Love from a to Z

ZAYNEB
SUNDAY, MARCH 17
ODDITY:
ADAM
E
XHIBIT
A: A
T THE MUSEUM
, when he showed me who he was.
Someone with zero awareness of what was going on in the world.
• • •
I pushed his care for Hanna out of my head.
I pushed his struggles with his diagnosis out of my head too.
I pushed him completely out of my head.
• • •
As soon as I let myself into the apartment, I texted Kavi. 
Talk? On FT?
Auntie Nandy, who’d been sitting on the couch, immediately got up and
walked swiftly by me to her bedroom, her phone stuck to an ear.
She closed her door tight.
What’s that all about?
Walking into the living room, I undid my hijab and threw it at the big
couch.
It landed on the arm of the single chair.
An image of Adam, hooked up to the IV machine, presented itself in my
head. I calmly walked over to the chair, the Adam chair, and sat in it, to
claim it back.
Why wasn’t Kavi replying? I checked Instagram and saw I’d missed the
latest story from her.
A shot of an arrow pointing at an inbox with an e-mail from SAIC. A
shot of her face overjoyed. A shot of Noemi, grinning big, beside her, then

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one of Nhu making a surprised O with her mouth.
Kavi got into SAIC?
I FaceTimed her. It rang and rang, so I hung up and tried again.
At the third try, she picked up, but with only audio. Audio of yelling.
“ZAY!”
“CONGRATULATIONS! Oh my God!” I burst. “Your number one
choice!”
“Thanks! I’m doing a mini celebration!” she shouted again, and I
suddenly noticed the noise around her. “Waiting for you to come home for
the real one!”
“I’m so proud of you! I knew you’d get in!”
“Sorry, wait. I can’t hear you fully! Let me get to a better spot!”
“What’re you doing? I mean, where are you?”
“It’s a VR adventure place, MAZETOWN! So cool! We gotta take you
when you get here!” It became quieter. She stopped yelling. “I just stepped
outside. It’s like crazy loud in there. We finished eating, so we’re getting
ready to go on the Galápagos tour. Zay, we have to get suited up and
everything, so we can dive and swim with the sharks and sea turtles. I’m
going to be in heaven!”
Kavi loves marine life. Her entire portfolio to get into art school was sea
creatures done in different mediums.
“Have tons of fun.” I pulled my legs onto the couch and smiled, happy
for her. “Mazetown. Must be a new place. Never heard of it before.”
“No, it’s not in Springdale. Noemi drove us to Indianapolis. Me, Nhu,
and Ayaan.”
“Oh wow. Are you guys staying there?”
“Yeah, we got a cheap hotel room.”
“Cool! Have fun,” I repeated, my mind incapable of thinking up anything
more exciting to say, being too busy conjuring up images of Kavi, Nhu,
Ayaan, and Noemi laughing in unison—in the car, in the hotel room, at
Mazetown, whatever that place looked like.
“We miss you so much!” Kavi said. “We were doing this-is-what-Zay-
would-say so often that Noemi just started saying it for you. The stuff you’d
say.”
“So she’s being me?”
“In a fun way. She’s good at improv.”
As I considered this, my phone pinged nonstop.

---

Picture messages from HannaChen.
“Well, you better get back. To get ready for the Galápagos,” I said. “Tell
everyone hi for me.”
“Hey, what about you? Any word from UChicago?”
I shook my head, forgetting that it was only audio.
I’d begun looking through the pictures Hanna sent me. “No. Talk to you
later, Kav.”
• • •
Many were fuzzy, but even those stopped my breath.
I’ve never seen myself so happy in photos before.
It could have been the fact that they were impromptu pictures, and I
hadn’t had time to arrange my camera-ready smile. Which was just slight
turnups of the corners of my closed mouth, like a there, are you satisfied
with my smile smile.
But these were different. My mouth was open and turned up naturally,
and my eyes joined the smile, scrunching up with joy.
And then Adam.
His face could be used in a picture dictionary for the word “eager.”
Boy, were we ever fools.
I sent five blue heart and five blue gem emojis in reply to HannaChen.
And added, Thanks. Sorry for my rude self today.
I thought for a bit, then added, Cousin.
She replied with a single, simple puppy emoji.
• • •
I’d decided not to ruin Kavi’s fun by unloading both the Adam and the D-
from-Fencer situations, so that meant I was a mess inside. Full of churning
emotions, mostly anger and frustration. With a lot of worried wonderings as
to my next steps.
I needed to vent. But without venting verbally.
I went to Auntie Nandy’s room to ask her if I could soak in the Jacuzzi in
her bathroom. When I’d first arrived at her place, she’d shown me the vast
array of fizzy bath bombs and bottles of scented salts and collection of
candles that lined the edge of the Jacuzzi. “You must help me deplete these
while you’re here. You’d better be in here soaking!”

---

As I drew near her door, I didn’t hear anything.
Then: “She’ll understand! She’s eighteen, not seven!”
I put my ear to the door.
“Just go. I’ll talk to Zayneb. Only return when Rashaad is okay. It must
be terrible for him.”
Rashaad? Dad?
Was Auntie Nandy talking to Mom? About Pakistan?
I knocked.
“Wait. I have to go. I’ll take care of it. Stay safe. Love you, Leesh.”
Leesh was Auntie Nandy’s nickname for Alisha. Mom.
The door opened. Auntie Nandy tried to smile, but it came off weird,
with her forehead wrinkled by a frown.
“Can I use your Jacuzzi?” I asked, wondering if I should just outright say
I heard something.
“Yes, yes you can.” She opened the door wider. “If you’re okay with me
being here? That was your mom on the phone.”
I paused my steps to her bathroom. “Is her flight okay?”
“Yeah, but . . . Okay, why don’t you get ready for your soak and we’ll
talk?” She went to her walk-in closet and bent to open a bottom drawer. A
kimono-like bathrobe, silky and subdued in mint green and gray, emerged
from it. “You can use this.”
“Thanks.” I took it with me to the bathroom, undressed, and put it on
while the water ran. I selected a random bath bomb and threw it in and
watched it erupt. The door was ajar, so I called out, “Auntie Nandy, what
were you talking to Mom about? Her flight comes in at nine, right?”
Auntie Nandy showed up at the door. “No, her plans changed.”
I stopped watching the fizzing action in the water and faced her. “What?
Why?”
“Your mom is meeting your dad in Pakistan. She just landed in Doha, but
then is flying on to Islamabad in a few hours. But we’ll go to the airport,
because she wants to see you. Talk to you.”
“Why is she going there too? What happened?”
“Darling, why don’t you sit down on the bed?” She came into the
bathroom and turned the water off. “You can do your soak later.”
I obeyed her and went toward the bed.

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