Cornered

by Rhoda Belleza

  “Apologize to Chacha jaan,” my father orders.

  There’s no way I’m apologizing to anyone else, not today, and especially not to him. So I run away, out of the kitchen, down the hall and up the stairs, and slam my bedroom door. I know my mother is going to start knocking in two minutes but an hour goes by and nothing. Nobody. By the time my mother arrives, I’ve stopped bawling and my fury has been subdued by remorse and shame. Though I still don’t ever want to be seen with Chacha jaan, I feel terrible that he had to hear me shouting it.

  “Are you okay, Shabs?” My mother approaches the bed slowly, like she’s worried I might lash out again.

  I pull the covers over my head. “Go away.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just starts pressing each of my toes, starting with my left pinky. This is how I learned to count to ten in Urdu when I was little. “Chacha jaan left. Abba’s taken him to a hotel next to the airport. He’ll catch his flight to Karachi straight from there tomorrow. Abba didn’t want him to go, but Chacha jaan, he insisted.”

  So Chacha jaan was finally gone. I ought to be rejoicing, but instead I feel sick. I didn’t want him to go like this. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d stayed the night, since I’m planning on never leaving my room anyway. He must really hate me. He must think I’m an awful brat.

  “He left something for you.” My mother reaches into the pocket of her slacks and holds up Chacha jaan’s tasbih. I don’t move, so my mother lays it down gently on top of the blanket.

  “It used to be his wife’s tasbih. You never met her, but she was a very kind woman. After I married your father, I stayed for some time at his family’s house. I was very nervous being a new bride at the in-laws, but Chacha jaan’s wife was so kind to me. Some of the other people in the house weren’t very nice to her, but I never heard her say anything bad about anyone.”

  She pauses, waiting for me to respond. I don’t.

  “What exactly happened at school, Shabnam?”

  “Not now, Amma. Please.”

  “Fine. I’ll come back later.” I must look really pathetic, because it’s not like my mother to leave me alone so readily. “But then we have to talk.”

  “Just no Abba, please.”

  “All right. But you’ll have to talk to him too, you know.”

  “I know.”

  My mother kisses my forehead and leaves. I stare at the tasbih for a while, hesitant to actually touch it. Why did he give it to me? His wife and I may look similar but she never would have behaved like I did tonight. What does he expect me to do with it? Surely he’s feeling its absence, like when you wear a watch all the time and then go one day without it. I hope it isn’t making him miss his wife more. But I’m sure it is.

  I want to hide under the covers again and feel sorry for myself, but I can’t, because I keep seeing Chacha jaan, hunched over on a bed in some ugly, lonely hotel room—his fingers instinctively moving down the prayer beads that are now lying next to me—missing his kind wife with curly hair. So I pick up the tasbih, close my eyes, and say a prayer for both of us, hoping that maybe, somehow, he’ll be able to feel it, and understand.

  The Shift Sticks

  BY JOSH BERK

  I WAS STANDING at a little sunglasses stand in the middle of the mall. A banner at the kiosk displayed a picture of a sun wearing sunglasses. Why does the sun need sunglasses? It shouldn’t really, but neither did I. It was just something to look at while my aunt and little sister shopped. I got the distinct feeling they didn’t want me around. Possibly training bras were involved. Something girly for sure. Hannah was eleven, and doing just about anything with her was weird now. So I split off and proceeded to roam the mall, killing time in every way I knew how.

  Mainly that meant video games and soft pretzels, neither of which lasted long. Soon I was bored and out of money. So the sunglasses stand it was. I tried on a flashy pair of brushed silver, aviator-style, very-not-me glasses with mirrored lenses just to amuse myself. Could I buy these flashy glasses and somehow become a different sort of person? It was a fun thought, but no, that’s not how it works. Plus they made my big nose look even bigger somehow. And also there was the whole out-of-money thing. Maybe I could become the type of person who steals sunglasses? I have these types of thoughts. Then, unexpectedly, I heard my name.

  Actually “unexpected” doesn’t even begin to describe it. I was visiting my aunt and uncle’s lame suburban town—fifty miles east from my own lame suburban town—and it wasn’t an exaggeration to say no one knew me here. Outside of Aunt Tina, Uncle Eli, and Hannah, I didn’t exist. This was a rough yet young teenage girl sort of a voice; it was the kind of voice that clearly did not come from a member of my family.

  “Bryan Forbes?” the voice said again, and before I could turn to look, I felt a hip smack into mine. I lost my balance and almost knocked over the stand, then steadied myself and looked over. Indeed, the voice did belong to a girl. The hip too. She was trying on a pair of sunglasses herself—bright neon green ones—and the price tag whipped around like a kite as she spun to greet me.

  “Um, yeah?” I said, pulling off the aviators. “Do I know you?” Something in her face looked familiar, but I didn’t know anyone like that. Not with the bright yellow dreadlocks and lip piercings. Not with rock star jeans. Not with the pierced nose. And the tattoos! An army of strange figures and phrases marched up and down her arms in brightly colored ink.

  “Dude, it’s me, Tiffany,” she said. Her voice was raspy, like a smoker’s. “We went to elementary school together.” My brain went fuzzy for a moment. Then the words formed very slowly in the back of my mind. Tiffany. Sanz. Holy. Shit.

  • • •

  What I remember about Tiffany Sanz:

  We weren’t very clever. What we were was mean. We called Tiffany a dog. All the time. I don’t know what started it, but once we decided she was a dog, that was it. Sometimes we would bark when she walked by, or maybe throw a stick and ask her to chase it. One time we found a pile of dog turds under the slide and someone said, “Oh, Tiffany, what did you do?” and we just about died of laughing. And always, someone sang the jingle from a popular dog food commercial when she was around. Sometimes she would just take it or sometimes she would run away. We liked it when she ran because it meant we could chase her as we sang, “Puppy chow, puppy chow! Make your lucky pup say wow!”

  I never saw her cry, but she must have wanted to. Even then I knew it was cruel, and I took comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the ringleader. But I was for sure a follower, and in a lot of ways that was even worse. I was right there, third or fourth in line, running around the playground after Tiffany with the wind in my hair and a smile on my face. “MAKE YOUR LUCKY PUP SAY WOW!”

  • • •

  “Don’t tell me you’re not Bryan Forbes,” she said, punching me in the shoulder. “It says your name on your jacket.” She still wore the neon green sunglasses, which she lowered to glower at me. I couldn’t deny being me. I was wearing my North High cross-country jacket (more like a lame Windbreaker) which clearly said B. FORBES across the back in block letters.

  “Tiffany Sanz?” I asked. My voice bubbled out of me like I was underwater. Like my lungs were filling with blood. It was amazing how quickly the name came to me. Like third grade was yesterday, not half a lifetime ago, back when we were all freaking out about learning Roman numerals.

  “How many other Tiffany’s were there in Mr. Clarke’s class, Bryan Forbes? Of course it’s me.” Man, her voice was rough. How many cigarettes can you smoke by seventeen?

  “Wow,” I said, still feeling like I was in a dream. “Mr. Clarke. I haven’t thought about him in years.”

  “He was cool. I mean, moving out of that crap school was the best thing that ever happened to me. But Mr. Clarke was cool. He taught me a lot about writing.” She smiled as if something about her saying that should be clear to me. Was she a famous writer now? Seemed unlikely. What did I miss? I barely remembered anything besides Mr. Clarke giving us
root beer-flavored candy if we got the right answer. That seemed like a stupid thing to bring up right now, so I said nothing.

  Tiffany took off the sunglasses and grabbed another pair that were way too big for her face. They were the type of dark-orange, old person sunglasses designed to fit over your regular prescription glasses. She looked like a blind person, which is to say she looked ridiculous. I think that was the point.

  She smiled and took a long sip of her drink, then pointed toward my jacket with the straw of her cup. “You go to North I see. I guess that’s where I would have ended up if we didn’t move out of that particular circle of hell.”

  “Yeah,” I said without any heart. “Go Vikings.”

  “Soooo, at North . . . are you one of the cool kids, Bryan Forbes?”

  I paused. It was weird to be asked so bluntly. I mean, people talked about who was cool all the time, but they didn’t talk about it. It was like this unsaid thing. We all could name the cool, the uncool, the sorta cool. There was no disagreement. It was like someone sent out a mass text and we all were bound to follow its instructions, then delete it and never speak of it again. That was the thing. You never just talked about who was cool and who wasn’t.

  I shrugged. I knew right where I stood. Precisely in the middle. Just like back in elementary school. Just like my whole life. Neither top nor bottom, cool nor uncool. But I didn’t want to be direct about it. “Kinda I guess. Um, you?”

  “Ha!” she spat. “Am I cool? That’s a no, Bryan Forbes. But I do not mind. I was bad at being normal, but good at being weird. Amazing how easy it was to switch.” As if to illustrate her point, she put on a different pair of sunglasses. These were small purple circles. Could it be that easy to change who you were?

  “Huh,” I said.

  “Aww, you turned out cute, Bryan Forbes.”

  “Thanks?” My voice came out like the crinkle of a brown paper bag. I felt my face get hot, and I suddenly felt thirsty.

  “So what are you doing at this mall, in this town, Bryan Forbes?” she asked.

  “I’m uh, visiting my aunt and uncle. They live out this way.”

  “Hey, is your aunt Tina Forbes the real estate agent?” Tiffany asked. “She has those commercials! Tina Forbes: Let ME help YOU find a home. Your new life begins TODAY.”

  “Haha,” I said. “Yup, that’s her.”

  “So, in town for just the day or . . .?” Tiffany let her question trail off. She popped in a piece of gum, chewed it, and blew a huge bubble until it popped.

  “Through the weekend,” I said.

  “Awesome. Come see my band. Tonight. I play guitar and sing. We’re called The Shit Sticks. Long story. And okay, they won’t let us put that on the marquee so it will say ‘The Shift Sticks’ which totally misses the point”—she moved a dreadlock that fell in front of her face—“and okay, it’s not a marquee, more like a chalkboard, which is all sorts of lame, but whatever. A show is a show, you know?”

  I nodded in agreement. Sure, I knew all about the world of being in bands and how shows are shows or whatever. She pulled a pen from a pocket, grabbed my hand, and started to write, presumably the address. It was sort of hard for her to write because my hand was really sweaty. I pulled it back and wiped it on my shirt, mumbling an apology. She tried again and kept talking. “Vortigern’s Coffee Shop down on Main. We go on at nine or so. I’ll dedicate a song to you.”

  Wait: Did I just get invited to go see Tiffany Sanz perform? Did I want to go see Tiffany Sanz perform? Did Tiffany Sanz say I was cute? It was too weird. I tried to get out of it. I’m always trying to get out of stuff.

  “I don’t know. I’m, uh, not much for coffee,” I said.

  “They also serve tea,” she said sharply.

  “I’m not a big tea person either.”

  “I should have taken you for a hot beverage discriminator. But you could probably get a cold soda. Unless you also hate sodas. But everyone needs liquid. Except robots.” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you a robot, Bryan Forbes?”

  “No, I’m not a robot,” I said, answering in a tone far too serious. “I’m just not much for coffeehouses.”

  “You won’t catch gay or something. And it’s not whiny coffeehouse music. We rock pretty hard. Do you not like rock and roll music, Bryan Forbes?”

  “Yeah, no, I mean, I like rock okay, but . . .”

  “Cool, fine, I get it. Forget it then,” she said. “Not your scene. You have sports games to watch and jock strap fittings to attend. It’s fine.”

  With that she spun on her booted heel, shoved her hands into the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt, and walked away. What the hell? I stared into my hand. I was still sweating and the smudgy ink was becoming hard-to-read. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to go anyway. Yet for some reason there I was, repeating the address over and over in my mind, trying not to forget it.

  I caught my reflection in the little mirror on the side of the kiosk. I looked like I had seen a ghost. I stared at myself for a few seconds—not something I normally love doing. But hey, some people think I turned out cute. I watched Tiffany until she disappeared into a clothing store, stuffed with people and loud music. She turned out cute too. Who would have guessed? I never thought I’d be into tattoos and piercings, but hey, maybe people do change. Maybe I could just become a different me, at least for a little while.

  People always say it’s a small world, but it really isn’t. You can be a few towns away and, if you don’t want to be found, it’s like you moved to the end of the earth. You can walk from the sunglasses stand into Miss Fashions for Teens, set your Facebook to private, and it can be like you’re on another planet.

  Even as part of me was trying to memorize the address to the coffee shop, part of me doubted I’d ever see Tiffany Sanz ever again. I wouldn’t really go. Would I? My mind wandered to those tattoos. I wanted to ask if they had hurt? If she has others, hidden ones she could show me. . . .

  I realized I was just standing there, zoning out. The sunglasses guy, who was middle-aged and Indian, was looking at me like “are you going to buy some freaking sunglasses or just stand there for nine hours?” So I put the glasses back on the rack and mumbled something like “not my size.” I saw an empty bench and walked over to it. I sat down to think, or to try not to think, about Tiffany Sanz. I failed. An unpleasant, acidic feeling kept rising up in my chest. It wasn’t this new, rock-star Tiffany I was thinking about. It was the old one. The scene from elementary school played unwanted in my head over and over. “Make your lucky pup say wow!” I felt a little sick, and it probably wasn’t from all the pretzels I’d been eating.

  My phone beeped, making me jump. It was a text from my dad. “ARE YOU BEING GOOD?” it demanded. Somehow even his text messages had his signature stern tone of voice. I fired back a quick “yes, sir.” It was good to keep it short with my dad, otherwise I’d end up saying the wrong thing like I always did. Plus I wanted to talk about the Tiffany thing, so I texted my best friend from home, Nate. I knew he was unlikely to provide much insight, but it was worth a shot.

  ME: dude you’ll never guess who i just saw: tiffany sanz!

  NATE: you didnt give me time to guess. i was going to guess tiffany sanz

  ME: u were not!

  NATE: then give me time to guess next time

  ME: fine shut up. isn’t it crazy though?

  NATE: not really. it is fairly impossible to predict the exact location of anything with certainty, sure, but it’s not that odd that she would have turned up at the mall in westport the same time as you

  Nate was on cross-country like me, but also in all honors classes (not like me). He was always relating everything to math and physics, and very often I had no idea what he was talking about.

  ME: how do u know we were at the mall?

  NATE: what else is there to do in westport?

  ME: good point. it felt weird seeing her. i felt so bad.

  NATE: bad about what?

  ME: the way we were back then, u know<
br />
  NATE: i’m sure she’s over it

  ME: would u be?

  NATE: i doubt it, but i’m sort of a vengeful bastard that way. does she still look the same? those glasses! and remember that sweatshirt with the cats she always wore?

  ME: no totally different!

  NATE: hot?

  ME: more like all tattoos and piercings and stuff

  NATE: whoa! So . . . hot?

  Nate had his own weird look these days—not at all classic nerd, but more like a hybrid hippie/heavy metal guy. He had shoulder-length hair and a thin mustache that he thought made him look tougher, but really just made him look like a perv. I imagined him hunched over his phone, waiting to hear my attractiveness rating of the new Tiffany Sanz.

  ME: kinda cute i guess

  NATE: dude, you gonna try to see her again while you’re out there?

  ME: maybe. she’s in a band. invited me to go see the show

  NATE: you gotta go! you need more weird in your life. go where life takes you, bry. that’s my motto.

  ME: i thought ur motto was “rock out with your cock out.” u have it cross-stitched on a throw pillow.

  NATE: that’s more of an unofficial credo. going where life takes you. that’s the real motto. you gotta go to that show.

  ME: eh i’ll think about it. gotta run. i see my aunt & sister

  I slid the phone back into my pocket and waved hello to Aunt Tina and Hannah. They waved back.

  “Hey,” I said, pointing to their bags. “You find anything good?” Hannah giggled, and I immediately regretted asking.

  “We did okay,” Aunt Tina said. “You?”

  “I didn’t buy anything other than soft pretzels. You know, research for my study into the quality of mall pretzels around the world.”

  “Someday the world will build a statue in your honor,” she said with a smile. Aunt Tina didn’t look like the coolest lady in the world. She had “mom hair” even though she didn’t have kids and always dressed pretty much like you’d expect a real estate agent to dress, but she was cool. Yeah.