“When I was a girl, I played soccer,” her ana says. “In Turkey, we called it football. Did you know that, Yasaman?”
Yasaman is stunned. Her ana played soccer? Her ana ran around a field chasing a ball, possibly even kicking it?
“I went to an all-girls school, of course,” her ana continues. She smiles. “I was quite good. Very fast.”
Yasaman can’t wrap her head around her mother’s story. She has only seen her ana in skirts and stylish slacks suitable for a wife and mother. At her all-girls school, when she was young, did she play soccer in slacks?
“Rivendell is not an all-girls school,” her ana says.
Yasaman knows that, of course. She waits on pins and needles to hear what her ana will say next.
“I asked this Josie if the trapeze class would be just for girls. She said no.”
Yasaman exhales. She was holding her breath without realizing it, and now she feels … deflated.
“But Yasaman, my beautiful daughter, you are ten years old. A ten-year-old is a child, not yet a young lady. Not yet a woman.” She lowers her hand and cups Yasaman’s cheek. “Do you want to take this … trapeze class, Yasaman?”
“No?” Yasaman says uncertainly.
Her ana tilts her head.
Yasaman gathers her courage. “Y-yes?”
“You want to fly through the air with the greatest of ease?” her ana says, a liveliness dancing in her eyes.
Yasaman can’t believe this is happening. She’s not quite sure what is happening. What her ana just said rings a bell, though. Yasaman received a CD as a birthday present, a collection of children’s songs, and one of them was about a trapeze artist in the circus. She hasn’t thought of that song in ages.
“I do,” Yasaman says, and her yearning hits her with full force. She does want to fly through the air. She wants to so much.
Her ana grows serious. “Your baba has reservations. But as I said, you’re ten years old, not fifteen. It is fine for you to do an after-school activity with boys. You’re in classes with them all day long, yes?”
Yes, yes, she is in classes with them all day long. She bobs her head, and her hair bounces against her shoulders. Her long hair, which is usually covered and bound. Her excitement ebbs.
“But … what about my hijab?” she asks. Trapeze lessons will involve, among other things, hanging upside down. Her underwear will not show, as Katie-Rose wondered out loud, because she’ll be wearing pants. But how can Yasaman hang upside down in her hijab? It will slip out of place. It will expose her hair. It will mess everything up!
“Stay here,” Yasaman’s ana says, patting Yasaman’s knee and rising. She leaves the living the room, and a l-o-n-g time passes before she returns, carrying a cloth-wrapped package. She places it in Yasaman’s lap.
Yasaman looks at it, then at her mother.
“Open it,” her mother says.
Yasaman peels back the folds of cloth. Within, folded into a neat bundle, is more cloth. She lifts up this second piece of cloth. It’s made out of stretchy material, and unlike a conventional hijab, it can’t be unfolded into the shape of a scarf. It can’t be unfolded at all. Yasaman examines it from all angles. It’s somewhat like a ski mask, but with one big face-size hole instead of holes just for your eyes, and with fabric trailing beyond where a ski mask would end.
“You pull it over your head,” her mother says. Her voice is animated. “Try it.”
Yasaman does as she’s told, twisting and tugging until her head pops through the opening.
“It’s not the most flattering hijab, but it stays in place, see?” her mother says.
Yasaman shakes her head. The flowing ends of the hijab whip about, but the part framing her face stays put. She gets to her feet and does jumping jacks, and then twirls, and then as much of a backbend as she’s capable of. She comes out of the backbend breathing hard. She realizes she’ll have to put her hair in a ponytail and tuck it inside the stretchy ski mask part, but that’s no big deal. For her final test, she just leans over with straight legs and touches her toes. Her head hangs low. The strange new hijab remains in place.
She stands up, beaming. “I can go upside-down.”
“Indeed. Modesty is important, but Allah gave you your strong body for a reason.”
Yasaman’s spine tingles. “So … does this mean …?”
“The answer is yes, Yasaman. Yes, you can take the trapeze class.” Her ana smiles and cups Yasaman’s cheek, blessing her in the traditional Muslim way. “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.”
America is making fun of, it seems, because of how dumb the lyrics are. The song is all about saying, “Yay, Friday! Party time!” but the lyrics are basically a preschooler’s lesson in the days of the week. Like, “Yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday, tomorrow will be Saturday …”
It goes something like that, and sure, Milla agrees that it’s goofy. But! Today is Thursday, and tomorrow is Friday, and that means … the Lock-In!!! If Milla had a packet of Funfetti, she would sprinkle it through the air as she follows her class outside for lunch.
Milla does not and will not ever have a packet of Funfetti, however, at least not if her Mom Abigail has anything to say about it. Why? Because Funfetti only comes in boxed cake mixes, and Mom Abigail is strongly against boxed cake mixes. Boxed cake mixes go against her principles, and she can detect the particular fake flavor of a non-homemade cake after eating the tiniest nibble. Same with brownies from a mix, muffins from a mix, chocolate chip cookies from one of those plastic-wrapped logs in the refrigerated section of the grocery store … anything.
So, no Funfetti for Milla, but that’s what Mom Joyce would call a high-class problem, since it means that Mom Abigail keeps their house stocked with delicious homemade baked goods. Like brownies! Yay!
This morning, Milla packed not one, not two, but three of her Mom Abigail’s homemade brownies in her lunch box. This morning, she offered one of the brownies to Mr. Emerson, but before she officially handed it over, she told him there was one condition he had to agree to. And if he didn’t? No brownie.
“What’s the condition?” Mr. Emerson said, eyeing the Saran-wrapped goodie. He knew what a good cook Milla’s mom was, and he knew that her specialities were baked goods because she’s donated lots of them to bake sale fundraisers over the years.
“That you share it with Ms. Perez,” Milla said. She jiggled it in her palm. “It’s big, see? So you’ll both still get a full brownie, basically.”
Mr. Emerson chuckled. He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head. “All right, Milla, tell me this: Why didn’t you bring Ms. Perez one of her own?”
“Well, I was supposed to. That’s the problem,” Milla explained. “I totally promised I would, but I forgot, and so that’s why I need you to help me out. ‘Kay?”
He inhaled and opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he exhaled and chuckled. Again. “Sure,” he said. “I would be delighted to share your mother’s delicious brownie with Ms. Perez.” He wiggled his fingers. “Now hand it over, please, ma’am.”
The second brownie is for Elena. Milla plans to give it to her before the end of lunch. It’ll be an icebreaker, and also a purely nice gesture, and hopefully it’ll remind Elena that Elena herself is a nice person who does nice things. Maybe Elena hasn’t been nice this week, but that’s because Modessa and Quin have confused her.
Milla plans to un-confuse her, because she wishes someone had done that for her when she got sucked into Modessa’s mean games. Elena, in Milla’s way of looking at things, kind of is Milla, back when Milla was teetering between accepting Modessa’s friendship (regardless of the cost) and staying clear of Modessa (regardless of the cost).
Saving Elena is Milla’s chance to go back and save herself. It’s her chance to prove to Modessa and Quin that she is not that girl anymore, while at the same time protecting Elena from getting hurt later on down the road. She just prays she doesn’t wimp out.
Today’s weather is nice, so the teacher
s are letting the kids eat lunch outside. Milla spots Violet at their favorite table, the one near the tetherball court. She waves to let Violet know she’s seen her, but she doesn’t yet head over. She has a pit stop to make first, a freaky and nerve-wracking pit stop. She pauses and scans the playground, giving herself a mental pep talk as she does.
You’re not going to wimp out, she tells herself. You’re braver than you give yourself credit for! You’re not small, either, even though you drew yourself that way in Sunday school. So get over it, okay?
Telling someone—even herself—to “get over it” isn’t the sort of thing Milla would generally do. But given the circumstances, it feels right. She doesn’t want to be small, or to see herself as small, or to be seen by others as small.
As for being brave, she wants to live up to the example set by her flower friends, who have done so many brave things it’s hard to keep track of them all. Like Yasaman, who, when pressed to the wall, held her chin high and told her parents she did want to take trapeze lessons, despite being scared to death of their reaction.
Like Katie-Rose, who can be a busybody, but who’s certainly not afraid to do whatever she wants to do.
And like Violet, who is the bravest of them all, Milla thinks. Her mom just got released from the locked ward of California Regional’s mental hospital. Violet has to be terrified at the thought of her mom getting sick again, since if she got sick again, she’d be locked up again. Talk about scary! But Violet keeps pushing through it, staying strong for her mom. Maybe too strong, a possibility Milla stores away for later consideration.
She sees the back of Modessa’s head. She’s flanked by Quin on one side and Elena on the other, and Milla actually doesn’t want to go over to them at all. The brownie, wrapped in Saran wrap and tied with a bow, dangles like dead weight from her hand.
But she has to go over to them, and so for courage, she replays a piece of advice her Mom Joyce gave her last night. She was having trouble falling asleep, and her mom asked why, and so Milla propped herself up on her elbow and told her a little bit of the Modessa-Quin-Elena story.
“Ah,” her Mom Joyce said in that parent way of not actually saying “yes” or “no” to the story itself. She sat on Milla’s bed and gentled Milla’s elbow out of its propped-up position. Once Milla was lying down flat again, she said, “Milla, we all have fears. Every single person in the world has moments of being scared or nervous or whatever.”
“Even you?” Milla asked.
Mom Joyce smiled. “Even me. But sweetie? You can’t run away from the things that scare you, especially when you really really want to. Because if you do, do you know what’ll happen?”
“What?”
“You’ll experience a huge rush of relief, which your body will interpret as a reward. And by rewarding yourself for not doing the scary thing, you’ll teach yourself to keep not doing the scary things.”
“Oh,” Milla said. It didn’t sound too bad, rewarding yourself for not doing scary things.
Mom Joyce ran her fingers through Milla’s hair the way Milla liked. “And Milla? The more you run away from things, or avoid certain situations, or say no to opportunities, the smaller your world becomes, until one day you wake up and find yourself in a tiny, walled-in box. Like Mrs. Krutcher from church. Do you remember Mrs. Krutcher?”
Milla knew of her, but she’d never met her, because she never came to the Sunday services. People at church called Mrs. Krutcher a “shut-in,” and sometimes Pastor Sharon prayed for her during “Prayers for the People.” There was a list of people who checked on her and brought her food on different days, and Mom Joyce and Mom Abigail were on that list, which made Milla proud.
“Well, you don’t want to end up like her, not that you ever would,” Mom Joyce finished. “But baby, believe me. That’s not the life you want.”
It isn’t. Mom Joyce is right. A cool breeze lifts Milla’s hair, reminding her of her mom’s touch, and she squares her shoulders.
“Mills, over here!” calls Katie-Rose, who’s joined Violet at their lunch table. She’s wearing a T-shirt she probably stole from her dad’s undershirt drawer, because it’s huge on her. Across the front, in bold, handwritten letters, it says, CHICKS DON’T DIG STINKS.
Milla would smile if her stomach wasn’t so knotted up.
Yasaman’s there, too, looking far more elegant in jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt with a gold star in the middle, and a gold-flecked hijab. All three FFFs look at her curiously, and Katie-Rose hollers, “What’s the hold up, lady?”
“One sec!” Milla calls. Because first? The brownie. Elena. Her heart thumps, but too bad. She makes her feet move forward.
When she’s almost to them, Quin glances over her shoulder and sees her. Her eyes widen, and she turns back, speaking urgently to Modessa and Elena. Modessa cranes her neck to double-check Quin’s report, maybe, and then there’s more huddled-tight conversation. Quin laughs. Milla is all nerves.
They are just girls, Milla tells herself. They. Are. Just. Girls.
“Um, hi,” she says when she’s directly behind them.
In unison, they swivel to face her. Milla focuses on Elena, who gulps. She offers her the brownie, saying, “This is for you. You can, you know, share with Quin and Modessa if you want.”
Elena doesn’t accept it. Her chest rises and falls.
“Remember,” Modessa warns her in a low voice.
“O-kaaay,” Milla says. She shifts her weight. “So … can I speak to you alone?”
“No,” Modessa says.
Milla looks at her. It must be a trick of the light, but her eyes are slanted, and she seems to have no pupils. “Is Elena not allowed to answer for herself? Are you afraid she’d say yes?”
“Whatever you want to say to Elena, you can say in front of all of us,” Modessa says. “Right, Elena?”
Elena hesitates.
“Right, Elena?” Modessa repeats, and Elena startles and nods too vigorously.
“Fine,” Milla says. She pretends that she’s Mom Joyce, and she takes a seat by this doll-robot version of Elena that isn’t really Elena, but just a human being with fears of her own. “Elena? Do you want to come to the Lock-In with me? I know you haven’t signed up, but it’s not too late.”
Quin chokes back a laugh, but she wants Milla to hear. She wants Modessa to hear.
“We could go together,” Milla presses on. “It’ll be fun.”
Elena grips the edge of the table. Her knuckles are white.
“Elena? Modessa isn’t the boss of you.” She tries to laugh in a way that shows how stupid Modessa is being. “You’re allowed to talk to me if you want to.”
“Oh, Camilla,” Modessa says, as if whatever she’s about to explain is a terribly easy concept to understand for all but the slowest students. “Elena knows what she’s allowed to do and not do.”
Milla feels heat rise to her face. She keeps her gaze on Elena. “Elena?”
“Is it time?” Quin asks, and Modessa must nod, because Quin says, “Three, two, one … now!”
All three girls bare their sharp, white teeth and hiss. Milla startles, jumping to her feet, but holding her ground. They’ve tried this trick once, and it worked, but it’s not going to work again.
The three girls rise together and advance, and Milla’s body tries to change Milla’s mind. Milla’s body wants to back away and run, because Modessa, Quin, and Elena are wolf-girls, witches, and evil chicks at the same time. They’re just as likely to eat themselves as they are to eat Milla, and when Elena—Elena!—swipes the air with a claw-fingered hand, Milla loses all strength of will. She flees, their laughter chasing her as she runs from the table.
“Milla,” someone says. “Milla, are you okay?”
Milla stops. Her breathing is labored. Max is looking at her with concern.
“H-hi,” she says. She feels ashamed—did Max witness her encounter with the evil chick wolf-girls? Then she takes a big breath, lifts her chin, and tells herself, No. You tried.
Give yourself a little credit, at least.
Max is still waiting for her answer
“Yeah, I’m totally okay. Well, not totally, but … um …” She bites her thumbnail. “I kinda went through something weird just now, but I’m fine.” She makes a face to say that it’s not worth talking about.
“Good,” Max says. “Um, not about the weird thing, but good that you’re okay, or fine, or whatever.”
Milla gives him a small smile. He always seems to know how to make her feel better. She holds out the brownie Elena rejected and says, “Here, this is for you.”
Max takes it. “Really? Cool.”
Milla’s mood lifts. She knows that Max will eat the brownie and think it’s yummy, and that makes her feel almost happy. She expresses her almost-happiness by twisting her shoulders in a way that makes her skirt swish. She didn’t know she knew how to do that, but it makes her feel cute. Flirty.
“You’re welcome,” she says. “Well … bye.”
He touches her arm. “Hold on, I want to show you something.” He glances around, and then, with his free hand, he unzips a pocket on his shirt. Milla is surprised, because until now she hadn’t noticed that there was a pocket on his shirt.
She steps closer and sees that it’s meant to be invisible, which is pretty cool. The shirt is black, the zipper is black, and not only that, the pocket isn’t in a typical shirt-pocket location. It’s higher up, and diagonal, so that it almost blends in with the shoulder seam.
Max glances at Milla, then pulls something out of the invisible pocket. It’s his iPhone, the one his parents gave him when his hamster died. He brought it to school even though he’s not allowed! He reveals an inch of it before dropping it back into the hidden pocket and zipping the pocket shut.
“Omigosh!” Milla says.
“And not only that, but look.” He fingers the collar of his shirt, and Milla sees that there are two small slits in the fabric, one on each side. From one of the slits, he tugs out an ear bud. “The other one’s on the other side. The cord runs through the shirt and connects to my phone.”
“That’s awesome,” Milla marvels.