All We Have Left (11 page)

I’d been so caught up in the flirtation, I’d never really thought about where it was going. It’s not like I didn’t know what guys want; Carla and Mary and the others were always
talking about how far they’d gone with what guy.
You really need to get it over with already, Alia.
But I didn’t
want
to just get it over with. I wanted the guy that I was with to be important to me, and for my first kiss, my first
whatever
, to be special, with a guy who really loved me, and who I would marry.

“I’m Muslim,” I said, though he already knew that. I was really saying it to myself, because, yes, I’m Muslim, but sometimes it was hard to be all the other things I wanted to be too. “This isn’t right. None of it is.” I gestured to the empty cups beside us, at him, at the party where girls and guys were hooking up in dark corners, or out in the open, not caring who saw them. “This isn’t who I want to be,” I said in a low voice.

“You could have fooled me,” he said, and walked away without looking back.

Later that night, I was curled up on Carla’s couch bed when I heard her come in. She was talking to someone, and she didn’t see me when she opened the door. I watched as she reached up and kissed Mike, long and slow, pressing her body against his.

“Forget her,” she said, slurring her words, and somehow I knew she was talking about me. “She’s just a stupid girl who doesn’t know what to do with a guy like you.”

I sat up. “Stupid girl? I’m not the one stumbling drunk, Carla!”

I felt so hurt, so betrayed by both of them. In my mind,
I jumped out of bed and took a swinging kick at the two of them, driving them apart. The girl wasn’t me, but a stronger, better version of me, who always knew the right thing to say and do. I imagined her blocked in a panel, eyes narrowed as she said, “
The best path is not always the easiest
,” which was something Ayah was always saying. My fingers itched to draw this superhero-me, who would never be sitting here silent, not knowing what to do.

For a moment Carla’s eyes looked sorry, but Mike just stared at me, like I was nothing to him.

Without speaking, Carla pulled Mike into her mom’s room, while I shook with anger and humiliation.

I went home to my parents, and they grounded me for the summer, and forbade me from seeing Carla. I didn’t even care, because I didn’t want to see her, or Mike, or any of them, ever again anyway.

I wasn’t like that. I didn’t know exactly what I
was
, but it wasn’t that. That’s what I thought about all summer, as I inked Lia, my new Muslim superhero, in panel after panel of frenzied world-saving activity. I went to camp and met the cool confidence that was Tanjia, and I began to see what I could be, if I tried.

I’m still trying to formulate the perfect words that will make Ayah listen, to make him understand, as I change at Chambers Street for the local #1/9 and get out one stop later at the
Cortlandt Street station. I climb the narrow brick staircase and enter the light modern hall above. People are hurrying in all directions, and I sidestep a woman carrying a green-and-white Krispy Kreme Doughnuts box, and go through glass doors past a sign reading 1 World Trade Center.

The lobby is white marble, soaring windows, glass and metal. I stop next to a potted plant, feeling small all of a sudden as people hurry past me, their voices crisscrossing across the echoing space. I scratch my head, because my hijab is
itchy.
A guy in a suit standing on the balcony ringing the second floor points at me, and for a minute I think it’s because of my scarf, but then he starts smiling and waving and a woman behind me calls, “I’ll be right there.”

Feeling silly, I bypass the line of employees swiping their ID cards at the turnstiles, and hurry over to the security line. The line moves in fits and starts, but thankfully, there aren’t a whole lot of visitors this time of morning. When it’s my turn, I give the guy in a blue blazer my school ID and best smile, and with some sweet-talking, he hands over a visitor pass card.

Then I go to stand with a crowd of people waiting for an express elevator to take me up to my father’s offices, high up in the north tower.

The Monday after I climb with Adam, I head toward my locker, thinking about a plane flying toward the Twin Towers one ordinary morning. It makes me feel precarious, as if anything could happen at any time. Which tower was Travis in? The first tower hit, or the second? I’ve been thinking about him a lot since I found the photo album, and wondering why no one seems to know—or wants to talk about—what my brother was doing there.

I literally bowl into Adam as I turn a corner by my locker. He is talking to one of the basketball guys, and I see his eyes widen, but it’s too late and I crash into him. I feel the soft musky wool of his sweater on my cheek as he catches me by the elbows.

“Sorry!” I say, my cheeks flaring a three-alarm fire. He
smiles, the dimple flashing in his cheek as I step back from him hurriedly.

“I thought … I thought you were in college. I’ve never seen you in school,” I say.

“No, I just moved to town. My parents moved here last summer, and at first I wanted to finish at my old school so I stayed behind. But then it got boring being the hot, popular valedictorian”—he yawns dramatically—“so I figured, why not see how the other half lives?” He leans his arm up against the wall, and I try to ignore the shivers that race down my arms.

“Really?” I say. “Can you be any more conceited?”

He nods. “Yes. Yes, I can.”

I swallow, because it would be so much easier if he didn’t go to my school. Immediately, I think of Nick, and turn toward my locker, brushing against Adam by accident.

He steps back to give me room to work on my combination.

But even as I’m trying to ignore the tug of attraction between us, I wish I could ask Teeny about him. She would know all his vitals, like why he
really
changed schools so close to the end of his senior year; but there’s a coolness between Teeny and me lately, a thin film of ice on our friendship which neither of us has been able to break. And it’s not just Teeny. None of my friends are talking to me much, and I can’t really blame them because I’ve been avoiding them too, mainly because I know if I tell them what’s going on with Nick and all the tagging they’ll tell me to stop.

“You’re a pretty decent climber,” Adam says. “Not on par with the awesomeness that are my own climbing skills, but close.”

“I’m guessing when you were a kid you thought you were going to grow up to be Superman.” I know I need to cut this, whatever it is, short because Nick will be here any minute.

“Naw. Spidey all the way. Have you seen that boy climb?”

“You’re nuts.”

“But I’ve managed to make you smile. Why don’t you smile more?”

“Do I look like I’m smiling?”

“I see a sparkle, a twinkle of a smile, longing to escape.”

My mouth twitches. “You need glasses.”

“Smiling is good for the soul. Laughter is even better. Volcanoes feel so much better when they let it all out.”

“Do I look like a volcano?” I ask, trying not to laugh.

“Yes, you do,” he says, and I can’t tell whether he’s joking or not.

I glance over my shoulder.
Where is Nick?
He’s usually here by now.

Adam looks at me curiously, picking up on my unease. “I … uh … I was thinking about going back out next weekend, if the cold snap holds. Do you, maybe, want to go?” His words stutter, which is such at odds with the confidence he usually wears like a bright neon sign that I glance up at him.

My gaze is trapped by the endless blue of his eyes, and I feel sparks like fireflies fluttering through my veins.

This is not good
, I’m thinking, but I can’t seem to look away. Neither, evidently, can he. We stand like that for a moment, until he finally backs up a step, his cheeks turning red.

“I can’t.” I stare down at the lock, which will
not
cooperate. I’ve already gone past my first number twice.

“Okay, then,” he says finally. “I’ll see you around.”

“Okay, sure,” I say, keeping my eyes on the lock.

He stands for a moment and then without a word, he turns and walks away.

“Who was that?” Nick comes up and snakes an arm around me.

“No one,” I say.

That night I sneak past my parents’ bedroom, stopping for a moment as I hear the reassuring rumble of my father’s snores, the slight murmuring of my mother. She hums when she sleeps, and sometimes it sounds like a lullaby. I wonder what baby she is singing to in her sleep. Travis, the dead child? Hank, the one who ran away? Or me, the one who is still right here?

I slip out of the apartment and down the interior stairs into the shop below, winding my way through the display cases and racks of coats and boots. The bells attached to the door jingle softly as I lock the door behind me.

Nick, on the steps outside the shop, stands when he
sees me. Without speaking, he pulls me in for a kiss. I relax against him, feeling my heartbeat slow as he rubs my back and drops gentle kisses on my jaw and neck. It’s best when it’s just him and me, like when we lie curled together on his couch and he talks in a soft voice about the graffiti business he wants to start, about his mother who left after getting hit one too many times, the fight he had with his brother that broke his collarbone. I talk too, about my parents and Travis, and the anger that seems to build and build inside me.

“It’s just us tonight,” he murmurs into my hair. My pulse skips, because it’ll be more dangerous with just the two of us. Nick grabs his pack, and I follow him down the icy sidewalk. It’s late, and the traffic on Main Street is light, the hiss of tires slow and sleepy in the wet spring snow.

Nick stops in front of Lila Danver’s cheese shop, and I say, “Nick? Here?” because this is the first time we’ve ever done anything fronting Main Street. Even though there isn’t a lot of traffic this time of night, there’s still some. He starts unpacking his bag without answering.

Lately, he has been getting reckless, and it’s scaring me how he’s taking more and more chances. But I know he’s frustrated that no one seems to be noticing our tags. At this point, we have painted “Nothing” on literally hundreds of buildings, and except for one small mention in the paper, and a few more police patrols, no one seems to care.

“Jesse, it’ll be fine. Trust me.”

I nod without speaking, hating that at this moment I
feel with Nick the same way I feel with my dad, like there is something I should say but don’t.

I hand Nick the cans of paint, and keep watch as he starts the tag. He’s halfway through when I see a car.

“Nick!”

He pulls me back into the shadows next to the doorway, and even though we are plainly visible if anyone looked, the car drives right past us.

“See?” Nick says. “We’re invisible. No one sees us.”

He’s almost done when I see the cop car. It’s cruising slow, like a shark, as it comes down the steep hill toward us.

“Cop!” I say, and Nick glances over his shoulder, and then back to his tag.

I stand for what feels like an eternity and then at least another week as the cop gets closer and Nick finishes the tag.