Accidental Trouble Magnet

by Zanib Mian

  “Mommy, I can do better, can’t I?” said Esa.

  “Of course you can, sweetie,” said Mom.

  For this, Maryam pinched Esa as she stormed out of the room. Mom was a bit flustered and didn’t seem to notice, but I kept quiet about it because

  Mom said I was sitting around doing nothing, so I should go and set the table for iftar and take the stones out of the middle of the dates and put nuts in instead. I wondered why they were called stones and I imagined what would happen if there were real stones in dates and somebody tried to eat one, thinking it had a nut in it. If they didn’t smash their teeth doing that and managed to swallow it instead, would it stay in their tummies forever, or would they poop it out?

  Just as I had finished setting the table, Dad came into the room. He liked that I had gone over the top and taken out fancy glasses and made the table look like they do in restaurants. Mom put her head around the door. She didn’t like it. She said that her fancy glasses could get broken and that I shouldn’t touch them. Then she told me to go and get Mrs. Rogers to join us for iftar.

  Mrs. Rogers brought a box of chocolates with her.

  That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s really slow when you’re doing it with her. While we walked, I had my eye on the chocolates. How could I make sure that Maryam didn’t steal all the best ones?

  Mrs. Rogers knew the iftar routine now. When there were only ten minutes left till the fast opened, she said, “Put the Islam Channel on, or we’ll miss that nice song that tells us when the fast opens.”

  We all tried not to look at each other and tried not to laugh.

  “That’s called the adhan, Mrs. Rogers,” said Dad. “It’s the call to prayer.”

  “Oh, well, whatever it’s called, it’s very nice, dear,” said Mrs. Rogers.

  Mrs. Rogers did the countdown, and everyone popped a date into their mouths when the fast opened.

  I popped a chocolate from the box that Mrs. Rogers had brought into my mouth. Because my mouth had been waiting for them. And because my mouth likes chocolates very much. But instead of being very happy, my mouth was confused. There was a

  with the chocolate taste.

  “YUCK!” I said.

  “Oh! Is it an alcohol one?” said Maryam.

  We’re not allowed alcohol, not even the adults, and I had never had it before.

  I quickly jumped up to spit it out and rinse my mouth.

  “Am I going to be drunk now?” I asked.

  Apparently, this was totally hilarious, because you have to have a lot more alcohol than that to get drunk. Mrs. Rogers explained that to me after she finished laughing for ten minutes straight.

  CHAPTER 16

  When Friday evening finally came around, I was very excited. I had somehow made it to the weekend without getting my bones broken by Daniel AND I was going to be fasting the next day, which meant

  I knew I had to wake up at two o’clock in the morning to eat before sunrise. That’s basically the

  At first, I couldn’t even sleep because I was too excited about getting up when I normally wouldn’t be allowed to.

  But the next thing I knew, Maryam was waking me up by saying,

  and poking me in the ribs with long fingers and, for some weird reason, blowing on my face, complete with added bits of spit!

  Was still whispering to her somehow and making her be mean?

  It took me a moment to remember why I wasn’t supposed to be asleep, but then I jumped out of bed.

  I whizzed down the stairs and jumped onto my seat at the table in the kitchen. Then I jumped right back up to get my favorite cereal.

  “How are you this perky, this early in the morning?” said something that sounded a bit like Dad.

  Mom and Dad looked different. Like half zombies. They weren’t speaking very much, and when they did, it was just one or two words, and it was a bit slurred.

  They were also moving a lot slower than normal. I imagined it was because the whole room was filled with

  and they were wading through it in slow motion.

  Adults are funny—I can’t understand why they have different levels of energy depending on how much sleep or coffee they’ve had. I’m basically the same all the time. I think Maryam is on her way to being an adult, because she was at least a quarter zombie while we were eating suhur.

  I had some cereal and was forced to have some egg and porridge, too (with hazelnut spread, obviously). Then we all went back to bed.

  When I woke up on Saturday morning, I had to remember not to eat breakfast and

  I was doing fine till about noon, when my tummy started to rumble a bit. I ignored it and tried to distract myself by building a Lego Triceratops. It worked, because the

  went away and by the time Dad announced that we had to get into the Peanut to go to the supermarket, I had forgotten all about hunger.

  That was until we actually reached the supermarket, and I saw all the shelves stacked with

  Even the things I don’t normally eat, like quiche, sat on shelves looking more yummy than they ever did before. My tummy growled like H2O. My insides suddenly ached, and my legs pretended to be noodles.

  On the drive back, I asked Dad if I could break my fast. He said that I could, because I was just a kid, and at least I had tried. He said there was a reason why Allah said that

  Their bodies aren’t like adult bodies.

  “But are you sure that Allah won’t mind?” I asked.

  He said of course Allah wouldn’t mind and that Allah would just be happy that I had wanted to try in the first place.

  “You can always try again next weekend, if you like.”

  That made me happy. I took a chocolate croissant out of the bag next to me and took a big bite.

  CHAPTER 17

  We’d been living in our new house for seven whole weeks. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was weird:

  Even though when I shut my eyes I could still remember exactly how my old room looked, with the stickers on the dresser that were peeling off, and the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling that Dad helped me put up when I was younger, and Esa’s teddies all over the floor. I didn’t feel like I wanted to move back. I liked pretty much everything about where we lived now.

  Everything except . . . Can you guess? obviously.

  Nobody else seemed to have a problem with me, but Daniel kept ruining everything. Most of our class hung out together on the playground, and though Charlie was my best friend, we often played soccer with Filip and Jayden and Jessica. Once or twice, the girls at the table next to ours asked for my help in science, even Sarah, who is smart at everything.

  I’ll give you an example of how Daniel made me feel miserable about

  pointless things. One Wednesday afternoon, Mrs. Hutchinson asked a question. It was the type of question that teachers ask when they know that the kids won’t know the answer, but they ask it anyway, just to see.

  She asked, “What is DNA?”

  The class was blank. I knew Mrs. Hutchinson had expected that because she didn’t look disappointed. I knew what it was, but I didn’t want to be a show-off.

  “OK, does anybody know what genes are?” she said.

  One kid put his hand up and proudly said, “Clothes.”

  “No . . .” she said slowly, stretching it out, which meant she wanted other guesses.

  “Genies?” asked another kid, clearly unsure.

  Mrs. Hutchinson’s face still smiled, but her hair and eyes gave it away. She was sad her class didn’t have at least a clue about what genes were.

  “Genes are what make us what we are. They’re like special instructions. They decide what color our eyes are, and things like that. And DNA is where the genes are found. Lots of them!”

  Mrs. Hutchinson’s hair sprang to life, like flowers that had just been watered.


  She said she was astonished at how much I knew about genes. I told her my parents were both scientists and it was one of their favorite topics.

  Charlie gave me a high five.

  But then Daniel gave me a look, and suddenly I wished I’d never said anything at all. Every time he glared at me, or pushed me and Charlie around on the playground, it reminded me of what he’d said—that

  and sent to a country I’d never even visited. I didn’t think he could be right, but if he wasn’t, then why would Reza believe it was going to happen, too?

  At home things were just as normal. Everyone was settled into the Ramadan routine and starting to plan for Eid, which was just around the corner. We have two Eids in the year and they are the two best days of the year for me. There’s , which was the Eid coming up, the one that is for celebrating that we’ve fasted for a whole month and earned lots of reward points. And then there is just a couple of months later, which basically celebrates Hajj—that’s when people go to

  on a holy journey. We have to sacrifice a sheep or something on that Eid, like Prophet Abraham did, but obviously if you don’t have a farm, you can’t do it yourself.

  If I had to choose, my favorite Eid is the first one, because that’s when I seem to get

  Maybe by the second one everyone’s money has run out or something.

  I usually drop a lot of hints to my parents about what presents to get me.

  OK, maybe it’s not hinting. Maybe it’s begging.

  My mom orders lots of the presents and Eid clothes online. But it’s funny, because when the deliveryman comes, she runs around the house going and looking for her headscarf. Which is never “where she left it.” It usually involves her hopping from room to room before sprinting upstairs to grab one and opening the door panting and apologizing. Once or twice, she’s even grabbed my hoodie and used it as a hijab.

  The last time this happened, Maryam pointed out that people who aren’t Muslim must think that Muslim women wear their scarves on their heads

  Even at home. Because whenever she comes to the door, Mom always has one on. They must think and and in it. When Maryam isn’t being

  she can be really funny. The thought of Mom showering in her headscarf had us laughing for literally seven and a half minutes. I kept imagining her shampooing it and blow-drying it. And then at dinner, out of the blue, Maryam blurted out,

  and I spat my food all over the table because I laughed so hard.

  CHAPTER 18

  Have you ever gone on a school trip but never quite made it to where you were supposed to be going? If you haven’t, you’re lucky. Me?

  My class was supposed to be going to the Science Museum. My parents were obviously extremely excited about this. The Science Museum had a new section called the Wonderlab, which Mom and Dad took us to see as soon as it opened. But it was super cool, so I didn’t mind going again. Especially because they have these slides made out of different materials, to teach you about friction, and one of them is really fast.

  the first time I went on it.

  We were put into groups of six for the trip. A teaching assistant or a parent was in charge of each group. I could tell Mrs. Hutchinson was stressed that morning because some curls from her hair were looking pretty and in place, and others were sticking out in funny directions—completely ignoring gravity.

  I listened as she read out names for the groups.

  I had my fingers crossed under the table, because I really didn’t want to be in Daniel’s group. I knew I wasn’t supposed to believe in crossing fingers. But I was trying anything. It was only later that I realized I didn’t even ask Allah not to put me in Daniel’s group. My mom said that if I had, Allah might have put me in a different group, or he might have even still put me in Daniel’s group because He works in mysterious ways.

  As you’ve probably guessed, I was put in a group with Daniel. And Charlie was in a whole different group.

  When our names were announced, Daniel looked over at me and snarled. The worst part was that it wasn’t even a teacher in charge of our group. It was just another kid’s parent. And she had no idea which kids were

  and which were not.

  Charlie came up to me and said, “Don’t worry, OK? We can still look at things together in the museum, OK?”

  I said, “OK,” too. I was feeling too miserable to say anything else.

  To get to the museum, we had to go on the London Underground. It was going pretty all right, until we tried to change trains.

  As soon as we switched platforms, in the rush of people, he took hold of the belt of my pants and jerked me back.

  “Your girlfriend, Charlie, can’t save you now,” he barked.

  Have you ever wanted to laugh in a horrible situation? I don’t know why, but

  even though I was probably about to get hit by the worst bully I’d ever met. It was a weird kind of not-real laugh, though, and it just seemed to make Daniel more furious.

  “Oh, so you think it’s funny, do you, teacher’s pet?!”

  People in dark suits and fancy shoes were walking past us as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

  “Our group! The class! We’ll get left behind!” I finally managed to squeak.

  Daniel looked over and saw what I saw: a crowd of busy-looking people exiting the platform, but nobody from our school. He seemed to freeze. Then, just a few seconds later, we were the only two people left.

  What happened next was completely astonishing.

  Daniel started wailing like a baby.

  I realized that I was going to have to handle this situation. And take care of the big crying bully baby in front of me even though Daniel was making me want to cry, too. I had been on the London Underground with my parents millions of times. But never on my own. It looked different now that I was on my own. It looked bigger. Noisier. Darker. Scarier. And it smelled like pee.

  No, wait, that was Daniel.

  He had peed himself.

  CHAPTER 19

  I know we should have tried to find somebody who worked at the station to help, but my thinking wasn’t very straight at that time. It was kind of and I was getting like a gazillion different ideas of what to do every second. That’s a very noisy head and, don’t forget, Daniel was still crying.

  A train

  from the tunnel, and my instinct was to jump on.

  Instincts are funny. You hear about them with animals, like when sea turtles hatch and move toward the ocean without anybody telling them which way to go. Or when baby kangaroos jump into their mommy kangaroo’s pouch when they are born. I felt myself wanting to

  onto that train, although nobody had told me it was the right way to go.

  I took Daniel’s hand, trying very hard not to think about when he had earlier, and stepped on.

  It was South Kensington station we were supposed to be going to. I remembered Mrs. Hutchinson saying so, and I remembered that when I went to the museum with Mom and Dad, we had to walk quite a lot through the station to get out near where the museums were.

  Daniel and I found seats on the train.

  “Do you know where to go?” sobbed Daniel.

  “Yes, look on that map up there,” I said, pointing toward the one that shows all the stops. “See if you can find South Kensington on it.”

  We looked. Very carefully. Marylebone station came. We still searched the map, but South Kensington was nowhere on that brown line. My heart sank as I said to Daniel:

  I love the Peanut, but suddenly I wished that we went to more places on the train so I would know what I was doing.

  “Let’s tell someone we’re lost,” pleaded Daniel.

  “No. We’re not lost,” I said. I kind of knew we were, but I wanted to get us out of the mess. Now that Daniel was all sniffly and depending on me, I wanted to be a

  “We just have to
get off this train,” I said. “Then we’ll be fine.”

  We got off at the next stop. It was Baker Street. Baker Street sounded very familiar. It sounded like home and good memories. I thought maybe it was another station that was close to the museums, and that’s why I remembered it.

  Daniel was like a

  that couldn’t think. I had to do all the thinking. But it sort of felt OK—he wasn’t being mean to me anymore, at least.

  I wondered whether our class knew we were missing by now. I imagined Mrs. Hutchinson’s hair going wild with worry. I had never seen her really worried before and I wondered what it looked like.

  We exited the station, crossed over at a crosswalk and walked down a busy road with lots of cafés on it. There was a Sherlock Holmes museum. I don’t know much about Sherlock, but my parents always watch a TV show about him that has Benedict Cumberbatch in it. Another thing I know about Benedict Cumberbatch is that he can’t say the word “penguin.” I only know this because one time when I walked into the kitchen, my mom was watching a video about him and laughing so much that tears were falling from her eyes.

  The road started winding to the left, and as we turned the corner, something touched my shoulder from behind. I swung my head around, and what I saw made me