Bestest. Ramadan. Ever.

by Medeia Sharif

  “I don’t think they have one for her size.”

  Ooh, cutting me down. She means that I’m fat, that the store doesn’t have a size seven for my height. “I’m sure they have the same style in my size,” I say, trying to maintain some dignity.

  Maria narrows her eyes at Shakira. “Almira has a wonderful figure,” she says. “So I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I didn’t say she doesn’t,” Shakira says. “She looks normal for a high school girl.”

  Now I’m a freak and I have to be mollified by the “normal” label. I know I’m short, therefore the slightest sign of chunkiness makes me gargantuan, but she doesn’t have to rub it in. I worry that my legs are short compared to my long torso or that my head is too large for my body. I look at Shakira’s long legs, perky boobs, sticklike arms, and model’s face. I hate her. There, I think it. I don’t even feel bad for thinking it.

  Shakira shrugs her shoulders, not offended by our obvious ire, the hatred spewing from our eyes. Lisa presses one foot forward, as if she’s ready to leap at her.

  “Yeah, right,” Maria says.

  I raise my shoulders high, even though I really feel horrible by what she’s implying.

  “I went to the Orlando store all the time and know what this chain has and doesn’t have,” Shakira says. She turns around and walks out of the store.

  To prove her wrong, we look through the racks. Shakira is right. All of the lavender dresses are made for Amazon women. I can’t find one that hits above my knees. Lisa finds a deep-purple dress in a slightly different style, with a V-neck collar, and it’s the perfect length for me.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Lisa says.

  “What a nasty twit,” Maria growls.

  My friends are trying to make me feel better, but they can’t. First Shakira said that Peter could never be my boyfriend, and now she thinks I’m short and fat. I shouldn’t care what she thinks about me, yet I do. I’m not going to let her have any power over me, I decide. She’s living in her own fantasy world of snobbery and shallowness, where she thinks she reigns supreme. She isn’t going to drag me into her pathetic fantasy. There are already rumblings at school, mainly from girls, that no one wants to be her friend and that she’s stuck-up.

  After buying our Parent Night dresses, we go to the food court and of course I can’t have anything. Being in the food court is aggravating, because I normally sample everything. An ice-cream cone here, Thai food there, yellow rice, beans, a warm pretzel, lots of soda. My mouth waters, as much as it can considering that I’m dehydrated. Drool can’t collect in my mouth because my body is withering up the longer I’m without food and water.

  “Do you want some?” Maria asks, waving an egg roll under my nose.

  “I can’t,” I say. Egg rolls. Oh my God. So crispy looking. I can’t eat it anyway because it has pork in it and Muslims can’t eat pigs, but I sure wouldn’t mind a spring roll. And the fried rice looks so delectable, loose and steaming. Why do I have to starve myself like this?

  “Are you sure?” Maria asks, a wicked grin on her face.

  “Don’t tempt her,” Lisa says. “She’s trying to be good.”

  “Sorry!”

  I watch Lisa and Maria heartily eat Chinese food, which I love. Before Ramadan, Mom would order Chinese food and I would gorge myself on vegetable chow mein and beef fried rice, but now I have to wait until I break fast. Maria slurps on a smoothie and I want one so bad. I’m thirsty. My stomach growls. Going to the mall used to be pleasurable, but the reminders of food, and having my archenemy tell me that I don’t look good in clothes, really sucks.

  There has to be some solace for sitting here not being able to eat with my friends. I know the solution: being even more alone in my thoughts by daydreaming. Robert Pattinson swims in front of my eyes. His face looms over me. He glitters in the sun. “Almira, my love,” he breathes.

  “Yes, my love,” I say.

  “Come away with me.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I close my eyes. The sounds of screeching children and laughing teenagers vanish. All I see is Robert. All I know is Pattinson. He grabs my hand. We’re on the beach. He’s wearing these flowing, white pajama thingies that I see in newlywed photo shoots, and when I look down, I glimpse a white skirt swishing around my ankles. We’re married! That has to be it. The sun is rising and he puts his arms around me as we watch the sun part the clouds. I take the opportunity to run my hands through his wild hair, something I’ve always wanted to do.

  “Cool,” I say.

  I’m so caught up in my fantasy that even with my eyes open, my mind isn’t in the real world. There’s a bowl of complimentary noodles in front of me. They look so flaky and crispy. I see my fingers grab one. I really, truly am not thinking at all when I put it in my mouth. The same reflex that grabs candy off the desk at Dad’s dental office and reaches for chips at parties compels me to put that noodle in my mouth and start chewing.

  Then it dawns on me. Duh, I’m not supposed to eat. I’m ruining my fast.

  Maria and Lisa are busy checking out guys. They don’t notice my Ramadan faux pas until I stand up so fast that my chair falls back.

  “What’s wrong?” Maria yells.

  I rush to the closest bathroom and spit out the noodle. I spit some more to get the taste out of my mouth. None of it has reached my throat, but I can taste the fried goodness on my taste buds. I don’t even want to rinse out my mouth, lest any drop of water reach my stomach. I take a paper towel and wipe my tongue with it.

  A blond toddler and her mother look at me and back away. Some girl I recognize from school stares at me and then also exits. A girl scurries behind me and shakes her head with distaste. Yeah, I’m a crazy lady all right. I grip the edges of the sink and take a good look at my reflection. My brow is sweaty and my eyes are glazed over.

  I open my mouth wide to see if there are any crumbs left there. What have I done? I almost destroyed the rhythm of my fast. As much as I hate other things in my life, not keeping my word to fast for an entire month seems like the worst thing in the universe. I’d be a big, huge failure. I imagine the fat F in red ink my math teacher gave me years ago on a quiz. It was my first and last F, because I hate failing. I don’t want to fail Ramadan either. That would be, like, a big event, something God is surely watching for. I won’t repeat what happened during last Ramadan, when I cheated … and Dad’s mouth formed a thin line, Mom tried to console me, Grandma shook her head, and Grandpa roared about my lack of discipline. Now my whole family wants me to win at this thing. People change. I’ve changed.

  “Almira, what’s wrong?” Lisa asks. Maria and Lisa open the bathroom door so hard that it bangs into the tiled wall behind it.

  Maria grabs both of my shoulders and gazes deeply into my eyes. Neither of them knows. They didn’t see me put that dreadful noodle in my mouth.

  “The smell of food was making me nauseous,” I say.

  “We’re done anyway, so let’s go,” Lisa says.

  Both girls are frowning and fussing over me. They take turns patting my arms and smoothing down my hair. I don’t like the attention, because it makes me feel guilty. But at least that noodle hadn’t gone down my throat. I feel like an anvil was about to fall on me, but it missed me by a few inches. Walking away from a near tragedy, I shiver from the cool air conditioning of the vast mall.

  It’s Monday and I ponder on what to do with my pretty brown eyes. Many people compliment me on my long lashes, but I believe that glasses hide my eyes. I try to put in my contact lenses, but they feel itchy on my irises. I quickly take them out and look at my cases of glasses. I normally wear my wire-rimmed ones, since they’re the thinnest, but today I settle on a pair with thick, black frames. They make me look artsy. I’m hoping to make Peter, an artist, feel like he’s with a kindred spirit.

 
I wear black leggings and a black tunic to enhance my artist appearance. If I could carry around a palette of paint and an easel, I would. I even wear a beret, but I know I’ll have to take it off once I’m inside school since we can’t wear hats of any kind.

  “You look like you’re going to a funeral,” Dad says.

  “Black is very slimming,” Mom says.

  “You’re not turning into one of those Goths, are you?”

  “Dad, no, stop it,” I say.

  A brand-new sketchpad that I bought at the drugstore last night rests in my bookbag. Maybe I can try to become better at drawing to impress Peter. This makes me nervous, because art has been the most challenging subject in my whole school career. In elementary school the art teacher who visited the classroom once a week always gave my drawings back to me and made me redo them. “That’s not a drawing. You did that too quickly. The crayon marks are all over the place.” Those comments affected my artistic self-esteem. Maybe under Peter’s eye I’ll blossom as an artist. I’ve practiced doodling in my notebooks over the past few days when I was bored in class. I began with geometric shapes and flowers. Soon I’ll start on the human figure.

  In English class I sit down and feel something hard underneath me. I get up expecting to see a pencil, and I find a Hershey’s Kiss instead. I don’t know where it came from, so I throw it out. I hear some lame remark behind me by some anonymous boy: “Ooh, Almira has a secret admirer who wants to give her a kiss.” I wish. I hope it’s my future boyfriend sending me messages through chocolate morsels. I picture someone tall, suave, dashing. He’ll leave a trail of chocolate toward my locker. I’ll open my locker and there will be a dozen roses. The dozen roses will have a note saying to meet him at a French bistro. At the French bistro we’ll have dinner to break my fast, and there will be roasted lamb and chocolate mousse and other stuff I like to eat. Then afterwards …

  “Almira, start your assignment!”

  I jolt in my seat when I hear the teacher call my name. Ms. Odige just asked us to write in our journals, about something that’s on our minds at the moment. I write the following:

  I don’t know why mean people suck so much. If I’m minding my own business and not doing something to someone, then I don’t understand why anyone would say or do something to hurt me. It doesn’t make sense and I don’t operate that way myself. It really sucks. I don’t like it when someone tries to hurt me or acts like I have no feelings. How would that person feel if I said or did the same thing to them? This person has really poor manners. This I know. She really needs to act nicer since she’s new and nobody really knows her. Nobody will want to know her.

  Ms. Odige reads some poetry with us and then gives us an assignment to do while she grades our journals. At the end of class I get my pink composition book back.

  You need to write more cohesively. You begin generally and then focus on the mystery person at the end. There’s no middle. Work on that. FCAT writing is just around the corner. Please don’t use the word “suck.” It’s vulgar.

  These are the comments Ms. Odige has written in red pen at the bottom of my entry. What does she expect? It’s just a mindless journal entry. Well, not really since I mean every word of it. I dislike Shakira. I don’t care who knows it. And I hate tests and the FCAT, a statewide test, is in the spring. And there are certain things, situations, and people that really suck. I also think that I write pretty decent if I concentrate hard enough.

  I wonder if my breath is okay. Fasting means that there’s no food or liquid passing my lips all day, so I worry about my breath. I blow into my hand, trying to figure out if the pigeons in the courtyard will drop dead if I walk past them. That doesn’t work, because all I smell is the soap on my hands. I can’t even have a Tic Tac, because that would be considered cheating.

  During lunch I observe—stalking is too drastic a word, even though that’s what I’m doing—Peter walking outside along the main building. I quickly walk over to the gazebo, which is a large, covered, wooden circle with benches. I plant myself on a bench and take out my new sketchpad. What to draw? I see a patch of violets to the side of the gazebo and decide to draw it.

  I goof up instantaneously. The violet I’m drawing has one huge petal compared to its other much smaller petals, and the shading is messy and unrealistic. I have to learn about lighting, coordination, and everything else artistic. How am I going to impress Peter? I look up and he’s watching me. I lift my knee higher, balancing my sketchpad so he can see I’m hard at work.

  He climbs the short steps to the gazebo’s platform. “Hey, what are you drawing?” he asks.

  “Flowers,” I say.

  “Oh.”

  That oh says so much. He thinks I suck. I know I suck.

  “I’ve been really interested in art lately,” I say.

  “Do you need any tips? I can help you if you want.”

  “Would you?”

  He sits down next to me and grabs my sketchpad. “First off, you started drawing to the far left and off center. There’s going to be a lot of white space to the right. You also have a very heavy hand shading … ”

  He rattles on about all of my shortcomings. He isn’t mean about it, so I calmly look at his wavy hair and arched eyebrows. He’s wearing a dark green shirt that’s the same color as his eyes. His hands look strong, yet he holds my sketchpad with a light touch. He’s amazing.

  “What’s that?” asks someone behind me.

  I turn around and Shakira is standing next to me. Why is she ruining this moment with Peter? Does she have no heart at all? I look at her and I see no flaws, except for the sneer on her face.

  “Violets,” I say.

  “You need to take art class with us,” Shakira says.

  Everything that comes out of her mouth is in a harsh tone of voice. There’s nothing soft and nice about her. She’s all about being rough and nasty. Yet Peter is looking up at her with admiration.

  “You should take art,” Peter says to me. “Shakira’s becoming a pretty good artist, and she took art at her last school. It helped her a lot.”

  “Yeah, like, you have to learn to draw.”

  She’s pointing out the obvious, with a voice dripping in sarcasm. I don’t want to hear her anymore. I take my sketchpad from Peter and tell them that I have to go to the restroom. I really do need to go, but I also want to get away from Shakira’s sharp tongue. I’ll be mortified if she embarrasses me in front of Peter. Is she going to call me fat again? Also, the way Peter looks up at her with worshipful eyes is unbearable.

  • • •

  Before biology, I catch Lisa opening her new tube of Fierce Pout and spreading it on her lips. Within minutes I notice that her lips are considerably larger. She doesn’t have Angelina Jolie pillow lips, but they are poutier.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Do you want to try some?” she asks.

  “Maybe later,” I say.

  We both sit next to Peter in class. He closes his pad when we plop our butts down on adjacent stools. I wonder who he’s drawing. I only saw dark swirls of hair and the sweep of a cheekbone. It’s definitely a girl he’s drawing. Maybe someone is posing for him in art class.

  “What are you drawing?” Lisa asks.

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “Will you draw me someday?” I ask.

  “Sure.”

  I smile. I want him to see my brilliant smile before I have dreadful braces placed in my mouth.

  “Your glasses are cool.”

  He notices! Mom and Dad thought I was crazy dressing like an artist this morning, but I know what I’m doing.

  “I think I saw those same glasses in Revenge of the Nerds,” Lisa says.

  I know she meant to say that in an innocuous way, but I shoot her a look of fiery anger. DO NOT RUIN THIS FOR ME. I’m hungry and boyfriendless. I
need the simple pleasure of a boy’s compliment. Lisa is pouting to make her artificially enhanced lips even fuller. She’s getting trout pout and it looks ridiculous.

  “There’s something different about you,” Peter says, shifting closer to Lisa. “I don’t know. It’s like you’re glowing.”

  “I moisturize,” Lisa says. She rubs her lips together and pouts some more.

  “Peter,” Shakira calls out. Boy, she pops up unexpectedly.

  “Hi, Shakira.” Peter becomes googly-eyed, getting lost in her olive skin and long lashes. She swishes her hair above one of her shoulders. She tugs at the waist of her dress and her boobs pop out an extra inch from her V-neck. Slut. Lisa must share my feelings, because her nostrils flare and the corners of her lips dip into a snarl.

  “This is the picture you asked for,” Shakira says. She slides a picture across the table. It’s one of those studio shots where the lighting gives her a halo effect, and she’s heavily made up. She’s wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, giving a come-hither look to the camera. Why is she giving this picture to him? I want to shout out. But I can’t play the jealous girlfriend when I have no boyfriend.

  “Thanks,” Peter says, tucking the picture into his binder.

  Shakira walks away and sits next to Luis, a football player who instantly begins to hover over her like an eager dog waiting for a bone to be thrown at him. Lisa and I both expectantly look at Peter. He notices our curiosity, so he gives us an explanation.

  “We’re drawing portraits in art and she’s my partner,” he says. “She has my picture so that she can work on it at home.”

  “Is she any good?” I ask. I know he said she’s improving, but I want to know if the slut has any talent. If she has beauty and talent, I just don’t know what I’ll do with that information. I want to hear that she’s stupid and talentless, rather than smart and skillful.

  “She’s working on it,” he says. “She’s okay, but she has a lot to learn about sketching.”

  I feel better hearing all of this, but I still have a lot of competition: Lisa, who is pretty in her own right, and Shakira, who is drop-dead gorgeous. I take out some cherry lip-gloss and slather it on my lips. If I do have bad breath, then the heavily scented gloss will mask it. I lean over Peter throughout the lesson, but he doesn’t notice my love for him. He pats my shoulder as if I’m a friend.