Does My Head Look Big in This? (8 page)

Eileen and I giggle and Simone sticks her tongue out at us.

I walk to the milk bar on Saturday morning to buy the weekend paper for my parents and the latest edition of
Cosmo
.
I’m a real
Cosmo
fanatic. A
Cosmo
quiz guru. According to
Cosmo
, Adam and I are perfectly matched, although June’s edition gave us a low score on physical compatibility so I threw that issue out.

All my
Cosmos
are stacked under my bed because my mum hates me reading such “filthy magazines with nothing but sex and skinny girls”. She thinks that if I read them I’m going to spend my Saturday nights bouncing away in cars and throwing up my lunch. OK, so last month she busted Simone and me glued to a sealed section on male body parts. Boy was that embarrassing. And man did she go nuts. She sat me down for a massive mother-to-daughter on sex and intimacy and how magazines and movies corrupt the precious relationship between men and women and blah blah blah. It was excruciating. Anyway, if she finds out I’m buying this month’s edition (which has an article on what guys
really
like in a girl), I’ll be hung out to dry with the washing.

On my way back from the milk bar, with the
Cosmo
stuffed in my coat, I see Mrs Vaselli standing outside watering her roses. She’s wearing her all-year-round thick black stockings, pleated skirt, woollen jumper and schoolgirl shoes. She dresses like that in the peak of summer too.

“Hi, Mrs Vaselli,” I call out. Another avoiding-a-lecture defence mechanism.

She pauses with the hose mid-air, scowls at me, and turns her back to water another plant. As I turn in to our drive she suddenly storms over to our fence and starts yelling at me.

“You tell newspaper people no trow paper on my grass!”

She stomps away back to her house.

“What a grumpy old fart!” I yell, slamming our front door and storming into the kitchen, where my mum is preparing breakfast.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“That old grouch is psychotic. I was walking up the driveway and she comes up to the fence and starts yelling at me.”

“What did you do?”

“Why are parents
always so
quick to assume it’s their children who must have done something wrong?”

“Easy. Because I’m your mum and I can assume anything I want to.”

“Nice,” I mutter. “Her latest big fat whinge is that when our newspapers get delivered in the week, they
sometimes
get thrown on to her lawn. The injustice of it must burn her. Boy, do I wish I had her problems. Newspapers touching her precious grass.”

“Don’t say that, ya Amal. You have no idea what her problems are.”

“Yeah, I do. She’s an anal, cranky, miserable woman who wants to take out her bad mood on everybody else.”

“Really? Only person I hear that sounds like she’s got a bad case of PMS is you.”

I flounce out of the room, stomping my feet as hard as I can as I walk up the stairs.

7

M
onday morning. And my class has finally decided to confront me about my hijab. I almost want to jump up and down with relief. I can handle an insult or an interrogation. I can’t handle going from getting along with everybody (with the obvious exception of Tia and her Mini-Mes) to being a social outcast.

Somehow, in between classes after lunch on Monday everybody suddenly finds the guts to approach me, wanting to know what’s going on with my new look.

“Did your parents force you?” Kristy asks, all wide-eyed and appalled.

“My dad told me if I don’t wear it he’ll marry me off to a sixty-five-year-old camel owner in Egypt.”

“No!” She’s actually horrified.

“I was invited to the wedding,” Eileen adds.

“
Really?
” This is definitely a case of dropped from the cradle.

“Hey! Amal!” Tim Manne calls out. “What’s the deal with that thing on your head?”

“I’ve gone bald.”

“Get out!”

“I’m on the Advanced Hair Programme.”

For a second his eyes flicker with shock. Then Josh punches him on the shoulder. “Rocked!”

“Like I believed her,” Tim says, looking sheepish.

“Doesn’t it get hot?” someone asks.

“Can I touch it?”

“Can you swim?”

“Do you wear it in the shower?”

“So is it like nuns? Are you married to Jesus now?”

It’s unreal. Everybody’s asking me about my decision and seems genuinely interested in hearing what I have to say. They’re all huddled around me and I’m having the best time explaining to them how I put it on and when I have to wear it. Then Adam plants himself in front of me and starts joining in with the rest of them and I want to plant a massive kiss on his face except that really would be defeating the purpose of my entire spiritual roadtrip now, wouldn’t it?

“So it’s your choice then?” he asks.

“Oh yeah!” I answer. “One hundred per cent.”

“Wow . . . so how come it looks different on you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like you see some women covering their faces and other women wearing really bright material with that red paint on their hand. Are they all Islamic too?”

“You mean Muslim.”

“Huh?”

“What she means,” Josh says, “is that the religion is Islam and the followers are Muslim. Like you can’t say to somebody you’re a Judaism or a Catholicism. Get it?”

“Right.” Adam nods his head. “So are they
Muslim
,
like you?”

“Yeah they are. But, every girl is going to interpret the hijab differently. It depends on their culture or their fashion sense, you know? There’s no one uniform for it.”

“I get you,” Adam says.

“A lot of Africans wear those really colourful wrap-around dresses and veils,” I continue. “Um, stricter women cover their face, but it’s not required in Islam. It’s their choice to go to that extent.”

“Will you ever cover yours?” Adam asks.

“Nah! No way.”

“OK . . . cool.”

We all keep talking until our Chemistry teacher, Ms Samuels, walks in and announces she’s going to test us to see if we studied over the holidays. We get stuck with an impromptu quiz and Kristy passes me a note with exclamation marks and smiley faces all over.

I’m really glad your dad didn’t go through with the wedding!! : ) : )

Sweet of her. But cradle theory confirmed.

“OK, personal question time, Simone,” I say during recess as Simone, Eileen and I are sitting outside on the lawn. “What do you think of Josh?”

“Unbelievably
dreamy
!” she moans, taking a bite out of her carrot.

“You make him laugh,” Eileen says. “Always a good sign. I reckon he’s got the hots for you.”

“
Josh?
Having the hots for
me
? There’s more chance of Ms Walsh waxing her upper lip than that happening.”

“Oh
puh-lease
!” I groan.

“While we’re on the subject of saliva-inducing crushes,” Simone says, “what’s the latest on Adam? Did you see how cool he was when the class was asking you about your veil? Usually he’s so quiet and serious.”

“I know!” Eileen exclaims. “He seemed really interested.”

I give them a lopsided grin. “He is
so
cute.”

“Somebody get me a paper bag,” Eileen says, “my two best friends have gone beyond corny on me!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll try to find some crush material for you too,” Simone says.

“No thanks. You two took the best. What am I supposed to admire about the rest of the guys in our class? That they can pick their noses? Have farting competitions? Or maybe it’s the fact that they can burp the alphabet? Ooh, I’m on fire.”

We all laugh and have a whinge about the disgusting habits of the male species in our classroom. Then Simone leans over to me. “OK, my hypothetical question for Amal.”

“Fire away.”

“Let’s say he asks you out. Would you be his girlfriend?”

I lean back on my hands and smile at them. “Nah, you know I don’t do the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing.”

“Not even with
Adam
?” Simone asks. “Surely God would understand! I mean he’s your high-school crush.
The
crush. The one you’ll be talking about for years to come, when you’re old and saggy and grey and telling your hubby and kids about your good old school days and how Adam Keane was your oxygen through Year Eleven!”

“That’s right, Amal!” Eileen adds. “Are you telling us you wouldn’t contemplate bending the rules?”

“Honestly, I think about it all the time. Like I imagine us being a couple and Tia being institutionalized from grief that I got Mr Popular.”

“She’d need shock treatment,” Simone says, giggling.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not frigid or anything! Boy do I sometimes wish Adam was my boyfriend, and if he was dating anybody I swear I’d have a hernia and probably start plotting death traps for his girl. But deep down I know I wouldn’t cross the line with him, no matter how tempting it would be. OK, OK, you’re thinking I qualify for nerdy geek?”

“Big time,” Eileen jokes and I hit her on the shoulder.

“But you know I can’t in Islam. You know the whole thing about no sex and physical intimacy before marriage.”

“Yeah, we know, you’ve told us,” Simone says.

“And it’s not just in Islam, you know,” I say. “Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism.”

“OK, we get it,” Eileen groans. “You’ve told us before. You don’t have to keep on trying to prove yourself against other religions for some sort of legitimacy. Sheez.”

“Do I do that? Simone?”

Simone nods her head.

“Well, OK then. Just don’t think it’s because of my parents. If I wanted to have a
boyfriend, I could easily get away with it behind my parents’ back. They trust me heaps so if I spoke to a guy for ages on the phone every night and said he’s
just a friend
they’d believe me, no questions asked. I could get away with telling them I’m going out with my girlfriends and meet up with my
boyfriend
without any problem. But it has nothing to do with them.”

“My parents would probably freak out if I told them I was going out with a guy,” Eileen says.
“They can be pretty strict about things like that. I suppose, though, if he was a good Japanese boy with plenty of culture and the brains of a nuclear scientist they’d welcome him with open arms.”

“My mum would be happy if I went out with anyone, period,” Simone says. “She’s just dying for me to have a boyfriend and be
normal
,
at least that’s how she puts it.”

“So, Amal, are you happy just being friends with Adam, then?” Eileen asks.

“Oh yeah! But this is the tricky part. See, I’m happy just being close friends and drooling over him without anything actually happening. But I want to be his best female friend. Do you get me? I want to know he confides in me and talks to me and looks out for my opinion more than any other girl. That would be the best. The physical stuff I’ll imagine!”

They giggle at me for being a nerd on the outside and a
devil on the inside. Simone and I are discussing whether Josh should use less hair gel when Eileen hisses at us to shut up as Adam is approaching. Before Simone has time to push her carrots under her bag (she hates people knowing she’s on a diet), Adam is in front of us carrying three textbooks, as usual.

“Amal, what’s going on with this question about determining a molecular formula for a hydrocarbon?”

“Do you ever
not
study?” I say, as I get up off the ground and have a look at the page he’s referring to.

“Yeah, don’t you take a break?” Eileen adds. “Food? Sport? Fresh air? It’s extremely unhealthy to subject your mind and body to round-the-clock academia.”

“I don’t have time for breaks.”

“That’s the whole
point
of a break. When you’ve got no time, you need a break.”

He pauses and looks at her slowly. “You should do a chocolate commercial with that line.”

Eileen and Simone look at each other and let out startled laughs.

“So you
do
joke?” Simone says.

“No,” he answers, his mouth twitching as he turns to look at the page.