Becoming Jinn

by Lori Goldstein

  “You’re welcome.” Nate moves hesitantly in front of me. “But take another sip of water, okay?”

  Nate lays his hand on my leg. He pats my kneecap and then rubs my lower thigh, gently, reassuringly, like a caring doctor. But I’m not a patient. And his hand is on my thigh. We look at each other, and sparks may as well fly.

  I feel it. And he feels it. I know because I can still read his mind. “The ability to read human minds outside the wish-granting ritual is rare,” my mother had said. How rare is it to be able to read minds when one’s powers are blocked? Is my mind-reading not actually tied to my Jinn blood? Am I like a psychic now too or something? The surprises keep on coming. Why do I think this is going to prove to be a problem?

  Hot, she is so hot.

  When Nate’s thoughts travel further than his hand, I close my eyes, not wanting to follow. At least not right now. My face burns so strongly, I expect it to actually shoot out flames. As inexplicably as I entered his mind, I’m out again.

  Nate’s making me an assorted buffet plate. My pulse races and my hands shake from both the astounding realizations I’ve just had: Nate likes me. I can read minds. The two battle for supremacy.

  Henry’s at the water’s edge. Oh man, wait until he hears about me actually having ESP. My bronze bangle clanks against the green plate Nate’s handing me.

  On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t tell Henry. With me on Jinn probation, it’ll only make him worry. Still, it would feel strange not to say anything. He’s experienced everything else with me. It’s almost like it’s not real until he knows.

  Then again, my desire to share the second bulletin about Nate is less intense.

  Chelsea sprints down the beach, stops behind Henry, and places her hands over his eyes. Making a show of it, Henry fumbles behind him, trying to catch Chelsea’s petite body, which wiggles and keeps itself just out of reach. She inches forward, playfully testing him, and Henry nabs her. His long arm sheathes her small waist. His hand slides to her bikini-clad bottom. And cups it.

  Henry! That’s not my Henry!

  Giggling, Chelsea leans into his palm. Henry spins around, picks her up, and dashes into the ocean. He toys with her, pretending to drop her. She shrieks and slaps his chest.

  Nate sees me staring at them. “They’ve been spending a lot of time together this week.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “You guys are neighbors, right?”

  “Friends.”

  “Friends,” Nate repeats in a tone that suggests a dozen question marks would follow its written form.

  I nod, still watching the couple who appear to be reenacting a cheesy romantic comedy.

  “She’s not so bad,” Nate says. “Chelsea. I know she can come off as a b—”

  “Bitch.”

  “Bit strong, is what I was going to say. But, yeah, I guess ‘bitch’ isn’t that far off. But not to everyone. If she likes you, that is.”

  The way she hangs on Henry’s arm as they walk up the beach seems to indicate Henry is getting a big thumbs-up.

  Nate raises his hand and waves to them.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “We have so much food. And Henry’s your friend.”

  I notice he doesn’t say, “And Chelsea’s mine.”

  Henry’s smile fades as he gets closer. It’s almost like he doesn’t want to see me.

  “Hello,” “Hi,” “Hey,” and “What’s up?” make the rounds before Nate invites Henry and Chelsea to share our lunch. The only good part of them saying yes is that Chelsea adds she can’t stay long. Her break’s almost over.

  The blanket has shrunk with the four of us crowded onto it, likely closer than most of us want to be to one another.

  I can’t help myself. “I texted you earlier,” I say to Henry.

  “I know,” Henry replies, “I was looking for you.”

  “Yeah, I can tell.”

  Chelsea scooches closer to Henry. The look on her face surprises me, more anxious than anything else. Our subsequent painful, banal small talk is mercifully interrupted by two ten-year-old boys who begin to use the empty lifeguard chair as a jungle gym. Chelsea swallows her last piece of sushi. Her third, I think. The only thing she’s touched since sitting down. Meanwhile, I’ve had a turkey sandwich, potato salad, and two brownies.

  “Damn,” Chelsea says, “I better go deal with that.” She checks her watch. “I’m back on the clock anyway.”

  Nate’s on his feet. “I’ll help. I’ve already yelled at those two twice today.”

  Chelsea looks directly at me. “It was nice to see you, Azra.”

  I don’t think she’s ever said my name. I’m waiting for the catch, but all Chelsea does is smile. It’s so genuine, I know it’s fake.

  “Talk to you later, Henry?” she says.

  He flirtatiously replies, “Absolutely, my lady.”

  My lady? Wasn’t long ago that Henry referred to me that way. How quickly ladies can be dethroned.

  “So,” I say when Nate and Chelsea are out of earshot, “what’s that all about?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Henry says gruffly.

  Holy attitude. Henry can’t actually like Chelsea, can he? He can’t actually think she’s for real? Every brain cell screams for me to warn him against trusting her, but his tone makes me strangle each tiny voice into silence.

  “Did I … do something?” Chelsea or no Chelsea, I can’t risk losing Henry.

  Henry’s face softens. “No, course not. I’m happy to see you.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it.” I don’t want to be pouting, but I’m pretty sure I am.

  “Oh, Azra, I’m sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he says too quickly.

  My skin still crawls from Chelsea’s phoniness. I need to know that Henry’s not being duped.

  “Well, I’m worried something might go wrong. Horribly wrong.” I gesture to Chelsea. “Are you guys seriously … friends?” I don’t want to ask if they are more than that.

  “She’s not so bad,” Henry says defensively.

  I don’t want to (okay, so maybe I do), but now I feel I have no choice but to tell him how Chelsea was making fun of Lisa’s stutter. I’m being careful, not indicating how truly awful she was, when Henry cuts me off.

  He waves his hand. “Don’t bother. She told me.”

  She what? That seems completely and totally out of character. Unless she’s playing him.

  Henry continues, “See, she’s not as bad as you think. She told me the other day. Lisa wanted to go up on the lifeguard chair again, but I said she couldn’t. Chelsea helped avoid a meltdown by giving Lisa her whistle and pretending it was a princess pendant or something. She’s into music, did you know that? She’s going to be choreographing the cheerleading routines this year. Anyway, after we talked, the next day, Chelsea came right up and apologized.”

  I’m dumbfounded. I would have bet I’d get my silver bangle back before Chelsea would apologize to anyone. “So you like her, then?”

  Henry shifts, sliding next to me so he no longer has to look me in the eye. “I don’t know. She’s okay.”

  “But what could you possibly have in common? She’s so … so…”

  “Fun? She’s fun, Azra. Easy. Uncomplicated.”

  The opposite of me.

  “Oh, okay,” I say, trying not to sound hurt.

  “Hey, Az, it’s just that a lot’s going on right now.”

  I touch my bangle. “I know this makes things different, but we can still hang out. It wasn’t just my powers we had in common, you know.”

  “I know, but it’s harder. There’s more at stake. I don’t want to make you mess up again.”

  I thought Henry knowing I was a Jinn would make things easier. Maybe there really is something to TMI. Because now he feels solely responsible. And afraid. Afraid I’ll get hurt because of him. I know because I am apparently in his head. In his head again. That day at the picnic tabl
e, the day after he saw me come home with Nate, when I thought I was just being intuitive, I must have been reading his mind. And Mrs. Pucher’s sister? It wasn’t being in the middle of the ritual that allowed me to hear her thoughts, was it?

  “It’s not just stuff with you either,” Henry says. “My parents. Lisa. A lot’s happened since we last talked.”

  “Like what?”

  He shrugs.

  “Tell me.” I put my hand on his forearm, and he tenses.

  No. Because you’ll want to try to fix it. And you can’t.

  “Henry, forget my magic. Just talk to me like you don’t know I’m the great, all-powerful Oz. Because I’m not. At least not right now.”

  Mind-reading aside, of course.

  Henry creases his forehead, eyeing me like he knows something’s not quite right. My words hit too close to his thoughts. Still, he off-loads everything that’s been going on while I’ve been under house arrest. And before that. Why didn’t he tell me sooner? Or had he been trying to? By following me, by saying he was stressed, by having that second beer?

  Did me, my magic, and I push his problems to the back burner? Or did he use us as an excuse to push his problems to the back burner?

  His voice lowers to a hair above a whisper as he explains his parents have been fighting more than usual lately. Lisa’s been upset, acting out.

  “She’s peeing her bed,” Henry says. “She hasn’t done that in years.”

  Of course Henry’s the one changing her sheets.

  In one long breath, Henry then says, “My mom’s sick of having to work two jobs and says my father’s exhausted all possibilities for work around here so she wants us to move in with her folks in New Hampshire and rent our house so they can make their mortgage payments again and my father’s furious with her, saying he’ll never leave and never let strangers sleep in his house.”

  My heart beats so fast it makes me dizzy. “So you’re not going?”

  Henry picks at a cuticle. “I don’t know. My mom says she’s still leaving. She’s going to take Lisa and just go without my dad.”

  “And you?” Henry can’t move to New Hampshire. He just can’t.

  “She says it’s my choice. I can stay with my dad or go with her and Lisa.”

  Breathe, Azra, breathe. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Henry drops his head into his hands. He rubs his face roughly. When he reemerges, his cheeks and eyes are red. “Because there’s only one reason to go and only one reason to stay.”

  He doesn’t have to say it. Even if I couldn’t read his thoughts I’d know what both those reasons are. The only reason to go is to be with Lisa. And the only reason to stay is to be with me.

  26

  “Stop the moping,” Henry says. “It’s not a done deal or anything.”

  It’s my day off, and Henry and I are walking to the far end of the beach. We stroll down the path over the dunes and wind our way through the overpopulated swathe of beach dominated by families. Loaded down with toddlers, toys, and tents, moms and dads plop themselves on minuscule patches of sandy real estate rather than haul themselves any farther down the beach.

  Amid this first wave of beachgoers sit the lifeguards. Including Nate.

  In the week since Henry first told me about New Hampshire, my feelings about my probation have vacillated between love and hate. And that line is not just fine, it’s dotted, it zigzags, and it occasionally stabs me square in the chest.

  I wave to Nate and my bangle shimmies down my wrist. On the love side of the line is how freeing it is to be relieved of the temptation and the pressure of using magic. My probation has turned being Jinn into a job. I’ll clock in, grant a wish, and clock out. Strangely, my bronze bangle has made me feel more like a normal HIT than ever before.

  Henry hops over two boys buried up to their necks in the sand. “Don’t make a big thing out of it yet. My dad’s track record is far from encouraging.”

  Mr. Carwyn has two job interviews within easy driving distance of Henry’s grandparents’ house, so his mom, dad, and Lisa are staying in New Hampshire for a few days. The only reason Henry was allowed to stay behind is so he can let in the real-estate agent who needs to assess the property and determine a fair price for renters and for … for buyers. And that’s what makes me scurry on over to the hate side of my probation line.

  Because if I had my powers, maybe I could help his family and Henry wouldn’t have to leave. Though, in truth, from the way things sound, what’s been going on inside the walls of Henry’s house may take more than magic to solve.

  At the very least though, if Henry does have to ditch civilization to go live free or die in the woods of New Hampshire, having my magic back would mean I could app there to visit him.

  “It’s not fair,” I say as we transition into the stretch of beach home to the second category of beachgoers: couples and surreptitiously day-drinking teens whose respective intolerance for screaming children and desire for privacy outweigh the ten-minute trek to the restrooms.

  “You know what’s not fair?” Henry says. “You being a total tease.”

  My neck spins like I’m possessed. With the amount of time Henry’s been spending with Chelsea, I figured we were past whatever may or may not have been going on between us because of boy-girl, Nate-Chelsea drama.

  “I mean,” he says, smirking, “you can’t even shape-shift.”

  That book. That stupid encyclopedia of spirits book. He checked the monstrous tome, half the size of my cantamen, out of the library again and keeps taunting me with supposed Jinn facts. Many cultures, especially in the Middle East and Africa, believe in spirits called djinn who, like angels, are supposedly part of a community of intermediary spirits who run the world, each having a specific function and dominion.

  “Isn’t granting wishes enough?” I say. “I need to be able to turn into a rabbit or something?”

  “Dog. Or snake, mostly, according to the book.”

  “And the book is always right.”

  Henry peers over his sunglasses at me. “Do I need to remind you it was spot-on with how to summon the djinn? Entice them with their favorite gifts of sweets and alcohol and you can get them to do everything from guard your house to chase away your bad luck. Then again, I’ve been feeding you wine-soaked marshmallows in those s’mores, but so far my luck hasn’t changed.”

  “Hilarious.” I bump into a thick, tattooed arm carrying a guitar. “Now do I need to remind you what it said about us hating crowds?” I grasp onto the rash guard shirt he’s wearing, which happens to be the last item I conjured before my probation, and let him lead us through the bustling boat town.

  This third and final group of beachgoers sees beer-bellied dads anchoring their floating vessels and spending the afternoon off-loading and then reloading what appears to be the entire contents of a small house (standing grills, full-height tables and chairs, coolers the size of a five-year-old).

  Henry guides me around a nearly invisible fishing line. “Hating crowds and the cold, a given. But that thing about feeding you salt provoking you? That I had to learn the hard way.”

  I forgot about the salt thing. Grains of truth actually do seem to lurk in most of what Henry read in that book. Who influenced who will forever be a mystery.

  Approaching the estuary where the ocean meets the river, we arrive at the empty span of beach home to a cornucopia of large black rocks. During high tide, they disappear. It being low tide, I weave through until I reach the widest one.

  I climb up and sprawl out. “Earlier you could walk right by and never know these were here.” Seaweed and unidentifiable slime creep through the cracks and dampen the backs of my arms and legs. “If something can’t be seen by the naked eye, does that mean it ceases to exist?”

  My powers, my father, my Henry.

  Henry groans.

  Eyes closed, I’m waiting for him to join me when all of a sudden a wave of frigid water washes over my legs. My body jerks upright. N
ot a wave. A Henry. Having dove under the water, he now stands above me, his feet planted on either side of my torso. My cries only fuel his torment. He balls up the fabric of his long-sleeved tee and wrings it out, dripping ice-cold saltwater onto my stomach.

  I slap at his ankles and scoot back. He takes off his wet shirt and drops it on my head. “The all-powerful Jinn’s afraid of a little water?”

  “I can’t help it if my species is more advanced than your primitive one. Our roots are in the desert. We know better than to risk frostbite by frolicking in glacial waters.”

  Henry shakes water from his hair as he sits down next to me. “The desert? Thought you said the rest of the Jinn make their home underground. Like worms.”

  I punch his bare shoulder. I’m wearing a tankini top and boy shorts over my bathing suit bottoms. In all the time we’ve been hanging out, this is as close as we’ve ever been with this little clothing on—aside from the time I apped myself into Henry’s closet to find him wearing only a towel, and then, not even that.

  Whatever Henry’s been doing with Chelsea and whatever I’ve been doing with Nate has remained undefined. Or at least Nate and I have yet to label ourselves. It’s possible Henry and Chelsea have slapped a name tag on their relationship and neglected to mention it.

  Henry’s finally started wearing the contacts I conjured for him while I still had my silver bangle. And he’s gotten a haircut since the last time I saw him. Maybe this new attention to personal grooming is a sign of his budding relationship. The next time I see Henry and Chelsea together, I might very well find a white rectangular sticker on their collective forehead saying, “Hi, my name is Dating.”

  Chelsea’s niceness toward me continues. Since I’ve been hanging out with Nate so much, I know I should be happy that Henry has someone to be with too. I tell myself I would be happy if only that someone was someone other than Chelsea. I tell myself, but I’m no stranger to lies, white or otherwise.

  Henry leans back on his elbows. “Janna’s really underground?”

  “Sounds bizarre, I know.” I remember how I felt hearing this for the first time. “When my mom told me, I didn’t believe her. I thought it was like when parents tell their kid that the dog went to go live on a farm. Like a metaphor or something. But now, well, I understand that a little dirt and rock are no match for magic. If you’re an Afrit or on their good side, it’s a game of name your paradise.” I jut my chin toward the water’s edge. “Crystal clear ocean and pure white sand? Check. Tropical jungle with secluded tree house? You got it. Opulent castle wallpapered in gold? No problem.”