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Authors: Lori Goldstein

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BOOK: Becoming Jinn
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“Maybe, but we Nadiras are better than that, Azra. That's textbook stuff. If you know how something looks and works, you can conjure it. The more intimately you know the item, the better you do.”

Hence my perfect hammer but my unidentifiable reciprocating saw.

“But,” she says, “we are not sideshow freaks. Our ability to harness the light and energy of this world allows us to manipulate the environment in ways two-bit charlatans can't even fathom. We can access laws of nature that humans don't even know exist. Until you ground all your magic in nature, your skills will be limited.”

My instinct is to dismiss her, but the tingle in my fingertips won't let me.

She tucks a loose strand of hair back into her impromptu updo. “At least one benefit of Yasmin's visit is we learned all you needed was a little encouragement.”

“Encouragement, condescension, fine line,” I say.

“Whatever works,” she says with a teasing glint in her eye.

A childhood of watching my mother perform magic made me fear I wouldn't be any good at it, certainly not as good as her, someone who long ago earned the nickname “model Jinn” from her Zar sisters. But she's always said that being descended from a long line of Jinn means magic lives inside me. Once I received my bangle, all I'd need to do is access it. Or as she's been insisting all day,
allow
myself to access it. I hate proving her right.

Fanning her face with her hand, she says, “How about you prove just how encouraged you are by putting out the rest of the fires? I fear I'm on the verge of perspiring.”

I've never seen my mother sweat, literally or figuratively. But if she were going to, today would be the day. The house is stifling, even for us.

My magically ignited fires churn in the rest of the house's nine fireplaces. Nine because we live in Massachusetts and hate to be cold. Nine because my mother, though no longer a wish-granting Jinn, still has her magic and can install fireplaces at will.

Though my hands still shake, all I have to do is think of Yasmin's smug face and I'm able to conjure water instantly at the dining room fireplace. I make my way to the second floor, extinguishing all the flames that have transformed our house into a two-thousand-square-foot sauna.

My bedroom being last, the air is thick with heat. I raise the double-paned glass window all the way up before kneeling in front of the fire.

“I'm flying, Henry!”

I jerk upright, dousing myself and the hearth with my conjured water as the sound of the little girl from across the street penetrates my bedroom. I cross the room and pull the curtain aside.

The open back of the Carwyns' small SUV is crammed with beach chairs, towels, one, no, two coolers, and an overflowing bucket of plastic toys. Mr. Carwyn, a bit rounder and grayer than the last time I saw him, shoves a bright green tote bag in between a large umbrella and a thickly folded plaid blanket as his six-year-old daughter, Lisa, soars down the driveway.

Head bent against the wind, arms straight out behind her, Lisa makes airplane noises as she circles the car. A shiver travels up my spine as she yells again to her older brother, “I'm flying, Henry!”

Ducking his head to get a glimpse through the open back, Henry yells, “Jumbo jet or single prop?”

“Jumbo!” Lisa comes in for a landing next to his passenger-side door.

The top of Henry's sandy-brown-haired head pokes out of the car. He leans down, picks Lisa up, and hauls her into the backseat. “I thought you looked like a 747,” he says.

A tired-sounding Mrs. Carwyn calls from the front passenger seat, “Ready, Hank?”

Mr. Carwyn's grunt precedes him slamming the cargo door shut. He steps back, his flat palms aimed at the car, ready to shove the door closed again should it fail to latch on account of the family of four's mountain of gear.

Mr. Carwyn's halfway to the driver's seat when the door begins to rise. All four Carwyn heads face forward, away from me.

Should I? Can I?

The “can” overcomes the “should,” and I test out my range.
Click.
The latch catches. Henry turns around. My heart catapults to my throat. But there's no way he saw. Heard? Doubtful. Even so, he wouldn't know what he heard.

Henry pushes a rainbow-striped beach chair to the side and cranes his neck to see out the back. He cocks his head and smiles. At me? Can he see me? Just in case, I smile back. We haven't talked in a while. Not that when we do talk we say all that much. But still, some days, he's the only one in school I have more than a “hi,” “hey,” or “'sup?” conversation with.

The thumbs-up he gives his father answers my question as the SUV then backs out of the driveway, headed for a day at the beach. There was a time, long ago, when I would have been strapped into the backseat, Henry on one side of me and Jenny on the other.

Before I release the curtain, I let myself seek out the “A
+
J” scrawled in the bottom right corner of the garage door. Faded as it is, I'm probably the only one who knows it's more than a series of black scuff marks.

I know because I wrote it. I'm the “A,” and Jenny was the “J.”

For the first nine years of my life, Jenny Carwyn was my best friend. Jenny and I were born on the same day but not in the same place. As Mrs. Carwyn gave birth in a sterile hospital room ten miles away, my mother expelled me out into her jetted bathtub, surrounded by her Zar sisters.

Our entries into the world marked one of many differences, but Jenny and I were inseparable from the moment we became mobile. Before I could even talk, Mrs. Carwyn would find me on their doorstep, having somehow escaped my mother's eye long enough to wander across the street.

Jenny, too, would have turned sixteen today.

“I'm flying, Azra! I'm flying!”

I close my eyes and see Jenny's fingers wrapped around the metal chain next to me. Higher and higher, we rode the swings on the set in my backyard, me promising her that just a little more and we'd be able to touch the tulip-shaped cloud in the sky.

“I'm flying, Azra!”

She was. She did. And then all that was next to me was the metal chain.

The day she died was the day I realized magic couldn't fix everything. It was the last day I wanted to become a Jinn. A Jinn like my mother. A Jinn like my grandmother. A Jinn like my great-grandmother. On and on, generation upon generation, we become Jinn. In exchange for granting wishes to humans, we receive powers that allow us to do the impossible. Though there are some things even our magic cannot do.

We cannot bring someone back from the dead.

This I learned the day Jenny fell from the swing in our backyard. The day I begged my mother to use her powers to save my best friend. The day I lost my best friend was the last day I had a best friend.

“Azra,” my mother's voice floats up the stairs. “How about a break from all this, kiddo?”

A break. From all of this. If only there was one. If only I could find one.

Even though my mother always insisted there was no way out of me fulfilling my destiny, when I was younger I thought maybe she was forcing me into this like other parents force kids to take piano lessons.

I steal a last glance at the “A
+
J.” Henry, barely a year older than Jenny and me, tried to take her place over the years, but I wouldn't let him. Couldn't let him. Though it surely would have been better for both of us if I had. But for the past few years, at least he's had Lisa, whose resemblance to Jenny both comforts and unnerves me. For the first time, I wonder if Henry feels the same.

At the brick hearth, I steady myself against the mantel, allowing my thumping heart to retreat to its normal rhythm. I lay a finger on the oval pendant hanging from a silver chain around my neck. The cursive
A
engraved on the front stands for the first letter of the name I share with my grandmother on my mother's side—the necklace's original owner, whom I've never met. Like a security blanket, my
A
has always calmed me. I was so young when my mother first looped the chain around my neck that I don't remember it.

Leaning over the terra cotta bricks, I wring the water out of my shirt and clutch my
A
once more before heading back downstairs.

When I enter the living room, my mother points to the bookshelf. “Up there,” she says. “Happy birthday.”

A box wrapped in silver and gold is nestled in among the tchotchkes. Painted tribal masks from Ghana, onyx candleholders from Mexico, baskets of yarn from Ireland, the objects cramming the shelves are a tangible history of my mother's life. Being Jinn has allowed my mother to see the world. Traveling to even the farthest reaches is only a matter of a blink and a nod for Jinn.

My hand reaches the box without me having to stand on tiptoes even though it's on the highest shelf—something I couldn't have done yesterday, but then again, yesterday, unlike today, my mother and I were not yet the exact same height. My tank top rides up, fully exposing my belly button.

“Tell me,” my mother says, waving her hand and drying my damp shirt, “because, knowing you, it could go either way. Is the midriff baring an unfortunate side effect of your metamorphosis or an intentional display of contempt for this whole thing?”

I run the tip of my red nail along my exposed stomach, working to bury the ache that always comes with thinking of Jenny. I issue a wry smile that lets her think it's the latter. I wish I would have thought of that.
I wish
. Rolls off the tongue. So easy to say. Takes so much to do.

Inside the box lies a deep purple tunic with pinstripes of gold so thin the effect is subtle, not flashy. I rub the soft linen between my fingers. “It's … it's beautiful. Thanks, Mom. Really.”

My sincerity throws her. “I can make it black if you want.”

“No, I like the purple.” The understated nature of the shirt—a departure from the bright fabrics of her wardrobe but in line with my monotone collection of blacks, whites, and grays—proves she knows how hard all of this is for me. As does what comes next.

“I know I said we'd wait until tomorrow,” she says, refolding the shirt. “But if you want, if you're not too tired, we can give it a try.”

“It” can only mean one thing—the power even I couldn't help but crave.

“Ready to app, kiddo?”

 

4

The rides I've hitched while my mother apported us both are nothing like doing it myself.

I do as she says and stand as still as stone. I'm so attuned to the beating of my heart that it pounds in my ears as if playing through earbuds. I close my eyes and picture the space around me in such detail that I could paint it if I had any artistic talent, which I don't. I envision my destination, focusing on one item I know to be in that location, clearly drawing it in my mind. Eventually, my mother says I won't need a specific object to latch onto. The name of the place itself will be enough, which is how we accomplish long-distance apping to grant wishes around the world in locales we've never been.

My mind zeroes in on my old single-speed bike.

Then it's pulse racing, head spinning, adrenaline skyrocketing.
Rush, rush, rush.

Unlike the chill that accompanies conjuring, apping sears my insides as if they were made of fire. Light-headed, I plant my hand on the wall of the garage.

I'm in the garage. I
apped
myself to the garage.

What's that sound? That big ole creak? The door to the world just opened, and I'm standing on the welcome mat.

It may only be the garage, but it's a start.

As I app back into the living room, I work to erase the grin that's plastered itself to my face. I convince my mother to conjure us a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and I produce the two spoons.

We're halfway through the container when my skin prickles and a purring fills my ears. It's less a shock and more like the vibration from a pumped-up stereo bass.

The next instant, Hana apports into our living room. Her orange-red hair echoes the fierce flames of my earlier fires, but she's the gentlest of my soon-to-be Zar sisters, except for Laila, of course.

“Happy Birthday!” Hana gushes, with her arms flung wide.

Is it my own arms at my sides that makes her change course? Because instead of hugging me, she pulls her elbows in and takes my hand, giving my arm a shy, tentative tug.

Am I Hana's Yasmin?

As she greets my mother with a kiss, I can't help but think magic lessons aren't the ones I need.

Though we've e-mailed a few times, I haven't seen her since she became Hana 2.0. Body taller, hair redder, lips fuller. What I'm thinking about her, she says about me.

“You're gorg, Azra!”

Except I wouldn't use “gorg” without the “eous.” Ever.

She walks a circle around me. “Hmm … though it's all actually pretty subtle, isn't it? Thankfully for the rest of us.”

My mother and Hana laugh. Unsure if I should join, I issue an awkward half smile. Which results in … crickets.

Hana clears her throat. “Just wanted to swing by and give you this.”

She holds out a kitschy, tarnished-gold, Aladdin-style lamp, complete with the stereotypical long spout and curved handle. “Congrats! You're the new keeper.”

Pop culture has turned genies into a joke. Oil lamps, serving a master, flying carpets, three wishes—none of it's true. Jinn live in houses, not lamps or bottles. Jinn do not fly on a carpet or otherwise. The Afrit assign wish candidates to Jinn. The candidate gets but one wish. The idea of three stems from humans who were greedy and Jinn who were pushovers.

“Keeper?” I ask.

Hana purses her lips. “Oh, right, you haven't been to most of our parties, have you?”

I skipped Yasmin's sixteenth birthday bash. Our other Zar sister, Mina's, too. But what about Farrah's and Hana's parties? I don't recall getting an invite to their birthdays.

BOOK: Becoming Jinn
8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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