Spilled Ink, page 7
Yusuf takes a swig of water and returns to the mic.
“Can you guys show my buddy Chris some love?” Yusuf shouts. Chris closes his eyes and strums on his electric guitar. “And a little appreciation for Liam!”
Liam adjusts his black-rimmed glasses and raps out a rhythm on the drums, then rumbles into the beat for the next song. I’ve been on the other side of the wall listening to Yusuf practice this song he wrote over the past year. Yusuf walks across the stage as he sings.
I’ve told Yusuf the song is really good, but the truth is the lyrics rock me and they nail the song, slowing down the final lines to let them fill the room. He repeats them and it may be the best he’s ever sounded:
If we stay or not, all the battles we fought
They cannot steal this
They take us apart, but we’re a work of art.
And they’ll never unsee this.
I come in peace,
Breathe with me or
I’ll leave in pieces.
Chris looks back at Liam, drumsticks raised as part of the finale. Yusuf beckons the crowd, inviting us all to join him. The line gets louder as voices lift, converge, and blur together.
I’ll leave in pieces.
I sing it too.
“Hey, we sound pretty good together! Let’s change it up a little,” Yusuf calls into the crowd, some people still singing that last line. He starts to vocalize. “La la la la . . .”
He points his mic to the audience.
“La la la la . . . ,” they repeat. I sigh. Yusuf must really think he’s some kind of star now. He is going to be impossible to live with if The Hipper Campus wins tonight.
“La la la la hey lee la!” Yusuf moves with the notes, gets up on his tiptoes for the high of the hey. Liam’s holding his sticks, watching Yusuf with an expression on his face that probably mirrors mine. Christopher looks a little confused but strums a few notes, trying to give the chant a melody.
The crowd repeats. I’ve never seen Yusuf croon like this. It doesn’t even sound like the song. He does a third round, going higher in pitch and then ending low. By this point, it sounds like the entire audience has joined in.
“Hey now, people,” Yusuf says to a captivated room. “What would you say if I told you you’ve all just recited the beginning of the Shahadah? Say it three times and you’re officially converted, so al-salaam alaykum, everybody, and peace and cornflakes be upon you, my friends.”
“Oh my God,” Asma says.
I gasp and sit frozen in my seat. I can’t believe he just said that. The room bubbles over with noise. In the dim light, I see mouths opened, eyes narrowed, shadows deepened. People are on their feet. Chairs squeak against the sticky floor. Angry shouts break through the rumble.
Something catches my eye in the periphery. Danny is pointing at the stage and shaking his head, his face flushed. He says something to Keith, who nods and runs his fingers through his hair. He glances in my direction and when our eyes lock, I try to read what he’s thinking but can’t. There’s no message in his expression, just something simmering under the surface.
“Yusuf!” I shout. I want my brother off the stage and away from this crowd. Their performance got a wave of love but now I can also feel the pull of a dark countercurrent here, too.
Liam and Christopher look from each other to Yusuf and the crowd. Liam is seething, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw his drumsticks at Yusuf’s head. Jace reaches center stage in three long strides.
“All right, all right,” he says, trying to signal the crowd to settle down by waving his hands, but this is not an orchestra he can conduct. Everyone who was sitting is now standing and people who were standing are now shoving. “This has been quite a night. I’m going to—”
When Jace tries to take the mic from Yusuf, my brother raises a finger to ask for a moment. Jace shakes his head and leans in to take the mic from him, but Yusuf takes two steps back and shakes his head.
I hold my breath, afraid to hear what comes out of my brother’s mouth next.
“I promise—that wasn’t actually the Shahadah. No one’s been converted,” Yusuf says. I can see his nerves through his sheepish grin. He didn’t expect this reaction.
Someone in a black T-shirt rushes to Jace from behind the stage, shouting something into his ear. Jace listens, his eyes on the crowd. He signals to someone in the back of the room, a larger guy with a denim jacket, a goatee, and the wide-legged stance of a security guard.
“Larson served up some straight-up retrograde racism tonight and where was this outrage then?” Yusuf asks, then repurposes Larson’s performance in a singsong voice that makes it sound like playground banter. “Well, guess what? I’m not going to take it!”
Jace grabs the mic this time and Yusuf doesn’t resist. He puts his hands up as if to say he’s finished. The auditorium devours his response, but I can feel in my bones it’s only because everybody loves a good clapback. Jace brings the mic to his face a couple of times but waits for the room to go from a roar to a simmer before he asks everyone to chill out.
“Delete your band!” someone calls out. It’s hard to keep up with what people are shouting. It’s even harder to figure out who people want to delete—Yusuf or Larson.
“Take out the trash!” someone calls out.
“Settle down!” Jace shouts, his face flushed. He looks like a parent who is beyond fed up with fighting siblings. “And as of this minute, I want both bands out of here. Find the door you came through and get the hell out.”
Larson stands at the side of the stage. He points at Yusuf and says something I can’t make out. Yusuf beckons to him to come on over. Chris pushes Yusuf in the opposite direction, trying to get him offstage. Liam is already gone.
I look back at the security guard, who is shouldering his way through the crowd to get to the stage. Without thinking, I rush to the stage too, but halfway there, my foot catches on someone or something and down I go, into the belly of this angry beast.
Asma pulls me up.
“You okay?” she asks. Mona is beside her, elbows out to keep people from jostling us. I look to the stage and see that everyone, Jace included, is gone.
“Let’s go find Yusuf,” Asma says, and I nod. We wind our way through the crowd and spill out the entrance. I breathe deeply, hungry for air. I’ve never been so relieved to be out of any building but there’s no time to celebrate because I spot Yusuf and Chris by the car. Yusuf kicks the ground and Chris shakes his head.
“What the hell,” I say, breathless.
“Exactly,” Chris mutters. Yusuf looks from me to my friends, then shakes his head just as Liam pulls up in his hatchback. He nods at Chris, who walks around to the passenger side, throws his guitar case into the back seat, and gets in without saying goodbye. Yusuf exhales through pursed lips. He looks drained, nothing like the defiant figure he was onstage a few moments ago.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says.
“Yeah,” I agree. Mona nods and says she’s going to drop Asma off at home. She’s borrowed her mom’s car for tonight and parked it, as she usually does, as far away from other cars as possible to avoid any dings.
“Give me a sec,” I say. My head is spinning but I haven’t forgotten that I came here with Keith. Danny’s car is still parked in the same spot. I look for them among the people hovering around the entrance but they’re not there. I don’t want to go back inside so I take out my phone to text him that I’m leaving with Yusuf. I am about to hit send when I think I hear Keith’s voice.
“Danny, let’s just go.” That’s definitely Keith, sounding very much like an impatient younger brother. I walk to the corner of the building, closer to the dumpsters, and my stomach drops.
Keith and Danny are standing with their backs to me. They’re not alone and there’s no mistaking the shaggy-haired person they’re talking to. After tonight, Larson’s face is one I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
9
“So you think I should have just let him talk that nonsense? That was true hate speech, Yalda.”
Yusuf and I are sitting in our driveway. Neither of us said a word on the ride home but now we’re parked outside our house and this is our last chance to talk without our parents hearing all about tonight.
“You couldn’t come up with anything else to say? You had to tell the crowd you’d just converted them? There are other ways to address the problem.”
“What happened after those dudes drew that garbage in the boys’ locker room? Two coats of paint and a few words about good citizenship from the principal. You call that addressing the problem?”
“No, it definitely wasn’t, but now they’re going to look at you as the problem instead of Larson,” I say.
“I wanted to make a point,” he says. “I wanted them to hear me. I’m not going to shove everything I’m thinking into a drawer.”
“That’s a cheap shot,” I snap. I rub my ankle, which is sore from bending at an unholy angle when I tripped on my way to the stage.
Yusuf lets go of the steering wheel, which he’s been clutching even though he’s parked the car. He shakes his head.
“Yalda, I didn’t mean . . . ,” he says softly. He stares out the window, looking torn. “Seriously, I’m sorry. Maybe I do need to shut up.”
I know he didn’t imagine the evening ending the way it did. “Well, someone needed to say something. Jace was useless,” I add.
“What a clown,” Yusuf scoffs. “Kicking us out like what I said was the same as what Larson said.”
Yusuf stares at our garage doors, looking at something I cannot see.
“Maybe I should have done nothing,” he says quietly.
“Yusuf, you—”
“I screwed up everyone’s night. Yalda, people showed up for us. Asma and Mona, Keith, his brother . . .”
“You guys were really good,” I said, my mind flashing back to seeing Keith and his brother with Larson. They had looked like three guys chatting outside, as if not a thing was wrong in the world. But I don’t want to tell Yusuf about that now. “Asma and Mona thought so too. They were glad they came out.”
Yusuf lets his head fall to the steering wheel and sighs. I feel a chill on my face when I see his forehead touch the cold leather. I’m about to suggest we go in when the porch light comes on.
Yusuf sits up quickly. We unbuckle our seat belts just as Mom opens the front door and waves at us to come in. She gives us expectant looks and pulls me in for a squeeze as we slide past her. I try to give her a quick hug back and slip out of her grasp because my mom employs all five senses to keep our home in order and I’m pretty sure my coat stinks of fries and deception.
“Do you want to get sick? You’re sitting in a cold car instead of coming in to tell me some good news,” she chides. She’s holding her phone and shows us the screen, which is bright with a picture of her sister’s face. “How did it go? Your khala says hi. Say salaam to her.”
The extended family used to think Yusuf’s music was a useless hobby or distraction from his schoolwork. Even our cousins thought he had strange taste in music. But last year, when Yusuf started finding obscure college scholarships for musicians, everyone’s attitude changed. All my cousins started catching heat for not finding creative ways to feed the tuition monsters.
“Salaam, Khala!” Yusuf calls out in the direction of Mom’s phone, and I do the same, our voices overlapping and messy but present. My mom loves to put us on the spot like this, inserting us into her phone conversations with little warning and zero permission. My aunt shouts back a cheerful greeting, then she and Mom start their goodbye process.
My father steps out of the kitchen holding a mug. His eyes look heavy, too heavy for the story of what went down tonight.
“Did you win?” Dad asks.
“No, we didn’t,” Yusuf replies.
“They picked another band?” Mom asks, a hint of how-dare-they in her voice.
“Not really,” Yusuf replies. “They didn’t pick anyone.”
“Oh, so everybody won,” Mom says.
“Everybody wins a competition?” Dad says, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. He had the same look on his face the day Mom explained gender reveal parties to him.
“It wasn’t a competition,” I say, because someone needs to shut this conversation down. “Anyway, it’s late and I was ready to go to sleep an hour ago.”
Yusuf mumbles some kind of agreement and we both head to our bedrooms. Any further conversation with our parents is only going to require telling more half-truths and I’m carrying enough guilt on my shoulders. I brush my teeth and open the bathroom door to find Yusuf standing in the hallway.
“Thanks for . . .” He nods in the direction of the living room.
“You don’t have to thank me. You’re right. Tonight totally sucked. Larson was a pile of donkey diarrhea,” I declare. Yusuf laughs at one of the insults I used to sling as a child. “He shouldn’t get a free pass.”
“Exactly. It was wrong and dangerous.”
Dangerous. His last word echoes in my mind as I pull my comforter over my shoulders and let my eyelids close.
Something tells me the danger isn’t behind us yet.
10
I make every effort to sleep in the next morning, doing my best to ignore the creak of floorboards under my mother’s feet. I know as soon as I step out of my bedroom, she’ll try to rope me into whatever fatal deficiency she has detected in our home, and I’m not in the mood to vacuum under the living room furniture today.
I check my phone, my eyes still blurry with sleep. I have a ton of messages from Asma, Mona, and Keith. Each asks me if I’ve seen what people are saying about last night. I groan and switch over to Pic-Up to see what’s happening.
WhereHouse is all anyone is talking about on Pic-Up. I scroll through the posts and see pictures of Yusuf with the mic in his hand. Most people didn’t think to start recording until after Jace took the stage. There were a couple of clips of Larson and his band performing, a few of Yusuf and the guys, and some reactions in the parking lot. But the most popular clip posted is one that’s been spliced together. In it, someone’s started with a few seconds of Yusuf’s fake Shahadah and then they jump to him saying: Say it three times and you’re officially converted, so al-salaam alaykum, everybody, and peace and cornflakes be upon you, my friends.
#Cornflakes is one of the hashtags.
New comments appear even as I’m scrolling, ranging from defending freedom of speech to asking which grocery store to avoid. Someone’s offered to egg Larson’s house but made sure to walk that back when others pointed out that he would be a prime suspect if something were to happen to Larson and this post could be admissible in court as evidence.
Some people say Yusuf should consider dropping out of school, and one person suggests Yusuf and Larson should settle their differences like real men, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Two people say they heard that the new people in our town didn’t even get a background check. Then I see someone share a post in which a string of hashtags includes one that makes my stomach lurch: #Yusuftheterrorist.
No, no, no, no, no!
A new message from Keith breaks through my internal screams.
Everything okay with your bro? He’s not answering my texts.
I start to text Keith back because I really want to know why he looked so cozy chatting with Larson after Yusuf and the guys got kicked out last night, but then I think about Yusuf scrolling through the same comments and posts I’ve just seen.
“Yusuf!” I yell. I jump out of bed as my mother pops into my room. She must have been in the hallway.
“What is it?” she asks.
I set my phone on my nightstand facedown.
“Nothing, I just wanted to see if he’s up yet,” I say.
“Did you . . . ?” She points a finger in the direction of the wall that separates my bedroom from Yusuf’s.
“Yup. No answer,” I say. Wanting to get to him first, I slip past her and go to Yusuf’s door. “I need to ask him about our math homework.”
Mom heads to the kitchen, where I can already smell her coffee brewing.
Per our mutually agreed upon protocol, I knock and wait ten seconds before entering Yusuf’s room. He’s got his back to me and is staring at his computer screen with headphones on. It takes him much longer than usual to notice I’ve entered his sacred space. When he sees me, he closes out the tab and shuts his laptop.
Yusuf frees one ear from his headphones, which means he’s open to an interruption, but not a conversation.
“Have you seen it?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. His shoulders are stiff, betraying the calm in his voice.
“It’s going to be over soon. They just need something new to talk about,” I say, realizing quickly that I cannot freak out right now.
“I know,” he says.
“Keith said he texted you.”
“I’ll text him back later,” Yusuf says, and then there’s a long pause while I try to figure out if I should stick around or leave him be. He doesn’t even question why Keith messaged me.
“Have you talked to Chris or Liam?” I ask. It feels important to keep him talking, to hear the timbre of his voice.
Yusuf winces and rubs his eye with the heel of his hand. I could kick myself. This was probably a dumb question to ask.
“I’ve got a few things I need to finish, Yal,” he says, and puts his headphones back on to signal the conversation is closed.
I go back to my room intending to make my bed but pick up my phone and text Keith instead.
He’s in the shower.
This is my attempt at protecting Yusuf’s privacy. Three dots appear. I wait for Keith’s reply.
It’ll cool down before Monday. Put your phone on airplane mode for a while.
Good idea.
Actually not a good idea. Don’t want you to ignore my texts too.
I wouldn’t, I reply.
