Love from A to Z: List 3

At that moment, I’d been lying spread-eagle and defeated on the mat, so I acknowledged her prowess by whispering, “I hail your yoga mastery, Auntie Nandy, but this disco queen is going to the bathroom.”

Immediately my shoulders relaxed and my arms went limp as I stared at the diffused lights on the ceiling.

I looked, ready to smile and wave, but was greeted with a weird frozen tableau on the other side of the window. With a towel around his torso, the bobbing middle-aged man was staring at me, standing with his legs apart beside the fitness center attendant, the one who’d signed Auntie Nandy and me into the facility, who now had his arms crossed, a frown on his face.

The pool, apparently, needed me to show my legs and arms. Caps were okay, so my turban was not a big deal, from what I surmised.

I nodded, my brain trying to work out what the exact swim-clothing rules were according to the attendant's long spiel.

I imagined opening the door to him without my hijab on, hair tousled, kind of getting in my eyes, but not so much that he couldn't see how done up those eyes were—with eye shadow, mascara, and all.

Wow, Emma Phillips’s crush on him lasted six years. And was only now coming to fruition.

As Jo traipsed around being allowed to be angry when she wanted to be, and Amy threw things in the fire during one of her rage sessions, it hit me that maybe it was because Jo and Amy were considered cute that they got away with showing their emotions.

“Right, you periodically give me these lessons, but I guess I remain a poor victim of cultural narratives popular round these parts,” Kavi drawled, accentuating her deep Southern accent that she’d almost lost after five years living in Indiana.

I swept my hair away from my face, wound it into a bun at the nape of my neck, and secured it with the scrunchie tie I had on my wrist.

“Every time he talks in class now, it grates on my nerves. I feel like a wrecking ball, ready to smash his lesson plans.”
“Wreck-it-Noemi,” Kavi deadpanned.

The headache, present since this morning turned drill-like, boring into the back of my eyes as I turned them to check if it was the same peripherally.
Peripheral was worse.

“There are a lot of messages for you. Connor. Zayneb. Emma P. Connor. Emma Z. Jacob. Zayneb, again.”
At any other time I would have thought he was being intrusive.

You can’t exploit the kindness of people you don’t know.

The doctor repeated the things he’d told me, using the words “nervous system,” “myelin,” “attacks,” “immune suppression.”
“Multiple sclerosis.”
“Nerve degeneration.”

You would just need a space for the nurse to come and set up the IV apparatus and for Adam to be comfortable.

I was also relieved, tentatively, for another reason: Did Ms. Raymond mean that I could get the treatments at her place?

Is my refusal to involve Dad in my illness tenacity or stubbornness?
I like to think it’s tenacity, because I have a strong reason for not telling him.

When Hanna got a high fever when she was three and was lethargic and couldn’t hold up her head, and the doctors said they couldn’t rule out meningitis, Dad went almost comatose.

My reason is ironclad, something to believe in, to not involve Dad in my MS for now.

I caught the checkered red-and-white cloth and hung it around my neck.

She opened the glass door for me, and I took a step in—with my right foot, as per Muslim custom. Maybe to make it an auspicious occasion?

“This is proper swimwear, Marc. It doesn’t breach protocol in any way.”

Now all of my purchases were at the entrance of my room, in a huddle of bags that the concierge had helped me carry up.

A wraith is a ghost.
A wispy one, according to Google.

“Yes. Chips. And pop.” She smiled sheepishly, kicking off her shoes. “I just want to eat a big bag of chips and drink fizzy sugar.”

Noemi is the one infringing on me and Kavi.

But in the second case, I'm the interloper.
I’m the one who thought of the possibility of us two when there was already a pair there.

I muted Ms. Raymond’s call and shook my head, the euphoria backing up.

She’d been sitting at the kitchen table when she answered, but with a jolt, she stood up with her hands on her hips, wearing a frown under front bangs that were more askew than usual.

At this affront, Hanna’s entire face emerged until her chin rested on Stillwater, squishing his brow fur into his eyes so much, he looked like an angry panda. “It’s not called Special Empire Rocks. It’s the Rare Jewels of an Empire exhibit!”

When I got to the part of conjuring slices of wood to evoke blades of grass, the front door opened.

Exhibit A: A super philosophical song.
I woke up to Auntie Nandy singing loudly from the kitchen, a song about joy and fun and seasons in the sun. But even though it had such happy words in it, it was an unbelievably mournful-sounding thing.

That small, hurting part of my heart spoke up inside, wanting to offer itself to share the heaviness with him.
“Ridiculous,” I whispered, quelling it. You’re going back home; he's going back to school. You’re both leaving Doha.

Basically, he gave a BS rant about how that was an isolated case and she was generalizing about a sensational news story and how that was shoddy analysis, not senior-year-level work at all, blah blah blah.