The Borders in Our Veins

(16 years ago)

"Come, A," Sia beckoned him like she always did. Held his hand through it while he tightened his lips and slowed his gate. She, with her bouncing long blond hair, was always a tornado of gold whenever she spun around so energetically. The first thing you ever noticed about Sia was how green her eyes were, how intense, and how ready she was to jump up a wall or climb a tree or run off into the horizon like a dog who just broke off his leash. Energy and light, that was Sia.

And Ahmed wanted to blend into the cracks of the school's brick walls. Didn't want to be here (or anywhere, except the roof maybe, or back home in his living room or hers, or in the treehouse or on the swing or deep in a book). Anywhere but school, where there were hundreds of eyes and no where to duck under them. He grew red in the face looking at her palm against his, and wondering what people thought, but she always moved through this world like she was the only one in it. "You'll sit beside me, A, it's okay. I'm so, so excited you're at my school. We've wanted to go to the same school since forever."

Ahmed had learned, pretty much alongside his learning to speak, that he didn't need to say a single damn word and that Sia could hold the whole conversation off just the flickers of his shy eyes.

What made it terribly awkward, and glaring with shame, was the knowledge that Si's mom had told Ahmed's mom that they ought to go to the same school - that Sia could help him out, after what Ahmed knew was a hushed and desperate rant on his mom's part about the state of his being bullied. Truth was, Ahmed didn't know how to quite fit in, never had. A puzzle piece just slightly askew so that you could maybe, maybe, maybe... almost... but never truly click it together. Always a few degrees over, a slight lift of a dimension away from this one; head in the clouds while Sia was all Earth and grounding him like a metal pole dug to the ground. She touched his hand and it zapped. Kept him from floating away like a kite.

"Don't hold my hand, Si. It's embarrassing enough," he bent his head so his whisper could reach her distracted ear.

"Oh," she lifted her hand, as if she hadn't known it had been glued to his palm. "I'm just," they stilled as the hallway swirled around them, "it's like it's not real, like you're going to float away if I don't." Her smile was unbelievably wide. Contagious, even.

They'd spent evenings and weekends together, these sacred pockets, ever since their dads had met at the bank they both worked in, Ahmed's dad new to the city and Sia's - ever the honest-to-God gentleman - ready to welcome him. To give him some anchor in the floating new world.  An anchor the size of his dinner table and sofa in front of the TV streaming football matches. To introduce their wives, both round with pregnancy. To have dinners and go to shows and find magnets in each other. So that when Sia and Ahmed were born, they were born into the web of something already thickly spun.

Sia and Ahmed had never known a life that wasn't at the end of each other's fingertips.

And at this new school, she protected him fiercely. Found him under the desks at recess, avoiding stepping out into the crammed concrete block that was a city school, with second graders already smoking their father's cigarettes and fourth graders imitating wrestling shows on one another, wearing black eyes proudly. Sia found him and offered him half of her sandwich, "no pork," with a smile, like she'd packed it just for him, and slung a lazy arm over his bony shoulders. "Go, Sia, go outside with your friends."

"You're my friend," she'd said. "You're who I've been waiting for while I pass time with all them anyway, waiting for school to end each day. And now you're here."

Ahmed didn't know - never knew - how he could have been the focus of someone as big as light, as big as the sun. How she could shine that towards his small frame. He ate his sandwich floating in an uneasy beginning of peace. If she meant it... if she meant it, he thought, (always thought), then he could drop his anchor right here between them and never worry about another thing again as long as he lived.