“Man United, actually. What about you?”
“Galaxy,” Dad says, looking mildly disappointed.
Strike one, Wells.
“Photo time!” Mom walks back into the foyer, brandishing the camera.
“Mom,” I hiss. “Come on, you have a billion photos of me.”
“It’s your first date! And it’s your birthday.”
“But, for the love of kittens, it’s not prom.”
I don’t say, It’s not a date, because … I think it’s a date.
“Cut your poor mother a break,” Dad says. “Okay, stand over here. Wells … you go right there … On her left, yep, there … Perfect, that’s good.”
I stiffen as Wells comes and stands next to me, praying he won’t do anything embarrassing, like put his arm around me or, God forbid, hold my hand. Luckily, he reads my mind, standing shoulder to shoulder with me and facing the camera, with his hands clasped in front of him. I clutch my purse in front of my stomach, a protective shield against the painful awkwardness.
This would be a zillion times less weird if Dad weren’t here. It doesn’t help that the look on Dad’s face is somewhere in between perturbed and constipated: I think he’s enjoying this about as much as I am.
Still, at least he’s trying.
Mom snaps the picture. “Happy birthday, sweetheart!”
The two of them give me a hug, and Wells shakes Dad’s hand goodbye.
“Happy freaking birthday,” he whispers to me as we walk out the door.
“Shh. Let’s get out of here.”
We giggle quietly as we rush toward the truck, my parents’ silhouettes framed in the doorway behind us.
* * *
Wells drives through Milton, the radio turned to the alternative channel playing a jaunty old Foo Fighters song.
“So you’ve never been on a date, huh?” Wells says.
“I turned sixteen like five seconds ago. Has anybody we know been on a date?”
He laughs. I love his laugh. It makes me think of a country song, full of honey and heartache. I wonder what else makes him laugh.
“Is this a date?” he says, amusement in his voice.
I blush. I look down at my sleek dress. Tonight I went for a Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy vibe. “I don’t know. No. Maybe. I told them we’re just friends.”
He glances over at me at a red light. I want to crawl across the steering wheel and plant one on him. “Too bad,” he says.
I giggle nervously, a Jackson Pollock patchwork of embarrassment no doubt renting advertising space on my chest.
“Your parents seem cool,” he says.
“Yeah. They’re both total dorks, but it’s only the three of us, so…” I shrug. “You? Siblings?”
“A younger brother. Sawyer. He’s annoying.”
“Like all little brothers.”
“My parents aren’t as cool as yours.”
“No?”
“Okay, it’s mostly my dad. My mom’s the best.”
“What’s his deal?”
He grips the steering wheel, shrugging. “You know dads.”
A tight-lipped nonresponse. I don’t press the issue.
We park at Avalon, Alpharetta’s fancy outdoor mall, and walk to a steak house at the far end, passing ice-cream shops, wine bars, and clothing boutiques.
“Holy kittens, we’re eating here?” I ask.
Wells grins. “Come on, birthday girl.”
“Wells Henderson, two for six thirty,” he says to the hostess. I swear, his voice sounds like it’s dropped an octave. She escorts us through the dimly lit room to a corner booth.
I check out the room. It feels like a country club: low lighting, leather banquettes, wood paneling. “Wells, this place is legit.”
He unfurls his napkin with gusto, looking proud. “Do you like it?”
“Obviously.”
But my stomach clenches when I read the menu. What is all this foie gras and beef tartare and duck confit crap? Can’t a girl get a regular cheeseburger—one without feta?
The two of us peruse the menu in silence. At one point, I glance up, and Wells is frowning, looking as dismayed as I feel.
“Uh, what are you getting?” he asks.
I review the menu for the fifth time, as if a nonfancy option will suddenly present itself. “Um.”
He peers at the menu. “What’s caponata?”
I pull out my phone. “Looks like it’s Sicilian eggplant.”
“Oh. I’m probably just going to get the burger. Plain.”
“Me too.”
We both start giggling.
“Zadie would be so disappointed in us,” I say. She’s the adventurous eater of the group.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be sorry!”
“You hate it.”
“I might not love the menu, but I love the gesture.”
He looks dejected. “I wanted to make it special.”
“Wells, it is special. This is awesome. I’ve never been to a place like this without my parents. It’s like we’re in college. Perfect for my sixteenth birthday. Thank you.”
I reach across the table and put my hand on top of his. The touch makes his frown melt away.
“You deserve better,” he says. “I have an idea.”
Ten minutes later, after apologies to the waitstaff and the hostess, we’re sitting in a pizzeria farther down the promenade, tucking into a large formaggio.
“Now this is perfect.” I smile at him, taking a sip of Coke. “God, this pizza is soooo good.”
“You sure?” he asks, looking anxious.
“It’s perfect. I mean it.”
After we demolish the cheese pizza together, we walk to a nearby ice-cream parlor, talking until our throats are scratchy and it feels like we’ve covered absolutely everything.
I tell him about my comp sci project and my mega course load, and how I’m dying to go to Northwestern, and how I kind of want to be an actress even though I’m shy, and how sometimes I suspect maybe the secret of life is to become a rich lawyer and eat your feelings.
He tells me about his YouTube channel and the recording studio sessions he’s saving up for, and his insomnia and his worries about the environment, and how, when he’s in front of a crowd, his nerves magically disappear and for a few moments, he feels free.
We talk and talk—except there are still worlds left unsaid.
I don’t tell him about my heritage. I don’t tell him the horrible things people have said to me about Muslims. Not just in Georgia. In Chicago, New Jersey, LA, Dallas. Everywhere.
I don’t tell him I have a hard time saying no because I don’t want people to dislike me.
I don’t tell him that, sometimes, after I go to sleep, I curl up with a blanket Teta gave me when I was two years old, and I smell it and I remember being little, and I feel safe.
I wonder what he’s not telling me.
* * *
Back in front of my house, the two of us sit in his truck, the radio turned low as Wells puts the engine in park.
“Hi.” I laugh nervously as he turns to me.
“Hi back.” His brown eyes dilate, his pupils large like a thousand black holes, dragging me into the depths of Wells.
“Tonight was incredible,” I say.
“Really?”
“Are you for serious, Henderson?”
We grin at each other, but then the mood shifts.
I look down at my hands, because I’m not sure where to look, and then I decide to take a chance and look back up. The emotions flicker across his face in rapid fire: tenderness and anxiety, mixed with a heavy dose of lust.
“Wells,” I say, half question, half invitation, looking into his eyes and thinking about how there is nothing more I want in the entire world than to finally kiss him.
So I do.
I lean over the armrest, putting my hand on his hair and pulling his face toward me. His lips are soft and warm, and as they part, gently pressing down onto mine, a strange
feeling takes over my body. I know I’m not supposed to be doing this, I know this goes against my religion, I know my parents would not be thrilled if they peeked through the curtains and saw me sucking face with Wells Henderson in his monster truck, but I don’t care. Because right now the only thing that matters is Wells, and his lips, and his arms wrapping themselves tightly around my back—pulling me closer until it feels as if we’re one.
It’s the perfect first kiss.
And the best birthday ever.
CHAPTER TEN
I wake up fretting.
What happens after the first kiss?
Are we boyfriend-girlfriend?
What if he pretends it never happened?
What if he changes his mind?
What if he decides I was a horrible kisser, and ghosts me forever?
I roll over, picking up my phone: 9:17 a.m.
There’s a text waiting from Wells:
Wanna come over today?
Ahhh. Praise kittens.
* * *
Any lingering anxiety is dispelled once my mom’s car disappears from sight after dropping me off at Wells’s house.
“Hey,” he says in that cute voice, looking kind of nervous. He takes a step forward, picking up my hand and pulling me toward him.
“Hi,” I manage to squeak.
He wraps his arms around me, and I melt into him for a long, delicious kiss. He puts his hand on the side of my face.
Okay, I’m pretty sure he likes me back.
Later that afternoon, after takeout Mexican and a make-out session, followed by a viewing of Rogue One on Wells’s basement big-screen, somebody calls to us from upstairs.
“Wells?” It’s a woman’s voice.
“Coming!” He turns to me. “My mom. Wanna meet her?”
“Sure,” I say casually, as if this isn’t a gigantic deal.
We enter a gleaming white kitchen. My eyes dart around the massive room: matching dish towels, artfully propped-up cookbooks opened to recipe pages and probably not covered in sticky leftover goo, decorative porcelain plates. It’s like being inside a Williams Sonoma.
His mother stands at the white marble island. “Thought you and your friend might like some, Wellsie,” she says, proffering a tray of freshly baked cookies.
My mom occasionally bakes cookies, too, but she doesn’t look like Martha flipping Stewart while she’s doing it. Meanwhile, Wells’s mom is straight from perfect-Providence-mom central casting: white-blond hair, pale-blue eyes, pearls in her ears, a gigantic gleaming diamond on her ring finger.
“Mom,” Wells says, “this is Allie.”
“Allie,” she says. “It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Serena.” She gives me a hug, smelling of vanilla. “Are you in a rush?” She directs us to the kitchen table. “Go sit. I’ll bring you a tray.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Wells says.
“You’ll love them!” she insists.
When somebody makes you homemade cookies, you don’t say no.
* * *
Around five thirty, stuffed with cookies and drunk on Wells, it’s time for me to go home for dinner.
Wells and I walk outside, waiting for my mom.
He brushes his fingers through my hair.
“Killing a bug?” I say. That’s what I do when I feel awkward. I make bad jokes.
In response, he leans down and kisses me. The two of us lean into each other, swaying back and forth. Wells’s touch is magic—when his arms are around me, my anxiety disappears.
A black Cadillac Escalade pulls into the long circular driveway, letting out three staccato beeps. Wells’s face tightens.
“My dad’s never home this early.”
The driver’s-side door opens, and an imposing man steps out. He’s surprisingly handsome, with sharp brown eyes and a square jaw. His white shirt is crisp, his black suit is subtly shiny, and the red bow tie around his neck perfectly matches the square tucked into his lapel pocket.
It takes me two seconds to realize who it is, and in those two seconds my heart falls into my feet, smashing into a million little pieces.
Wells’s father is Jack Henderson.
TV pundit Jack Henderson.
Blowhard Jack Henderson.
Muslim-hating Jack Henderson.
He’s always on TV, barking about immigration and “radical Islamic terrorism” and the “tyranny of safe spaces.” And, of course, he famously lives in Atlanta—cable news central.
“Dad, this is Allie.” Wells sounds nervous. “Allie … this is my father.”
Jack Henderson shakes my hand. “Hi, Allie,” he says, his voice deep. “Nice to meet you, darlin’. You’re at Providence with Wells?”
I nod.
“Looks like you already know my son pretty well.”
He pats Wells on the back with a wink and gives me a big smile—so that’s where Wells gets his perfect teeth from. He heads inside before we have a chance to say anything else. I’m literally trembling as he walks away.
“You okay?” Wells asks.
“Yeah.”
“I should have told you. I worried—”
“It’s fine.”
“Everybody has that reaction at first. Not everybody, but … you know … people who aren’t … fans.” He clears his throat.
He doesn’t even know.
“It’s fine,” I repeat.
“You sure?”
Just then, my mom pulls her car into the driveway behind Wells’s dad’s. She waves, looking happy for me.
“I gotta go,” I say. I stand on my tiptoes to give Wells a peck on the lips. I’m tall, and he still towers over me. “Text you later.”
As mom drives away, humming along to the Dave Matthews Band, I watch Wells receding in the rearview mirror. My heart pounds as I try to make sense of what happened—and of what’s about to happen.
“A kiss, huh? Not just a friend anymore?” Mom smiles at me, oblivious.
“Mmm.”
Wells’s nervousness had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with him. God knows, I don’t want to be cynical. I want to have faith.
But I don’t need a crystal ball to predict that once he finds out the truth, things will change—and probably not for the better.
After all, I’m sure America’s most famous conservative pundit—the author of bestsellers like This Land Is My Land … So Get Out! and Not Safe in Our Own Country: Radical Islam’s War from Within on the American Way, the man who’s made yelling a national sport—will blow a gasket when he finds out his son’s new girlfriend is Muslim.
PART
TWO
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I knock gently on the door, where several kids are in the first-floor biology classroom across from the library. It’s half an hour before first bell.
Heads swivel, a handful of welcoming faces.
“Hi,” I say shyly. “Is this the Muslim Student Association meeting?”
“Allie! Hi. Salaam. Come in.” Dua, previously hidden, stands to greet me. “Everybody, this is Allie Abraham.”
They say hi, an intermingled chorus of “Salaam” and “Hey” and “Hi.”
I take a seat in the back, underneath a double-helix poster.
The last twenty-four hours have been surreal.
Wells is now my boyfriend. Are we using that word? Let’s use that word. Dad hasn’t had a coronary about me dating. And I’m finally sixteen. So I’m basically all grown up.
But.
Apparently, my new boyfriend’s father is the biggest racist in America.
Jack. Freaking. Henderson.
Of all the parents in the world.
People are on edge again. At the mosque near Aunt Bila’s house in Dallas, there was a bomb threat. Aunt Bila told Dad she and Teta were hissed at yesterday while shopping for groceries, some woman telling them to “take those things off” their heads.
And worse. In Virginia, a mosque was set on fire.
It’s not a talking point. It’s not theoretical
. It’s real.
I feel guilty it’s taken me this long to stop hiding.
I hope other Muslims can forgive me.
Wells and I haven’t talked about his dad. Last night was the first one in a long time where we didn’t text before bed. It took me all night to process, but while showering this morning, I thought: What am I scared of? Why am I holding back? Talk to him.
Yeah, I’m white-looking. Sure, my mom is a convert.
I’m still Muslim. I’m allowed to claim it.
So here I am.
“It’s a mistake,” a boy says, clearly picking up a conversation from before I entered. His voice is full of confidence, but he’s small and scrawny—obviously in ninth grade. I wonder if I ever looked that tiny to older kids. “They should use the money for a new STEM center. Why do we need a bigger football stadium? Who cares?”
“Um, everybody,” a tall girl with olive-brown skin and a shoulder-skimming haircut replies. “This is Georgia, Hamid. Not San Francisco.”
“More robots, fewer running backs. Got it. Good luck with that,” Dua says, glancing at her phone to check the time. “Okay, everybody here?” She takes roll.
There are two boys and six girls in the group, some faces new to me, others I vaguely recognize from around campus: this guy Pratam from the baseball team, this girl Maya who I think might be in marching band. Dua moves from topic to topic with self-assuredness, clearly the group leader.
I sit, listening quietly and not saying much. I expected it to be a Qur’an study group, but instead they discuss issues such as graffiti at a local mosque and prominent Muslims to follow on Twitter. I make a mental note to create an account.
When Dua starts talking about the International Rescue Committee fund-raiser, I realize they haven’t met their goal yet.
“A hundred and ten bucks, people. Not great.”
“Our goal is five thousand,” Hamid says.
“Aaaand that’s why I’m bringing it up,” Dua says in a gentle tone. “Any suggestions?”
A few people throw out ideas.
“Bake sale?”
“Car wash?”
“We should totally do a GoFundMe.”
I wait until everybody else has gone before raising my hand.
All-American Muslim Girl Page 9