“My little Azra,” Samara says, releasing me. “You are breathtaking. Not that you weren’t always gorgeous. But now … let’s just say you might break your mom’s record for most invites to prom.” She calls out to my mother. “What do you think, Kalyssa? Will you be upset if your daughter outshines you?”
“Lalla Sam, stop it.” I sink into the couch. “There’s no danger of that.”
My mother joins us in the living room, a tray with bowls of hummus, roasted eggplant, and pita bread following her.
My newly inspired resolve to give this a chance receives its first positive reinforcement when my mother, upon seeing me in the purple tunic, smiles warmly.
Laila still hasn’t said a word. I feel her eyes on me and turn to her. “What?” I instantly regret the harshness of my tone.
Weakest. Resolve. Ever.
That we aren’t the best friends our mothers want us to be is entirely my fault. Still, we’ve grown up together, and she’s the closest I’ll ever come to having a sibling. When we were little, I liked having Laila around. Especially after Jenny was gone, being with Laila made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
“It’s just…” Laila starts. “This is what I’m going to look like?”
But ever since we started needing bras and deodorant, I’ve been alone again. Because Laila can’t wait to be a genie.
“Awesome.” She runs her fingers through her already long hair. “Only a few more weeks to go.”
Seeing what magic managed to do to me, I’m not sure I want to stand next to Laila, with her blond curls and pale blue eyes, after she turns sixteen, especially if Samara’s voluptuous figure is any indication of what’s to come. As Samara bends over the coffee table to dip a slice of warm pita into the hummus, I get an eyeful of Laila’s future.
I used to think the Afrit were huge fans of that silly old TV show and decided humans deserved their genies sexed up: lipstick-wearing, midriff-baring, cleavage-daring.
But the attractiveness of our species is simply genetic. We are all descended from Lalla Mimouna and Sidi Mimoun, the first Jinn power couple. Legend has it that Jinn were once spirit creatures, made of smokeless fire. These spirits inhabited a plane between the air and the earth and embodied the purest elements of the natural world. In return for corporeal form, the spirits agreed to use the magical powers nature bestowed on them to serve humans for the “greater good.”
Guess “pure” translated into “hot” when those spirits got legs. Then again, Jinn are particularly clever. It wouldn’t surprise me if the bargain with nature included an eye-candy clause and we Jinn actually are the most shallow of species.
Samara wipes a glop of hummus off her heaving bosom, which causes Laila to turn to me. “Did you need a bigger bra?”
Everyone’s eyes fall on my chest, which I am too easily able to cover with my arms.
“I sure hope I do.” Laila pulls out the collar of her cotton short-sleeved sweater and studies her breasts.
Samara’s deep, sexy laugh precedes her reply. “Oh, you will. Runs in our line. Always has.”
Laila pats her boobs and beams.
Though our birthdays are less than two months apart, Laila has always seemed younger. Her being short—and anything under five feet four inches is short for a Jinn—doesn’t help that. That’ll likely change when she gets her bangle. But she’s also seemed younger because she’s so eager. She’s been excited for her sixteenth birthday as far back as I can remember.
One December, when we were ten, we were celebrating Christmas. We celebrate all the religious holidays on a rotating basis. Some years it’s Christmas, some years it’s Hanukah, some years it’s Kwanzaa, some years it’s Las Posadas (my favorite because it involves whacking piñatas), and so on. But that year, it was Christmas’s turn. Our moms were huddled together in front of the fire having one of their marathon talks, and Laila and I were rearranging the decorations on the tree.
Laila tore off a piece of the silver tinsel and broke it in half. She tied one strand around my wrist and the other around her own. “There,” she said, “now you grant my wish, and I’ll grant yours.”
She wanted me to pretend first. Not because she wanted to make a wish so badly but because she wanted me to get the chance to grant one first. She was being her usual kind, generous self, letting me be the first to role-play as a genie. To Laila, being able to grant a wish was far more of a thrill than being able to make one.
Six years later, this fact still separates us. The only thing that’s changed is my need to pretend. Now I can actually grant wishes. Somehow, everything I’ve done today makes this prospect more, not less, frightening.
“Dinner should be ready by the time everyone else gets here,” my mother says.
Samara snorts. “Oh, Kalyssa, you and your tagines. Tell me, why tagines? Why are tagines the only dish you make the human way? The very, very slow way?”
My mother looks at me. “I just think it tastes better that way.”
Her concession to make my favorite meal without using Jinn magic is the closest my mother can come to granting what she knows has always been my wish.
Samara swishes the wrist of her gold-bangled hand. “Yes, because it makes you starving. Hunger makes everything taste better. If I had your talents, there’s nothing I wouldn’t conjure rather than cook.”
“Well,” Laila says, drawing out the word, “perhaps if you spent half as much time practicing conjuring food as you do purses, we’d end up with something edible.”
Samara flutters her thick eyelashes at her daughter. “I’ll let you perfect conjuring food, sweetheart. Until then, we’ll have to settle for raiding the kitchen for more snacks.”
Laila hops off the couch and grabs my hand. “Want to help?”
Maybe maintaining my resolve is getting easier, because I kinda do. Let’s say it’s that and not the fact that my stomach is rumbling, begging for more than just the mint chocolate chip ice cream I fed it today.
“Sure, in a minute,” I say, which elicits an approving nod from my mother. She follows Laila and Samara into the kitchen while I roll up the sleeves of my tunic.
The house still radiates warmth from the morning’s fires. I kneel on the couch and lift the window behind it as the Carwyns’ SUV pulls into their driveway. Lisa pops out first, a pink-and-white-striped beach towel tied around her neck like a cape. Mr. and Mrs. Carwyn exit the front seats. Henry is the last to appear.
He waits until his sister has completed her circuit of figure eights across the front lawn and unties the towel. He shakes it, folds it in half, and adds it to the bag his father unloads from the back of the car.
It’s a normal Saturday in the Carwyn household.
Mrs. Carwyn carries a red-and-white-checked doggie bag. The styling is instantly recognizable as that of the seafood shack that makes the best fried clams and oysters in our coastal town. The Carwyns must have spent the day at the beach followed by dinner at the Pearl. They spent my birthday the way I wanted to.
Before the family enters the house, each member leaves a pair of sandy flip-flops by the hose on the side of the garage. The four pairs sit there, each representing its owner: mother, father, daughter, son. When my family returns home from the beach, there are only two pairs of flip-flops. And they aren’t even sandy. My mother vanishes the sand before we get in the car.
I’m still staring at their house when Henry emerges from the garage. He turns on the faucet and uses the hose to wash out a bucket shaped like a sandcastle. The patches of sun-bleached white on the blue plastic make me certain it’s the same one Jenny and I used to play with.
Henry leans over to pick up a pair of flip-flops and his glasses slide off his nose. He digs them out of the slightly too-tall grass and tucks them into his back pocket. The post-beach, sun-touched pink of his cheeks and windblown tousle of his light brown hair suit him better than the fluorescent lights and prison gray walls of our French classroom. He looks directly at me. I freeze. The day at the beach and dinner
at the Pearl was surely his family’s way of trying to forget what today would have been for Jenny.
I flop down and hide behind the couch cushions. I can’t think about that on top of everything else. When my rapid heartbeat slows, I inch back up and peer over the pillows. Henry is turning off the spigot. He wipes his glasses with the end of his shirt before he returns them to their perch on the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He couldn’t have seen me. I sit back up. He looks right at me. And waves.
Though I’m technically an adult, at least in the Jinn world, my childish response is to duck behind the cushions again.
“Azra!” My mom enters the room with a bowl so full of chips that she needs to levitate the top ones to prevent them from cascading over the side. “It’s freezing. What are you doing with that window open?”
Henry’s still standing there when I shut the window. I turn around to see a bottle of wine hovering above the coffee table.
“Care for a glass?” Samara says.
Four wineglasses swoop into the room, landing underneath the bottle of wine just as the cork shoots out of the neck. The red liquid flows in an arc into the suspended stemware.
I grab a curtain in each hand and draw the fabric over the front windows.
It’s a normal Saturday in the Nadira household.
6
Wine is delicious.
Samara persuades my mother to allow Laila and I half a glass each, a small indulgence to celebrate my entry into Jinn adulthood. She presses my mother on why human rules should apply. “It’s bad enough they have to go to their schools, why should they have to do everything like them?”
This marks the first thing I have no objections to all day.
Traditionally, along with sweets, Jinn love alcohol. My mother has never allowed me a single taste before today. By the time I finish my glass, I have an inkling why. The warmth of my cheeks penetrates my whole body. It’s like apping in place. Which, apparently, I’m not allowed to do.
“No apporting,” my mother says.
I make a face. Normal high school kids get the lecture about not drinking and driving.
“I’m serious, Azra,” my mother says. “I gave in, at least do what I ask, okay?”
I mumble a “fine” and lick the last red droplet clinging to the rim of my glass. Laila places her own empty glass on the table. She drank as fast as I did.
The knock on the door prevents me from angling for a refill.
Laila climbs across my lap and scrambles over the arm of the sofa. She seizes the doorknob but doesn’t turn it. Instead she waves me over with her free hand. “Come on, Az. Let’s open it together.”
The alcohol appears to have dulled my groan reflex. If my mother knew that, she’d probably change her tune and make me use wine instead of milk in my morning cereal.
Positioning myself by the door, I let Laila fling it wide open. I stumble back when, instead of the members of our soon-to-be Zar, before me stands Henry holding a string in his hand. I follow the string up to the balloon it’s tied to, the balloon that reads, “Happy Sweet Sixteen!”
Ah, Henry doesn’t know that for me, the only thing sweet about turning sixteen is the slowly digesting wine in my stomach.
Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck prickles, and my “thank you” lodges in my throat. The room hums with static electricity. Thanks to Yasmin and Hana’s earlier visits, I know exactly what this means. Laila begins to move out from behind the open door, but I shove her aside in the same instant that a glass shatters behind me.
Samara’s shrill voice cries, “Azra, app, appi—”
I’m already launching myself out the front door. I collide with Henry just as eight assorted Jinn materialize out of thin air in my living room. I slam the door shut and pry myself off of Henry’s chest. I search his eyes, whose same greenish hue as Jenny’s leaves me momentarily speechless, for any sign that he caught a glimpse of the swarm of teleporting Jinn.
I can’t read the look on his face. Surprise? Fear? Amusement? Amusement, yes, he’s tickled pink, and not just from the sun. From me.
“Sorry,” I say. “Laila was … changing.”
Henry’s grin widens as he looks at the door and then back at me. He inches forward, eyes narrowing, head tilting.
I inch backward, shoulders hunching, knees bending.
With Jenny gone, Henry might be the only human able to tell that my change in appearance is from more than a full day at a high-end Boston salon.
“Is something … different?” he asks.
“Spa day,” I say without hesitation as I sweep my long braid off my shoulder. “Mom’s idea of a birthday present.”
My lies flow as easily as water from a faucet, but this time, with Henry, as I slink into the shadows being cast by the fading sun, it’s not just to hide my new look; it’s also to hide my guilt.
Skepticism radiates from Henry’s nod as he rests against the weathered gray shingles to the left of the door. He squints and then points to my shirt. “Purple?”
“Another birthday present.”
“It’s nice. That was Jenny’s favorite color.”
I flatten my palm across my chest. How could I forget? Did my mother remember? That I’m sure she did makes my heart grow heavy.
“Nice that you’re having a party,” he says.
A party Jenny can’t have. The only sound is that of the foil balloon brushing against the door frame.
Now my heart may as well be made of lead.
Henry clears his throat. “Haven’t seen Laila around much. I’m glad you two are still close. And that was her mother? Sam? What was that she was saying? Appy…”
Pushing past the knot in my stomach, I issue what I hope is a breezy laugh. “Oh, that was just Lal—” I swallow and laugh again. “I mean, Aunt Sam trying hard to be funny. ‘Appy Berfday.’ Working on her cockney accent, I think.”
My body had sprung into action even before Samara had finished her warning. Which makes me wonder why none of our Zar sisters managed to detect the presence of a human before appearing. Was Henry too far from them or were they too busy horsing around to take notice? My mother said the more attuned we are to our senses and to our surroundings, the better and farther out the detection works.
I notice Henry eyeing the small gap between the front window’s curtains and snatch the string from him. “Thanks for this.”
Running his hand through his hair and leaving several tufts standing upright, he says, “Oh, sure, but that’s just my cover. This is your real present.” He digs into the front pocket of his jeans and pulls out a small silver key. “Here.”
Instead of taking it, I slide farther into the shadows. “What’s that for?”
“My parents finally put a lock on the fence gate. I figured what with it being your birthday and all, you might need your escape hatch.”
The string slips through my fingers, but Henry catches the end before the balloon races for the stars.
“You knew?” I say, sounding as dumbfounded as I feel.
Seeking refuge in the Carwyns’ backyard during the Zar gatherings held at our house started a couple of years ago and by now has become my routine. Sneaking away even for a few moments helps prevent the sheer quantity of Jinn-ness from suffocating me.
I had no idea that Henry had been watching me.
He gently places the key and the balloon’s string in my hand. “If I had as many aunts and cousins as you, I’m sure I’d need a break too.”
Our eyes meet, and I immediately lower my golden gaze.
“Hey,” he says, “don’t look so worried. I haven’t told anyone. But I did keep a lookout to make sure you didn’t fall in the pool or freeze to death.”
I had no idea that Henry had been watching out for me.
“Figured your family was coming tonight. Now if you need to go on the lam, you can. And, as always, mum’s the word.”
Still in shock, I stammer out, “You … you won’t say anything?”
He shrugs a yes. “Can’t have sisters and not be good at keeping secrets.”
A smile tugs at the corners of my lips. I’m good at keeping secrets. Sharing them is a new experience. One, at least with Henry, I like. He’s become the older brother Jenny would have deserved.
The front door I’m leaning against flies open, and I tumble backward over the threshold and into the living room. I tuck the key into my pocket before facing my own version of sisters.
Steam threatens to billow off my searing hot cheeks as I’m flanked by Yasmin, Hana, Mina, and Farrah. Who just happen to be decked out in genie costumes. Exposed belly button, gauzy harem pants, tiny hat with sheer headscarf, the whole ridiculous nine yards of flowing fabric. And Henry’s right here. Are they crazy? At least I can count on Laila to help … Oh, come on.
Laila bounces down the stairs in her own sparkly pink ensemble. She flips the scarf off her face as she rushes to hug Henry.
“I haven’t seen you in forever!” Laila says as she lets him go.
He hovers in the doorway. It’s not often that humans see six GITs in one place. Add in that five are half naked, and Henry’s face turns as red as mine feels.
He shoves the end of his T-shirt into his jeans. “Of all the days for my Batsuit to be at the cleaners.”
No one but me laughs at his joke. It’s possible no one but me gets his joke.
“Wouldn’t have pegged you as a costume party kind of girl, Azra,” Henry says. He nods to my mother, who enters the room from the kitchen. “Didn’t mean to crash the party, Mrs. Nadira.”
“Oh, Henry.” My mother maneuvers herself to block his line of sight into the house. “You’re welcome here any time.”
As much as she wants to mean this, she can’t. The five scantily clad teenage Jinn behind her and the five grown Jinn levitating place settings in the dining room that I can see out of the corner of my eye are proof of that.
I move past my mother to steer Henry back onto the front porch. I stand with my hand on the edge of the door and lower my voice to a whisper. “Thanks for the key. Odds are, I’m going to need it.”
But, I realize, I don’t. Even if I could manage to escape my own birthday party, I woke up this morning with my own way to unlock the gate.
Becoming Jinn Page 4