a beautifully patterned purple scarf over her head. She catches my eye.

“
As-salaam alaikum
,” she says in Arabic, the universal
greeting among Muslims. Her voice is as American as my own.

Peace be upon you.

“
Wa alaikum as-salaam
,” I answer automatically.

And upon you be peace.

She nods at me in sisterly camaraderie, and I smile, feeling a small glow of warmth and acceptance. I sit back on the hard, plastic seat I was lucky to get this time of the morning as the train rocks back and forth. Pulling my notepad out of my bag, I sketch the girl in broad, quick strokes, capturing her slender face and the delicate edge of her scarf, and write the dialogue bubble above her head:

Lia, I want you to know that the entire world is counting on you. I know you can do it!

I finger my Hand of Fatimah amulet on its thin gold chain around my neck as I consider Lia’s response to her newest fan. I sketch Lia slowly melting into the wall of the subway seat as she pulls on her camouflage burqa. I draw a cloud shape with smaller circles going down to Lia’s head to indicate a thought bubble:

I wish I were as sure as she is that I can win this battle.

The train accelerates as it slides under the river, and I sit with the notepad in my lap, thinking about what I will say to Ayah.

I know he’s worried about me making bad decisions. And really, after what I did, how can I blame him?

My sophomore year, Mike Stanley sat behind me in my Humanities band, and he sailed paper airplanes with messages over my shoulder, saying stuff like:
My eyes are crossing. Are your eyes crossing?
and
I’m pretty sure it’s possible to die of boredom.
It was funny, and I thought he was cute with his deep brown eyes and strong dancer’s legs. Pretty soon he started walking with me after class. We talked on the phone, and I told myself we were just friends, that it was okay if we were just friends. Carla thought he was hot and said if I didn’t grab him, she would. And then he asked me if I wanted to go see the new Pearl Harbor movie with him, and somehow I didn’t just say no. Two hours before he was supposed to pick me up I went into the living room and told my parents.

“It’s not a good idea, Lala,” my father said, and at least he
sounded
sympathetic.

Mama just shook her head and said, “Have you lost your mind, Alia?”

That set me off, and before long Mama and I were trading words so fast it felt like we were in some kind of raging ping-pong game.

“You don’t want me to be happy!” I yelled. “I hate it here, I want to be in LA, and you
don’t care
! You want me to be miserable!”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Alia,” my mother said. “Of course we want you to be happy. It’s because we want you to be happy that we are asking you to believe that we know what’s best for you.”

“How could you possibly know what will make me happy?”

Eventually my father intervened, telling me gently that faith was a road map to happiness, God willing, not a roadblock to fun, and asked me to go to my room to calm down. I burned with embarrassment when I heard the door buzzer a while later, hating them,
hating them
, and wondering what they had told Mike when he showed up at our door.

Later that night, I packed a bag and snuck out while my parents were sleeping. It was wrong, it was stupid, but I’d felt so powerless. It felt like if I stayed there even one more night I would wake up as a puppet, dancing to my parents’ commands. Carla’s mom was out of town, so we had two glorious days of freedom, or at least that’s how it seemed at the time.

The second night, Carla threw a party on the roof of her building. She lent me some clothes, and we giggled and laughed as we dragged chairs from her tiny apartment up two flights of stairs to the roof. I was trying not to think about my parents, who had called Carla over and over again. Every time she lied smoothly: “Oh gosh, how
terrible
, Mr. and Mrs. Susanto, but I haven’t seen her!”

It was the first Saturday in June, and at first it was damp and foggy. The only lights we could see were the twinkling, colored strands of Christmas lights I’d helped Carla put up. A bunch of people were there, chilling and talking, and we watched as the damp fog rolled back and suddenly we could see the lights of the buildings around us, shining like stars
on the ground. Carla cranked up the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” and we all yelled the refrain at the top of our lungs.

I was standing at the edge of the roof when a paper airplane landed on the wall beside me. I knew who it was, even if I didn’t see him arrive. Without turning around, I opened the note:
I missed you last night.

I turned around and Mike was standing there, his hands in his pockets, wearing a tight blue T-shirt. He was so handsome I felt my pulse jump a little. Okay, a
lot.

“Here,” he said, and handed me a beer. “What happened last night?” He leaned up on the wall next to me, and I felt his warm closeness against my arm.

“What did my parents say?” I asked in a small voice, feeling so stupid.

“They were real nice, actually—wow, you look just like your mom, did you know that?—but they said there was some kind of misunderstanding, and that you couldn’t go. I was hoping I’d see you here.”

I looked down at the beer, and put it on the wall without drinking any.

“They are the
worst
,” I said, and my voice was shaking. “They want me to act like some sort of, of
nun
, or something. It’s like I’m in prison.”

“That sucks,” he said, and put his arm around me, drawing me close. I stiffened, but it felt so good that I leaned into him, smelling his cologne and the stuff he used in his
hair. He took a sip of his beer, and we stood like that for a while, as our friends laughed and drank. It was almost the end of the school year, and even though we had finals coming up, it felt like summer was so close.

“Do you want one?” Mike asked as we watched Carla on Harry Mercado’s lap chugging a purplish drink.

“No, I—” But he was already gone, and I immediately felt cold and alone. When he came back, he was holding two cups of the drink and handed one to me.

“Cheers,” he said, tipping it back. I hesitated, and then I did it too. I was expecting it to taste terrible, but it didn’t, just sweet and fruity. My parents didn’t drink—most Muslims don’t—and even though Carla and her crew did, I never had before.

“Watch out, it’ll sneak up on you,” Mike said. We sat on the wall together, and he put his arm around me. I was feeling warm, and somehow disconnected from myself. I found myself taking his hand, felt his strong fingers clasped over mine.

“You know I like you,” he said in a quiet voice. I could smell the sweetness of the drink on his breath as he leaned down toward me, and his lips just grazed mine, soft and gentle.

I was so startled that for a moment I didn’t react. Truthfully, I didn’t want him to stop as waves of sensation slid through me whispering and hot. But then the wrongness of it crashed down on me, and oh no,
what was I doing?

“No,” I murmured, and tried to pull back, but he just drew me closer. His hands were slipping under my shirt, and I wasn’t liking it anymore, because I really didn’t know him that well, not really, and how could
this
be my first kiss, with some guy I barely knew? It wasn’t supposed to be like this, and
why won’t he stop?

“No!” I cried, and finally got my hand free from his and pushed against his chest.

He blinked at me, fuzzy and bewildered. “Wha … ?” He was drunker than I had realized, and his expression took a moment to change from confused to angry.

“What the hell?” he said. “You wanted it. Don’t act like you didn’t. Come on, girl—” He tried to pull me back to him, and I struggled away from him.

“Stop it!” I said. “I told you
no
.” I stood up, breathing hard and almost crying. There was another couple nearby, moaning and kissing, and I saw it was Mary Naradan and some guy from another school who I knew she just met tonight. Was that the kind of girl I was?

“I never pegged you for a tease,” Mike said, his voice hard. “You hang out with Carla and her crew, so I
know
you can’t be that uptight. So, what? I’m not good enough?”

“You don’t understand,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to lead you on. I
wasn’t
.”