“She’s got heinous taste in shoes. Look at those.” He nods to Jamie’s neon Nikes. “Like her feet got eaten by traffic cones.”

  Salahudin usually has dad humor, but that wasn’t bad. I almost say so. He glances at my face. I want to hide. Or run away. He steps closer.

  “Noor.” He sees too much. I wish he didn’t see so much.

  “You should go.” Ashlee watches us from the field. “Your girlfriend’s waiting.”

  That word still makes me want to kick him in the teeth. Girlfriend. I’d glare at him, but I’d have to crane my neck. Last time I was this close to him, he was two inches shorter. With worse skin.

  If the universe were just, he’d have shrunk. Grown questionable facial hair. A wart would be good. Maybe a personality transplant, too. A potbelly instead of a six-pack.

  But the universe is not just.

  “Right,” Salahudin says. “Yeah— I wanted to ask you a favor.”

  I cross my arms. A short conversation is one thing. But we both know he shouldn’t be asking for favors.

  “Could you text my mom?” he says. “Tell her to push her doctor’s appointment? Ernst gave me detention for being late and—” He lifts up his phone. “It’s—not working.”

  “I have a charger.”

  “No, it’s—” He fidgets, which is weird because Salahudin isn’t a fidgeter. “There’s a problem with our account. Some . . . billing thing. Ama’s on a separate plan, though, so her phone’s fine. Never mind. Forget I asked.”

  He turns away. The bunched cords of his neck tell me he’s upset. As soon as I think it, I’m angry. I know him so well. I wish I didn’t.

  “Hey—” I reach for his arm, then quickly let him go when he jumps. I shouldn’t have grabbed him. He hates being touched.

  Though as soon as I do touch him I want to do it again. Because touching him makes him real. And that makes me remember how I used to feel about him.

  How I still feel.

  “I’ll text Auntie,” I say, thinking about her message to me this morning. About the food she made me. She loves me. I know that in my bones. Salahudin being an idiot isn’t her fault. “And I’ll stop by after I’m done at the hospital. How is she doing?”

  A long pause. He could say a hundred things. But his shoulders harden. His brown eyes drift away.

  “Not great.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “What happened?”

  Salahudin gives me a sad half smile. I don’t recognize it. “In Him we put our trust,” he says.

  One of Auntie’s religious sayings. Salahudin would argue with her about it. “What about our will?” he’d say. “What about what we want?”

  She’d answer in her don’t-make-me-smack-you-with-my-chappal voice. “What you want is what you want. What you do is what God wishes for you to do. Now ask for forgiveness, Putar. I don’t want the gates of heaven closed to me because my son was disrespectful.”

  Salahudin would grumble. Then he’d ask for forgiveness. Always. Auntie knew how to answer his questions. She knew what to say to him.

  But I don’t. He pulls away. I let him go.

  chapter 4

  Misbah

  November, then

  Amid the brilliant silks of Anarkali Bazaar, the fortune teller was a sparrow. Her small feet tapped impatiently in cracked rubber sandals. “She’s younger than you, Misbah,” my cousin Fozia told me, “but she will ease your mind.”

  The fortune teller beckoned me to sit across a rickety wooden table and took my hands. The cross at her neck marked her as a Christian.

  “You are to marry,” the fortune teller said.

  “I am not paying you one hundred rupees to tell me cows make milk.” I lifted the Sahib’s Bridals bag in my hand. The girl’s laughter creaked out of her. Perhaps she was older than she looked.

  “Your fiancé is a restless soul.” She stroked the lines on my hands and poked at the calluses. “You will travel across the sea.”

  “My fiancé is the only son. He will not desert his parents.”

  “Nonetheless, you will leave Pakistan,” she said. “You will have your children far from here. Three.”

  “Three!”

  “A boy. A girl. And a third that is not she, nor he, nor of the third gender. You will fail them all.”

  “What do you mean I will fail them? How? Will—will they die? Will they be sick?”

  The fortune teller met my eyes. Hers were small and long lashed, the crisp brown of fallen leaves.

  “You will fail them all.”

  I offered her one hundred rupees to change the fortune. Then two hundred. But no matter what I offered, she said no more.

  chapter 5

  Noor

  Chachu wants me at the store by 3:15, but Auntie didn’t respond to my text, which worries me.

  I spend the last two periods of every school day in a volunteer program at Juniper Regional Hospital. Chachu doesn’t like it, but it’s during school hours, so he can’t do much about it. When I finish my shift, I head to the motel. On my bike, it’s only ten minutes away. I should have enough time to check on Auntie and get to the store.

  The motel’s quiet when I roll across the cracked concrete in the carport by the main apartment, where Sal’s family lives. Auntie never locks the door, and when I enter, the warm smell of sugar-toasted semolina fills my nose. I call out, but there’s no one inside. I walk behind the carport to the fenced-off pool and toolshed, but they’re empty, too. “Cold Moon” by the Zolas plays in my earbuds. I shut it off as the chorus winds down.

  The east wing of the motel is quiet, the parking lot empty. Business hasn’t been great, I guess. None of the rooms on the west wing are open, either. But the bright blue door of the laundry room creaks in the wind.

  I push it open to find Auntie leaning against the wall inside. She has a towel clutched to her chest.

  She looks awful. Her brown skin is gray and sickly. She’s breathing too fast. I see her pulse jumping. The knot of her pink hijab, which she usually wears pulled back and rolled into a bun at her nape, is coming undone.

  “Auntie?” I get to her side in a second.

  “Oh!” She jumps. “Asalaam-o-alaikum. Kithay rehndhi, meri dhi?” Peace be upon you. Where have you been, my daughter?

  “Auntie, you need to sit down. Take my arm. Did you get my message? About Salahudin having detention?”

  “Yes, I canceled the appointment.” I try to give her my arm, but she waves me off. “And don’t think because I’m speaking to you I’ve forgiven you. After all those parathas, you couldn’t come and visit your old auntie?” She smiles. But I feel her sadness.

  “Mafi dede, Auntie,” I ask for mercy hastily. Half of forgiveness is saying sorry, she once told me. “I’m an idiot. Let’s go in the apartment.” She’s so gray I’m surprised she’s standing. I need to get her to a doctor. But she won’t go unless I ease her into the idea—probably over tea.

  “I didn’t think you’d come.” She squints in the bright winter sunshine. “But I made you halva and puri just in case.”

  Just thinking about the deep-fried, puffed bread makes my mouth water. “You didn’t have to—”

  “It’s your birthday, na? Eighteen! Very—very important—” She stops to catch her breath, and I finally get her to take my arm. I could pick her up, she’s so light.

  Once inside, a bit of color returns to her face and she lets go of me. She makes her way through the dim living room, patting the wall of the apartment like it’s an old friend. She loves this place. Even if it’s sucked all the life out of her.

  The kitchen is off to the side and shaped like an L. A big window faces the east wing. Three CorningWare dishes sit on the old butcher-block counter, next to a four-person dining table where I’ve eaten hundreds of meals.

  I’m half reaching for the cholay—Auntie’s turmeric and cumin chickpeas—when she turns on the stove to warm up the puri. Her hands tremble.

  I nudge her into a chair. “Let me make you some tea. Then I’m calling the doctor, Auntie. Birthday halva can wait.”

  “I rescheduled for tomorrow, so stop worrying. We have time for tea.”

  As I pull out two mismatched mugs and PG Tips tea bags, I relax. The UVA rejection doesn’t seem like such a big deal. The failed English paper doesn’t, either. Something about Auntie makes me feel like I can face those things.

  I want to tell her all this. This is home. You and Salahudin are home. I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I crack a few cardamom pods between my teeth, planning and abandoning a dozen apologies. It’s like when I try to write. Only worse.

  “It’s okay,” Auntie says, and I glance over at her. Her eyes are hazel, much lighter than Salahudin’s. Right now, they are fixed on me. She puts a hand to her heart. “I know.”

  The knot that’s lived in my chest for months loosens. We let a companionable silence fall as the halva crackles and the puris puff up. After I join her at the table, Auntie doesn’t touch her food, but I’m halfway through mine before she takes a sip of tea.

  “Wow.” I finally take a breath. “You outdid yourself, Auntie.”

  “You haven’t been eating enough.” The crease between her eyes deepens. “I offered to teach Riaz to cook, you know.” She’s always called Chachu by his last name. “When he first brought you to Juniper.”

  I put my puri down. Chachu hates Pakistani food. He hates Pakistani everything. “He, um, he prefers sandwiches, I guess.”

  “Brooke wanted to learn,” Auntie says. “Did you know?”

  I shake my head. Technically, I should call Brooke “Chachee,” since she’s Chachu’s wife. She thought it was cute when I first brought it up. Chachu shut that down quick. He only let me call him Chachu because at six, I couldn’t say “Uncle” properly, and he hated mispronounced words more than Urdu ones.

  “Anyway, your chachu heard about it. So she didn’t come back.” She takes a deep sip of tea.

  “Auntie, why haven’t you been going—”

  “You know, Noor, now that you’re eighteen—”

  We both stop and she gestures for me to go on.

  “You’ve been missing dialysis appointments, Auntie.”

  Her expression darkens. “Oh, those are rubbish anyway,” she says. “They don’t make me feel any better, but they cost an arm and a leg. I drink turmeric in milk—”

  “Kidney disease is dangerous, Auntie,” I say. “You can’t cure it with turmeric. You have to get dialysis. What about insurance?”

  “No insurance.” She glances at her desk, littered with bills. “I have to get back to cleaning. Play me a song before I go, Noor Jehan.”

  She uses the nickname she gave me when I was little and she first realized I loved music. Noor Jehan, for the famous Pakistani playback singer.

  “All right, you know how you love that Johnny Cash and U2 song?” I pull out the smartphone she gave me last year—one she said a tenant left behind but that I suspect she paid for herself. “Well, I have another Johnny Cash collaboration. It’s called ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ This time with Fiona Apple. You like her, too.”

  I find the song, and the first strains of Johnny’s guitar strum out. Auntie closes her eyes. When the chorus hits with both him and Fiona singing, she reaches for my hand.

  “That is you, Noor,” she says. “My bridge over troubled water. And Salahudin’s. But . . .”

  She leans forward to look at me. Really look at me. I drop my head, letting my bangs fall into my face.

  “Noor,” she says. “I need to—I need to tell you . . .”

  But she stops talking. Like she’s too tired. “I don’t feel well, Dhi,” she whispers. I manage to get in front of her as she slumps forward, body suddenly limp.

  “Auntie—oh no—okay—” I try to grab my phone without letting go of her. But it slips from the table and bounces off the linoleum and is too far to reach. The front door opens.

  “Salahudin?” I call out. “Something’s wrong with Auntie!”

  But it’s not Salahudin. It’s his dad, and I can smell the liquor on him before he appears in the kitchen doorway.

  “Noor?” he mumbles. Then he sees his wife and his voice breaks. “Misbah?”

  “Call 911, Uncle Toufiq,” I say. Auntie is collapsed against me, her heartbeat thudding strange against my shoulder. “Now!”

  Juniper is small enough that the ambulance doesn’t take long to get to the motel. Uncle Toufiq stares while the paramedics load Auntie into the back, the terror of his wife’s illness briefly sobering him up.

  He tries to shove his car keys into my hand, but I shake my head. “I don’t know how,” I say, relieved that he isn’t trying to drive. “Ride in the ambulance. I’ll leave a note for Salahudin and bike over.”

  I grab a sheet of paper.

  Hey, ASSHOLE, I write, but immediately cross it out.

  Your mom collapsed—No. That’s just going to freak him out.

  Come to the hospital ASAP. Emergency room. Your mom is OK. But she had to be admitted.

  My phone dings as I hop on the bike. A quick glance tells me it’s Chachu. 3:17. I’m two minutes late.

  The liquor store is five minutes away. But once I get there, Chachu’s going to walk out. He won’t care that Auntie is sick. He never even wanted me hanging around here.

  I shove the phone into my pocket, grab my backpack, and follow the ambulance.

  chapter 6

  Sal

  By the time I reach the hospital, it’s almost seven and I’m sweating so hard it looks like I ran through a car wash. I found Noor’s note, but not the spare car key. When I called her from the motel phone, she didn’t pick up. So I ran.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Noor paces at the entrance to the ER. “She’s in the ICU—come on.”

  As we hurry through Juniper Hospital, Noor catches me up. I flinch at her voice, a Gatling gun firing off fact after fact. Your ama is weak. Hallucinating. The lack of dialysis took a huge toll. High levels of potassium in her blood—she’s at risk of heart arrhythmia—

  A few nurses greet Noor as she passes, but she hardly notices. As she speaks, she brings her hands together and apart, twisting them like she’s rubbing on soap. She’s terrified.

  Part of me wants to tell her: “Stop. Look at me. Everything will be fine.” That’s what Ama would say.

  But I hate lying. I especially hate lying to Noor. Her fear catches, infecting me. By the time she stops at the door to the ICU, I’m sweating again, and not from the run.

  “Give them your name when you go in. They’ll only let in one visitor at a time, and they already kicked your dad out.” Noor’s voice softens at my expression. “He—got a little sick. I’ll go check on him.”

  Ama is hooked up to a million machines. She’s only forty-three. But she looks like she’s aged twenty years. I tuck her hair under her hijab and straighten the gown they’ve put her in, pulling the blanket over her bare legs. Ama keeps her legs covered in public. The docs here know her. They know she prefers modest dress. They didn’t even have the decency to cover her up properly? Assholes.

  “Why didn’t you get your dialysis?” I whisper to her. “Why didn’t you listen to the doctors?”

  “Putar.” Son.

  I grasp Ama’s hand—the only person whose hands have always felt safe. She settles her gaze on me.

  “How are you feeling, Ama?”

  “Where’s your abu?”

  Embarrassing the hell out of himself by throwing up in the hallway.

  “He’s outside.” I don’t give her more than that, but she recoils at the venom in my voice.

  “He’s sick, Putar,” she says softly. “He—”

  He’s not sick. He’s never been sick. Weak, maybe. Pathetic. “He’s drunk, Ama. Just like always.” The hurt on her face makes me hate myself. But I don’t apologize. This anger must have lurked within me for a long time, coiled like a hungry snake.

  Ama squeezes my hand. “Your father . . . he—”

  “Don’t make excuses for him. He’s outside decorating the ER with lunch while you’re in here—” I shake my head. “But don’t worry. Everything’s under control—”

  “Where is Noor?”

  “She’s in the waiting room.” I can’t talk about Noor with Ama. Not again.

  “Putar, you must make up with her. She needs you. More than you know. And you need her.”

  “Ama—don’t worry about me and Noor, okay?” I wish I could lose this edge in my voice. I’m trying. I’m trying to be calm but my body feels not like a body at all and instead like a dark cave of stress and uncertainty and fear, ejecting words that aren’t words but hawks, with razors for wings and knives for beaks.

  “Noor is fine,” I say. “She’s been fine without us for six months. You always—”

  “You’ll need to call my cousins in Pakistan,” she whispers.

  “Why—” My voice cracks and I imagine it as words on a page, nudged, molded, bent to my will. When I speak again, I sound normal. “You’ll call them yourself, Ama.”

  “You’ll have to pay the bills, Putar. Your father forgets,” she says. “Water the flowers. Ask—ask Uncle Faisal for help—”

  “Ama, when he visited in the summer, he gave me a trash bag of his son’s old Brooks Brothers so I’d look ‘less like a daku.’ ” A criminal. “I’m not asking him for anything.”

  “I miss—him.” Ama’s voice is faint, but she looks past me so intently that I glance over my shoulder.

  “You miss Uncle Faisal?”

  “No,” Ama whispers. “My father. ‘Little butterfly,’ he called me. He’d play carrom board with Toufiq and his father. He loved Toufiq’s jokes.”

  I nod even though the last time I remember Abu telling a joke, I was still in Hulk-themed underpants.