Tats leans into me to whisper, “Who is he, and why is he hiding here?”
“Layth, and no idea why he’s here,” I say.
“Uncle Bilal forced me here for the thing your brother’s having. His party. But there’s some strange band setting up, practicing, and I needed to get out.” He taps the phone in his hand. “Just catching up on some friends’ updates. From the sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary?” Tats asks, reaching up to her hair. It’s in a bun—we decided to do similar hairstyles—but now she’s unclasping something. If she lets her giant hair down now, it’s going to dwarf her face.
“Yeah, animal rehabilitation sanctuary in Ecuador. There’s no electricity, no Wi-Fi except on Friday afternoons when they go into town, so they’ve just uploaded a bunch of videos.” He holds out his phone to Tats. “A rescued kinkajou.”
It’s an animal that looks like a weasel. A cute weasel with a long tail. It’s scampering around with mad energy while a guy, his bushy blond hair held back with a headband, tries to get it to eat from a slop bucket he’s kneeling beside. The guy occasionally shoots a goofy grin at the camera. There’s a girl making encouraging noises off camera who must be the one taking the video.
The kinkajou suddenly slows down and tentatively approaches the bucket. And then shoots away again to climb a tree nearby. It stays there for a bit and then comes back down and attempts the bucket approach again.
“They get hunted for their pelts or to be exported as exotic pets,” Layth says. “This one got hurt, so he’s still on edge after a few weeks at the sanctuary.”
It’s weirdly calming to watch the animal slowly come to trust the slop bucket. And eat finally.
I find my breathing’s slowed down. I look up from the video and meet Layth’s gaze. He nods at me, his eyes kind, not judgy in any way.
I decide to forgive him for sporadically eavesdropping. He’s going to leave the continent soon anyway.
“Aw, it’s adorable,” Tats says, handing the phone back.
“And calming,” I add. “And satisfying. To watch that kinkajou trust again.”
“It’s like a drug.” Layth plugs his earbuds into his phone again. “The high.”
“The high?” Tats says, ever pushy. Her hair is not in a bun anymore. But it’s still up—now in a high Ariana Grande ponytail, which, because Tats is an Audrey Hepburn doppelgänger, makes her look like Ariana’s sister or something. “And you would know? About highs?”
He shoots her a look that says he knows.
“So when you go to this sanctuary place, you’re not going to have any electricity? Or Wi-Fi?” I ask.
“Nope. Can’t wait.”
“But what about lights? And phone charging? And family and friends?”
“There are candles, and they fire up the generator twice a week so we can charge our phones, though the service is not good as we’re actually in the rain forest. Wi-Fi is in town once a week.” Layth pockets his phone. “And family, I only have my mom, who flew to England last month to be with my aunt—Dania and Lamya’s mom. My friends, they know where to find me.”
I remember him muttering “used to” when I brought up siblings before. But it would be weird to ask him about that with Tats around.
What did that mean, “used to”?
I could never imagine not having a sibling—well, Muhammad.
Like how he didn’t want to leave me earlier until he made sure Tats was with me.
Will I ever be that good of a sibling to the laddoos?
To Muhammad?
I stand up slowly, holding the opening of the abaya closed tight over the wad of sari cloth that is now even bigger and dragging on the ground.
I’m thinking of Sarah in her glittery jilbab, resplendent at her henna party.
I try to push my loose fake eyelashes back into place and look at Tats. “We’d better go. I wanna dance for Sarah.”
She nods and gets up too.
Before we leave, I look at where Layth’s still sitting. “I’m pretty sure that band my brother got for his party, the ’Arrys, should be done now.”
“Nah, I’m okay here.” Layth shakes his head.
“Can I ask you something? Where can I see more of those rescue animal videos? From the sanctuary?”
“I can send you the link. It gets updated weekly.”
“Thanks.” I nod at him. “ ’Cause they’re calming, you know?”
He looks up at me, nods, and adds a smile, and I’m 100 percent sure that I got him wrong before. He’s not a crank at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tats and I go to Linda’s room, and I use makeup remover and clean my entire face and take off the fake eyelashes. Then Tats unravels my sari, and I change into Zayneb’s shocking pink suit. Tats helps me put on fresh makeup that’s not so loud.
I line both her wrists with all the bangles Auntie Maysa had given me, which gets her giddy, and then I hug her tight, because, truly, there’s no best friend like her.
* * *
The other girls in the dance with us come up from the basement, and we practice in the family room quickly, under Zayneb’s direction. We decide that Tats will join in at the end and do a ta-da flourish of different TikTok dance moves to get Sarah to laugh.
Tats hams it up, and we laugh so hard at her antics that we’re all in high spirits as we head downstairs to perform. I swallow everything I felt earlier, but I don’t push away all the memories that were opened from that awful time.
Instead, I draw the memory of the moment when Sarah learned that I was trying to hide my assault. How she took me out for fancy cupcakes to bond with me, to show me she cared about me, and I took a picture of her in my head.
Of her loving smile under a big thick frosting mustache.
I’m going to dance my heart out for Sarah.
* * *
The room is a long rectangle, and, except for the dance space in the middle, the floor’s covered with the Persian rugs and mirrored cushions Linda and I set up on Wednesday, so guests are sitting here and there on the floor. There are a few chairs at the edges for those who can’t sit on the floor, but most people are seated low and spread out.
We line up in three rows of four, with Khadija seated in the middle, for us to dance around at the chorus part. Sarah, sitting on a red velvet chair Ms. Mehta loaned us, gives a huge smile on seeing our group all arrayed. I know from Zayneb that we’re the third dance performing.
The music comes on, and Zayneb nods to get us hopping to the rhythm before we add our arm and hand movements, when the words join the beat.
Mehndi hai rachnewaali.
We spread jam on our right hands in unison while hopping our feet to the beat.
We spread jam on our left hands in unison.
We screw lightbulbs on the right. Then left.
We streamer our arms to the right, then left.
We screw lightbulbs on the right. Then left.
We streamer our arms and spin.
And continue for the rest of the song, coming together to dance around Khadija whenever the song swells.
I can’t believe how good it feels to do something perfectly synchronized, where even when we mess up, we all laugh and help one another get back on track. And then, when Tats comes in at the end and jingles the bangles on her arms dramatically before launching into a mashup of TikTok dance moves, while the rest of us look at her theatrically perplexed, our hands positioned in front of our mouths, it’s just the perfect ending.