Accidental Trouble Magnet

by Zanib Mian

  On the way home, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Daniel had said.

  I thought about talking to Maryam about him. Maybe she could help and tell me what to do, without having to tell our parents. I know they’d get all stressy and worried and make a big fuss at school and that would definitely just make Daniel worse. Maryam might be annoying, but she used to stand up for me back when I was a really little kid and we still went to the same school . . .

  But then I remembered the time just before we moved when I was quietly trying to get away with going over my screen time limit in my room and Dad came stomping in, like a giant who had just stepped on an enormous thumbtack.

  He had discovered the TV remote was missing its batteries. I froze. I didn’t move and didn’t say a word. I imagined I was a spider playing dead when someone is trying to smack it with a slipper.

  Then Maryam came in with her huge, pointy finger of accusation.

  It was true. I had desperately needed them for my controller . . .

  I got into so much trouble that day. I was banned from video games for a month.

  Maryam is a complete snitch these days. No, I couldn’t trust her.

  CHAPTER 11

  I knew there was one person I could trust to talk to about Daniel: my cousin Reza. And luckily, we were going up to Manchester to visit a couple of days after the sand disaster. I was bursting to ask him whether he’d heard about Muslims getting kicked out of the country. Did Daniel just make that part up? Could it possibly be real?

  He’s twelve. He’s the kind of kid that knows a lot about everything. If anything happens to his bike, he can fix it using his dad’s tools, and I’ve even seen him changing the oil in his mom’s little red car, which he calls a clunker. And when we walk around in Manchester with him and his family, lots of people always say, “Hi.” Reza must have really great pester power skills, or maybe he knows hypnosis, because he literally has everything he wants. That’s one of the reasons I love going there: because we have two days of playing on his Xbox as much as we want and we always have a

  I’m pretty sure almost every Muslim has cousins in Manchester. I was wondering if they were all as interesting as mine while I finished packing my backpack, when my dad shouted up the stairs, “Get in the Peanut, everyone! We’re leaving in two minutes!”

  You might be wondering how we could all get into a peanut. We can’t. This is what we call the It’s a 4x4. But look at the license plate!

  There are some things that always happen on our road trip to Manchester:

  As we were loading the car with all our stuff, Mrs. Rogers came out into her front yard to put a bag in the garbage can.

  But instead of just going back inside, she stood and watched us with

  I waved at her and gave her my best smile, just to see what would happen. She gave me her best blank expression.

  When we were on the highway, Esa started saying he needed to pee.

  “But it’s only been forty minutes!” said Dad.

  Mom said, “I knew I shouldn’t have given you that apple juice.”

  Dad said he had to hold it until we got to the rest area. But Mom said he was only little and couldn’t hold it that long. Maryam said, “We should have put a diaper on him because he’s a big fat baby.”

  Dad said to stop being so rude.

  I hate it when we are stuck in the car and everyone is being all stressed out and I also hate the thought of Esa peeing on the seat right next to me. I mean, how

  I would end up sitting in a

  So I stared out of the window and imagined myself on my Rollerblades, riding alongside all the cars and faster than them. So fast that there was

  blazing out the back of them. And then I said,

  And they took me all the way to the moon. I don’t actually have any Rollerblades, and I don’t know how to roller-skate, but that’s the great thing about imagining: you can do anything you want. Except pee. For that, we had to stop on the shoulder of the road so Esa could let it out.

  I asked my parents why it was called the shoulder. Nobody knew. This is why my parents should let me have my own smartphone, because then I could have just looked it up myself.

  That night, while we pretended to be asleep on our row of mattresses on Aunty Sumayyah’s living room floor, Reza told me that Daniel was right, we were all going to be kicked out of the country and we were probably going to have a

  I gulped. He told me that we would all have to go and live in Pakistan.

  “Have you ever been to Pakistan?” I said.

  “Yeah. Once, when I was five.”

  “What’s it like? Will we like living there?”

  I felt sick.

  The five bars of chocolate that we had snuck into our beds and eaten attempted to make their way back up my throat.

  “Well, the pizza is

  and you can hardly understand what people are saying,” Reza said.

  “Why?”

  “Because they speak in Urdu. You can’t speak Urdu, can you?”

  “No.”

  I lay awake for ages after Reza had fallen asleep. I imagined his quiet snoring sounds were from H2O instead and that my pillow was resting on H2O’s back. It made me feel better to know that wherever we had to move to, I could take him with me.

  At breakfast, there was such a big feast of food on the table that I forgot all about Daniel and Pakistan. Uncle Fahad had even pulled out last night’s leftover chicken wings.

  Everyone burst into laughter. Uncle Fahad choked on his juice.

  CHAPTER 12

  One evening the following week, when we were putting our lasagna-covered dishes into the dishwasher, we heard an

  coming down our street. Maryam and I both raced to the window, while Esa whined to be let down from the table (he was still eating, as usual, because he’s super slow).

  Maryam and I pressed our faces to the glass. The ambulance had stopped next door and the paramedics were hurrying toward the front door.

  I said in surprise.

  “Oh no . . .” gasped Mom.

  Dad had his quick-thinking face on.

  “I should go,” said Mom. “Should I go? I should go.”

  Maryam said, “No way, she’s horrible!”

  Esa dropped his plate of freezing-cold lasagna on the floor with a

  Dad looked at it and breathed a sigh and ran his hand through his hair. He does that when he has his thinking face on.

  “What if she doesn’t want me? What if she sends me away and shouts at me in front of them?” Mom said as she ran around the room putting her scarf on her head and putting her coat on inside out.

  “It doesn’t matter, darling. You go. At least you will have done the right thing. Go and see if she needs anything at all.”

  said Maryam and she folded her arms and threw herself onto the sofa.

  I went to the front door and watched as Mom hurried out of our gate. She reached the ambulance just as they were wheeling Mrs. Rogers out on a stretcher. She was clutching her wrist and telling the paramedics how she had slipped in the bathroom.

  “I’m here with you,” Mom said softly. “I mean, if you want.” And then Mom put her hand out so Mrs. Rogers could hold it if she wanted.

  Mrs. Rogers looked really pale and scared. She said in a small voice, “John isn’t here.”

  And then she took Mom’s hand and tried to

  Later, Mom said that when Mrs. Rogers did that, it was easy to forget all about the rotten things that she had said.

  When Mom and Mrs. Rogers came home in a taxi a few hours later, Dad went over, too, to help Mrs. Rogers get settled. When they came back, he was grinning from ear to ear because he had heard Mrs. Rogers on the phone as they were leaving, saying,

  CHAPTER 13

  All we seemed to talk about in our house for the next little while
was how Mrs. Rogers was doing.

  Now that Mrs. Rogers knew we were nice, she was a

  She wasn’t and anymore. She was

  whenever we went over to her house. That made me wonder why she didn’t like us in the first place. Could it be because the fall made her brain work differently? When I suggested this to Dad, he laughed and said that although that was possible, he thought it had more to do with what she had been reading before in the tabloid newspapers about Muslims, where now she knew what we were really like. He said we should invite her to our house during Ramadan so she could learn more about the real Islam.

  which is kind of confusing because during Ramadan you can’t eat or drink ALL DAY. I know my mom and dad like to eat a whole lot, and my mom is completely addicted to coffee. Even though they make up for all the not eating when they break their fast at iftar time, no one had ever really explained to me what was so good about Ramadan. So I asked Aunty Iman.

  Aunty Iman was my new Qur’an teacher. She isn’t related to us, but Maryam and I call all ladies that are our mom’s age “Aunty” because it’s rude to just say their name. She comes over to teach me how to read the Qur’an every Wednesday and Friday after school. I like her because she’s kind. She’s

  than my last teacher from before we moved, who didn’t tell me about what the words meant and just told me to be quiet whenever I asked a question about Allah, which made it boring. I like to know what the words mean. I heard my mom telling my dad that the teacher wasn’t doing a good job of handling my

  Anyway, it was super handy that Aunty Iman filled me in on what’s so good about Ramadan, because Charlie has an inquisitive nature, too, and he started asking me lots of questions all about it.

  “So, wait, Omar, in Ramadan, you can’t eat for a whole month? Won’t people die if they do that?” he asked.

  “Hahahaha. No. You only have to stop eating

  Basically, when the sun is out. All the other times, you can eat what you want, and you can eat lots, like my mom and dad do, so you stay alive.”

  “OK.” Charlie looked a bit relieved but a bit sheepish, too, so I felt a little bad for laughing. “But why do people do it? The fasting, I mean. And if they like doing it, why do they only do it in Ramadan?”

  “Because that’s when you’re supposed to do it, and for a whole month you get extra reward points from Allah. I found out that you get seventy times more points for praying and reading the Qur’an than you do in other months.” We were sitting by the sandbox in the playground, so I made two piles with the sand, one that was like a

  and another

  “OK. That’s really cool,” said Charlie. “Is it hard?”

  “I think so. Anyway, even if it’s hard, we have the to look forward to at the end of the month! It also helps that the Devil is locked up during Ramadan, so he can’t persuade us to eat when our tummies are rumbling.”

  And since it’s the Devil who whispers to us to do bad things, I was pretty relieved that I could have a whole month without him telling me to eat Maryam’s stash of hidden chocolate when she wasn’t looking.

  I was planning to ask Allah for a lifetime’s supply of chocolate of my own on the

  which is in the last ten days of Ramadan. It’s called that because it’s better than

  months. That means you could get the same reward points in one night that it would take you one thousand months to get! That’s eighty-three years!

  And all the angels come down to Earth and you can ask Allah for anything you want.

  Then I remembered the best part. “AND for people who fast, Allah will give them a secret reward and we don’t know what it is!”

  “Wow,” said Charlie. “Maybe like a or something?”

  “OH MY GOSH, Charlie! That would be so awesome.” I could almost feel the steering wheel in my hands . . .

  CHAPTER 14

  The first fast was on a Monday. Maryam was going to wake up for the because she was going to be fasting for the whole of Ramadan for the first time. The meal is called suhur, and it has to happen before dawn. My mom said that I wasn’t allowed to get up for it because I was still too young. I wasn’t happy about this at all—I wanted my Ferrari! So I put up a fuss and turned on the turbo on my

  In the end, Mom said I could practice keeping a fast on the weekend. I said fine, but I was still worried about Maryam getting more reward points than me.

  So I went to school with breakfast in my tummy as usual. It was funny that at school it was just a normal day, when at home it was special because it was the first day of Ramadan and that’s all that anyone could talk about. Nobody in my class was talking about it, which is why I was super surprised when Mrs. Hutchinson bounced over to my table and said,

  I think my cheeks might have gone red. But I looked at her, at her Happy Ramadan curls, and managed a very small thank-you.

  “Are you fasting?” she continued, crouching down near my chair.

  “No, I’m not allowed,” I said.

  “Oh, well,” she said, “I’m happy to go easy on you for PE if you ever do.” And she winked and went to write the date on the board.

  The first person I saw when I looked up was Daniel.

  Could it have been jealousy?

  At break time, Daniel came over to where Charlie and I were sitting, doing cool graffiti drawings with chalks on the floor.

  He spat out the words as if they were a really nasty part of a pet, like its poop. And he pointed his finger at me, back and forth, back and forth, before smudging up our drawings with his foot.

  Anger bubbled up in my chest.

  I imagined H2O swooping down from the clouds and whacking Daniel with his strong tail.

  If only he could do that for real . . . I was so tired of Daniel using any old excuse to pick on me.

  I said.

  “What will you do? Call your girlfriend, Mrs. Hutchinson?”

  “She’s not his girlfriend, OK?” said Charlie.

  For a second, I thought Daniel was going to try his headbutting thing again, but luckily, he saw one of the teaching assistants coming toward us, so he ran away. The teaching assistant walked past us slowly, asking if everything was all right. I said yes, even though it wasn’t.

  Afterward, Charlie asked me if we should just go and tell her or Mrs. Hutchinson that Daniel was being a big fat bully. I just shook my head. I knew getting Daniel in trouble would only make things worse. But I also knew that I had to do something—standing up to Daniel made me feel shaky and sick, and I super definitely didn’t want to have to feel that way forever.

  I imagined H2O flying off into the distance and entering a big fluffy white cloud in the blue sky. I decided that’s where he lives. Everyone’s seen it—it’s the big cloud that is shaped like a dragon. It probably feels like being wrapped up in

  like the ones my mom uses on her face. If the cloud wasn’t there and the sky was clear blue, it would be because H2O had gone to visit his friends or buy some

  or whatever dragons do in their spare time when their owners don’t need them. And when the cloud was darker and spilled rain onto the earth, that would be when H2O was taking a shower.

  Well, maybe your dragon doesn’t see as much action as my H2O . . .

  CHAPTER 15

  That evening, Mrs. Rogers came over for the first iftar, which is the food you eat when you break your fast at sunset. Her wrist still wasn’t all better yet, and Mom and Dad had been sending dinner over to her so that she didn’t have to cook for herself. But this was the first time she actually came to eat at our house, at our table.

  She watched everything we did, quietly, with a smile in her eyes. She kept saying,

  and nodding her head.

  Once we’d finished eating, she took her phone out and called John—who was her son, it turned out—and said, “The Muslims put less chili in their food for me, John
. It was delicious.” We all grinned, because being called “The Muslims” was a bit of a fun joke for us all now.

  As the week went on, I noticed that everyone was getting used to not eating when the sun was out. And actually eating a bit too much when the sun went down. Normally, Maryam and I eat about the same amount, but now

  At first, I was worried that she would eat all the if I wasn’t quick enough, but then I figured out that while she was busy munching, I could talk loads about my video games and she wouldn’t tell me to shut up like she normally does.

  Mrs. Rogers came over for the iftar every day. She told me she liked the samosas best of all.

  But by the time we got to Thursday, everyone was a little bit less patient. Probably because they were hungry. It didn’t help that Maryam had done really badly on her science test, which was a

  in our household because she is the daughter of two successful scientists. Mom was telling her that it really wasn’t good enough and that they would go over all the things that she found hard. And Dad was saying that they wouldn’t be upset if they didn’t believe that Maryam could do better.

  I looked at Maryam. Once, I watched a video of a gorilla dad whose gorilla children were being really, really annoying, and he was trying his best to be patient and not to “go ape,” until he DID. Maryam reminded me of the gorilla, trying to stay calm. It didn’t last long.