“I wouldn’t have taken your money.”

  “Why? You are—were—my boyfriend.” I don’t have a response to that. She shivers.

  “Come on.” I unlock the office door. She’s not wearing a coat and the nights are still cold. “It’s warmer inside.”

  The apartment is as silent as a mausoleum, and as empty of life. For a second, terror grips me. Images flood my head: Abu on the side of the road, hit by a car. Abu passed out for good.

  “Your dad went for a walk,” Ashlee says. “Left a few minutes after I got here.” She sidles toward me. “Which might not be a bad thing for us . . .”

  She takes my waist and I jerk away, as if a snake has dropped down on me unexpectedly.

  Ashlee drops her hands, flushing. “Right.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s not you—I’m just—”

  Ashlee slumps onto the office seat, wincing when her tailbone hits the leather. “It’s okay,” she says. “I—my back’s hurting all the time. And . . . I miss you. I texted you about the new Saga and you didn’t even respond.”

  “There’s this thing in my religion,” I say. “After someone dies you mourn for three days. Then you’re supposed to get on with life. After forty days, you read Qur’an for them. That’s it. That’s all the mourning you’re supposed to do.” I shrug. “Not sure why I’m telling you that.”

  “Because you wanted a clean break,” she says. “I get it.” Her phone lights up, and when she sees the text, she sighs.

  “Kaya’s not settling down for the night. I have to go.” She takes out eighty dollars. “Help me out? My doctor has to call in a prescription, but she’s on vacation.”

  “What would Lying Cat say to that?” I reference the Saga character, famous for calling out untruths.

  Ashlee rolls her eyes and shoves her hands in my pockets, ignoring my flinch as she fishes for what she wants. She keeps two pills and gives the rest back.

  “Ashlee—”

  “I’m hurting, Sal,” she says. “Don’t be mean.”

  “Well, don’t drink with this shit. Or mix it with anything else.”

  “Are you educating me about my drugs now?” Ashlee laughs. “A month ago, you thought Oxy was moxie spelled wrong.” She hands me her money and blows me a kiss. “Let’s hang out sometime,” she says. “I promise I’ll behave.”

  As her Mustang roars to life and she drives away, I feel sick. All of this—selling Ama’s meds. Selling the shit Art gives me. It’s wrong. Dealing to my ex-girlfriend, who has a child, is extra wrong. If something happens to her—if Kaya ends up an orphan because of me—

  She’ll be fine, I tell myself. I tuck the money into an envelope. I’m sixteen hundred dollars away from paying First Union. A few days more, if I’m lucky. A week, tops.

  “And then I’m done.” I say it out loud. As if by doing so, I’ll make it true.

  chapter 22

  Misbah

  July, then

  I waited until noon before phoning Junaid’s home, but the line rang until it disconnected. Perhaps he got delayed at the market. Or he became ill.

  The knock came at my door as I put on my shoes. A boy in dusty chappals waited outside.

  “Baji, chethi ah—koi pehrei khabar eh!” Big sister, come quickly—something terrible has happened. He went on, but too quickly for me to make anything out but one word:

  Bijli. Electricity.

  As I ran down the stairs and into a rickshaw, my heart thundered like a wedding dhol. Many of the electric wires above our own apartment were live. I told Toufiq a thousand times to be careful when he sat up on the veranda with Baba and Junaid.

  The street in front of Junaid’s house was thronged with people and an ambulance. Even from thirty yards away, I smelled singed flesh.

  A police inspector—one who worked with Junaid—found me. He told me what they had pieced together, that Nargis arrived home in the early-morning hours. She went to the veranda. Junaid tried to get her to come down, fearing she’d be electrocuted. She cursed him and stumbled into a live wire.

  He grabbed on, trying to save her. The current took them both.

  For hours, I debated how to tell Toufiq. Selfishly, I wished for my father so that he could deliver the news. But he was visiting friends in Rawalpindi.

  In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Toufiq over the phone. I waited until he arrived home. He was always so calm. Quiet. Controlled. But when he heard, he put his head in his hands and wept.

  “Not for me, you understand,” he said after a long time. “But for her. For him. Because I couldn’t save them.”

  We buried them later that day, in accordance with Islamic custom. That night was the first time I saw Toufiq lose himself in drink.

  But not the last.

  chapter 23

  Noor

  April, now

  Mrs. Michaels hands me the F silently. I expect her to be angry. To make a big deal out of it.

  She doesn’t. She calls out the next student to come get their paper. I walk back to my desk.

  I’ve lived in America for twelve years. This is my first F. Maybe it will explode. Jump off the page and bite me. Burn a hole through the desk.

  But it just sits there, ugly and red.

  Jamie, sitting in front of me, glances at it, her pale eyebrows practically in her hair. She doesn’t hide her smirk.

  From across the room, Salahudin tries to catch my eye. I draw triangles in the margins of my paper. Things have been awkward since I hung up on him two weeks ago. No matter how many times I tell him I’m freaked out about college, he doesn’t buy it.

  Don’t look at him. As soon as I think it, I glance over. My neck goes hot. His head is cocked a little, dark hair falling in his face. From here, his brown eyes are black. He’s staring at me. Like he has something he wants to tell me. He flips a pen from finger to finger with a proficiency that is unfairly sexy. I snort at myself. It’s just a pen, Noor. He’s not smiling, but that only draws my attention to his mouth.

  Which is not helpful.

  I want to look away, but I can’t. My fingers feel weird. Tingly. I imagine him watching me like this when we’re alone somewhere. The pen falling, and his clever hands on my body instead. That mouth—

  I let my hair fall over my face. Stop. I find his gaze again. What is he thinking?

  Not what you want him to be thinking, Noor.

  Jamie’s noticed. “Get a room.” She makes a gagging sound, and then, so only I can hear: “Maybe one at his little motel.”

  “Go to hell, Jamie.” The room goes silent right as I say it.

  Jamie gasps. “I cannot believe—”

  “If you’d all turn to page 233 of your textbooks.” Mrs. Michaels gives me a warning glance. “Medea by Euripides. A tragic masterpiece from the fifth century BCE. Adapted by the great American poet Robinson Jeffers. We’ll read it aloud today—”

  At the collective outcry, she lifts her hands. “Or you can turn in a three-page essay tomorrow about how Euripides represented gender roles via Medea’s soliloquies. Show of hands?”

  No one moves. Or speaks. Mrs. Michaels calls out the parts. Don’t give me one, I think at her. Don’t do it, Mrs. Michaels.

  “Noor,” she says. “You will play the part of the chorus.”

  She knows I hate performing. I have since grade school. I could barely sound out words back then. When the teacher made us read aloud, everyone in class would groan. Anyone but her.

  This is for telling Jamie to go to hell. For failing the paper.

  We launch into the play. It might be on the AP test and that test is half our grade. So I pay attention. Since the day I stepped into an American school, I have never stopped paying attention. I have never stopped doing my best.

  But fear eats at me. A terror in my gut that it doesn’t matter how well I do. I’ll never escape Juniper.

  “Noor?”

  I scramble for my place in the play. “ ‘Old and honored servant of a great house,’ ” I read. “ ‘Do you think it is wise to leave your lady alone in there, except perhaps a few slaves, building that terrible acropolis of deadly thoughts? We Greeks believe that solitude is very dangerous, great passions grow—grow—’ ”

  I stop. Maybe Mrs. Michaels assigned me this part on purpose. Maybe she knows something I don’t want her to know.

  Stop being paranoid, Noor.

  Everyone stares, so I fake-cough and go on. “ ‘Great passions grow into monsters in the dark of the mind; but if you share them with loving friends they remain human, they can be endured.’ ”

  Forget enduring. I want to escape. I want out of Juniper. I’m the only one who can make that happen. And I’m so close to failing.

  Screw Euripides. Screw Mrs. Michaels. Screw this stupid play and every school that’s rejected me. I want to scream it. Flip a table. Break a chair.

  You are better than this place. More than this place. I try to hold on to those words, but they dissolve into the dark like my family, like my past, like my future. All that’s left is fear.

  The world closes. Mrs. Michaels’s voice goes distant. Everything shrinks to a point. The words on the page—words I should be reading—go blurry.

  Some people want classmates to reminisce about them. I want to disappear from Juniper’s memory. But I know these assholes. People still talk about how Billy Cunningham shat his pants in the fourth grade. If I don’t pull it together, I’ll be the orphaned brown girl who knocked herself out on the edge of a desk in senior year.

  I need music. Something to bring me back. Karen O screaming out in her cover of “Immigrant Song.” The melody winds through my head. I can’t breathe. I try to whisper the lyrics. It’s not enough.

  Then the fire alarm blares out.

  I swing my head toward Salahudin. The lever of the red alarm beside him is pulled down.

  “Everybody line up!” Mrs. Michaels says. “Exit in an orderly fashion!”

  She doesn’t have to say it twice. The room clears out in seconds, and then a big, warm hand rubs my back.

  “Hey. Deep breaths. Five seconds in, seven seconds out.” Salahudin drops his voice. “Say you smelled natural gas. Okay? Otherwise, my ass is toast.”

  “Noor.” Mrs. Michaels isn’t in a rush to get out, and she’s eyeing Salahudin suspiciously. “Are you all right? I know Euripides can be depressing, but . . .”

  “I . . . smelled something—um, like natural gas?”

  Mrs. Michaels purses her lips as she looks between Salahudin and me. “Why didn’t you say anything before pulling it, Sal?”

  “The smell was so powerful,” Salahudin says, and I’m surprised at how easily he lies. “I thought it might knock us all out before we got the chance. I panicked.”

  He doesn’t sound panicked. But then, he never does.

  Mrs. Michaels sighs. “Pulling a fire alarm without cause is a misdemeanor—”

  “I didn’t pull it for shi—kicks and giggles, Mrs. Michaels,” Salahudin says. “I smelled something weird and it was making me sick. Noor definitely looked sick. Maybe we should get out of here.” The alarm still blares and the voices in the hall get louder.

  Mrs. Michaels—in no hurry—gives us a level stare. “Sal,” she says. “Have you written that story? For the contest?”

  Salahudin sighs. “I’ll start working on it right away.”

  “Good.” Mrs. Michaels sniffs at the air. “Now that you mention it, I might smell gas, too. I’ll tell Principal Ernst as much.” She makes for the door. Not for nothing is she my favorite teacher.

  My knees shake when I stand. Two seconds more and I’d have been fine. But Salahudin’s arm comes up under me. The sides of our bodies touch. Our thighs. Hips. Up to my shoulder. I fit just under his arm.

  He’s warm, even though he’s forgotten his jacket again. Mrs. Michaels tells us to hurry up. I don’t want to move. This feels almost like the hug from a few weeks ago.

  So I don’t tell him I can walk fine.

  M-hall is packed. No one seems worried about why there’s an unplanned fire evacuation. When we’re outside, Mrs. Michaels maneuvers her wheelchair around to face me.

  “Salahudin,” she says. “I need a moment with Noor, if you please.”

  I don’t want him to let go of me. But he does, and waits against a wall a few feet away.

  “Far be it from me to make assumptions,” Mrs. Michaels says quietly. “But you weren’t looking well in there. Does that have anything to do with the grade on your paper?”

  “No, Mrs. Michaels.”

  Sirens blare from far away. Principal Ernst cuts through a group of students, bellowing.

  “This is not an opportunity for you to skip school. I need everyone to the football field. The football field, Mr. Malik—”

  “You can make it up,” Mrs. Michaels says. We push through the crowd. “I don’t submit final grades until after AP test results come back in the summer. If you pass the test, it’s an automatic A from me. I know college is important to you. Have you . . . heard anything?”

  The earth feels unsteady again. I make myself breathe.

  “Nothing yet,” I say.

  “I see. Your uncle—is he supportive, Noor? Is your home life . . .” Her pink nails tap against the armrest of her wheelchair. “Is there anything you need to talk about?” She searches my face.

  I shake my head. “Thanks for making me feel better about the paper.”

  She nods, and her shoulders relax. Relief, maybe. She moves away quickly after that. No backward glance. Like she’s worried I’ll change my mind. Like if she stays too long, I’ll say something she doesn’t want to hear.

  chapter 24

  Sal

  My stunt with the fire alarm means hours spent in Ernst’s office, trying to convince him not to call the cops.

  By the time he finally releases me, I’ve missed lunch. But it was worth it. My chest twinges when I think of how Noor’s hands shook as she was reading. If pulling a stupid alarm broke her out of whatever mental hellspace she found herself in, so be it.

  After school, I’m hurrying to my car when Art waylays me.

  “Sal!” he shouts. “Hey, since we’re business partners now, why don’t we watch Breaking Bad together tonight? We could do a marathon.” I nudge him with my backpack. Darth Derek is skulking nearby. Art lowers his voice not at all.

  “We could get ideas,” Art says, “for how to expand.”

  “Art, I’m working for you until the motel picks up. Then I’m done.”

  “All right,” Art says. “But if you’re waiting for your dad to figure out his shit, it won’t happen. Whatever problem he has now, he’ll still have in twenty years. Because if you aren’t enough to make him change, then change ain’t happening.”

  Art’s occasional profundity always surprises me, especially considering how much of his own product he samples.

  “You got plans with your lady?” Art waggles his eyebrows and nods to where Noor leans against the side of my car, her face shadowed within her hoodie.

  Since her bike broke, I’ve been giving her rides to and from school and the hospital. The rest of the day always seems like a silent, sepia film compared to the vibrancy of those minutes with her, as she explains the lyrics of a London Grammar song, or argues about why the magic systems in my favorite shows make no sense.

  Sometimes, I imagine telling her that I’m falling for her. But then I hear her saying, “I’m over you.” At that thought, the earth shudders beneath me, and I feel like I’m being tipped out into space.

  “She’s not my lady,” I say to Art, hoping he’ll go away. Noor seeing me with him will just lead to more questions.

  “Aw, come on.” Art elbows me. “She’s hot. In that shy-but-I-will-kick-your-ass-if-you-look-at-me-wrong kind of way. If you’re not interested—maybe you could tell me what she’s into—”

  I give Art a death glare and he backs away, grinning.

  “I knew you liked her,” he crows. “Tell her. She’s smart, right? She’ll leave your ass when she goes to college. You might as well—”

  “She’s right there,” I say between gritted teeth. “So if you could shut up?” Already, Noor looks between me and Art, her gaze narrowing. Shit. She knows there’s no good reason for us to be walking together.

  “Leave,” I hiss, and Art slopes off, leering revoltingly.

  “What was that about?” Noor eyes Art like he’s a daku waiting to accost her.

  “You don’t want to know. I’m starving. No shift at the store today, right? Thurber’s?”

  “I could use some twisty fries.” She slips into the passenger seat. “I’m buying, though,” she adds. “I owe you. For today.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I say. “If it wasn’t for you . . .” I wouldn’t have survived the past two and a half months.

  “You wouldn’t have had to spend lunch convincing Ernst not to have you arrested.” She shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Just trying to live up to all those Pakistani drama heroes you and Ama are obsessed with.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Please. You could never live up to Saif Ilyaas in Dilan dey Soudeh—”

  “Noooo.” I clap my hands over my ears and drive with my knees. “Do not start in on Saif Ilyaas and his abs, please—”

  Thurber’s is packed, but I claim a table while Noor grabs the food, roast beef sliders for her and a vegetarian sandwich for me. Ama was strict about keeping halal and I feel guilty breaking the habit.

  “Aah, cat meat,” Noor moans ecstatically. “I have missed it.” She glares and kicks my shoe violently under the table. “That’s for keeping me away from Thurber’s.”

  “I didn’t stop you coming here.”