Spilled Ink, page 6
Keith takes off his coat, and despite the chill in the space, I do the same, hooking it over my elbow. He doesn’t seem to notice my outfit, which is both a relief and a tiny bit disappointing too. I feel a little shiver run through me. There aren’t enough people in the room to warm the space and the door keeps opening as people float in and out.
“Yalda!”
Mona calls me from the far side of the room. She’s standing and waving at me. On the bench behind her sits Asma, bundled in her coat and offering an uneasy smile.
My friends’ eyes are on me like hot lasers as I stand with Keith and Danny. Since I told the girls I was coming with Keith, Mona has regressed into a third grader. She coos and bats her eyelashes and once asked how serious we are on a scale of one through Jasmine and Aladdin. I’m hoping she’ll recover some of her dignity soon. Asma, on the other hand, said Keith seemed like a good guy and that she hoped we would have fun hanging out together. It felt like there was more she wanted to say, but she held back and I didn’t press her on it—probably because I didn’t want to hear any words of caution.
“I think I spotted your girls. Did you want to hang out with them?” Keith asks, noticing Mona’s arms flailing in the air like she’s directing traffic. She’s still got her burgundy puffer on. I’m not sure if Keith meant for us to part ways here. I don’t want to assume too much. Actually, it’s probably best I don’t assume anything at all.
“I don’t have to,” I say. “Unless, do you want to?”
Keith looks at Danny, who is standing a couple of feet back. He has one hand stuffed into his pocket and his cell phone in the other hand, the screen illuminating his face and furrowed brow. I turn to Keith. “I guess I wasn’t sure if we were just coming here together or if we were going to watch the show . . . together.”
“Like a date?” Keith asks, cocking his head so his hair falls away from his eyes.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” I say quickly, maybe too quickly.
Keith lets out a long sigh.
“Here’s the thing,” he says, and I think maybe a head-on collision at the intersection wouldn’t have been so bad. My face is hot enough to melt a crayon. I instantly flash back to our conversations and I can see it all clearly now. The watermelon in winter, Asma’s chastising look, and the smell of cumin on my black jeans—I’m a curiosity, not a crush.
7
“I didn’t know my brother would be coming with me,” Keith says with a conflicted look. “Maybe we can hang out some other time . . . without everyone else. Also, my brother aside, I have serious concerns about Mona.”
I follow his gaze and almost die to see Mona staring at us.
“Oh my God,” I say.
Mona shrugs and shakes her head in a “what gives” gesture. Asma, the patron saint of subtlety, tugs on the sleeve of Mona’s coat, but Mona hardly seems to notice.
“So, another time. What do you think?” he asks. At this critical moment and without warning, someone flips a switch and a rock song blares through two large speakers in the back of the hall. I feel the vibration through the soles of my shoes.
“Yeah, that sounds like a very good idea,” I agree.
“What?” Keith asks, because it’s hard to hear anything now that the music is on.
“Good idea!” I say, and give him a goofy thumbs-up. I’m partly disappointed and partly relieved. Maybe this evening is a sign from the universe. Maybe Keith has just had a what-was-I-thinking moment and is saving us both from a very awkward second half of senior year.
Keith bites his lip but doesn’t say anything more. He nods in the direction of his brother before we part ways. He walks back to Danny and I cross the room to join my friends. When I reach the bench, Mona cuts her smoky eyes at me. She’s been experimenting with her mother’s kohl eyeliner lately and she’s gotten really good at smudging it, not smearing it.
“Fears!” she says.
I blink. Am I that transparent?
“You look fierce!” she repeats, adding a snap of her fingers for effect, and my shoulders loosen with relief. Words are toying with my head these days. “Holding nothing back tonight, I see. Isn’t he going to sit with us? I’ve shooed at least five people away from this bench so you two could fit with us.”
“She told those two people over there that our friend’s in the bathroom,” Asma says, shaking her head. “People are going to think you have a bad case of food poisoning or something.”
Asma’s always more sensitive to what people think. This has been especially problematic since her parents didn’t bother to think through how kids would pronounce her name. While her name means supreme or beautiful, people butcher it. They turn her into a respiratory ailment in need of an emergency inhaler. Or they put all their energies into the first two letters of her name and turn her into the literal butt of their jokes.
“He’s going to sit with his brother,” I reply, and wonder if Keith is watching me. I lean back and twist my hair over one shoulder to look casual and not like I’m bursting from the conversation we just had. “It’s not a big deal.”
Mona’s eyes go soft with sympathy. She reads my no big deal as a very big deal. Her voice drops with the weight of the situation.
“Oh, he brought his brother, too. So this wasn’t really a—”
“No, actually it wasn’t like that. He wasn’t expecting his brother to come so he said we should hang out some other time . . . without everyone else,” I say, repeating his words.
“As in, he wants you guys to hang out alone, just the two of you,” she confirms. Why does her version sound so different? But come to think of it, that is what Keith said. I’m suddenly fizzy inside, effervescent.
“Oh my hot bod. What did you say?” Mona asks.
“I said sure.”
“I bet you did!” Mona squeals. “Now all you have to do is pull it off without your parents losing their minds. Actually, your parents are cool so they probably wouldn’t.”
“Your parents are cool,” Asma says, then shakes her head. “Mine, not so much, but that’s mostly because my grandmother is a legendary matchmaker, and all marriages are supposedly doomed if she doesn’t handpick the people.”
“It’s just hanging out,” I say, cringing at the mention of marriage and matchmaking. How did that even come up? I’m so glad Keith isn’t hearing this conversation. “Hanging out is no big deal. It’s nothing serious.”
My parents have never explicitly told me that I cannot date. That would require them to put the words date and boys in unacceptable proximity to my name, and I think they fear the power of suggestion.
My mom, who seems to be in charge of addressing all taboo topics with us, finds oblique ways to talk about dating. And there are some conversations she seems to have only with me. Watching a movie, she’ll shake her head and say it’s impossible for guys to see girls as only friends. She’ll throw in an oh-so-casual mention about the boy-crazy daughter of so-and-so who neglected her schoolwork and will be selling hair accessories in the mall and eating fast food for the rest of her life because she didn’t listen to her parents. Even these sideways mentions of relationships seem to give my dad severe heartburn. He pretends he hears his phone ringing in the next room or feels an urgent need to bring in more paper towels from the garage.
But it’s not just that dating will kill my chances of having a career or a salad. I remember my mom’s older sister warning us against dating because of a different set of consequences too terrible to name.
The boys see the girls and they are one day with this one, another day with that one. Like a cheap thing. For the boys, nobody says anything. But for the girls, forget it. She’s this and that. Anyway, now is the time for thinking about school. Everything else can come later.
And that sums up the discussions we’ve had in the family about dating or relationships. If this had been an English assignment, Ms. Deroche would have failed my mom and my aunt for lack of detail, no citation of sources, excessive use of hyperbole, poor structure, and failure to address the topic.
My father would have been marked absent.
A guy in acid-washed jeans and a black T-shirt appears on the stage. Someone in the crowd lets out a whoop and others follow. In the last ten minutes, the crowd has grown to where I can’t see the other side of the room, and if I look for Keith, Mona will start teasing me for craning my neck.
“Well, look at who crawled in tonight,” the guy says with a laugh. “You guys here for a show or what?”
The room hollers back. Asma lets out a whoop, much to our surprise. Mona claps, more for Asma than for the performances that are to come.
“For those of you lucky enough not to know me, I’m Jace, and I’m glad you didn’t have anything better to do tonight.” There are more cheers. Jace grins at the crowd, then turns and waves to someone offstage. He checks his watch. “All right, we’ve got a great lineup tonight. We’re going to have some fresh talent on the stage. Who knows? Maybe we’ll be hearing from a group that’ll end up on our wall of fame.”
Someone appears at the corner of the stage and kneels beside the speaker. Suddenly, a brain-piercing screech erupts. We cover our ears and groan.
“Whoa, man. Late for a sound check, isn’t it? Sorry about that,” Jace says, then shoots the guy a grim look and pivots to the crowd. He turns a shade more formal, more like a manager. “So, for real, though. Thank you all for coming out tonight. I’m ready to hear these bands rock the house. What about you?”
Another round of cheers, laughter. Jace introduces the first band. I don’t know the group. Their lead singer is a woman with chunky blond highlights. She looks from the crowd to her bandmates, standing in front of the drummer as she sings.
The last time I stood on a stage was for a fourth-grade play. I was a spider. My costume had eight legs that we’d made too long and floppy. Every time I took a step, I was whacked in the face by one of my own hairy limbs, much to the delight of the audience. Yusuf might like the stage, but I prefer to keep eyeballs, lights, and cameras off me.
“Do you know this song?” Asma asks me.
“Nope,” I say, shaking my head.
Mona nods. “My brother listens to this stuff all the time,” she says. “I think it’s kind of depressing.”
The second band comes onstage. Jace introduces the lead singer, Larson. I’m straining to see if I’ll recognize them, but when they step into the light, I realize they’re a few years older than us.
“We’re going to do an oldie tonight,” Larson says. He looks to be in his late twenties and is wearing a brick-red flannel shirt over dark jeans. He nods at the drummer and turns his attention to his own guitar. I don’t recognize it until they hit the chorus and repeatedly refuse to take it. At this point, I can even sing along. I don’t know what it is, but none of us are going to take it anymore.
I look around and see people nodding and cheering, a fed-up consensus.
“I like this,” Mona laughs. “Who sings this?”
Asma has her phone out.
“I should know this. I’m way too weak in music references,” she groans. Asma dreams of one day winning at least five days straight on Jeopardy!, so in preparation she leaves no question unanswered. She even has the game show’s music as her ringtone. “Twisted Sister!”
“Don’t you mean, ‘Who is Twisted Sister’?” I say. Asma grins, like I’ve just spoken her language.
“That’s such a weird name,” Mona reflects. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
“If the internet knows, I’ll find out,” Asma says, scrolling on her phone.
At the end of the song, Larson riffs on his guitar for a few seconds, then shouts into the crowd.
“Sounds like you can’t take it anymore either,” he tells the crowd. Encouraged by the cheers, he laughs. “I’m with ya. I’ve had enough of people telling me I need to love everybody. No offense, but I’ve had enough of people who feel offended.”
There’s laughter in the crowd.
“If you feel me, say enough!” he commands.
“Enough!” the crowd echoes, half laughing. Asma doesn’t yell and isn’t about to start just because this guy said to, and I’m always a second too late to join any cheer, but Mona whoops loudly enough for the three of us. I spot Yusuf on the stage wings, mostly hidden by the curtain. They were scheduled to be onstage five minutes ago, but Larson is clinging to the spotlight.
“I think I saw an everybody in the grocery store trying to figure out how to make a bomb out of cornflakes. Eff that. Say enough!” He leans into the mic this time. His voice rattles the speakers. I am having a hard time believing what I’m hearing.
“Enough!” the crowd echoes. Larson throws a fired-up fist in the air. Mona snaps her arm back to her side and whips around to look at me.
“What the hell?” Mona shouts, but she’s a whisper against this crowd.
That flutter in my chest, the pit in my stomach—my body knew before I did that tonight could go so very wrong.
8
Groans and laughter, applause and protest ripple through the audience like warm and cool currents in the ocean. I know the town has been tense because of refugees being resettled here. That cranky vibe has seeped into our school too, but I did not expect to hear that bitterness onstage at the WhereHouse. I look around the room and suddenly feel like I’m on another planet.
Mona and Asma look as stunned as I feel. A guy standing near the front shouts something at the stage before making his way out of the auditorium. I don’t know exactly what he said, but he’s got the same olive skin and thick hair, so I know we’re made of similar ingredients.
The band clears off the stage and Jace returns, looking more perplexed than when the mic screeched.
“Hey, hey. Can everyone settle down for a moment here? Remember, we’re here for the music. Let’s keep all that other stuff out of here. I think it’s time to bring out the next band,” he says, giving Yusuf a nod.
“That’s it?” I say. “Is he serious?”
“How dare he? You can’t say things like that,” Asma says, shaking her head.
“Apparently you can, and everyone looks pretty happy to ignore it,” Mona declares. “That guy is such a piece of—”
“Trash. Such trash,” I say. His grocery store comment has me fuming. I spotted an Afghan family at a grocery store a few days ago. A father and two teenagers had divided up the bags from the shopping cart, each carrying two bags. They left on foot, maybe for the apartment buildings down the road. I watched them walk away and wondered if my parents looked like those kids when they first landed in this country. “He should have been booed off the stage.”
It occurs to me, as soon as I say this, that I did not stand up to boo him off the stage. I didn’t even boo from my seat on the bench. Where did my voice go?
“Without further ado, I give you The Hipper Campus,” Jace says, then leaps off the front of the stage like it’s burning his feet.
Yusuf and his bandmates drift into their positions. Liam takes his seat at the drums and taps a cymbal gently, then stills it with two fingers. Christopher takes one mic and Yusuf the other. They plug their guitars into the sound system and Yusuf turns to Liam, who gives him a nod. Yusuf leans into the mic.
“Talk about a tough act to follow. Let me start by saying therapy works and maybe some people should try it,” he says, and the crowd reacts with noise I don’t know how to interpret. There’s definitely some laughter in the mix. “Anyway, it’s a dream to play for a hyped crowd and you guys seem pretty lit. We have a different vibe, though. Ready for it?”
People applaud. Yusuf grins and begins plucking at the strings of his guitar, the one he bought from Crescendo with a few months’ worth of paychecks, and that was with the employee discount. The studio manager, Beto, lets them practice there since both Chris and Yusuf give lessons to kids.
“This one’s an original,” he says, then shoots a look at his bandmates. Standing in the crowd, I am second-guessing Yusuf’s decision to play something unfamiliar to the audience. I’m nervous for them. “Here goes.”
The song kicks off with a spiral of notes, climbing a scale and then sliding back down. It’s haunting, especially in the darkened auditorium. Then Yusuf adds his voice. Christopher steps up to his mic and adds the harmony.
“His pitch is gold,” Asma adds with an air of musical authority. “They’re going to be the favorites tonight. No question.”
“And I can’t believe he wrote this song,” Mona says. She looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t because she’ll miss it.
A chemical burn, you never learn
Don’t reveal too much too soon
Everyone in this room can hear it. His voice isn’t strained or boring. It’s sometimes gentle, sometimes edgy, but always smooth. Of course, I say none of this to anyone because I don’t want to brag about my brother, and I certainly don’t say it to Yusuf because his ego needs no inflation.
Keith and his brother have moved toward the front of the room. They’re a few feet away from the stage and easy to spot because Danny is bigger than most people here. Keith leans toward his brother and says something to him, his hand cupped over his mouth to funnel the sound. Danny nods, his eyes on the stage. Maybe Keith feels my gaze because he looks in my direction and smiles. He points at the stage and gives me a thumbs-up. I nod, return the smile, and turn my attention back to the stage.
“I see him looking at you!” Mona teases.
“Mona,” I say, my voice deep with warning.
“What? It’s an observation,” she replies.
“Observe something else, please,” I suggest.
“Looks like Keith likes your whole family,” Mona says, unable to contain herself. Does he? I don’t know what to make of his brother asking me where my family was from. I don’t know how they feel about the new folks in town, especially given what Danny’s been through.
“Mona, drop it,” Asma chides. The room bursts into applause and we join in. “Can we just listen to the music? They’re on their second song already.”
