Chapter Twelve The Brother I Didn't Expect.

It had been raining for three days. By four o'clock the third day, Malik was stir-crazy. He wasn't the kind of person to stay inside; he was always moving. Always on his way somewhere new. He said he couldn't take it anymore and asked who wanted to go to the movies. There was only one movie theater in Cousins besides the drive-in, and it was in a mall.

Khalil was in his room, and when Malik went up and asked him to come, he said no. He'd been spending an awful lot of time alone, in his room, and I could tell it hurt Amir’s feelings. He'd be leaving soon for a college road trip with our dad, and Khalil didn't seem to care. When Khalil wasn't at work, he was too busy strumming his guitar and listening to music.

So it was just Malik, Amir, and me. I convinced them to watch a romantic comedy about two dog walkers who walk the same route and fall in love. It was the only thing playing. The next movie wouldn't start for another hour. About five minutes in, Amir stood up, disgusted. "I can't watch this," he said. "You coming, Malik?" 

     Malik said, "Nah, I'll stay with Zarah."

Amir looked surprised. He shrugged and said, I’ll meet you guys when it's over."

I was surprised too. It was pretty awful. 

Not long after Amir left, a big burly guy sat in the seat right in front of me. "I’ll trade you," Malik whispered.

I thought about doing the fake "That's okay" thing but decided against it. This was Malik, after all. I didn't have to be polite. So instead I said thanks and we traded. To see the screen Malik had to keep craning his neck to the right and lean toward me. His hair smelled like Asian pears, this expensive shampoo Leila used. It was funny. He was this big tall football guy now, and he smelled so sweet. Every time he leaned in, I breathed in the sweet smell of his hair. I wished my hair smelled like that.

Halfway through the movie, Malik got up suddenly. He was gone a few minutes. When he came back, he had a large soda and a pack of Twizzlers. I reached for the soda to take a sip, but there were no straws. "You forgot the straws," I told him.

He ripped the plastic off of the Twizzler box and bit the ends off of two Twizzlers. Then he put them in the cup. He grinned broadly. He looked so proud of himself. I'd forgotten all about our Twizzler straws. We used to do it all the time.

We sipped out of the straws at the same time, like in a 1950s Coke commercial- heads bent, foreheads almost touching. I wondered if people thought we were on a date.

Malik looked at me, and he smiled in this familiar way, and suddenly I had this crazy thought. I thought, Malik Kareem wants to kiss me. Which, was crazy. This was Malik. He'd never looked at me like that, and as for me, Khalil was the one I liked, even when he was moody and inaccessible the way he was now. It had always been ad. I'd never seriously considered Malik, not with Khalil standing there. And of course Malik had never looked at me that way before either.I was his pal. His movie-watching partner, the girl he shared a bathroom with, shared secrets with. I wasn't the girl he kissed.

I knew bringing Lila was a mistake. I knew it. I knew it and I did it anyway. Lila Jewel, my best friend. The boys in our grade called her Jewel, which she pretended to hate but secretly loved.

Lila used to say that every time I came back from the summer house, she had to win me over again. She had to make me want to be there, in my real life with school and school boys and school friends. She'd try to pair me up with the cutest friend of the guy she was obsessed with at the time. I'd go along with it, and maybe we'd go to the movies or to the Waffle House, but I'd never really be there, not completely. Those boys didnt compare to Khalil or Malik, so what was the point?

Lila was always the pretty one, the one the boys looked at for that extra beat. I was the funny one, the one who made the boys laugh. I thought that by bringing her I'd be proving that I was a pretty one too. See? See, I'm like her; we are the same. But we weren't, and everybody knew it. I thought that bringing Lila would guarantee me an invitation to the boys' late-night walks on the boardwalk and their nights on the beach in sleeping bags. I thought it would open up my whole social world that summer, that I would finally, finally be in the thick of things.

I was right about that part at least. Lila had been begging me to bring her for forever. I'd resisted her, saying it'd be too crowded, but she was very persuasive. It was my own fault. I'd bragged about the boys too much. And deep down, I did want her there. She was my best friend, after all. She hated that we didn't share everything every moment, every experience. When she joined the Spanish club, she insisted I join too, even though I didn't take Spanish. "For when we go to Cabo after graduation," she said. I wanted to go to the Galápagos Islands for graduation, that was my dream. I wanted to see a blue-footed booby. My dad said he'd take me too. I didn't tell Lila, though. She wouldn't like it.

My mother and I picked Lila up at the airport. She walked off the plane in a pair of short shorts and a tank top I'd never seen before. Hugging her, I tried not to sound jealous when I said, "When'd you get that?"

"My mom took me shopping for beach stuff right before I left," she said, handing me one of her duffel bags. "Cute, right?"

"Yeah, cute." Her bag was heavy. I wondered if she’d forgotten she was only staying a week.

"She feels bad she and Daddy are getting a divorce so she's buying me all kinds of stuff," Lila continued, rolling her eyes. "We even got mani-pedis together. Look!" Lila lifted up her right hand. Her nails were painted a raspberry color, and they were long and square.

“Are those real?"

"Yeah! Duh. I don't wear fake, Zarah."

“But I thought you had to keep your nails short for violin,"

"Oh, that. Mommy finally let me quit violin.

Divorce guilt," she said knowingly. "You know how it is.”

Lila was the only girl I knew our age who still called her mother Mommy. She was the only one who could get away with it too.

The boys came to attention right away. Right away they looked at her, checked out her smallish B-cups and her blond hair. It's a Miracle Bra, I wanted to tell them. That's halfa bottle of Sun-In. Her hair isn't usually that yellow. Not that they would've cared either way.

My brother, on the other hand, barely looked up from the TV. Lila irritated him, always had. I wondered if he'd already warned Khalil and Malik about her.