Bestest. Ramadan. Ever.

by Medeia Sharif

  I don’t want him to be my friend. I have plenty of friends. I want him to sketch me in his pad as if I’m his muse. I want to be his Mona Lisa or Duchess of Alba (maybe I’d be uninhibited enough to pose naked, but I’d probably chicken out). Knowing that he’s sketching Shakira further infuriates me and makes me hate her all the more.

  After school, Mom picks us up to take me to the orthodontist. Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do with It” plays on the radio and Mom sings along. The same boy who blew Mom a kiss last week does so again. His friends laugh at him, which makes me feel like he’s laughing at me and my mom. I see Peter walking home, and he thankfully doesn’t look in our direction. Good. I don’t want him to know that my mom is an exercise freak/karaoke singer. Yeah, she sings karaoke like it’s nobody’s business during parties.

  I’m also not in the mood to hear love songs since my heart’s all torn up and gouged out. It’s so hard trying to get Peter to look at me as girlfriend material. Lisa and Shakira are totally in my way. Lisa is hanging all over him shamelessly, and I’m attempting to be bolder than her without stepping on her toes as her best friend. I also want a relationship to happen naturally, yet I feel like I’m going out of my way with Peter by trying to get noticed. I don’t know if I can take the chance of looking like a fool and being rejected with all the extras I’m doing (like pretending to be interested in sketching). Then there’s Shakira, who is beautiful and more of an artist than I am. I did take a peek at her sketchpad today and she isn’t as good an artist as Peter, but she’s good enough to draw people who look like people, without outrageous features or any other oddities. Still, I feel like I’m able to compete with Lisa and Shakira. With or without braces, with or without glasses, with or without an extra ten pounds, I know that I’m girlfriend material.

  Mother starts yowling like a cat in pain (or heat) when Tina Turner hits a high note.

  “Mother!” I snap.

  She keeps singing. The woman is tone deaf. I sigh. The sight of the road pleases me, because now we’re far less likely to be spotted by my classmates as she sings off-key, dances in her seat, shakes her shoulders, and puffs out her chest. I want to walk home, but I have to go to this appointment with the orthodontist. Lisa slicks on some more Fierce Pout. Mom asks her what it is and they start to talk about makeup. I look out of the window, wanting to be somewhere else—in Peter’s arms, in a size-four dress, on the beach. My stomach growls loud enough for me to hear it, but nobody turns my way. Tina Turner is drowning out my hunger pangs, but I want people to know about my pangs. I want everyone to know that I’m hungry and starving during Ramadan, I’m afraid of Grandpa’s driving, I don’t want braces, and I’m madly in love with Peter. I want to be heard.

  “Do I look like Angelina with this?” Lisa asks my mom.

  “More than you used to,” Mom says. “But Angelina has big lips and I don’t think you can buy anything from the store to get that pout.”

  Everything is about what Angelina would do. Since Lisa wants to be just like her, it means being slinky and seductive. She’s going to take Peter from right under my nose. I’m going to be like Jennifer Aniston, spurned and lonely, and with braces. Dad always tells me that life isn’t fair, and at this point I know what he means.

  Dr. Abdelwahab and Dad work in the same building. The building is three stories high and is packed with doctors. There’s a gastroenterologist (someone who fixes gastric stuff), urologist (a urine doctor, I guess), endocrinologist (a doctor for the endocrine), and hematologist (someone who studies hemas, whatever those are). On the top floor is Dad and Dr. Abdelwahab. Mom and Lisa stay with me for extra support, even though I don’t need it. I’m not dying or anything like that, unless braces are going to look so disgusting on me that I want to die.

  The doctor is tall and skinny, with a handlebar moustache. “How are you?” he says, loud and happy.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Fantastic!”

  I frown. He reminds me of Borat, who is funny on screen but probably obnoxious to the extreme in person. There is no need for him to be so peppy when he’s going to uglify me and ruin my life. I open my mouth. He pokes, he prods, and then he sticks this contraption in my mouth to take an X-ray. After a few minutes Dad comes in, taking a break from his own work to see what’s going on.

  “Her bottom teeth are crowded,” Dr. Abdelwahab says, a large smile plastered on his face. “And they will get even more crowded because her wisdom teeth are coming in.”

  “What?” I say. “I’m too young for wisdom teeth.”

  “They usually appear after sixteen years of age, but sometimes they come in earlier,” he says.

  “I’ll pull them,” Dad says. “Then she can get braces.”

  Pull them. Out of my mouth? “Um, Dad, how are you going to take my wisdom teeth out?” I sputter.

  “You’ll need surgery.”

  Oh my God, I’ve never had surgery before.

  “It’s just Novocaine. You’ll be awake.”

  I don’t want to hear this! If I’m going to have surgery, I don’t want to be awake during it. I want to be knocked out cold so that I won’t feel an ounce of pain.

  “I can do it tomorrow—my four o’clock cancelled, so I have an opening,” Dad tells Dr. Abdelwahab. He turns to me. “After you heal, you’ll get braces.”

  “Dad!”

  “Don’t whine, Almira,” Dad admonishes with the shake of his head. “We’re the professionals.”

  That doesn’t mean anything. Professionals can cause a lot of pain. They have the needles and knives. I shouldn’t have smiled and laughed in front of Dad last week, because then he wouldn’t have noticed my funky teeth and I wouldn’t be going through this agony. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.

  “You’re going to look beautiful!” Dr. Abdelwahab brays. “Very nice!”

  “It’ll be okay,” Mom says.

  “Yeah,” Lisa says. “I had my tonsils taken out when I was little. We all get surgery some time in our life.”

  “But I don’t want to have this surgery before Parent Night.” So that I can arrive there with a swollen, ugly face when I want to eat dinner with Peter afterwards? Nooooooooooo.

  Whatever. There’s nothing I can do. I’ll be grown up and suffer through it. It’s bad enough that I wear glasses, but now I’ll wear braces to boot, with wisdom teeth extraction as a prerequisite. Mom stops by Starbucks to get us iced lattes, as if that can make me feel better. The sun has an hour more to go, so I put the latte, which makes me salivate, in the fridge until then. Everything seems like a test of patience: to wait for the sun to go down, to wait for my braces to come on, to wait for my braces to come off, to wait for Parent Night, to wait for my first kiss, to wait for my first boyfriend …

  AlmiraRules: what r u eating right now?

  GorgeLisa: brownies

  AlmiraRules: yum

  GorgeLisa: super moist with walnuts

  AlmiraRules: did your mom make them?

  GorgeLisa: yes

  AlmiraRules: her brownies are delicious

  GorgeLisa: i know, i wish i could cook as good as she does

  AlmiraRules: i can’t wait until the sun goes down

  GorgeLisa: for dinner we’re having pizza with mushrooms

  AlmiraRules: stop!

  GorgeLisa: it’s true, because it’s pizza night and mom also stopped at the bakery and got éclairs

  AlmiraRules: i’m going to faint

  GorgeLisa: éclairs are delish the way the cream oozes out when you bite into them

  AlmiraRules: please don’t remind me

  GorgeLisa: but my favorite is chocolate cake with the coconut in it

  AlmiraRules: german chocolate cake?

  GorgeLisa: yes

  AlmiraRules: STOP

  GorgeLisa: sorry for teasing you<
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  AlmiraRules: yeah! i can picture everything in my head but none of it is in front of me or in my mouth where it belongs

  GorgeLisa: ur doing a good job fasting

  AlmiraRules: thanks, but i’m nervous

  GorgeLisa: don’t be. imagine how fantastic you’re going to look without those extra wisdom teeth. you don’t need them. and you’re going to have perfect teeth after the braces come off

  AlmiraRules: do you think Peter is falling for Shakira

  GorgeLisa: she better not take my man away from me

  AlmiraRules: what makes you think that he’s your man?

  GorgeLisa: we have a spiritual connection that can’t be explained. it’s like when angelina signed up to do mr. and mrs. smith. she thought she was doing a regular old action movie, but she met the love of her life on the set and it wasn’t supposed to happen because he was already married, but it did. i’m angelina and shakira is jen

  AlmiraRules: shakira isn’t jen because peter barely knows her

  GorgeLisa: if you’re talking about two women vying for the attention of the same man, then she is jen.

  AlmiraRules: what’s so great about peter anyway?

  GorgeLisa: everything. he’s gorgeous, but not stuck up. quiet, but he can be funny. and he’s an artist

  AlmiraRules: he’s great

  GorgeLisa: see, i’m not wrong

  AlmiraRules: he’s gorgeous

  GorgeLisa: he’s the bestest

  AlmiraRules: do u think I’ll ever have a boyfriend?

  GorgeLisa: men will be beating down your door someday. you’ve lost weight and you have curly hair to die for and big brown eyes. of course you’ll have a boyfriend someday.

  AlmiraRules: i really hate shakira for what she’s said to me and i hate hating anybody.

  GorgeLisa: you are justified

  AlmiraRules: i’m going to eat soon and then go straight to bed. tomorrow i have surgery

  GorgeLisa: before you go, ms. odige wants us to write about an influential book that changed our lives

  AlmiraRules: i picked are you there god it’s me margaret by judy blume

  GorgeLisa: i picked the diary of anne frank

  AlmiraRules: cool

  GorgeLisa: the problem is, i forgot who wrote it. can you help me out

  AlmiraRules: it’s a diary

  GorgeLisa: so who wrote it?

  AlmiraRules: who do you think?

  GorgeLisa: ???

  AlmiraRules: THINK

  GorgeLisa: stop playing games, i really don’t know

  Almira Rules: ANNE FRANK

  GorgeLisa: duh, thanks. bye

  AlmiraRules: bye

  Mom makes a huge dinner, which I pick at. I can’t stop thinking about Peter and how Lisa is dead set on having him. What an unfair world it is that two friends want the same boy. Lisa and I share a life together, went through childhood together, and then this boy came into my life last year when I was a freshman and at the moment he has me befuddled with love—I barely know him, but he is causing an emotional rift between me and Lisa. It feels strange, but maybe it’s a part of growing up. I’ve fallen in and out of friendships before, but I always expect Lisa to be a constant presence. If I reveal my crush to her, could she possibly accept it? It’s too scary to think about.

  I think about Peter’s transformation. Last year, when he was heavier, he had love handles spilling over his jeans. Even then I wanted to squeeze the baby fat rolling off his waist. When he sat in front of me in freshman English class, I saw he had pimples on the back of his neck and I wasn’t grossed out at all, when that normally would gross me out. Maybe it was a sign, fate. I’ll accept everything and anything from this boy. We’re meant to be together. I hope that he’ll accept me the way I accepted him.

  Then he lost weight, his body went from soft to hard, his face cleared up, his hair was lusher … it was like he had an overnight makeover, blossoming in front of my eyes. Smoking hot. I can’t stop thinking about him, and at the same time Lisa has declared her love for him. Why can’t Lisa love someone else? But I know the answer. In a school, nay a town, teeming with hot boys, Peter is a rarity. It’s more than his looks, but something that is indefinable, that je ne sais quoi. He’s more mature than the boys around us, he’s an artist, he studies art books as if he wants to be swallowed by the paintings, and he’s even a poet (he mentioned to me that a poem he submitted showed up in the last edition of the school newspaper). So he’s not just good-looking, but he’s deep. While my other male classmates are making fart noises and laughing for stupid reasons, he stands out as a profound boy/man. He’s special.

  “What are you thinking about?” Grandpa asks me during dinner.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  I’m thinking about an American boy. I’m thinking about kissing an American boy. So what do you think about that, Grandpa? I feel treacherous having these thoughts in front of him. I’m stung with guilt, because how can I be musing about boys in front of Grandpa? Thank God he isn’t a mind reader. Thank God daydreaming is safe, that it isn’t the real thing, because I don’t know if I can handle the real thing.

  “How is your fasting going?” Grandpa asks me. He’s always asking me that question. I try not to flare my nostrils or give other signs of anger.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “You’re not, you know—” He twitches his mouth, nibbling something imaginary. “You’re not sneaking away any snacks?”

  This time I do flare my nostrils. “No, Grandpa, I’m not,” I manage to say. I really want to yell at him for asking me that question. Sure, I cheated last year, but it’s in the past. I’m trying to redeem myself, wash away that ugly memory of eating the pack of chocolate wafers when I couldn’t ignore my hunger pangs, and then hiding the evidence by stuffing the wrapper in the bottom of my trash can. But I forgot to wipe away those crumbs stuck to my lip-gloss. Grandpa noticed them first, then my parents became disappointed in me and I dropped the idea of fasting for the rest of the month. Grandpa just has to remind me of this dreadful incident. He’s acting like Ms. Odige. I messed up on a paper, formatting one entire paragraph in all caps, and she never lets me forget it. “Almira, remember to watch your caps lock,” she says every time she assigns a paper. Grrr. Why do some people have to be like that? I can’t stand it when someone doesn’t let go of the past and won’t accept my new accomplishments.

  My anger vanishes when we dig into a tray of cookies and cups of tea. Grandpa tells me stories about his car dealership days (he was the number-one salesperson, rich infidels were always treated nicely, and ditzy young women didn’t know how to haggle). My grandparents leave and soon afterwards I help Mom clean up the kitchen.

  I don’t go to bed right away. I read a romance book, one with a handsome teenage boy and gorgeous teenage girl on the cover looking deeply into each other’s eyes. Mom says those books are trashy, but all of my friends read them. My parents couldn’t care less about what I read, because they think it’s good that I’m at least reading. Some of my friends don’t read at all, with the distractions of iPods, video games, the Internet, and premium cable channels. Dad even gives me gift cards for bookstores, which I use to buy more romance books. I hide these books from Grandpa. I have shoeboxes in my closet just for them, because he’d confiscate them otherwise. You’re being corrupted by this Amriki trash. His words echo in my head. I stomp them out by reading a juicy scene of kissing and light petting.

  This part is really good. That’s written in the margin of one of the pages. It looks like Maria’s bubbly handwriting (I lent her the book months ago). I reread the page, picturing me and Peter as the main characters. We’re stuck in an elevator during a power outage. It’s hot. We’re rivals, both writers for the school newspaper who never see eye-to-eye with each other. He’s just written a lead story that I also
happen to be working on—roaches in the cafeteria—but he finished it before I could. We had a yelling match the other day, but we stumble into the same elevator that afternoon. The power outage freezes the elevator between floors. I feel faint from the heat, so he grips my arm. I hold his shoulder to steady myself. Our bitterness turns into lust. His lips are on mine. There’s nothing else to do but make out. In real life our school doesn’t allow students to use elevators, and they all require a security key anyway. Only teachers can use them.

  Before going to bed, I study myself in the mirror. I smooth Olay cream, which Mom has given me, over my face. I rub baby oil over my lashes since Mom says it helps make lashes grow. I have long black lashes, and I bat them. No, it looks wrong. I don’t look seductive enough. All of Mom’s tricks, potions, and lotions don’t exactly work on me.

  I take a tube of lip balm and smooth it over my lips. I make kissy faces. Kiss me, Peter, kiss me now. The dialogue in my head sounds like it comes from the cheap, campy romance novels I’m always reading. I wonder what the real thing is like, a real boyfriend, a real kiss, a real relationship. I open Heavenly Kiss again, to the page of Maria’s commentary. I take a pink pen and underneath Maria’s words I write, This is the bestest part of the book.

  There’s a surprise waiting for me in math class: a small Dove chocolate on my desk. I wonder if I should throw it out or not, since it has no perforations or rips. It’s probably Maria trying to tempt me, since she’s been trying to trip up my fasting since I began. Maybe it’s Lisa, who sometimes joins Maria in the teasing. I hope that the two of them will have to fast someday and then I can wave food in front of their faces, see how strong they are.

  I put the chocolate in my bookbag. Self-control, that’s what Ramadan is about. Of course eating is far from my mind with the surgery ahead of me. Pain, not pleasure, comes to mind when I think about my mouth. I probably won’t be able to eat chocolate for days since my mouth will be sore after surgery.