* * *

  I don’t have Noor’s number or a car, so it’s easy enough to stay away from her. A couple of times, I bike past Riaz’s house. Once, he’s out checking the mail. I hate his face, but seeing him makes me feel better. Because it means he’s far away from her.

  A week after the hearing, I’m sitting outside school before class starts, watching students pour in. Even though it’s seven a.m., most are in tank tops and shorts, because the desert went from cold and miserable to hot and miserable in the space of seven days.

  I spot Art lurking between the shadows of two buildings, talking to Atticus. Bags exchange hands and I wonder how long before Art ends up in front of a judge, too.

  Probably never. He’s got rich-boy luck.

  “He’s lucky you’re not a snitch.” Ashlee appears and sits next to me. “My mom told him she’d break his kneecaps if he came around again. I didn’t tell her I bought from you.” My ex looks me dead in the eyes. “I figure prison is punishment enough.”

  Ashlee’s hands twitch for a cigarette, and as she grabs one, Jamie passes, with Grace, Sophie, and Atticus trailing her.

  “—should be expelled,” Jamie is saying. “I mean she practically tried to kill me. I read about how Muslim names have violent meanings like ‘warrior’ or ‘sword’ or—”

  “She’s getting real brave with her bullshit,” Ashlee observes after they pass.

  “Prepping for politics.”

  Ashlee watches Jamie with narrowed eyes. The bell rings and she puts out her cigarette. “Noor’s back,” she says casually, as if the news isn’t a firework going off in my brain.

  “Really? Oh. Wait, really?” I stammer like a dumbass, and Ashlee smiles tolerantly.

  “Figured you might faint if you saw her in class.”

  “Right—sorry.” I fidget. “This is awkward.”

  “Please,” she snorts. “I’m over you. I’m dating a girl who knows more about Star Wars than you ever did. Might even introduce her to Kaya one day.” She gives me a pointed look. “You gonna do right by Noor?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ashlee blows smoke out the side of her mouth, pinning me with her pale eyes. “I mean, are you going to make sure she doesn’t go to jail?”

  “I’m going to try—”

  “ ‘Do. Or do not.’ ” Ashlee quotes Yoda. The Empire Strikes Back always was her favorite. “ ‘There is no try.’ ”

  Her words stick with me as I walk to class, and when I step into English my throat is so dry that even if Noor had been there, I probably would have just croaked at her.

  But her desk is empty.

  When I approach Mrs. Michaels after class, she sighs. “I don’t know where she is. From what Principal Ernst told me, it might be best for you to keep your distance and focus on graduating.” Mrs. Michaels crosses her arms. “Did you ever write the contest essay?”

  “I want to, Mrs. Michaels,” I say. “But—I don’t know what to write.” Before the arrest, I’d sat down to get a draft done and stared at the prompt for two hours. Tell a fictional story based on a real experience. When nothing emerged, I made myself take out my journal, hoping old words might inspire new ones. But I was thinking about all the dealing and only wrote down one sentence. I’m a monster.

  “The good stories never come easy,” Mrs. Michaels says. “You’ll miss the contest deadline. But promise me when the story does come to you, you’ll write it. Even if it’s just for you.”

  I nod and leave, still hoping to find Noor. It’s not until lunch that, while looking over my shoulder for her, I run straight into her. Figures.

  She jumps away quickly. My heart thuds faster when I see her T-shirt because it’s one I gave her. It says i listen to bands that don’t exist yet.

  That’s a good sign, right? That she’s wearing something I gave her? Unless she doesn’t remember I gave it to her. Which is totally possible.

  “Hi,” I say before she can walk off. “You weren’t in English.”

  She takes off her headphones, but no sound comes out. Noor doesn’t really listen to music quietly. Which means she’s probably walking around without music. It’s so unlike her that I think about asking her a super-personal question to make sure she hasn’t been body-snatched.

  “Yeah,” she says to my comment, voice flat. “I didn’t see the point. Excuse me.”

  She tries to go around me, but I do a weird, praying-mantis sidestep, desperate to stop her.

  “AP tests are next week,” I gabble. “Mrs. Michaels gave us review questions.” I dig around in my backpack. This is so weird and horrible. Talking to her like she’s a stranger. I find the question sheet and hold it out to her.

  She doesn’t take it.

  “You haven’t heard from UCLA, right?” I say. “Your essay was really good. You might get in.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if I got in.” She snatches the paper from me and crumples it up. A few people stop to stare.

  “Today’s May tenth. The deadline to accept admission was a week ago. And I’m going to prison, Salahudin.”

  “Did you ever check the UCLA portal again?” I say. “Maybe—”

  “I’m taking the plea deal.” She spits the words at me. “Khadija’s going to call the DA tonight after she gets home from work. She—she wanted me and Shafiq to be there.”

  “No. Noor, don’t do that—”

  “What else am I supposed to do?” The words explode out of her in a sudden, earsplitting shout. The students around us go silent. “Wait for the trial and get sentenced to eight years instead, you asshole?” Her voice gets louder. “If I don’t take the deal, they’ll throw the book at me.”

  “I’ll explain that it was mine. I’ll tell them the truth.”

  “God, you’re stupid. You told them the truth, Salahudin. So did I. How did that go for us?”

  More people gather to watch, Ashlee among them. A few students have their phones out, like they’re waiting for us to maul each other.

  “Your drugs were under my seat,” Noor says. “Under my backpack. In the glove compartment inches from my hands. My fingerprints were on the bottles because, like an idiot, I took them from you. I’m going to prison no matter what.”

  “Martin says we can argue that we were using. The judge could—”

  “Go to hell, Sal.”

  I grimace at her use of my nickname. It sounds as weird from her mouth as it does from Abu. “Noor—please. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Can’t you just forgive—”

  She steps close enough to kiss me, or punch me.

  “Don’t you dare tell me to forgive you,” she says. “Don’t you put that burden on me.”

  “Fine, don’t forgive me,” I say. “But go to class. Don’t give up. Think about—about Ama, Noor. She’d tell you that you’re more than this.”

  Noor laughs, but it’s all wrong. “Maybe I was more than this. Before you.”

  “Oh, look, the brown Bonnie and Clyde.” Jamie saunters through the crowd. Atticus is with her, looking a bit hangdog. I guess it’s easier to have a racist girlfriend when she’s not so public about it.

  “Bonnie and Clyde were bank thieves and murderers,” I snap at her. “So that’s a shit comparison.”

  “Still perps. Still destined for failure and an early death. Just like you.” She leers at Noor, and as I seethe, Ashlee shoves through the throng.

  “You’re deranged, Jamie,” she says. “Why don’t you—”

  “Don’t talk to me, white trash,” Jamie says. “You fucked this shit-skin, right? Of course you’d defend him.”

  A low mutter rolls through the crowd, and Atticus steps away from Jamie, though she doesn’t notice.

  Many of Juniper’s denizens are proudly racist. We’ve had people spray-paint Nazi symbols and “Go back” and “White Power” in our rooms before. Abu told me that after 9/11, he and Ama had to replace the front picture window when someone threw a brick through it.

  I didn’t expect that kind of bald hatred from Jamie, though. She’d masked it under snobbery.

  Noor speaks up, hands tucked beneath the straps of her backpack, like she’s worried about what they’ll do if she lets them loose.

  “Go away, Jamie,” she says.

  “I will,” Jamie says. “Right to Princeton. While you’ll be rotting in jail, where you belong.”

  Noor shrugs. “You won,” she says. “That’s what you want to hear, right? You’re going to college and I’m not. You’re valedictorian and I’m second place. You’re also a monster. I’m pretty sure your own parents don’t like you. I know your friends don’t.”

  Jamie laughs and turns to look at Atticus—who’s disappeared. The rest of the crowd watches, silent.

  She flushes red. “Insult me all you want,” she says. “Your own life is your punishment. And it’s what you deserve. I don’t care what your excuses are, Noor. You’re illegal. A criminal. You should be shipped back to the shithole country you came from, to get married to a guy fifty years older than you or a goat or whatever the hell it is you people do.”

  I get in Jamie’s face now, vicious words on my lips, but Ashlee pulls me back and I don’t even feel her hands, I’m so angry.

  “Not worth it, Sal,” Ashlee says. A few feet away, Noor gives me a quick, searing glance, filled with contempt.

  Then she walks away.

  I don’t follow.

  * * *

  * * *

  The conversation with Noor rattles around my head as I walk home, shaking its chains and rustling its bones. Not the worst bit of it—I’ve already put all that in my “shit to relive when you hate yourself” memory box.

  No. I’m thinking about UCLA. About how Noor never heard from them.

  Horrible as it is, I get why she didn’t get in to the other schools. Her essays were shit. Noor said she choked during the interviews. But I read her essay for UCLA. And other than a couple misplaced commas and the word “memory” inexplicably spelled with two r’s, that essay was incredible. And she had everything else she needed to impress the admissions board.

  Noor said she couldn’t get into the UCLA portal. Probably because they kill the accounts of everyone they reject. To them, I no longer exist. But that doesn’t seem right. And I know Noor; sometimes her fear is so loud that it’s all she can hear.

  She also said she didn’t get a letter from UCLA. But maybe she did. Maybe she just didn’t see it.

  Thank God Chachu never checks the mailbox. He does, though. I saw him do it a couple of days ago.

  If he even knew where I was applying . . .

  Noor never told Riaz. But he knew—the other night at Khadija and Shafiq’s house. You’re not going to UVA or UCLA.

  Noor only needs one yes. One victory. Something that will give her a reason to fight. To not take the plea deal.

  From what I remember when Noor and I snuck in years ago, Riaz kept every other damn piece of paper he got. Why not her acceptance letter?

  Leaps of logic, Salahudin. Maybe Brooke told him about UVA and UCLA. Or maybe he got a letter but it was a rejection.

  Ama used to say “hadiyan sach bolti hain.” Bones speak the truth. Mine tell me that something is up with UCLA.

  I stop in the middle of the sidewalk, my brain exploding with a sudden, brilliant idea. One that could get her the future she deserves.

  One that could get her to forgive me.

  chapter 50

  Noor

  No one stops me as I walk off campus in the middle of a class period. No one cares.

  The words I screamed at Salahudin pound in my ears. I’m so angry I think I’ll break into pieces.

  My headphones are in. I downloaded as much of my old music as I could find. But there’s no song I want to hear. No playlist can fix this feeling that nothing good will ever happen to me again.

  The only music I have room for in my head is broken guitars and short-circuiting amps. A cello plunged into flames, a piano dropped from a skyscraper, drums with the skins ripped out.

  I’m angry that Salahudin lied about dealing, that he pulled me into his bullshit, that I’m going to do prison time, that my future is destroyed.

  But the thing that gnaws at me the most is that the one person I trusted in this shit world hurt me the worst. He gave me what I wanted more than anything—love, safety.

  Then he took it away. He can never fix that.

  I think of the Verve singing “Love Is Noise.” Florence and the Machine and the thundering drums in “Cosmic Love.” Rihanna’s consuming pain in “Love on the Brain.” Masuma Anwar mourning her fate in “Tainu Ghul Gayaan.”

  They all mix in my head. A jangle of notes that don’t make sense. Cutting through it, Auntie Misbah’s voice. “If we are lost, God is like water, finding the unknowable path when we cannot.”

  But I’m not lost. I know exactly where I am. Trapped. Stuck in that closet again, with the world dying around me.

  “Noor!”

  A glimmer of dark hair. Mrs. Michaels waves at me and makes her way across the parking lot.

  “I saw you from the staff room,” she says. “Why weren’t you in cla—”

  “Because there’s no point,” I say, wondering if I should tattoo the words on my head so people stop asking.

  “Well—here.” Her leather bag is strapped across the side of her wheelchair, and she sifts through it before pulling out a paper. My final “One Art” essay. I worked on it at Khadija’s insistence, and turned it in after reading more about Elizabeth Bishop’s life.

  Which, to be honest, kind of sucked. Something I pointed out in the conclusion of the essay.

  One of Bishop’s early titles for “One Art” was “The Gift of Losing Things.” Maybe because of all the loss in her life—family, friends, homes, people—Bishop had to see loss as a gift. It surrounded her. In order to keep from drowning in it, she couldn’t view loss as the universe’s way of saying “I hate you.” She had to make her peace with the loss, accept that it was part of her life, and find meaning in it. She had to learn that despite the loss, she would keep going.

  “It was just wonderful,” Mrs. Michaels says. “My favorite essay this year.” She puts the paper in my hands. “Noor. You have so much to offer. I know what it is to go through hard times. Truly, I do. But I believe things will get better. And I’m asking you, please—don’t give up.”

  She turns to head back to school, and as I watch her disappear between the buildings, I think of Auntie Misbah.

  “If we are lost, God is like water, finding the unknowable path when we cannot.”

  For a moment, as I stare at the A+ on top of the paper, I believe it.

  chapter 51

  Misbah

  March, then

  Two months after the doctor told me I was sick, Toufiq learned of my illness. I only knew because he started drinking again.

  He tried to conceal it. But then he made a mess in the pool and Salahudin discovered him.

  After I cleaned Toufiq up, I found Salahudin waiting in the kitchen, shaken. I dug out the PG Tips, cream, cardamom, and sugar.

  “Chai, Putar?” I took out a second cup for him, in case. But he shook his head.

  “Do I ever say yes, Ama?”

  “No,” I sighed. “But I always hope.”

  “Ama . . . What’s wrong with Abu? Why did he smell like . . .”

  Like the drunks that sometimes break bottles outside the motel, or fight in the alley behind the pool.

  “Your father is an—” I almost said the word. Alcoholic. But I couldn’t bring myself to. “Your father has a problem, Putar. A problem with drinking.”

  “But Abu prays,” Salahudin burst out. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your father prays for guidance. He is often lost. Adults get lost, too, you know.”

  “You never do.”

  “That is God’s will,” I said. “And no doing of my own.”

  “Ama,” he said. “Why did he start drinking when I was little?”

  “Your father couldn’t be strong,” I said. “He’s not like me, Putar. Or like you.”

  Salahudin snorted. “I’m not strong.”

  I took his hand and he winced in surprise. I squeezed it too hard, trying to hold on to him. He must understand this, I thought. He must know that he can survive anything.

  “I see so much promise in you, my son. You are what you wish to be,” I told him. “Wish for strength and God will make you strong. Tell me you understand.”

  He gently pulled his hand from mine. “I understand,” he said. “Um—I’m pretty tired, Ama.”

  “Go.” I gave him a kiss on the hair and watched his narrow back as he disappeared into his room.

  He did not understand. I knew this. But he would. I would make sure he did, before I left this world. I pushed the tea away, and prayed.

  Please, please. I pressed my hands together so tightly that they tingled. Give me more time.

  chapter 52

  Sal

  May, now

  When it’s nearly dark, Art finally returns to his house in his shiny Camaro. His parents aren’t around and as he approaches the front door, I step out from a pillar near his porch.

  “Sal, holy shit!” He jumps about a mile. “What—”

  “Shut up.” I don’t touch him. I don’t have to. He can tell it’s taking all my self-control not to punch his stupid face. “You’re gonna help me with something. Or I’m going to tell the cops who supplied me, asshole.”

  I explain my plan to him in the car, making him drive past the liquor shop, where we see Riaz’s old blue Nissan parked in the back lot. A few minutes later we pull up in front of his house. Brooke’s car is gone.