IN ANOTHER LIFE

Chapter 2: We Need To Talk

_We need to talk._

Three words. In Aisha's handwriting. Small, neat, careful letters like she wrote in her Quran notes.

The bell rang for next period and I could not breathe.

We need to talk.

About what? About us? About yesterday when I carried her home and ruined everything? About the way she looked at me now like I was a stranger she used to know?

For the rest of the day, I did not hear a single word the teachers said. Algebra. History. English Lit. All of it was noise. All I could see was the back of her head, two rows in front of me, her blue hijab covering hair I had never seen in nine years of friendship.

Had I ever seen her hair? No. Never. Not once. In second grade she fell in the pool at school and even then she held her hijab with both hands while she screamed for help. I had pulled her out, and her mother had still called my mother to say thank you, but also to say, please, he should not touch her again.

I had not understood then. I understood now.

After last bell, everyone rushed out. Backpacks zipping, chairs scraping, kids shouting about practice.

Aisha didn't rush. She packed her books slowly, one by one, like she was waiting.

I walked past her desk and dropped a folded paper of my own. I didn't look at her when I did it. My hand was sweating so bad the paper was almost wet.

It said: _Oak tree. 5pm._

She didn't pick it up right away. I went to my locker and watched from the corner of my eye.

She looked around, made sure no one was watching, then slipped it into her backpack. She didn't look up at me.

She left the classroom first. I waited five minutes, then left too.

***

At 4:55 PM, I was under the oak tree.

This tree was older than both of us. Its roots broke through the ground like knuckles. We had carved our initials into it when we were ten. D + A. With a heart that was supposed to be a friendship heart. The carving had grown bigger as the tree grew, stretched and ugly now.

I kept touching my cross necklace. I was nervous in a way I had never been nervous around Aisha before. For nine years she was just Aisha. My Aisha. My best friend who stole my fries and beat me at spelling bees.

Now my mouth was dry.

At 5:12 PM, she came.

She was not wearing her school uniform anymore. She was wearing a long black abaya and her blue hijab, the deep blue one. She walked fast, looking over her shoulder every three steps like someone was following her.

"You're late," I said, trying to sound like old Daniel.

"My mom said I should not go out after Asr," she said quietly. "I told her I was going to the library."

Asr. The afternoon prayer. I knew her prayer times better than my own church times because I had waited for her so many times while she prayed.

She did not sit down. She stood, with space between us. That space had never been there before. We used to sit shoulder to shoulder, fight over who got the bigger root to sit on.

Now there was a foot of air between us that felt like a wall.

"You shouldn't have carried me," she said, finally looking at me. Her eyes were red. Had she been crying?

"You fainted," I said. "What was I supposed to do? Leave you on the floor?"

"You could have called a teacher! A female teacher! You didn't have to... put your hands..."

Her voice broke. She adjusted her hijab quickly, as if checking it was still perfect.

"Everyone saw," she whispered. "My brother's friend was there. He told my mom before I even got home. He said you carried me like... like I was your girlfriend. My mom cried, Daniel. My dad didn't even talk to me last night. He just looked at me."

I felt my stomach drop. "I didn't mean—"

"I know you didn't mean it," she cut me. "That's the problem. You never mean anything bad. You are just Daniel. You do what you think is kind. But your kind can destroy my life."

That word. Destroy.

"Aisha, come on. It's not that deep. We are friends. We have been friends since we were seven."

"We are not seven anymore!" She finally raised her voice, then looked around scared. "Don't you get it? My parents are already talking about sending me to stay with my aunt in another state for senior year. To keep me away from... from you."

Away from me. Like I was a disease.

I stepped closer. She stepped back.

"Do you want to go away?" I asked.

She didn't answer. Her eyes filled with tears that she blinked back fast because good Muslim girls don't cry in front of boys who are not their family.

"Aisha, do you want me to stop being your friend? Just tell me. If you want me to stop, I will. I will never talk to you again in school. I will—"

"No!" She said it too loud, too fast. Then covered her mouth.

The oak tree leaves moved in the wind. A squirrel ran across.

"No," she repeated, softer. "I don't want that."

Then why are we here? Why are we standing like strangers?

I looked at her hands. She was holding her sleeves so tight her knuckles were white.

"Aisha," I said, and my voice was now the sixteen-year-old voice that cracked sometimes, not the eight-year-old voice. "Yesterday when I carried you... for one second, when your head was on my shoulder... I felt something. And it was not friendship."

I should not have said it. I knew I should not have said it the second the words left my mouth.

Her eyes widened. She stared at me like I had slapped her.

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't say that. Please don't."

"Why not? It's true. I think I... I think I like you. More than a friend. I think I have liked you for a long time and I was too stupid to know what it was."

"Daniel, stop!"

She was crying now, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, disappearing into her hijab.

"You wear a cross," she said, pointing at my neck, her hand shaking. "I wear hijab. My father will never, ever let his daughter marry a Christian boy. Never. Your mother will never let you marry a Muslim girl. We will both go to hell according to each other's grandmothers. Do you understand? There is no future. There is no 'us'. There is only sin and shame and my family disowning me."

"I don't care about that," I said, and I meant it.

"But I do!" she cried. "I care! I love my family! I love my faith! I cannot throw it away for a teenage crush!"

Teenage crush. The words hurt more than they should have.

"It's not a crush," I said quietly.

She wiped her tears angrily with the back of her hand. "Then what is it?"

I had no answer that would satisfy her parents, or my parents, or God, or the whole street that had watched us grow up.

Under this same tree, we had promised best friends forever. Now we were promising nothing.

She took a deep breath. "We have to stop. Talking. Sitting together. Walking home together. All of it. For a while. Until this... feeling goes away."

"And if it doesn't go away?"

She looked at me then, really looked at me, with the same eyes that had looked at me when we were eight and I helped her over the gutter.

"If it doesn't go away," she whispered, "then we will have to love each other in another life. Not this one."

In another life. There it was again. The title of our tragedy before we even knew it was a tragedy.

She turned to leave. I grabbed her wrist without thinking. Just for a second. Her skin was warm.

"Aisha."

She froze. She didn't pull away right away. She looked down at my hand on her wrist, then up at me.

"Tomorrow in school," I said, "if you pretend you don't know me, I will understand. But don't ever think it was just a crush."

She pulled her hand back gently, not harsh.

"Tomorrow in school," she said, "I will still know you. I will always know you. That's the problem."

And she walked away, fast, her black abaya flowing, her blue hijab the last thing I saw before she disappeared between the houses.

I sat under the oak tree until the streetlights came on and my mother called my name three times from the front yard.

On the tree trunk, our old carving D + A was still there, stretched and bigger than we were.

I touched it.

In another life.