Jimmy turned onto one of the streets branching off from Bunder Road. “Do you think the police will come looking for you here?” he said, his tone as conversational as Maryam’s had been. He slowed almost to a stop and shifted into first gear, rolling ahead, inch by inch.

  “Where are we?” Zahra said.

  The buildings here were a mix of old and new, but it was the old ones with their mournful dilapidation that caught the eye. Made of yellow Gizri sandstone, like Maryam’s grandfather’s house, with carved woodwork balconies jutting out, some enclosed, some not. You might think Romeo and Juliet if you wanted to put a gauze filter over what really went on here. The street was crisscrossed with electric wires, a canopy of snakes, some dangling low, almost touching the roof of the car. A peepul tree grew out of the pavement.

  Zahra would know what this street was if anyone had spoken its infamous name, but no one did and there was no sign to identify it. Maryam knew where they were because one evening when Abu Bakr had allowed her behind the wheel in the old part of town he’d refused to let her turn down here. Not a place for you, he’d said, and that told her it could only be Napier Road. She had tried to insist, said she was interested in the architecture of the old theaters and entertainment halls, but he knew her well enough to know why she wanted to drive through the street where the seediness of prostitution commingled with the promise of stardom for the few who made their way from the entertainment halls into the world of cinema. She wanted to look up at the balconies and see if she could glimpse one of the women whose lives were so unimaginable to her. But Abu Bakr was adamant, and there was a part of her that didn’t want to see things that she might have to think about afterward, so she’d relented and driven past the red-light district that was so handily accessible for the port, the business district, the universities, and the high court.

  Now, in the darkness, a man was crossing the street with a tray of something that turned out to be laddus when the light from the doorway he was entering shone on it, brightening the golden spheres. Then the door closed behind him, cutting off the music that had rolled down a briefly glimpsed flight of stairs.

  “Come on, yaar,” Hammad said. “Let’s take them home. No one’s having fun.”

  “Or we could start having fun,” Jimmy said. The car was still inching forward, Jimmy looking through the windscreen at the balconies and boarded-up windows on either side of the road as if trying to recognize something or waiting to see someone. There were no women visible; they must be inside, waiting for their pimps to bring men to them. Or else they were all already occupied. The word occupied made Maryam feel strange. Benazir Bhutto taking the oath of office felt very far away. You could do anything to a woman on this street and no one would stop you.

  The street was narrowing as they progressed through it. Jimmy looked into the rearview mirror again. “Why don’t you ask me nicely to take you home? Twice you’ve asked in the rudest way. Ask nicely and maybe I’ll do it.”

  She met his gaze in the mirror. His eyes were cold, hard, something ugly in them that she hadn’t seen before in anyone’s eyes.

  And maybe I won’t, his eyes said to her, and the tight knot of loathing that had been inside her all this while unspooled into fear. All these months she hadn’t wanted Hammad, but she had wanted to be wanted by him. But Jimmy’s eyes in the rearview mirror told her that her wants were irrelevant. He could do whatever he wanted, would do it, was thinking right now of how it would feel, a cold hard smile to match his eyes.

  You could do anything to a girl here and no one would stop you; you could do anything to a girl anywhere and no one would stop you if you had a car with tinted windows and a stereo system that drowned out all screams.

  “Maryam, please,” Zahra said.

  “Could you please take us home?” Maryam said.

  “Of course,” Jimmy said. He reversed out of Napier Road, back into the familiarity of Bunder Road. Maryam rolled the window down all the way, gulped in the fresh air.

  It was only a few minutes before they returned to the part of the city that they traversed in their everyday lives, and another few minutes before they were driving past the homes of people they knew. When they finally neared the identical blocks of flats along the seafront, Jimmy said, “Still want to park farther up where it’s dark?” and Hammad replied, “Jimmy, come on, even I am going to be in trouble for getting home this late.”

  The dim bulb in front of Zahra’s block of flats showed only the silhouettes of the two men standing outside, one smoking, one pacing. As soon as Jimmy’s headlights swung round to illuminate them they rushed toward the car.

  Jimmy cursed, his voice high-pitched, and reversed all the way back onto the street, away from the men waiting for their daughters to come home. “Out, get out,” he shouted even as he slammed on the brakes. “Come on, Zahra,” Maryam said, but Zahra needed no prompting to open the door and tumble out. Jimmy peeled away, and Zahra ran straight into her father’s arms. She was aware of Maryam’s father approaching more slowly, shaking his head at his daughter.

  “How could you?” he said.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Zahra’s father said quietly.

  Upstairs, there was Zahra’s mother, and instead of the expected scolding, the tightest of embraces.

  “Zeno?” Maryam’s father said.

  Maryam’s mother was bent over on the sofa, elbows on her knees, her palms covering her face. When she moved them away her mascara was smudged, and for the first time Zahra saw that Zenobia Khan wasn’t more beautiful than Shehnaz Ali—she was only more elaborately arranged.

  Zeno stood up and walked over to her daughter. “Are you going to say something?”

  “Sorry for being so late,” Maryam said to Zahra’s parents.

  “Late?” Maryam’s mother said. “Don’t think we don’t know what happened. Saba told us. What she didn’t see, the drivers did. Do you know how lucky you are to have a friend like Zahra? Did you think of the position you were putting her in?”

  Zahra formed the sentence in her mind that would say that Maryam had been the one who wanted to go back to the party, and that she, Zahra, had got into the car when they could have walked through the gates to safety. But they would ask her why, and how could she say, because Hammad’s wrist, because the tinted windows and the unknown man in the driver’s seat.

  “Are you both all right?” Zahra’s father said.

  Zahra and Maryam nodded, both smiling reassuringly as if they’d already discussed the matter and agreed there was no point giving their parents any more worries with talk of running red lights and cars sitting in darkness in the middle of the road and transactions that had certainly been criminal. They lived so close to the edge of violence every day, and Zahra knew the directions in which her parents’ minds would have gone—directions in which her own mind had raced as Jimmy drove fast through the empty streets, one hand on the wheel, one on his thigh. But in the end, nothing terrible had happened. Really, nothing had happened. They went for a drive, he stopped to pick something up along the way, they came back. She’d been in cars with crazier driving—Saba’s brother had once driven back from the beach on the wrong side of the road to avoid a traffic jam, trucks and buses charging at them with blinding headlights for an endless stretch of time. Now it was just a story of daring that Saba told those who hadn’t been there.

  “They’re fine!” Maryam’s mother said. “Look at them. They’ve had a grand adventure. We’re the ones who’ve been sitting here worried sick. Habib, Shehnaz—I’m so sorry about my daughter.”

  “We’ve all done stupid things at that age,” Zahra’s mother said. “Maryam’s a good girl.”

  “That’s kind of you, but hardly true,” Maryam’s mother said. “Come on, Maryam. We’re going home.”

  On the way out, Maryam reached for Zahra’s hand, clasping it. Zahra pressed down against her friend’s fingers.

  Maryam woke into a feeling she didn’t recognize but which became anger as soon as it had someone to alight on—her parents, who greeted her at breakfast as though nothing had happened the night before; her younger sisters, whose persistence in wanting to know what had happened sharpened the contrast with the parents who didn’t want to know; Hammad, who was clearly the person who kept calling and hanging up when someone other than Maryam answered the phone; Saba, who must have told her aunt, Mrs. Hilal the biology teacher, that two of her classmates had gone off in a car with Hammad and a strange man, which was why the headmistress had called to say she needed to see Maryam and her parents in her office first thing Monday morning.

  “What are we going to do if she wants to expel you?” Maryam’s mother said, opening the bedroom door forcefully but then standing in the doorway, as if there were only so far she could go in asserting her authority over her firstborn.

  Maryam looked up from the art pad she’d been sketching on. “I’ll drop out of school and go to work at Khan Leather.”

  Her mother shook her head and retreated down the hallway. Maryam looked down at the sketch—she’d drawn a rearview mirror, a pair of eyes reflected in it. Maryam ripped out the sheet, folded and folded it into a tiny square of paper, and placed it between her teeth, biting down hard.

  What is it what is it what is it, she whispered into the empty room. What was this feeling that made everything seem wrong, with no route back to right?

  The fear she’d felt last night had been activated by a knowledge inside her body, a knowledge that was about her body. She knew that Zahra’s terror was related to hers, though that man—Jimmy—didn’t look at Zahra the way he looked at her. Knew also that Hammad felt no trace of it; he might worry that Jimmy would drive them into an oncoming car, or that the police would stop them at a checkpoint, or that he’d be home so late his father would clip him around the ear, but he couldn’t know this feeling of—she had it now—inescapability. Ever since her body had become a strange new home in which she had to learn how to live, this was what she had glimpsed from the corner of her eye, this was what was present in the men brushing against her on the Tube, the uncle pulling her close in an embrace, and even Hammad resting his eyes on her breasts as he walked down the school corridor toward her. She was a target now, her body a target. She placed the palms of her hands on her breasts, felt their weight.

  She was beginning to understand why men and women walked so differently, stood so differently. Men strode, owning the world. Women walked with smaller steps, watched and watchful. Her anger deepened into rage, and she felt the strength of it, the strength of her own will. Not her. She would stride always, even in the presence of a Jimmy, especially in the presence of a Jimmy. She took the paper out of her mouth; it was sodden, tooth-marked. She flicked it with her thumb and finger across the room, a perfect soaring arc, into the wastepaper basket.

  “Nice shot,” said the only voice in the world she really wanted to hear. Zahra came farther into the room, Maryam scrambled off the bed, and they embraced, arms tightening around each other, staying like that for a very long time. Maryam felt the world start to tilt back to okay.

  “Have you received the summons? Zahra said when they finally separated and took up their side-by-side positions on the bed.

  “Yes. Why is it the school’s business anyway?” Maryam said. “ ‘We expect our students to maintain certai n standards at all times,’” Zahra said, in a perfect imitation of the headmistress’s voice. She picked a book off the bedside table—Lucky, which Maryam had turned to for comfort last night. With her other hand she cupped her neck as she did when she was feeling insecure about something. “I’ll tell her I was the one to get into the car when you wanted to—tried to—go back inside.”

  She was looking at the book, attempting to keep her tone light. Maryam watched her friend. She knew the request that was being made of her, that couldn’t be voiced. Zahra’s closely guarded Reputation would be sullied if she changed her role from concerned friend who’d gone along to protect Maryam to the one who’d insisted on getting into the car. Perhaps she wouldn’t make it to Head Girl, perhaps a teacher would be a touch guarded in her praise in a university letter of recommendation.

  There was a part of her that wanted to yell, Why did you do it? It was the most un-Zahra-like behavior, the first completely inexplicable thing she had done in all their years of friendship. Or perhaps not so inexplicable. For a while now, Maryam had suspected that for all Zahra’s bookish intelligence she could be very foolish about the world. And despite everything else, she felt triumphant in having this confirmed, and then immediately disliked herself for the thought and hoped Zahra would never know she’d had it. She certainly would never say it. Zahra wasn’t uttering a word of blame for any of the events of the night, and perhaps—she felt grown-up thinking this—perhaps friendships weren’t all about what you said to each other but also about what you didn’t say.

  “Don’t be silly,” Maryam said. “You’ll tell her no such thing. We got into the car at the same time, and I’m the one who organized the whole thing with Hammad. Do you think Saba found my shirt in her flowerpot?”

  “I bet she’ll keep it and wear it at the next party she knows you’re going to be at.”

  Zahra’s voice was full of relief and gratitude as she took Maryam’s hand, squeezing it tight.

  Monday saw them in the headmistress’s office—Zahra and Maryam and all four parents. The room was large, dominated by a vast desk, behind which the headmistress sat in a black gown over a beige shalwar kameez. The walls were covered in photographs of the school’s staff over the years, the headmistress herself going from bright-eyed recent graduate to a woman of authority in the course of several decades.

  She had looked up without smiling when the Alis and Khans walked in, though Zahra’s mother stood beside her in many of the pictures on the wall. Personal relations were secondary to the question of the school’s reputation, and the school’s reputation was indivisible from the students’ reputations.

  She asked Zahra and Maryam to step forward, which meant they were standing beside each other, yet nowhere close to being in the same moment. Ever since the headmistress had called to summon Zahra and her parents to this meeting, Zahra had imagined her future disappearing into a dark void, regardless of her parents telling her she was overreacting and Maryam’s assurances that she wouldn’t let Zahra take the blame for anything. A girl could be expelled from school for going off with a strange man, and if that happened she’d carry that stain with her forever. Girls who were expelled didn’t get scholarships to Oxbridge, they didn’t graduate summa cum laude from Ivy League colleges, they didn’t go on to shine brightly in the world, leaders in their chosen fields. Disgrace and failure: the words brushed against her, feather-light and horrifying, like Jimmy’s touch on her cheek. By contrast, whatever happened to Maryam today wouldn’t matter very much. She’d still inherit a business and a place in society. The rich lived in a different universe.

  The problem, the headmistress said without preamble, was that on the face of it both girls had done the same thing—gone for a joyride late at night in a car driven by a boy they didn’t know, the kind of boy who drove around with tinted windows that led to all kinds of speculation about what went on inside the car.

  Maryam glanced at Zahra when the headmistress said “joyride,” as if this were a moment to quibble about vocabulary.

  The headmistress continued. What punishment awaited one girl must befall the other, she said. Several of the teachers were in favor of suspending them for what little remained of the term; of course, the timing meant they would then miss their exams, and that would show up on their transcripts and could affect their university admissions. And now Maryam’s hand reached out, shielded from the headmistress’s sight by the desk, and gripped Zahra’s hand, steadying her.

  The headmistress’s expression softened. No one in the staff room wanted Zahra to suffer long-term repercussions for what everyone understood to be a large-hearted though misguided act of friendship. She was one of the school’s brightest stars, a responsible, hardworking, admired student who had the potential to one day be Head Girl, though for that to happen, in light of these new events she would have to stick to the straight and narrow without exception. It was to Maryam’s credit—and her tone of voice made clear this was the only thing to Maryam’s credit—that she had chosen such a best friend, and it was to be hoped that this escapade would cause her to reflect and to learn from Zahra.

  Fortunately, the headmistress said, there was another way to look at the night’s events. The girls had agreed to be dropped home by a fellow student. There was nothing wrong with this. The school should be responsible for ensuring that none of its students were boys you wouldn’t feel safe going home with. They didn’t know—did you, Zahra?—that some other boy, from some other school if he’d ever been to school at all, was driving and had his own plans. The drivers—it was very unfortunate that drivers had to witness all this—had said the girls had started walking back to the house but Hammad’s friend had driven up and, in some accounts—she emphasized the some—Hammad had all but kidnapped them. Hammad, of course, had been expelled. It was a shame they hadn’t found a way to do it earlier. A bad seed from an early age.

  The black gown, it was now clear, was meant to call to mind a judge’s robes.

  And so, the headmistress said, placing the palms of her hands flat on the desk, there would be no punishment for the girls from the school. She would leave it to the parents to decide their own ways of responding.

  It was only now that she half stood up so she could reach across the table to take Zahra’s mother’s hands in hers. “My dear, we miss you terribly,” she said.