“I want to go,” I say. “Take me home.”
He drops his spoon on to the table and stands up, taking my hand in his. “Why? What’s wrong? Did somebody hurt you? I’ll smash their face!”
I choke back tears and he leads me away to a quiet corner.
“What happened?”
I take a deep breath and lean back against the wall. “Have you seen Timothy?”
“Timothy? You mean the guy with the lawyer mom?”
I nod and he shakes his head. “Why? Do you want me to smash him?”
“Bilal! I don’t want you to smash anybody.”
“But you’ve been crying. It’s your night, Jam. You’re supposed to be happy. I’m missing out on a funk night, remember?”
He gives me an affectionate look and I smile. “I don’t think I can go through with it, Bilal. I don’t think I can play in the band.”
“Then don’t,” he says casually. “It’s no big deal.”
But it is. He doesn’t know how much it means to me.
“Oh, Bilal. You don’t understand.”
“Wait there one second, OK?”
I nod and he dashes off. I’m rubbing smudged makeup from the bottom of my eyelids when he returns. I turn around and Timothy is there, standing tall and graceful in a black tux.
“She’s been looking for you,” Bilal says. “Apparently I don’t understand. I’m guessing you do. Hurt her, and I’ll smash you. Be nice to her and you can come and chill with me. I’ve got an extra plate of pasta if you’re still hungry.” He winks at me and walks away.
“What’s going on?” He gives me a confused look.
I smile self-consciously. “Forget it. Anyway, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.”
“I made friends with the DJ.”
“I owe you an apology.”
“You owe me an apology for not accepting my apology. There, we’re even.”
I laugh out loud in surprise. “That was easy. I had a whole speech planned.”
“I can understand why you were initially angry. It would have come as a shock to you. It did to me when I realized I was e-mailing you.”
“I’ve thought long and hard about it. And you didn’t take advantage of me. You blocked me pretty soon after you found out. Boy, was I pissed off with you!”
He laughs. “Why?”
“Because John was the first person I’d ever opened up to. But then we started getting closer and it felt so familiar and comfortable. I didn’t miss John as much anymore.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“Who am I talking to? Jamilah or Jamie?”
I smile and look into his eyes. “Jamie’s gone, Timothy.”
He suddenly steps forward, grabs both of my hands, and kisses me on the lips. Then he leans back, still holding my hands tightly in his.
I’m stunned. It feels like an electric shock. Like every cell in my body is on fire with the excitement of it. I feel like jumping up and down with delight. I feel like laughing. He makes me feel like a salty summer breeze. Like a sailboat bobbing up and down on the harbor on a cloudless day.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I catch Bilal looking our way from across the room. I can tell by the expression on his face that he hadn’t seen Timothy kiss me. But his face is scrunched up with confusion, having seen me so close to Timothy. He stretches tall on the tips of his toes and tries to get a closer look.
I quickly drop my hands and step back, keeping my distance from Timothy. I wave at Bilal, trying to disguise the guilty expression on my face. He slowly waves back and then turns around.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper to myself.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
I look up at Timothy and give him a gentle smile. “I’m sorry, Timothy. But I can’t do this.”
“What do you mean?”
“This. Us. I can’t do it at this point. The timing is all wrong.”
“Why?”
I sigh and fumble anxiously with my hands. “For the first time in my life I’ve decided to be honest. With myself, with my friends, with my family. To be with you would mean I’d have to go behind my dad’s back. I’ve just discovered honesty and trust. And for once in my life I have a relationship with my dad. I don’t want to lose that.”
He stares down at the floor. Then up at the ceiling. Then back at the floor. He sighs heavily.
“There’s no chance he’d come around?”
I chuckle. “Not in a million years. I care for you, Timothy. A lot. But I also care about keeping the peace between Dad and me. I’m through with the lies and deceit.”
This is what I love about Timothy. He understands me. He gives me space when I need it. He doesn’t take crap from me. I’ve talked to him, I’ve read him, and it’s been like fish and chips in butcher’s paper and fizzy lemonade in a glass bottle. All I want is for us to forget John and Jamie and start over as Timothy and Jamilah. But as best friends. This is my first test. And if being with Timothy means deceiving my father, then I’m willing to put that desire aside. It hurts to reject Timothy. Choosing honesty isn’t always easy. I just know it’s the right thing to do.
He takes a deep breath. “Oh boy,” he says, exhaling heavily and running his fingers through his hair. “Well, I can’t very well resent you for wanting to do the whole true to myself thing. Not after all we’ve been through.”
His smile is warm and sincere and it almost makes me want to cry.
“You’re special, Timothy.”
“You’re breaking my heart here, Jamilah,” he says, trying to sound cheerful as he shakes his head.
I lean over and gently place my hand on his arm. “Thanks for everything.”
There’s no need for words. We walk back to our table, enjoying the comfortable silence between friends.
Mustafa storms up to me and grabs me by the arm. I’m sitting with Timothy, Bilal, Amy, and Lindsay. We’re eating our main course, listening to Bilal’s stories.
“Here you are! Man, come on backstage! We have to go through some pre-performance logistics! I’ll see you there in five. You dig?”
“Yeah, I dig,” I say and he gives me the peace sign and hurries away.
Mr. Anderson gets up onto the stage and makes an announcement that the band will be performing in fifteen minutes. Anybody wanting to dance along to the performance is invited to the dance floor.
Peter is sitting at a nearby table. He makes a loud booing noise. Bilal looks behind and then back at me, rolling his eyes in Peter’s direction.
We all stand up. Everybody wants a good position on the dance floor. We head down, crossing paths with Peter, Chris, Sam, and Liz as we do. They have no problem sharing their lack of enthusiasm.
“What a frigging joke!” Peter cries. “Now we have to put up with these wogs and their desert music.”
Bilal’s eyes turn into slits, as narrow as two coin slots. I gently place my hand on his arm and shake my head.
Peter is oblivious. “I mean, this is Australia, not Iraq.”
“That’s it,” Bilal says, pushing my arm away and tapping Peter on the shoulder. We all stop to watch.
“Do you want to shut your trap or do you want me to do it for you?”
“Who do you think…?” Peter’s voice trails off as he turns around and notices Bilal’s size. “What’s your problem?” he asks, his voice slightly shaky.
“My problem is that you’re a racist idiot. I’ve just eaten two bowls of pasta. I’m on carb overload here, so connecting your face to the floor isn’t really going to take much effort. My sister’s playing in that wog band. She’s going to rock. And I’m going to seriously injure you if you don’t shove that tongue back down into that miserable throat of yours. Do you understand?”
Peter shrivels up. He looks over at me in astonishment and I fold my arms across my chest and stare back at him, daring him to say something. He looks back at Bilal, who’s towering over him, gives a feeble sneer, an
d quickly walks away. We all stare in awe at Bilal and let out a whooping cheer.
I hitch the bag containing my darabuka under my arm. Bilal gives me a quick hug. Timothy winks at me. Amy squeezes my hand. I smile at them and walk backstage. I know that I’ll never feel alone again.
Mustafa, Samira, and Hasan are anxiously waiting for me.
“The concert starts in ten minutes,” Samira cries. “We’re on soon! Are you all ready?”
“Yep!” I pat my bag and she smiles with relief.
I make a quick trip to the bathroom. I lean over a sink and put some water on my cheeks, careful not to ruin my makeup. I take in deep breaths, shaking my hands and looking at myself in the mirror.
“You can do this,” I whisper to myself. I stare long and hard at my reflection but I slowly start to look distorted and lopsided and it freaks me out so I stare at the bath tiles instead.
The schizophrenia sets in about three seconds later.
Voice 1 (A mix of Timothy and Amy): Don’t panic. You have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s your heritage. It’s cool. You know the darabuka is awesome. They’ll love it.
Voice 2 (Jamie loud and clear): Don’t be such an idiot. How lame can you get? The darabuka? At your tenth grade formal? Run while you still have a chance to save your dignity. It’s woggy beyond belief. You will never live it down. They’ll know you’re Arabic! And then what? Do you seriously want to open up the way for all the towelhead and terrorist and camel-jockey jokes? Run!
Voice 3 (Aunt Sowsan): You should have eaten some of the pasta. Solids in the stomach would have helped you cope. Although the pasta did look a little too creamy. That could have been dangerous too.
Voice 4 (Miss Sajda): Darling, habibi, don’t concern yourself with the creamy pasta. Years of garlic sauce on kebabs have given you a great constitution. Just have your fun! Be proud of who you are! Remove the disguise. And step out of the world of anonymity.
And so that’s what I decide to do.
I return to my group and stand behind the curtain waiting for Mr. Anderson to finish introducing us. The crowd claps and cheers and we step out onto the stage. The internal karate moves don’t stop but I try my best to ignore them, looking out into the sea of faces and bodies. I see Amy and Timothy and they wave wildly at me. Bilal is standing to the side of the dance floor, hands folded across his chest, chest pumped up, thoroughly enjoying the attention of the girls who are buzzing around him. We make eye contact and he gives me the thumbs-up.
We each take our individual positions on the stage and set up our instruments. I place the darabuka under my arm and crack my knuckles.
This is it. I gulp hard.
Mustafa, not content with Mr. Anderson’s welcome preamble, grabs the microphone, adopts his “I’m a sick bro in the ‘hood” attitude, and proceeds to get the crowd in even more of a whirl.
“Yo! Whassup, y’all? We’re gonna FREAK tonight! This group behind me here is the bling of tonight’s formal!”
The crowd cheers. One person yells out, “Get on with it, ya P. Diddy wannabe!”
“Tonight is about Aussie-Ethnic pride! We’re the OzWogs! And we’re gonna make you shake it!”
The crowd starts cheering. I look over at Mr. Anderson. He looks aghast.
“Let’s get the party STARTED, y’all!”
My God, I think to myself, does Mustafa need an English dictionary or what?
The stage lights dim and Mustafa and Hasan start on their keyboards, sounding out a stream of dance and techno beats that doof doof through our bodies. The beats start slow and then start to intensify, getting faster and wilder. On my cue, I start striking the center and edges of the darabuka with the palms of my hands. The music drums out and reverberates into the night as the stage floor microphones pick up the beats. I look out at a sea of faces. Most people are in awe. We’ve combined techno and dance, eastern with western, and the crowd is loving it. Suddenly Hayaat, a Lebanese girl; Stella, a Greek girl; and Caroline, an Anglo girl, jump up onto the stage and start dancing to the music, shifting between hip-hop, funk, and belly-dancing shakes of their hips and torsos. As the music intensifies, their moves become faster and they flirt with the air, swinging their hips, swaying their arms, and kicking their legs. The crowd responds with more frenzied cheers.
I spot Peter, Chris, and Sam. They’re huddled together, scowls on their faces. Liz is looking up in surprise. I grin down at them.
We keep on playing and the darabuka picks me up from my chair and lifts me into another dimension. I’m floating above the crowd, watching them celebrate my music, drinking it up like chilled lemonade on a summer’s day.
I can’t believe I’m here, at my formal, in front of all my classmates, exposing myself like this. There’s no shame; there’s no embarrassment. With every drumming down on the darabuka I’m announcing who I am. For the first time in my life, knowing the answer has never felt so sweet.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANK YOU TO the team at Scholastic for all your wonderful efforts in publishing and promoting my books. Special thanks to Marion Lloyd. It is both a delight and honor to work with you. My books are truly in special hands. And thank you to my brilliant agent, Sheila Drummond. We really are a perfect match.
Juggling a newborn baby with a deadline to deliver the second draft of this book was quite a challenge. I would not have been able to meet my deadline without the support of many people. My biggest thanks go to Tant Thanna, who selflessly offered me so much of her time and support.
Thank you to my parents and sister. Your unending faith and support keep me going!
Finally, thank you to my husband, Ibrahim, for his patience and love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH is a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer. Ten Things I Hate About Me is her second novel, and she received a Kathleen Mitchell Award for Young Writers for it in Australia. Does My Head Look Big In This? was her first, and received much critical acclaim when it was published by Orchard Books in 2007.
Randa grew up in Melbourne, Australia, but now lives in Sydney where she is active in the interfaith community. She is also a member of Palestinian human rights campaigns and the Australian Arabic Council. She loves traveling to Egypt and Palestine and being spoiled by her relatives. She also loves reading, watching romantic comedies, her husband’s sense of humor, getting a seat on the train, and any movie starring Colin Firth. Randa and her husband have a baby daughter.
Copyright
Text copyright © 2006 by Randa Abdel-Fattah
First published in Australia by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd in 2006.
Published by arrangement with Marion Lloyd Books, an imprint of Scholastic, a division of Scholastic Ltd.
Published in the UK in 2007.
All rights reserved. Published by Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. ORCHARD BOOKS and design are registered trademarks of Watts Publishing Group, Ltd., used under license. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Marion Lloyd Books, An Imprint of Scholastic Ltd, Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street, London NW1 1DB, UK
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Abdel-Fattah, Randa.
Ten things I hate about me / Randa Abdel-Fattah.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Lebanese-Australian Jamilah, known in school as Jamie, hides her heritage from her classmates and tries to pass by dyeing her hair blonde and wearing blue-tinted contact lenses, until her conflicted feelings become too much for her to bear.
ISBN-13: 978-0-545-05055-5
1. [Identity—Fiction. 2. Self-acceptance—Fiction. 3. Prejudices—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6.
Lebanese—Australia—Fiction. 7. Australia—Fiction. I. Title.]
PZ7.A15892Te 2009 [Fic]—dc22
2008013667
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 10 11 12 13
FIRST EDITION, January 2009
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
E-ISBN: 978-0-545-23203-6
Jacket photographs © 2009 by Michael Frost
Jacket design by Lillie Mear
Ten Things I Hate About Me Page 20