by Paula Jolin
He. She couldn’t possibly mean Trevor, could she? Miya wrapped her hands around the bowl and stared down into the dark liquid.
“You’re only half-Japanese, right?” Yoko asked. Miya looked up. “I’ve been waiting for you many years.” She closed her dark eyes and a stillness settled on the flat planes of her face. “Yes, I’m sure you’re the one in my dreams, the one who will carry on my tradition.”
What could she possibly mean by tradition? Nothing so mundane as a tea ceremony. Was it possible—Miya tried to read her hostess’s face, but the shuttered eyes, the tight, expressionless mouth gave her nothing to work with. Was it possible that Yoko had had that same experience, floating and being at the same time? Was there really something in this?
Or was it just a concussion, brought on by banging her head into a tree?
“It will be a long, difficult challenge,” Yoko told her, “but you, you will see it through. You have great gifts, although you perhaps don’t recognize them. One day, ao wa ai yori ideshi.You know what that means?” Miya stared back into her bowl. Yoko must have read her mind: no. “You have a pool of navy blue paint, and you take out a speck of it. That speck shines brighter, more powerful, than the original pool of almost black. Sometimes it is the student who outshines the teacher.”
Great gifts. That wild sense of something other in the forest—had Gillian felt it, had Aliya? Close her eyes, and she heard Aliya’s plaintive call as she stormed down the hill; saw Gillian dancing in circles, arms outstretched—illustrated in that one wild instant when the fire behind her ignited, shot up. They should have placed the stones closer together, should have been more careful to brush all the leaves away.
Both Gillian and Aliya had been silent over the weekend, each of them retreating to her own little world. But she’d walked into school beside Gillian this morning; the girl’s brow thundered when Miya mentioned obeah. And she’d bumped into Aliya after gym and heard some vague mutterings about Trevor’s presence. Trevor. Miya swallowed, tugged the ends of her hair. “I came here to ask you about a friend of mine,” she said. She licked her lips, rubbed them together. “A boy, he died recently. It may—well, it may be he took some things I said too harshly, in ways I didn’t mean.” Face reality, Miya. “Maybe his death was my fault. My mom, she’s the Japanese one, she told me that sometimes there are special prayers you can say to put dead people at ease. Since you’re a kitoshi, I thought maybe . . .”
Yoko waved away the idea with swift, angry arms. “Later, later,” she said. “For now, you must begin your training. You need to gain control over the spirits as soon as possible—if they tap into your untrained power, it could be disastrous. You must fast, twenty-four hours.” Yoko dropped her arms but kept on talking. “Then you will go at dawn to the waterfall by Oak’s Ridge, take off your clothes, all your clothes, and stand underneath it. As long as you can. The water will wash away your past, prepare you for your future. You won’t be ready for this transformation, oh no. Perhaps the first day, you’ll be able to stand one minute only. Then three, then five, as your body becomes stronger, as you think less of pain, and more of possibility. And then . . .”
A waterfall, in the winter. She’d catch pneumonia. No, not pneumonia, but maybe hypothermia. Shivering, goosebumps, muscle mis-coordination. Pale skin, blue toes.
“Later, there will be more challenges.”
“It’s twenty-eight degrees today,” said Miya.
“Yes,” said Yoko.
Miya brought the teacup to her mouth, but she didn’t drink. You must fast, twenty-four hours.
Yoko leaned forward, spoke with a new intensity. “You are hesitating. I see. But it will be worth it. Think of the power. The great mystics of the past—Ozuna, who flew around on a cloud, who controlled the weather, you’ve heard of him, of course. There were no limits to what he could have done. In Japan, many kitoshi are held back, able only to speak with the spirits, help ease their suffering and the bad luck they put on the living. But here in America, the spirits are more powerful, able to change everyday things, conditions, and that makes us more powerful, too. I believe it’s their contact with other spirits from all different parts of the world.”
Miya heard a sharp, indrawn breath. Her own.
“All kinds of possibilities,” Yoko told her. She looked over Miya’s head, threw her arms wide, as though talking to a large audience of spirits. “Maybe make a boy who hasn’t spoken tell you he loves you.” Love? She wasn’t interested in love. She was a sex-is-life kind of girl. But she found herself thinking of Luke’s pale face, his sad, green eyes.
The kitoshi waited. Not until Miya looked up did she say, “Or find a way to punish the one who broke your heart, who made you hate yourself. Or even find some new, special way to make the dead rest in peace. Everything is possible. But first, first you must begin your training.”
Miya stared. She reached for the sociological argument— the collective consciousness . . . ancestors . . . the sacred—but her vaunted memory failed her. Nothing but words on a page anyway, in a book published a hundred years ago. She’d been there, in the forest, floating above the trees. She’d seen her powerless self, seen—maybe—her potential. Was that a nod she just gave?
The kitoshi, at least, took it that way. “Of course, I will need many things to start your training. Incense, and prayers, and special fabrics. But we can begin for, let me see, maybe one thousand dollars. Very cheap, compared to what it would cost you back home.”
A thousand dollars. Miya’s first, gullible thought: Where am I going to get a thousand dollars? If I ask Mom, she’ll want to know—and then, Fraud! She shook herself and pushed back on the mat, hard enough that she crashed into the wall. She plunked the bowl back down on the ceramic tray and scrambled to her feet. “Well, thanks for the offer, Kitoshi-san, but I think I’ll have to pass.”
“But you’re the one . . .” Yoko kept repeating variations of the sentence as she followed Miya to the door. “Maybe I could buy everything I need for eight hundred. You think this is all about money? Of course not. If I had the money, I would gladly pay for everything myself . . .”
Miya slipped through the door and into her shoes, and Yoko called after her. Taken in by a charlatan! Unbelievable. She, the girl who’d always been so skeptical.
She ran down the stairs and through the magic shop below. The cashier at the register called out something, but Miya ignored her. Safe in the street now, she looked up overhead, half expecting Yoko to poke her head out the window and call down, Really, you’re my one and only. With perfect timing, Glimmer’s friend Savannah was passing by across the street, offering Miya yet another chance to be great fodder for the gossip-column crowd.
But Yoko must have accepted defeat. All Miya heard was some car honking at the light, the tinkle of a bicycle bell, classical music drifting out of the bookstore next door.
Miya buttoned up her leather jacket and headed down Main Street. Time to be satisfied. She’d gotten what she came for, right? Grasping, greedy kitoshi just proved that anything can happen when you let a tree bang you on the head.
Except there were those three teacups already set out on the mat. And the kitoshi’s comment about making a boy fall in love with you. Not that she was interested in love, of course not. But . . .
Not evidence, these things. Just coincidences.
Miya reached her car and went to open the door. Someone had stuck a flyer on her windshield. She ripped it off. Special offer, it read across the top. Ditch the Winter Blues and head to the waters of the Caribbean on a special tour of spectacular waterfalls.
Miya crumpled it up without reading any further. Another coincidence.
Right?
TWENTY
ALIYA STOOD in the woods beside Trevor’s driveway, staring at Mrs. Sanders’ car. Not the first time, this. The week of the funeral, she’d practically camped out here, watching mourners come and go, trying to figure out who was related to Trevor, tracing his features in their eyes and noses and fore
heads.
Remembering the fall day they’d cut school in the afternoon and Mrs. Sanders came home for lunch. They beat it out the back door, rushed around the corner, and covered themselves in leaves in this exact spot. No giggling, he whispered sternly, and then he added, I’d do you right here, you know, but then, I’d do you anywhere. How could she keep from giggling after that?
Down the street, a car roared around the corner. Aliya melted a little deeper into the woods.
She should be done with all this.
If only she didn’t have the feeling that the house had something to tell her. If only she wasn’t so sure that Trevor had been at that séance, hovering over her, about to take her hand. She’d heard him in those moments leading up to midnight, felt him, sensed him. But what had happened next? Did the jinn cause the fire to explode? Were they mocking her when she’d called on them for help? What did they know that she didn’t? The secret of Trevor’s last night, she was sure of it—a secret tied to the redheaded girl.
She had to see that torn-apart room for herself. Maybe it held a clue—a secret diary, a scrapbook, a video journal. Miya said no, but what did she know? There had to be something in it, Trevor’s room in ruins, like Aliya herself . . .
The car purred down the road, slowed as it neared the house. No need to panic. Unless someone was looking for her, she blended in with the trees.
“Hey.”
She looked over, had to. A black sedan with the windows rolled down came to a complete stop. A new black sedan, the one Nabile had just bought for Mariam.
“Aliya?”
Two choices: She could run till her feet fell off, but knowing Mariam, she’d probably gun the car and chase her through the trees. Or she could find out what her cousin was doing here. Aliya made her way past the trees and brush, sloshed through a puddle, and leaned in the passenger window. No salaams today. “Are you spying on me?”
“I used to see you come this way after school sometimes.” Mariam met her eyes without the hint of a smile. “Salaam aleikum, ya Aliya. We’re not all fools, you know.” Fear hit Aliya, so sharp, so abrupt, it felt like pain. Who else knew? Her parents? “You’re too young for this, too innocent. Someone needs to look out for you.”
“I can look out for myself,” she said.
“Can you? Can you, Aliya?”
The weather seemed harsh all of a sudden, the cold bit her nose, froze the ends of her hair. “I don’t like spies,” Aliya said. “Or gossips.” The fear spread until even her fingernails shook. Had Mariam followed her around like this when she was with Trevor?
“He wasn’t worth it, Aliya. He still isn’t.”
Of course she had.
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“I know enough,” said Mariam. “Sometimes I’d run into him at the butcher shop; he’d come in and buy fresh meat for his dog. Demented American. People are starving all over the world—people are starving right down the street—and he’s giving choice lamb to a dog.” Aliya stared at her. She remembered thinking the exact same thing, those precise words. Until she saw Trevor curled up on the couch, his arms clutching that dog like a climbing rope. She couldn’t help but like Rambling a little after that. The week before Trevor died, she’d even bought Rambling a leather collar and leash, to replace the ones he’d chewed through. She’d never had a chance to give them to Trevor. Her last present to him, still hidden in her top drawer.
“How did you know about . . .” She couldn’t say the words. Trevor and me. She didn’t like this, her carefully delineated worlds crashing into each other.
“He was a donkey, Aliya. I saw him in the library once with this redhead—”
Aliya’s head swung up. “What? Who? What was her name?”
Mariam put both hands on her leather padded steering wheel. “No idea. I pretended to look up a word in the dictionary and hovered around their table for a few minutes because . . . Well, I thought if I told you he was with someone else, you’d drop him.”
Aliya’s heart broke. Literally. One piece headed up to her brain to chop it into little pieces, the other down to her stomach to set off a riot. “They were together? You’re sure?”
“No, I’m not sure. That’s why I didn’t say anything to you. They didn’t hold hands or kiss, but they sat close together, laughing too loud, even though it was the library. The looks she gave me . . . she didn’t say ‘ninja,’ but she might as well have.” Mariam blinked her eyes, gave two tight shakes of the head. “So rude. He didn’t say anything to her, ask her to stop, even though he was, the two of you were, well, whatever.”
Wow. Aliya was still alive, breathing even. “I need to find out who she is.”
Mariam clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “No, you don’t. You need to get in the car and let me drive you home.”
Aliya turned her head and stared at the front yard. What she needed was . . . well, whatever it was, she wasn’t getting it from Trevor’s house. At least not while his mother was there. Still, climbing in the car with Mariam seemed too much like giving up, too much like letting her cousin win. Mariam was trying to talk her out of Trevor.
Then again, wasn’t she trying to talk herself out of Trevor?
She eased herself back a little and opened the door. Her chest felt heavy, like it had doubled, tripled its weight. The air stretched between them, put a million extra miles smack dab in the space between the front seats. She finally managed to say, “I don’t know why you care so much.”
“I’m your cousin,” said Mariam, “and your sister in Islam. Of course I care.” Her mouth screwed up, but maybe she was just moistening her lips. “This whole boyfriend thing, it never works out. You love him so much, just looking at him makes you smile, and you do whatever it takes to make him happy. He loves you back, of course he does, when love means stroking your hair, or buying you illegal martinis, but when you need him . . . suddenly he doesn’t recognize your number on the Caller ID.” She smoothed her hijab into place then started the car. “I’ve seen it happen to a million girls.”
“Trevor wasn’t like that,” said Aliya. She couldn’t, wouldn’t—didn’t—think of his e-mail: I can’t come tonight either. But soon . . .
But never.
Mariam snorted as she pulled into a three-point turn. “They’re all like that, Aliya.” She pressed the gas, and they roared down the road. Aliya wanted, oh, how she wanted, to look back at the house one last time, to see the Secret Truth about Trevor Sanders escape from the windows, to jump up and catch it as it tried to float away like a balloon. But she didn’t.
“The safe thing to do is get married, love your husband,” said Mariam. Her pompousness spilled into unbearable.
“The fact that you let them railroad you into marrying some FOB with a mustache just because he has a residential surgery doesn’t mean I’m going to.”
“You have no idea,” said Mariam. Was that a tremor in her voice? Her lips—yes, trembling; her eyes wet? Aliya blinked, and the whole world changed.
“You’re not talking about me,” she said. “You’re talking about you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Mariam. “I’m an adamiya.”
Too late. Aliya had pressed the rewind button on her memory, and scenes from last year scrolled across the screen, garbled. Mariam had been erratic, hadn’t she? Exuberant at times, like the day she brought Mama that vase full of roses, despondent at others. The plate of stuffed grape leaves she threw across the room, the screaming match she got into with Mama over—well, what was it over? The stress of exams, must be, Aliya had thought. Then she’d tuned out the noise, buried her face in her phone, sent more texts, sent them faster.
Mariam had had a boyfriend, of course she had. An Unbeliever, somebody at school. Maybe he’d been on the literary magazine, stayed late to read manuscripts, bumped elbows with her as they went to draw the same red line on a novella.
Had Mama known? Had Baba? The screaming match had been followed by a locked-door session
in the living room, Mama emerging sorrowful, telling them Mariam might be too sick to take exams. She wasn’t though, was she? She starred on every one, though she’d been so pale and distant and snappish through the spring. By God, could you leave me alone? she’d said, more than once, when Aliya’d brought her hot milk with sugar on Mama’s orders. Brought it upstairs to her own bedroom, where Mariam lay with the curtains pulled down and a cold compress pressed to her forehead.
After the fight, she lay about for a few more days, then she cheered up. Everyone said it was because she’d gotten engaged.
“Oh my God,” Aliya said. The words came out Arabic. Mama had broken up Mariam’s relationship, broken her heart, then bought her off with a man from abroad. Or the boyfriend had broken her heart, Mama had descended on him, shrieking—Aliya was sure of that—threatening to cut off his testicles and then got Baba to cheer her up with a new husband. Did it even matter? Because Mariam was crying now, tears spilling out of her dark eyes, making lines on her sharp nose. “I never loved him,” she said. “Not the way I love Nabile, never.”
“Who else knows about this?”
Mariam didn’t answer. She pulled up at a stop sign, took a sharp, angry left turn. “I wanted their ‘freedom,’” she said at last. “And all I found was a straightjacket. There’s a reason Allah forbids boyfriends, Aliya, and I know what it is. Do you really want to end up like that? Chewed up and spit out? I came so close.” Mariam swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “You’re the lucky one, Aliya. God spared you what I went through.”
Aliya stiffened. What was she saying? That God let Trevor die in order to keep Aliya away from an Unbeliever? Hardly likely. And anyway, all boys, all Americans, weren’t alike. Trevor wouldn’t have chewed her or spit her or crumpled her. Remember the night rain had pounded the basement windows so hard they shook? And Trevor had bundled her tightly in a blanket, secured her with his arms. Brushed her cheek, teased her nose with his cologne. She breathed deeply. Was that Baldessarini she was smelling now?