Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Exactly. Which, by the way, Amina, is why your mother isn’t quite in focus.” Mrs. Messina pointed at the blurred corner. “You probably would have gotten her if you had had just a little more light. My guess is she moved.”

Her mother? Amina leaned forward, squinted at the portion Mrs. Messina had motioned toward. There was nothing there. She scanned the newspapers on the floor, the door leading to the laundry room, the vigas, the fuzzy lines of classroom behind her father. Then suddenly, sharply, as though the figure itself were rising from the paper, she saw the woman. She was standing in the corner, just behind her father. Amina saw the braid, the jasmine, the sari, the smile buried in her face, and knew she was not looking at her mother at all. She was looking at her grandmother at age thirty-three.

She had to show someone. Not her father. Or her mother. Definitely not Dimple. Amina paced the yellow lines of the parking lot, placing heel to toe to heel very carefully, waiting for Akhil. She was sweating. She looked at her watch. Half an hour late. She opened the notebook and peeked inside, both relieved and doubly nervous to find the picture exactly the same.

Maybe they could tell Thomas together. Or maybe they could tell Kamala first, and all three of them could show the picture to Thomas. And what would he make of it? Would he be relieved? Scared? Would he come home more or less?

Fifteen minutes later Amina sat on the hood of the car, watching a thin film of cloud traverse the southeast edge of the mountains. The windshield was hard against her back, the notebook warm on her lap. She turned toward the approaching footsteps. Akhil’s forehead creased like a Chinese dumpling.

“It’s about time,” Amina said.

Akhil looked up at her, eyes glassy, face puckered.

“Are you crying?” She slid off the hood.

“No.”

She looked for the telltale bruises. “Did those guys beat you up again?”

“No! Jesus.” Akhil hunched his shoulders. He dug the keys out of his pocket, flung the door open, ducked inside, and slammed it shut. Amina watched him through the window. His mouth was twisting nervously. His nose was gleaming and viscous. He wiped a shiny trail across the back of his hand and unlocked her door. She sat down.

“I fell asleep and missed all my afternoon classes,” he said finally, his voice sticking in his throat. “Farber said if I did it one more time, I’d be suspended.”

“Suspended? For falling asleep once?”

“It’s been more than once.”

“Oh. Like, how much more?”

Akhil stared at his lap, and another tear worked its way out of his eye, falling onto his chinos. He brushed his cheek angrily. “He thinks I’m doing it on purpose. He said that if I thought he wouldn’t expel a National Merit Finalist, I was wrong. Motherfuck!” He was really crying now, his round shoulders shaking under his powder jacket, his head down on the wheel. He lifted it up just to ram it back down. The car keys slid out of his hand and landed on the floor mat with a soft clink.

“It’s okay,” Amina said lamely.

“On purpose ? He thinks I’d …? Doesn’t he know that the only thing that’s going to make anything better is if I get the fuck out of here?”

“You won’t get kicked out.”

“FUCK!” He kicked the floor. The car shook. “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”

“Akhil, stop! It’s not going to happen! It’s …” She looked around the car, as though some piece of clear logic could be found on the dashboard. “He’s just trying to scare you. You know that. It’s a Farber power trip, man — don’t fall for that stuff!” The words felt ridiculous in her mouth, like she was telling a joke with a punch line she didn’t understand, and Akhil wouldn’t even look at her as he reversed and peeled out of the parking lot.

He was driving too fast for being on school property, but Amina knew better than to say anything about it, so instead she said a little prayer that they wouldn’t get spotted by Farber or, worse, his secretary, who loved reporting traffic violations. They caught air over the speed bump and landed with a thump that sent up a little cloud of ash from the ashtray. Akhil screeched to a stop at the gate.

“It’s going to be okay,” Amina said again, trying to sound a little more official this time, but all this did was make Akhil drop his head to his chest with a sticky gasp. From far away, the dotted line of oncoming traffic swooped toward them like a fleet of planes.

“I mean, you’ve got, like, a four-point-o,” she rushed on, not wanting to see him cry. “You never skip school. Besides, Cheney Jarnet got busted smoking weed in the baseball dugout last year, and he didn’t get kicked out, right?”

Akhil said nothing, but let the car inch slowly toward the road.

“Akhil,” Amina said.

Silence.

“Hey!” She pushed his shoulder, and when he fell heavily against the wheel, her heart shot up like it was trying to knock her brain out. Little bits of static floated everywhere. The wheel , she thought, turn the wheel , but when she grabbed for it, the seat belt smacked her back. They continued to slide forward, the cars bearing down on them now, metal grilles gleaming like dog teeth. And everything around Amina felt slippery then, the cool metal of the seat belt clasp in her hand, the rubber mat under her feet, the white line on the road they were heading toward nose-first, like a puppy pushing its way onto a horse track. For one brilliant moment she saw how it would happen, how the cars would crack through Akhil’s door and send them up into the sky, how the world would flash through the windows, how the metal and glass would explode into a thousand spears launched from a Lilliputian army. And then the seat belt popped open and she was slamming her foot down hard on top of Akhil’s, bringing the car to a lurching stop just as the cars went by them, swerving and honking and releasing the smell of burning tires.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” she yelled, pulling the emergency brake with shaking hands and then scrambling back into her seat. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Across from her, Akhil was still, body wedged awkwardly over the wheel. Fear filled her lungs. She lunged at him, pushing him back hard until he hit the seat heavily. She put her hands on his face, his lips. Breathing. He was breathing. And sound asleep.

Albuquerque greeted Amina with a howling dust storm. Down below the plane, brown coils of sand snaked across the mesas and against the mountains, scattering with the shifting wind currents. They hissed against the windows in the descent, and Amina squinted and held her breath involuntarily as the sky faded from blue to beige. The plane slipped out from under her, and the woman on her side let out a gasp that smelled of white wine. The intercom clicked on.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please check to ensure your seat belts are fastened and your bags are completely under the seat in front of you,” said a calm, cheery voice. “It’s a windy day here in Albuquerque, and we’re going to be hitting a little turbulence on our descent.”

Thirty years before, Kamala and Thomas had arrived in a dust storm. Kamala still told Amina about it whenever she felt thwarted by the desert — when a drought shriveled her tomatoes or the mesas caught fire. Once, during a dry summer that drove bears down from the mountains and onto the freeways, she called at six in the morning: That day we flew in, I looked down and everything everywhere was brown, brown, nothing but brown! I had to walk all the way into the airport with my eyes closed!