a whisper in the wind | ✓

one

"I'VE MADE A MISTAKE."

My head plops onto the desk I'm sitting at as Maham Mahdi spares me a glance from my bed.

She scrolls through her phone, the silver diamond on her ring finger twinkling under the yellow-tinted lights in my room. "What do you mean?"

I can hear our dads laughing downstairs — the obnoxious kind that rings throughout the house and probably into our neighbor's sleeping ears.

Having the Mahdis over always feels like this: our parents talking and joking about politics, and Maham and I upstairs in my room having superficial conversations with one-worded answers.

I can't recall the exact moment when the two of us had drifted apart. There were too many to count and consider. Perhaps it was six years ago when both of our families had moved to a different state given that our dads worked for the same company. She changed once she found new friends with similar mindsets, and I didn't like change. It was hard enough that I had to leave my old friends behind, and I couldn't lose the only other person I knew here in Cleveland. And as someone I've known since we were in diapers, she knew that; she just chose to ignore it — or at least, that's what it felt like.

The two of us could have drifted even before then, about eight years ago, when she asked me to keep her first boyfriend a secret in ninth grade. I didn't mind keeping my mouth shut because she was my friend. After all, questioning our South Asian parents' traditional values on dating and romance had peaked for all of us during our teenage years. But eventually, one secret led to keeping another one, to another, and another until I could no longer recognize the person in front of me.

Or maybe the moment when Maham and I drifted was five years ago when we promised each other that we'd go to our first concert together. That promise only lasted up until I had received a text from her on a school night, asking me to guess where she was along with a picture of a stadium. Though I had expressed my sadness in the form of a joke, all I got back was, I didn't ask you because I didn't think your mom would let you come.

Whatever the reason was for our drifting, the process must have been a gradual buildup — like rivets of water trickling down a wet window.

It took me long to admit it, but becoming friends with Maham Mahdi was the first mistake I made in my life.

There's still a part of me that can't let go though. And no matter how awful our past is, clinging on to the fact that we've known each other since childhood seems to be the only reason I can bear to be in her presence at all.

"Karina."

I lift my head up from the desk, snapping out of my daze at the sound of my name. "What?"

Maham looks up from her phone for the first time in a goddamn hour. She can't even pretend to acknowledge my existence unless she's waiting for someone to text her back. "What do you mean you made a mistake?"

I glance over at the clock: 11:07 PM. When the hell are they leaving? "It's just... I'm in my last semester of university and I still have no idea what I want to do. I think majoring in healthcare was a bad idea."

"Oh, boy." She sighs. "I feel that."

"Do you? You're going to nursing school in the fall."

"Only because I'm way too deep into it. I don't know what I would be doing either if I actually took the time to think about it. And honestly, if it wasn't for you editing the fuck out of my personal statement, I probably wouldn't have gotten accepted in the first place."

This is true. Maham is known for being a shit writer, and the countless hours I spent helping her over studying for my own exams should have given me The Biggest Loser Who Doesn't Know How The Hell To Move On Award.

"Well, at this point I'm tempted to just drop everything and work at a flower shop. I bet it's stress-free and fun," I say.

"Your parents would kill you for wasting your degree like that," she fires back quickly, unimpressed by my comment.

Right...

After a moment of silence, Maham chuckles at her phone, as if our conversation was distracting her from her priorities. "Maybe you should try doing something different. Live a little! Ali's having a party at his apartment next week; I can take you! Just tell your mom you're studying with me."

My nose scrunches in disgust. "Ali Rizvi? The one who got arrested for drunk driving? No, thanks. I'm good."

"Suit yourself," Maham says. "But you've never broken a single rule in your life, Karina. You're twenty-two years old. You should at least have one act of rebellion on your conscience. It won't make you a bad person, you know."

I do know, but her words still don't sit right with me. Why say it as if it's an obligation? As if I can't be happy unless I disappoint the parents who've raised me? One act of rebellion won't make me a bad person, but neither will it necessarily make me a better person. And though my teenage years may have looked slightly different from the typical American, I'd like to think that I've still grown up to be a respectable person the same way most of us have despite our past.

But perhaps there's some merit to Maham Mahdi's argument. Despite all of the trouble she's caused and the infamous rumors about her, people still view her as a beacon of light. A saint among us mere mortals. If one act of rebellion doesn't make me a bad person, then how much harm can I cause in doing something for myself for once?