Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Amina?”

How had she not even heard Kamala coming up the stairs? Amina turned around to find her mother walking down the same hall Paige had just stood in, yesterday’s nightie bunched around her knees. She looked at the open door to Akhil’s room, and her face darkened.

“What are you doing in there?”

“N-nothing,” Amina stammered, willing Paige to put down the shirt and step away from the hamper, but it was too late for that now, Kamala was already pushing past her and into the bedroom, suspicion pressed deep into her face. Paige turned, her face filling with panic before she seemed to get ahold of herself. She placed the shirt on the bed, smoothed her dress down, and stood tall.

“You must be Kamala,” she said, offering a hand to shake, and Amina flinched. “I’m Paige.”

Kamala looked at her hand, confused.

Paige swallowed, tried again. “I’m … I was … I’m Akhil’s girlfriend.”

Kamala looked at Amina.

“The one he was going to prom with,” Amina said.

At this, Kamala stiffened a little, the needle of connection between prom and everything that had followed pricking some corner of her mind.

“I was — I am so sorry to not come to the funeral,” Paige said, hand lowered, cheeks burning with pink circles. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted … I just … I wanted to come by to see you both. You and Thomas. To tell you how much I loved your son.”

Kamala looked at her for a long time, gaze brewing with something Amina couldn’t quite place, until she said, “Loved?”

The word was spoken neutrally, but one look at her face was enough for Amina, who reached for Paige’s elbow.

“Yes.” Paige brushed Amina away, looking puzzled. “Yes, of course.”

Kamala laughed once, hard, like a shovel hitting cement.

“Paige,” Amina said evenly. “Let me walk you down.”

Paige straightened at this suggestion, taller than either of them. She looked from one to the other, her face suddenly ripening with an expression Amina had seen her give Akhil a thousand times before. It was a look of hope, of compassion, of — God forbid — love.

“Amina, I’d like to speak with your mother alone.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good—”

But it didn’t really matter what Amina thought because Paige was already saying, “I loved your son more than I’ve ever loved anyone,” in a low and steady voice, one sweet with the belief that there was something left for her to hold on to in this house, that two people in pain could find common ground. It was an opinion that was probably welcome across the Anderson dinner table, or at least taken seriously, but it was not welcome in this room, where Kamala’s rigid face slammed away every word and Amina turned silently and fled, going back down the hallway, down the stairs, and through the front door like a shot. She shut the door behind her with a thump.

Fucking Paige. Fucking Kamala. Fucking Akhil .

“Hey,” she heard from her side, and she nearly screamed. Jamie waved from her periphery. He was standing awkwardly next to one of the planters, his face drawn with worry.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She was not okay. Amina knew this for sure as she charged toward him, shaking like a comet and ready to flatten him, so she was surprised by how easily he caught her, his arms opening just enough for her to fit between them, his shoulder landing firmly under her chin. Warm. He was warm. His heart thumped against her chest, and Amina shut her eyes, wanting to keep pushing forward until she somehow disappeared all the way into him.

Why wasn’t it weird to be held by Jamie Anderson? It’s not like she had ever been held by anyone not related to her before, and none of them felt even a bit like Jamie, who was exactly her size and skinny, with skin hotter than she would have thought healthy. But it wasn’t weird, even if she was half stepping on one of his feet and his Afro was scratching against her ear. It wasn’t even weird when he said, “How’s it going?” like they weren’t already plastered together.

“It’s horrible,” she said.

He hugged her tighter and whispered something. It sounded like I’m sorry , but it also sounded like I’m worried , and she wanted to ask which he meant, because it seemed like a pretty big distinction, but just then the door opened and Paige came flying through it, eyes wet, mouth trembling.

“Go,” Paige said to Jamie as they sprang apart. “Go, go, go!”

“What?” Jamie asked as she stumbled down the steps. “Wait!”

But Paige was not waiting. She was running toward the Andersons’ Volvo, her dress flapping at the backs of her knees. Jamie looked at Amina, his face clouding.

Well, what did they think was going to happen? Where did they think they were?

“You shouldn’t have come,” Amina said, and watched as this registered with Jamie’s slight flinch, a tic behind his gaze that then turned into his backing away from her and running after his sister.

Long after their taillights had disappeared into the darkening trees and the traces of Jamie’s heat had evaporated from her skin, Amina stood on the porch, trying not to think about what Jamie probably thought of her now, or how good it had felt to be hugged, or how Paige hadn’t even looked at her on the way out. Her feet felt heavy going upstairs, and heavier still as she walked down the hallway toward the slight stir of air and light that came from Akhil’s room.

Inside, Kamala was praying. This is what Amina thought at first when she saw the unlikely Pietà of her mother sitting on Akhil’s bed, the T-shirt strewn weakly across her lap. Kamala’s head was bent over it, and something about this — not being able to see her face — made Amina realize suddenly how much she missed her mother. She missed Kamala banging the cupboards in the kitchen. She missed her shouting “Hey, dummies! Rise and shines!” from the bottom of the stairs in the morning. She missed her saying “Oh, really?” when Queen Victoria burped too loudly, like they were having an actual conversation, and how sometimes she would come up and squeeze Amina’s shoulder out of the blue, which used to feel like a poor excuse for a hug but now, in memory, felt like sitting in front of a blazing fire with a world of snow falling outside.

“Ma?” She took a step into the room.

Her mother’s head snapped up, and with a stab of fear Amina realized her mistake. This was no noble sorrow, no reverential Mary. Kamala glared at her like a tiger hunkered over a fresh kill, and Amina found herself thinking, She will kill me now, too . Not that Kamala had killed Akhil. No one had — not Kamala, not Thomas, not Akhil himself, not even Amina. Except that standing there, looking at her mother, Amina suddenly understood that they all had, in some way. They all had.

Kamala opened her mouth, dark eyes glinting.

“Shut the door,” she said.

It got better after the Andersons’ visit. Not better in that anything actually good happened, but better in that Amina stopped waiting for it to. It was as though a punctuation mark had been put on the event of Akhil’s death, giving it an exact shape for her to size up. She stopped waiting to feel normal. She stopped expecting anyone to understand. She stopped keeping an eye out for Paige at school, and when Jamie talked in class, she looked right through him, daring herself to feel less and less for either of the Andersons until finally they slipped back into the Mesa masses, their bodies moving in a steady line down the hallway, avoiding her without even trying.

“Amina?” Her father opened her bedroom door on the last school night of the year. “Can I come in?”

Why do fathers always look ungainly in their daughter’s bedrooms? Like mythical beasts wandered in from the forest of another world? Thomas made an effort to steer clear of Amina’s piles of clothes, of the desk and bookshelves, but he still managed to rattle everything on the surface of the dresser and knock his head on the canopy over the bed.