Becoming Jinn (13 page)

“That was really nice,” I say to Nate, whose cheeks seem to flush in response. Momentarily taken aback, I conceal my ancient bike lock with my hand and use my powers to open it. “Pretty sure the kid Chelsea was making fun of is my neighbor. She's just a little girl.”

Nate nods. “Yeah, I know. I helped her brother find her missing pail. I could see it from up on my chair.”

Nate, chief of the beautiful bods, helped Henry?

“If someone was mocking my little sister,” Nate says, “I bet he'd do the same.”

He would. This I know from past—and present—experience.

My helmet dangles from my handlebar. Not wanting to look like a dork, I wait until Nate covers his (presumably) soft hair with his own helmet before sticking mine on my head.

As I fasten the buckle under my chin, Nate eyes the infinity symbol around my neck. My body turns to stone as he reaches out, lifts it off my skin, and rests it in his palm.

“Pretty,” he says. “But I think I like your old necklace better.”

“Old necklace?” His fingertips tickle my throat. Did he feel how hard I just swallowed?

“Yeah.” He gently eases the figure eight back onto my prickling skin. “I think this is the first time I've ever seen you without it. I thought it was cool that you always wore your initial. It was like your signature.” He gives a sheepish smile. “But, hey, what do I know about fashion?”

My
A
necklace? Talk about being rendered speechless. Nate knowing my name is one thing, but the idea that he noticed me before today—not only noticed me, but noticed me enough to know I always wore my
A
necklace—stuns me. In a good way.

His brown eyes, the color of the icing on my birthday cake, try to penetrate the tint on my sunglasses. Though his fingers are nowhere near my skin, goose bumps spread like wildfire.

“All I know,” Nate says, because I've still not managed to make a sound, “is it suited you. You seem … different without it.”

Right,
that's
what's different.

He throws one leg over his bike frame and pauses, studying me again. “Nope, sorry, but I still miss the old one. Then again, I don't handle change particularly well.”

That makes two of us. Nate missing any part of the old me, even if, consciously at least, it's just a necklace, binds us more than he'll ever know and unties my tongue.

We bike home, side by side, and he tries to convince me to read
Zeitoun
, which is on my summer reading list and was on his last year, about a guy saving lives after Hurricane Katrina. I counter by suggesting he read
Into the Wild
, which is on his reading list but I've already read, about a guy ditching his life and disappearing into Alaska, unfortunately quite literally in the end.

When we hit the street where I need to turn left and he needs to turn right, we brake, pop off of our seats, and rest our feet on the ground. The pain from the bump of my ponytail makes me remove my bike helmet. I take off my sunglasses and stick them in my backpack.

“It's getting late,” Nate says. “Maybe I should make sure you get home okay.”

With my powers, it's actually the other way around.

“Thanks, but I'll be fine,” I say, never knowing what may be waiting (or floating or materializing out of thin air) at home.

“Would you…?” Nate gnaws his bottom lip. “How about you text me when you get there?”

Text him? That would require him giving me his phone number. I'd have
Nathan Reese
's phone number? “S-s-ure.” I fumble in my bag for my phone, almost dropping it as I hand it to him. I clear my throat. “I mean, yeah, no problem, if you want.”

He enters his number into my phone and asks if it's okay if he puts mine in his. Is it okay? Is he serious? Is he…? Is it possible Nate's shy? That
he's
uncomfortable around
me
? I lean against my bike to hide the quiver in my knees, but I lean too hard, and the bike clatters to the ground.

Immediately Nate bends to pick it up. As we right the bicycle together, we brush shoulders. We are the same height. He looks me in my un-sunglassed eyes. I hesitate before lowering my gaze to the bike, making a show of dusting it off.

“It's funny,” he says, circling in front of my handlebars. “I didn't realize how tall you were.”

Deflect, Azra, deflect.

The best I can come up with is so girly I'm not sure he'll buy it. “That's what happens when you wear heels one day, flats the next.” I kick my sneaker against the bike frame. “Sneaks with loads of cushioning.” To further sell it, I pull out my ponytail holder and give my hair an awkward flip. “We girls have tons of tricks that make it more challenging.”

Nate almost misses the seat as he slides back on. He says in a voice barely above a whisper, “You should think about wearing your hair down more often.” He then rises from his seat, feet on the pedals, ready to cycle hard and fast. In his normal tone he says, “Put that helmet back on though. Better to be safe than sorry. Never know when you might hit something and be thrown for a loop.”

I pull the helmet on and snap the buckle under my chin. Apparently I should have been wearing this thing all day.

 

12

“What do you do if someone wishes to have never been born?”

My teeth sink into the lamb kebab right as my mother springs the first question of one of her pop quizzes on me.

I chew and chew and chew because I have no idea. I swallow slowly, reach for my glass of water, and drink the entire thing, tiny sip, by tiny sip. My stalling doesn't fool her and doesn't help me find the answer.

“Because you know you can't kill anyone, don't you?” she says. “Well, it's not that you can't, but it's highly frowned upon. It can result in severe punishment unless it's absolutely necessary. There's almost always a way around it.”

I'm not sure what shocks me more, the realization that I have the power to kill someone or that my mother thought me doing so was a possibility.

My appetite takes a hike. I push back my dinner plate and think for a moment. “Maybe I could give him a new identity?”

“Perhaps, but he'd almost certainly be missed.” My mother pauses. “You're on the right track, but you have to dig deeper. Find out what's making him feel that way and what you can do to fix it.”

So maybe mine's only a C answer, but considering the difficulty of that hypothetical, we really should be grading on a curve. Just like my mom to kick things off with a zinger.

She's deep in thought, pondering her next question, when a pulsating
buzz buzz
in my thigh makes me sit up straighter. It took me fifteen minutes to come up with the uninspired
“Home”
and a smiley face that I sent to Nate before dinner.

I ease my phone out of my front pocket, convinced the text won't be from him. But it is.

Alone?  ;)

My head snaps up to my mother, who's cutting the fat off a piece of lamb. The
thunk, thunk
of my heart, the nearness of my mother, the very idea that
Nate'
s texting me ends with me nervously dashing off a terse:

No.

Warmth from embarrassment and … something else floods my entire body as I read Nate's reply:

Too bad.

My trembling fingertips hover over the keyboard as I contemplate my response.

“Azra!” My mother snatches my phone. “Is it too much to ask you to pay attention to me for five minutes?”

I shake my head, extending my hand for the phone. She can't read it.
She can't. She can't
.

My racing heart slows to a trot as she rests the phone at the far end of the table and resumes her questions, which despite my now even more unfocused mind, I answer pretty well, definitely in the B
+
or higher range. This likely makes her believe I've actually been studying, and I don't indicate otherwise. If I can fake it this good, why hit that stupid old book?

“Well,” my mother says, “I think maybe you're ready for your second candidate.”

That's what I get for being so good at bluffing.

Her forehead crinkles. “Again, it should probably be someone we know…”

Henry's kindness to me and Chelsea's meanness to him rush back to me.

The algorithm the Afrit use to select candidates is a mystery. Supposedly, when they see evidence that an individual may be able to do important things for society, they give that person a little prodding by selecting them to receive a wish. There's a Jinn to thank for everything from the first light bulb to the first supercomputer.

They'll choose my candidates for the rest of my life.

My mother chose my first candidate.

This time, I want to choose.

Before the creases on my mother's brow flatten out, I say, “What about Henry?”

Her olive skin doesn't turn pink, despite how tickled she looks. “Huh, I didn't realize you two were a thing. Sure, I mean, the balloon and all on your birthday was a clue, but I thought the crush was a bit more him on you.”

My skin, on the other hand, must match the color of the tomatoes left on my plate. “What? Crush? I don't have a crush. Neither does he. We're just … just friends. He's nice, and I think it'd be nice to do something nice for him.”

Nice, very, very nice.

“Whatever you say.” My mother smiles. “Still, I'm not sure that's the best idea. Considering the history you two share, I think you might be too … invested. Predisposed to grant the wish
you
want to grant, which may or may not be what he wants. Restraint can be difficult when it's someone you like—”

“I don't
like
him.”

“Or hate, I was going to say. Remember how you felt with Mrs. Pucher?”

I do. The tsunami of emotions surging through me while granting Mrs. Pucher's wish didn't just disappear when I was done. A sense of melancholy hung with me all day.

My mother scoops up her last spoonful of cardamom-scented rice. “Now think about how long the human's residual anima may stay with you if it's someone you have a connection with. The circulus holds great power over us.”

Reciting the circulus incantation is what allows us to grant a human's purest wish. It links our spirits, a magical mumbo jumbo I always scoffed at. I still want to, but I can't. Not anymore. The circulus incantation is what made me feel Mrs. Pucher's pain. It gave her soul a temporary home in mine. This is how I was able to delve into her inner psyche, into her unconscious “anima,” and understand her needs, her wants, her desires. In that moment, we were one.

I imagine feeling that with Henry. Henry, who has Jenny's eyes. Suddenly the idea of granting Henry a wish seems like a very bad one indeed.

“It really is … intimate, isn't it?” I say.

My mother lays her fork and knife across her plate. “It lessens over time.” She relaxes back into her chair. “The stronger you become, the more control you have over the depth of the connection. Still, the process takes a lot out of us.”

And takes a lot of energy, so much so that if we ever invoked the circulus for a candidate not assigned to us, the Afrit would be able to recognize such a spike in magic instantly.

“And their anima,” I say, the word still feeling foreign to me, “their souls, do they really stay with us?”

“A piece.”

“But I don't feel any different.” Except being more than a little weirded out.

“You may not. Not yet, but it builds. Eventually it weighs us down. Not that there isn't as much lightness as there is darkness. But they're always there, the effects of linking with a human's soul.” My mother runs a finger along the rim of her wineglass. “And then, one day, you'll recite the circulus incantation and find you can't link anymore. You can't enter the human's psyche. Your wish-granting days are over.”

The Afrit retire some Jinn before their circulus powers are bled dry, but my mother, predictably, was one of the ones kept in rotation until she was the equivalent of the Sahara. She granted her last wish when I was five. Sometimes I wonder if the hairline creases around her eyes don't just come from me.

Her eyes glisten. “Maybe you can't yet accept it, but making someone's wish come true is special. It's what we are meant to do. It completes us as much as them. You see that now, at least a little?”

I shift in my seat. Did helping Mrs. Pucher make me feel good? Of course. How could it not? Did it complete me? Fill all the Swiss cheese holes the Afrit have punched in my life? Of course not. How could it?

My mother sighs as she wraps her hand around the gold bangle that replaced her silver one when she retired. Though she lost her ability to grant wishes, she gained the powers of healing (which is why I never suffered so much as a nose bleed) and tracking (why I never got far when I packed my pillowcase, hobo style, and bolted).

She slowly gets up from the table. “It's nice that you'd think of Henry, but trust me, you don't want to make this more complicated.” As she clears our plates, she adds, “Unless you want to be stuck trailing some human for the rest of your life. Remember Farrah? She was tied to that old man for a week.”

We both laugh. We can't help it. But it must have been awful for Farrah. Scary too.

Without the circulus link, we can't grant a human's wish, but
with
the circulus link, we can't
not
grant a human's wish. Once we recite the incantation, we are magically commanded to grant whatever wish the human makes first. There are no do-overs, for them or for us. We have twenty-four hours to show signs of beginning the wish-granting process, after which the circulus curse kicks in.

Like it did with Farrah. It was her second official candidate. He wished for a “room,” but the old man's lack of teeth made her think he wanted a “womb.” Her mind-reading skills weren't, and still aren't, great so she relied on what she heard with her ears, neglecting to fully enter his psyche. The grace period came and went, and a baffled Farrah became tied to the old man. Magic physically compelled her body to shadow him. She couldn't be more than a hundred and fifty feet away from him until she completed his wish.