The Way It Is - 2

When we finally get across town there’s exactly two parking spaces left in the lot of the restaurant and while Hayat and Carlina bicker over which one is better, Senait begins to tell me what she did last night.

“Ok so you know that girl Ashley who’d been eyeing me at that spring break thing last year? So, she showed up at the party - I didn’t even know she knew Carter, to be honest? But anyway, she showed up and she had a few shots before she got up the courage to come talk to me and when she finally did all she could talk about was some stupid shit like where she got her top and I thought, like - why the fuck did I think she was so cute?”

I can only manage a huff that passes for a laugh. If we were texting, that last sentence would have ended with, like, ten question marks. I allow myself a small smile at that, but it slips away as we finally get out of the car and face the front of the restaurant.

The doors and wall are ceiling to floor glass, so I can see Kelsi making her rounds at the tables, stumbling over bags and feet, smiling politely and giving her little spiel and all that. I can hear it in my head - “Hi! I’m Kelsi and I’ll be your server today. And yes - before you ask - the place is named after me. But that was before my parents really got to know me,” (pause for obligatory chuckles). “So. Can I get you guys started on drinks or are you ready to order?” She never gets tired of saying that. I can’t really understand why, but at least it gets us free food.

When we step in there’s a sort of wall of noise that rises up immediately, and I have to close my eyes against it. After a moment I feel a hand wrap around my wrist and tug me forward. I open my eyes to find Hayat leading me gently towards a booth in the back corner, next to a window. Against my better judgement I slip in first to rest my head on the cool glass. The rest of the girls talk over my head like always, something about prom. Senait mentions graduation at one point and I almost say something, but am saved by Kelsi, who appears like an apparition beside the table.

“You want the usual, right?” She grins, quick and slippery, and then it’s gone, replaced by the tapping of her pen against the notepad.

The others all grumble in the affirmative and I let a half-thought-through, defiant line slip out. “No. get me a big fat heap of bacon and some bagels with cream cheese and anything else you can think of that’s pork-based thanks.”

A look like exasperation crosses her face before she settles into milder annoyance. “And what happened to keeping halal, Hani? Or did you fall off the wagon with jello shots last night?”

I decide it isn’t worth it anymore, suddenly as tired as this morning, or even just before on the trampoline. “Yeah. Ok. Just get me like, whatever. A burger? You know the drill, Kels.”

She rolls her eyes, not unkindly, but still says, “I’ll get my mom to find something, ‘k babe?”

I lift my head long enough to smile and say “thanks” before I go back to being almost half-asleep. Hayat gives me another look like she’d had when I said my dad was at work but when she sees me looking merely shrugs and turns to answer Carlina.

After maybe ten minutes of listening to the couple in the booth behind ours talk about something the girl’s mom did at dinner the other night, Simon appears with two trays of food and a piece of paper in his mouth. After setting down our fries and burgers, he adjusts his glasses, runs a hand through his hair, and hands the note to Senait.

She gives him a look, but he just blinks and shrugs. “Kels said it was for you. I’m an ask-no-questions kind of guy, sorry.”

“I think that’s just because y’all make out on a regular basis, Simon. Otherwise…” Carlina shrugs. Simon only rolls his eyes and dashes back into the kitchen. We all giggle lowly and then pick up our burgers and promptly stop talking.

Admittedly, Senait tries to speak with her mouth full a few times but is cowed into silence by Hayat’s weird stern look. After everyone’s done stuffing themselves we all sort of fall into various states of repose, heads on shoulders, elbows on the table. If Mr. Nguyen came around he’d probably kick us out and tell Kels her friends were bums, but we’re saved from actually falling asleep on each other by Isaiah.

He walks past our table once, on the way to the counter, and then does a double take at Carlina and I before turning back. It takes me a moment to place the face again but when I do I give him and wiggly-fingered wave.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Hani, right?” He sounds a little out of breath, but I really can’t imagine why. For a split-second I imagine him running all the way here from our neighborhood, but I put that out ofmy head before I can snicker out loud.

Carlina’s head pops up. “Isaiah! What are you doing here?” Coming from anyone else it’d probably sound a little standoffish, but she manages a dimply smile and all is forgiven.

He shrugs and rubs a hand at the back of his head. “Ah, just gettin’ dinner. And probably breakfast, I think. I don’t know where anything else is at the moment.”

“You should sit with us for a bit! Eat your food here and take the rest back to your mom, kay? And if you want, we could show you around later this week?”

He blinks at the sudden onslaught of hospitality, but she’s still smiling sweetly and now Senait is looking too, so I suppose he feels like he has no choice. “Sure. Ok.”

And so that’s how in the span of ten minutes Carlina’s gotten Isaiah a plate of pancakes and hash browns (apparently he’s vegetarian, a fact which made Kelsi give him an almost murderous look before she scurried away to plead with her mother), a coke, and a round of introductions that put an even more bemused expression on his face.

“So you guys moved here from…?” asks Hayat, taking a long sip of her iced coffee.

He shrugs and his long fingers tap at the table next to his plate. “We moved a few times, I guess. We came from like New Mexico, though. Most recently.”

Hayat opens her mouth to say something else, but stops when a voice comes from behind us.

“Where have y’all been?!”

Isaiah looks sufficiently alarmed, but Senait grins at the offending newcomer. “Yonas. We’ve been where we always are, dumbass.”

He laughs, joined by two other familiar voices. At that, my stomach does a funny thing, but I swallow down my dread and twist around to face the boys. “Hey guys. Long time no see?”

Abdi laughs raucously but says nothing, Yonas flops down next to Isaiah, and Carter gives me a tentative smile. I blink long and slow at him, a smile pushing at my own lips.

It’s all the invitation he needs, then, because he slides in past Hayat - who mumbles something under her breath - and lifts me into his lap without a second thought. No one else blinks an eye, but I can feel Isaiah looking at us curiously.

“No hard feelings, right?”

I shrug. It’s odd, settling back into his chest, but I guess it’d be odder not to. We don’t talk beyond that or even really touch - I perch on his knees, my own knocking against the underside of the table, and listen to everyone talk.

Carlina introduces Isaiah - again - and he nods at everyone as she lists their names, faltering on Carter. Besides that hiccup, the conversation continues smoothly into the coming school year. I have nothing to add to the conversation except my definite decision to get out of here after graduation, so I listen to everyone else talk about college and scholarships while debating whether or not it would cross a line, under the circumstances, to lean all my weight against Carter’s chest.

////

We end up at Carlina’s house, sprawled on her couch cushions with leftovers in our laps. Ms. Rossi pops downstairs for a minute to say hi to all of us, even hugging Isaiah after being introduced, and to scold Carlina quite loudly about the state of her room before disappearing again.

The girl in question only shrugs. “I’ll get to it tomorrow.”

“No you won’t,” says Yonas. “You’ll clean like maybe the area around your bed and then find someone to fuck off with.”

She blinks at him from under her bangs but decidedly says nothing.

Senait, coming back from the kitchen with an ice cream cone, plops down next to her. “Can we watch a movie? You said you got new ones, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” she waves her hand at the tv setup. “They’re in there somewhere. Pop one in Abdi.”

He looks up from his phone with an owlish expression, staring for a good six seconds. “What?”

“God, never mind,” mutters Kelsi. She slips off the couch and half-crawls over to the tv. “Which one do you want?”

“We got the new X-men. I think. That or some horror movie.”

“Can we watch the horror one, then?” asks Carter.

We all turn to frown at him. “Weren’t you the one who, like, cried the last time we watched a horror movie?” I think Yonas said that - I watch as Carter fidgets in his seat next to Isaiah, who leans his head back on the cushions and looks amused.

He grins sheepishly. “I want to redeem myself?”

“Right. How about instead of pissing ourselves, we watch The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and call it a night? Put it in Kels.” Hayat waits for no man.

So we end up watching it, anyways, but only after a half-assed protest from Abdi (who only watches action). Someone flicks off the lights so there’s a glow coming from the kitchen and the stairs but nothing else, just us sitting in the dark with our eyes half-closed.

Once in a while someone laughs or comments on the movie - that bearded guy is a douche - but it’s pretty quiet. I look up now and then to find Isaiah just quietly taking everything in.

God - I wonder what he must be thinking. It really can’t be fun moving to a new town, not to mention right before your senior year. He must think we’re all a little strange - practically kidnapping him into joining us and all. Well - I mean he agreed, but still. He’s sitting in a stranger’s house watching a film with eight teenagers that all seem a little off-kilter and one-quarter of them are probably not-ok-right-now.

He catches me looking and smiles, easy, but I slide my gaze away anyways, moving on to Carter, who looks between the two of us.

Despite myself, I roll my eyes at him. No, it’s not what you think.

He frowns. You sure?

I shrug, shake my head. Sure. Just met him.

There’s a pause where Yonas looks over at the both of us and raises his eyebrows at Carter. He shrugs back, a signal that means something different for them than it means for us, so I’ve lost track of the conversation.

When he looks back he points at me, back at himself, and then jerks his thumb to the back door. Against my better judgement I nod and slide off the couch to follow him outside.

He shuts the sliding doors and leads me over to the swings. When I sit down on the one next to the slide and pull out my lighter, he wrinkles his nose. I grin too wide.

I can’t remember why I started smoking. Or even when - I think I’ve killed those brain cells. Probably some kid at school offered me a cigarette. And me, rebel that I was (am?) probably took a long drag, just to spite Hayat, who went with me everywhere and would have been protesting loudly in the background, and hacked up a lung. I might have vowed never to do it again.

I pull a lucy from my back pocket, mercifully un-crushed, and light it just to spite him. He shakes his head but sits down anyways.

“Do you remember last night?”

“No,” I laugh. “But trust everyone else to tell me exactly who did what.”

“Oh. So you know, then. Cuz I didn’t really wanna be the one to tell you all that.” He starts moving his feet a bit, not quite in the air yet.

I huff out a lung-full of smoke and try to decide whether or not I want to continue this conversation. The chain-creaking stops as he waits for me.

“Do you want to do it again, then? Like, sober?”

He huffs a laugh that threatens to become a low rumble in his chest. “Nah, b. I mean - not that it wasn’t good, but it’s too weird and I don’t wanna have to explain myself to your father if he finds out about it.”

“Abba loves you, though. He thinks you’re the best thing to happen to me since I started wearing hijab.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “You only wear it at home, though.”

I shrug. “He doesn’t know that, does he?”

He laughs again but for real, lets out a long slow breath. “Don’t you think he’ll ever find out, though? I mean - he’s bound to see you out sometime.”

“He hasn’t left the house for anything but work since mom died, so I really really doubt it. He doesn’t even come to my games anymore. But nice try, Carter.”

He cocks his head to the side to squint at me, his mouth twisting into an odd line. “So you guys don’t talk much?”

“Nope. I mean - we could? But no. Not like you and your mom.”

“Ok, but like that’s because I had a close relationship with her before she left. You can’t expect bonds to be forged out of thin air, like you’re gonna have to supply some material, y’know? Make initial contact?”

“You sound just like the school counselors did, oh my god. I can’t believe I ever kissed you.”

He grins at me wide and slow, before stopping the motion of his swing and straightening up. “I have a certain charm, Hani. The ladies love me.”

“Right.”

He huffs and pushes half-heartedly at my shoulder, already turned toward the house.

Before I can say anything else he gets up and heads back inside. So. I’m left with a lit cigarette and the feeling that nothing was actually said just now.

I’ve managed to smoke a third of the thing before someone else opens the back door.

“Hey,” he calls. “What are you doing?”

“Isaiah?”

He steps further into the yard. “Yeah. What are you doing, Hani?”

I shrug. “Smoking.”

“Oh,” he falters at the spot where the concrete patio meets the grass. “Can I have one? I mean - have you got any more?”

“You smoke?” I ask, already digging in my shorts.

“Yeah,” he says, coming closer now. “Just when… sometimes. I smoke sometimes.”

“Here,” I hold one out to him. “You need a light, too, or nah?”

He smiles, something not as easy as last time. “Yeah. Got that covered.” Before he sits next to me he digs a red lighter out of his pocket and waves it at me.

“Just so you know, that was my last one.”

“Oh.” He stops. Looks at the cigarette perched delicately between his forefinger and middle finger. “Do you… want it back?”

I snort. “No, dumbass. Just saying - next time we find ourselves together outside in someone’s backyard, I expect a cigarette.”

He doesn’t laugh, smirks instead. “Sure.”

“So how do you like California?”

He blinks at me.

“You said you guys moved from New Mexico, right? Or am I talkin’ outta my ass.”

“No, yeah. New Mexico. Just didn’t follow your train of thought there, sorry.”

“Been to in’n’out, yet?” Usually that’s the first thing people do when they cross state lines - like it’s some sort of secret club or something.

“I went once, in Texas. Wasn’t so bad.”

“They have it in Texas? Bruh.”

“What, you didn’t know?” he grins around his cigarette, teeth flashing white.

“Well. Now I know, I guess.” I twirl mine in my fingers before bringing it back to my mouth. He watches my movements quietly - I get the feeling he does that a lot. Like, that’s just how he gets through life. Quietly observing.

“School starts in a couple weeks, right?”

“Mhmmm.” I’ve never mastered the art of talking around a cancer stick so I stick to non-verbals.

“Are you excited? You seem like the kind of person that wouldn’t be.”

“I mean. Everything’s not like hunky-dory over here. There’s a lot you can fuck up in four years, y’know? So when I graduate, finally, it’ll be like a fresh start.”

“I get that.”

I don’t really have anything to say back, so we smile and shrug at each other and finish our cigarettes in relative quiet. Eventually he starts swinging, too, the chains creaking like when Carter did. After gettnig to a certain height he digs his feet in and grinds to a stop.

“See you later, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

And then he’s gone, and I still feel as tired as this morning.