“Asalaam-o-alaikum, Salahudin.” Sister Khadija, Imam Shafiq’s wife, opens my door. Her deep brown skin is ashen against her navy hijab. The grooves beneath her eyes tell me she slept about as much as I did. “I’m so, so sorry.” Her southern drawl is as gentle as a hug. My eyes get hot.

  Don’t cry, Salahudin. Once you start, it’s over. On Thursday, after Noor couldn’t reach me and called Imam Shafiq to the hospital, it was Khadija who volunteered to wash Ama’s body and prepare her for burial. They met at the tiny Juniper mosque enough times that Khadija knew the religious rules were important to Ama.

  I almost ask Khadija if she’s sure it was Ama’s body she washed. When I finally got to her hospital room, Ama’s IV had been taken out, the machines clustered around her like sentinels in mourning, having failed in their mission to keep her alive. Ama lay beneath a sheet, and though it said MISBAH MALIK on her hospital bracelet, this person didn’t look like Ama at all. Too small. Too faded.

  Too dead.

  I look for Noor but don’t see her. My throat tightens. She’s the only person on the planet I could stand to be near right now. She was there for Ama, at the end.

  Unlike me. A stab of self-hatred pricks me, and I dance with it. Better that than the wave licking at my heels.

  The cemetery grass is yellow, broken up by graves and the occasional stunted tree. People approach to tell me how they knew Ama: A mechanic who haggled with her over tire prices. An old tenant who hid from her meth-head boyfriend with Ama’s help.

  My pediatrician, Dr. Ellis, and her wife, my elementary school principal, are there. Abu’s AA sponsor, a no-nonsense woman named Janice, waves to me sadly. She hasn’t been around in a while. But she adored Ama.

  As Imam Shafiq coaxes my father toward the grave, Ashlee makes her way to me, black skirt dragging across the grass. I didn’t want her to come. Ama didn’t know I was dating Ashlee. I had an argument all planned for when Ama found out. You can’t be angry at me for kissing someone when you don’t say shit about Abu being a drunk.

  “Hey.” Ashlee falls into me. Her nose is cold against my neck and I remind myself she’s touched me a hundred times. It’s fine. I’m fine. As I try to focus more on her body than my own, I notice that her arms are heavy, her neck is loose, and she’s leaning on me like I’m the only solid earth in this cemetery. Gingerly, I ease away and whisper into her ear.

  “Ashlee—what did you take?”

  “Nothing. I had a backache. My tailbone . . .”

  It broke during labor and some days it hurts like hell. She’s told me a hundred times.

  Some of Ashlee’s pain meds make her temperamental, and some mellow her out. If I let go of her, she might sag to the ground. Or she might get upset and make a scene. Not knowing which it will be makes my throat dry with anxiety.

  Abu is like this sometimes. Unknowable—unpredictable. Maybe that’s why I’m with Ashlee. She’s familiar.

  “Hey.” Khadija taps Ashlee’s shoulder gently. “We’re about to start. Salahudin’s father needs him. Will you stand with me?”

  Before Ashlee can protest, Khadija’s ushered her away with that smooth competence she must call on in courtrooms, when she’s defending her clients. Imam Shafiq guides Abu to my left, and my father stares at his black shoes, unable to lift his gaze to the coffin.

  Then the imam invokes the name of God, and the world tilts, because he speaks of Ama as someone who was, instead of someone who is.

  The wave gets closer. I can’t listen to this. If I listen, I’ll shout. Or break. I’ll drown.

  There must be some way to get out of this gracefully. I could plug my ears. Hum to myself. Laughter singes my throat. A crazy, chittering laugh, like Gollum’s at the end of the Lord of the Rings, right before he hurtles into the lava.

  What is wrong with me? It’s Ama’s funeral. Ama’s funeral. Worst pairing of words in history.

  Then there’s a rustle beside me, the warmth of another body, and I’m looking down into Noor’s well-dark eyes. My relief nearly drops me to my knees.

  She tucks something into my hand. A black earbud—wireless and hardly noticeable. The other is mostly hidden behind a curtain of hair.

  I pretend to scratch my head and put the bud in my ear, letting my own hair fall over it. A bass guitar strums, joined shortly by a deep voice. Johnny Cash and U2 singing “The Wanderer.”

  Ama loved this song. Noor first played it for us when she and I were thirteen, sitting in the kitchen at the motel. We were pretending to do homework but actually stealing the chapli kabobs Ama was frying up.

  He’s a wanderer, Ama said. Like me. I teased her about what Johnny Cash would make of a hijab-wearing Punjabi woman singing along to a song about a preacher.

  If you made him these kabobs, I bet he’d be fine with it, Noor said. I go back to that day, to the hot ghee popping off the pan, the tang of onions and bite of garlic, the wet-cotton cool of the air conditioner. I go back to Ama’s laughter, and Noor’s and mine.

  I stare at the cold blue mountains in the distance as Noor plays the song once. Twice. I’d be happy if it just kept going. But Imam Shafiq finishes his speech and Noor shuts off the music. The silence is a monster on my chest, suffocating me slow. The coffin is lowered into the earth and the sound that comes out of my abu makes the hair on the back of my neck rise.

  I don’t know if I believe in hell, but if it had a sound, it would be the strangled howl of your father finally realizing that the love of his life is being put into the ground.

  Noor’s body shakes. My eyes are dry. The wave is waiting, but I won’t face it. Not now. I’m not going to fucking weep.

  It wouldn’t cost me anything to reach out to Abu. To Noor. To hold their hands. Give them whatever strength I have.

  But my arms don’t move. Tears don’t come. I stand still as a statue, freezing because I forgot my jacket, staring at the coffin. Wondering how someone who filled up a room could fit into a box so small.

  * * *

  By the time Uncle Faisal, Ama’s only sibling, and his douchebag son, Arsalan, show up from Los Angeles to pay their respects, Abu is quietly hammered.

  We’ve scraped up about eighteen Muslims from Juniper and a few nearby desert towns to do the sunset prayer. Imam Shafiq’s voice soars when he delivers the call to prayer—and Abu remains impressively upright. But when everyone touches their foreheads to the scattered prayer mats, Abu closes his eyes for a little too long.

  As he rises again, he sways. Sticks out his hand as if he’s about to fall. Only he doesn’t fall, so it just looks like he’s performing some weird interpretive dance. Uncle Faisal and Arsalan exchange a surreptitious glance. Drinking alcohol is forbidden in Islam. Drinking while praying? I’m surprised the devil’s not at the door.

  I try not to hate Abu. He’s in pain. I know that.

  Noor, in a black shalwar-kameez and with her dupatta wrapped tight around her head and neck, weaves her way over and places a folding chair behind Abu. She nudges him into it and he stops swaying. Eighteen people breathe a collective sigh of relief and Imam Shafiq quickly completes the prayer.

  After, I escape to the storage room off the kitchen, and stand there in the dark like a psychopath. If I turn on the lights, I know what I will see. Ama’s perfect cursive, honed at a girls’ school in Pakistan, faded against neat strips of masking tape attached to bins: Keys. Doorknobs. Tools. Yarn. She loved bringing order to her world. That’s probably where I got it from.

  I pull my journal from my back pocket. It’s small enough to carry around and messy enough that I’m the only person who can read it. I haven’t written in it since Ama died, because what’s in my head would just come out as a scream. Not an aaaaa scream but every inch of every page blued out with pure ink.

  Seems like a waste of paper.

  Don’t be weird. Go back inside. Ama taught me Pakistani hospitality long ago. Even in the middle of Podunk, California, there are rules. One is that you don’t leave dozens of people in your house to fend for themselves, no matter what the occasion.

  In the apartment, the stink of drooping flowers is inescapable. Everyone hovers in the living room, helping themselves to the platters of food that Imam Shafiq and Khadija have set out. I stare out the wide kitchen window, at the motel’s east wing. A single room is lit up. Room 4, rented by Curtis Franklin, our only weekly tenant.

  Right in the middle, between room 3 and room 4, a blue door glows under the fluorescent floodlights. The laundry room.

  My stomach churns at the sight of it and I turn my attention to the weeds popping out of the cracks in the concrete. I’ll have to take care of those. Ama hated weeds.

  The phone rings, a shrill distraction, and I grab it quickly.

  “Clouds’ Rest Inn Motel, how can I help you?”

  Most of the calls have been from Pakistan. Ama’s cousins, her aunts and uncles—a blur of brown faces that I should remember better from a lone visit a decade ago. Some are in disbelief. Others say Ama’s death is the work of the evil eye—nazar. All wish to talk to my father.

  This call is different. “Misbah Malik?” a stern voice says. “I’m calling from Yona County Debt Collection—”

  Before I hear any more, I hang up, heart juddering. Then I jump, because my cousin Arsalan has materialized next to me, horror movie–style.

  “Dude, ‘inn’ and ‘motel’ are the same thing,” he says. “So when you say ‘Clouds’ Rest Inn Motel,’ it’s—”

  “I don’t need grammar lessons at my mom’s funeral.”

  “Apologies. I was being stupid,” Arsalan says in a rare fit of self-awareness. “Sorry about Auntie. She was great. Such a nice lady.”

  Yes, Ama was very nice. Which is why she kept her comments to a minimum whenever Arsalan or his family came up. That was as close to shit-talking as Ama got about the brother who lived three hours away, but never visited, who could have donated a kidney to her, but refused even though they were a match.

  “—a ton of great memories,” Arsalan drones on. “Once, you guys visited for Eid—”

  I remember. I burgled Hot Wheels from him. Stuffed them down in my overnight backpack, wrapped them in my dirty pajamas because I knew no one would ever look there. I never felt guilty about those thefts. Not until I told Noor, anyway.

  He has two playrooms and his own room. He didn’t even notice, I’d defended myself to her after showing her the cars, irked that she wasn’t impressed with my treasure.

  But you know you stole them. Noor looked so perplexed at my perfidy that I started to squirm. The next time I went to Arsalan’s house, I returned the damn cars.

  I examine my cousin’s shoes. They are these ugly loafers with TODS emblazoned on the side. He’d get along with Jamie. I crack a smile and look around for Noor. She’s toying with the ends of her long hair and staring at a picture Ama put up a few months ago. It’s one I took before the Fight, of the two of them drinking tea, rapt as they watched a Pakistani drama.

  Arsalan smiles at her and I step into his line of sight.

  “So, your senior year, huh?” He refocuses. “Picked a college yet?”

  What I would give for a human mute button. “Ama’s dead,” I say. “My dad’s a drunk. I’m not going to college, Arse-alan.”

  Mocking his name is a low blow. Ama would give me the stink eye if she heard me. Arsalan falls silent, mouth agape.

  At that moment, the motel’s bell sounds with a wrathful BZZZZZ like a drone missile shrieking down from the sky. I can’t get away fast enough.

  The door connecting the office to our apartment opens silently. Behind the high front counter, the young guy from room 11 taps his fingers impatiently. I rented him the room in a blur last night, and haven’t seen him since.

  “Can I get some towels, man? I’ve called like five times.”

  I stare. “Towels?” I say. A knot forms inside me, twisting tighter and tighter. The towels are in the laundry room.

  “Shit, I thought you spoke English.” Room 11 pulls his shirt away from his body and pretends to wipe his hands with it. “Tow-ells?” He raises his voice. “For clean-ing?”

  “I got it.” Noor must have followed me, though I didn’t hear her. She’s so close that I flinch. But she doesn’t touch me. She reaches around me for the master key that hangs on a hook next to the phone switchboard, and disappears outside. Room 11 follows her and the knot in my stomach relaxes.

  I lean against the office counter and think of everyone waiting in the apartment.

  No way I go back in there. I’d rather be chained to the top of a mountain with an eagle pecking out my liver.

  Since that’s not an option, I grab my mom’s Dockers jacket from the hook by the door and go outside.

  The cold slaps my face. But it’s a good slap—the kind you see in a black-and-white Western that knocks a gibbering idiot out of their hysteria.

  I head for the pool behind the carport. Ama padlocked the chain-link gate months ago, worried some kid might wander through and fall inside. It rattles when I pull myself over it, the only sound in a quiet, freezing night. I drop to the concrete, dangle my legs off the deep end, and look down. With the floodlights off, it’s like staring into a black hole.

  We’ll fill it next year, Ama said last summer. I’ll be better and your abu will be back at work. You can finally teach me to swim.

  When I was a kid, the pool was always full. It looked like a cheerful blue kidney bean, or a giant’s footprint. We had parties every September for my birthday. Sometimes Noor was the only kid who came, but that just meant no one complained when we did cannonballs off the diving board. After we dried off, we’d gobble up the mango kulfi Ama churned in her old ice-cream maker.

  Then a year and a half ago, a few months after Ama got sick, I came outside to find Abu muttering to himself and pissing in the pool. I thought he was someone else at first. It didn’t occur to me that he was drunk because for as long as I could remember, Ama made it clear that I was never to touch alcohol.

  Ama helped me get Abu inside. The way she soothed him, turned him on his side, and put a bucket next to the bed told me she’d done this before.

  After that, we drained the pool. Ama wanted to fix it before refilling it. She wanted to sand the cracks and paint the whole thing periwinkle to match the sky.

  The fence clinks behind me and Noor hops over. I get up to meet her.

  “Imam Shafiq was looking for you,” she says. “And I think I should get home.”

  The imam will have to wait. “I’ll walk you.”

  Juniper’s streets empty out around nine p.m., so we walk right up the middle of one, Noor on the right side of the white line, and me on the left. The wind’s kicked up again, biting through our thin clothes, bringing with it the earthy scent of creosote. Noor’s shivering, and I give her Ama’s jacket and step closer. Our arms touch. Brief. Electric. I can’t tell if it feels good or bad. I can’t make sense of it at all. You’re all right, I tell myself. Five seconds in. Seven seconds out.

  Noor looks up, surprised at the touch. Maybe she’s thinking about the way her fingertips brushed my jaw just before she kissed me months ago.

  I wanted the kiss and I didn’t want it and it terrified me. Instead of trying to explain, I shouted at her that she was ruining our friendship. I don’t understand why I snapped like that except that I’m strange inside. And when she kissed me, it strummed that strangeness until it was a chord I couldn’t bear.

  “You know, I was really mad at you,” she says when the motel is far behind us.

  “I deserved it.”

  “Yeah, you did.” She looks down at our hands, almost touching. I think about taking hers. An apology of sorts. I have a lot to be sorry for, when it comes to Noor. But she tucks her hand into Ama’s coat, and it’s too late. “Darpok!” Ama would call me. Scaredy-cat.

  “Look—about the Fight—”

  “Leave the Fight, Salahudin,” she says. “Auntie wouldn’t have wanted either of us thinking about it tonight.”

  “Okay—uh, how are college apps going?” It’s a clumsy change in subject and Noor looks at me askance, smiling slightly.

  “Didn’t you shit on your cousin for talking about the same thing?”

  “He deserved it.”

  “He is awful,” she agrees. “He kept talking about his watch collection? Then he asked me for my number.”

  “Ugh,” I groan. “What did you say?”

  “I told him it was 968-273-3685.”

  At my confusion, she chuckles for both of us. “It spells ‘you are foul.’ Not that he’ll ever figure it out.”

  A few seconds later, we slow as her uncle’s house comes into view. It’s in a housing tract next to a stretch of empty desert, low and pale like everything else in Juniper. A lamp in the front room casts a circle of light over a scraggly flower bed. I haven’t been by in months, but the BEWARE OF DOG sign that Riaz hung up years ago as a burglar deterrent is still there. No dog yet.

  “Thanks for everything today,” I say. Noor glances at the front door, shoulders caving, like she can already hear her uncle’s censure. Riaz is the opposite of Ama: cold and analytical and forever reminding Noor that she’s going to work at the family business after high school. I’ve known him since I was a kid, but every time he sees me—or Ama or Abu—it’s like he’s smelled a rotting goat carcass.

  Normally, Noor and I would walk around the block a few times. But the whole day presses against my brain, the wave too high now, too close.

  “Call me or text if you need anything,” Noor says. “Don’t be alone in your head. I’m here and . . .” She picks at the sequins on her kameez. Her nails are painted black, which I hadn’t noticed before. “All that stuff from last year is forgotten, okay?” She tries to smile, but doesn’t quite stick the landing. “You don’t have to worry about me saying or doing something that . . . makes you uncomfortable. I’m over you.”