Six Truths and a Lie
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Synopsis
Six Muslim teens are falsely accused of a deadly attack in this timely and harrowing examination of America’s justice system, perfect for fans of Angie Thomas and Samira Ahmed.
As fireworks pop off at a rowdy Fourth of July bonfire party, an explosion off the California coast levels an oil rig—resulting in chaos and worse, murder.
At the center are six Muslim teens - six patriots, six strangers, and six suspects.
An old soul caught in the wrong place. An aspiring doctor. An influencer with a reputation to protect. A perfect daughter with secrets to hide. A soccer star headed for Stanford. An immigrant in love. Each with something to hide and everything to lose.
Faced with accusations of terrorism, The Six are caught in a political game that will pit them against each other in exchange for exoneration. They must choose: frame each other to guarantee their own independence or expose their secrets to earn back freedom for them all.
Release date: March 12, 2024
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Print pages: 400
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Six Truths and a Lie
Ream Shukairy
MONARCH BEACH WAS CROWNED LOS ANGELES COUNTY’S safest beach three years in a row.
That was what Nasreen told her parents to gain a whopping fifteen-minute extension to her curfew, ringing in at the ever-desirable 10:00 PM.
Though she was thrilled with the extension at first, arriving at the beach quickly fizzled her excitement. The MSA’s Inter–High School Independence Day Bonfire Spectacular wouldn’t get going until around the time she’d have to head home. Her parents stood by their curfew even though she explained to them that this was a Muslim event for Muslims, hosted by several Muslim Students Associations. Repeating the word Muslim that many times should’ve confirmed her safety to her mama and baba, yet it didn’t get her any more leeway.
She trudged away from the boardwalk and over to the sand, sunshine blending into orange as the sun drew farther away from the earth. The chilly night breeze from the months of May and June lingered into these first days of July. She held her elbows tighter and kicked herself for not bringing a jacket despite her mama’s reminder.
As she approached the bonfire pits, she stopped near a boy with an impressive beard for a high schooler and a tank top that flashed a big USA in neon red and blue. He glanced up, cocking his eyebrow at her.
“Here to help set up?” the boy asked, hoisting a bright blue cooler onto a foldable table like it weighed nothing. Though twice her height, he looked her age, and his parents likely also came from one of the nooks and crannies of South Asia. “Hey, don’t I know you?”
Nasreen shook her head in disbelief. Or perhaps belief.
She was certain he hadn’t seen her around; no one here had ever seen her except maybe in passing at one of the mosques in the city. She definitely wasn’t on a setup committee, nor a cleanup one, nor a planning one. Nasreen was a spectator, spectating, but more specifically waiting for someone to arrive for a conversation that had to be had. She’d delayed it long enough, and now she couldn’t keep living with the discomfort of her secrets. Secrets made her irritable and want to throw up. And the more this boy watched her, the more her temper shortened and her stomach gurgled. Perhaps that was just her hunger because she hadn’t been able to eat all day. Or it was anxiety about how she would find her way out of the hole she’d dug herself into. She usually had a knack for hiding away at the first sign of trouble, but this time was different. This time she’d created the trouble, and confronting it—or rather her—made her feel hot and itchy.
Just try to enjoy the festivities for a little while.
The boy emptied the cooler, full of an egregious amount of halal hot dogs, onto the table. “Are you from Monarch Beach High?”
He was hell-bent on conversation.
Nasreen pushed her black-rimmed glasses up along the bridge of her nose like she always did when she was nervous. She was never good at talking to boys.
“No,” she replied, though she recognized some of the faces of Monarch Beach High School from the masjid. “I go to Saint Modesta High.”
“Oooh, drip.” He raised his fist to his mouth and looked like he’d just eaten a spoonful of cayenne pepper. “Are you, like, the only Muslim there?”
That’s the first time I’ve heard that one, thought Nasreen. The lack of originality was precisely why she didn’t bother with boys. She rolled her eyes in response.
“Here, you can help with the dogs,” he offered, but Nasreen made no move to help. He paused, tongs in one hand and a bag of coal in the other. “Or, um, you can help at the Huntington pit next door, or the Valley pit to our left. Sorry, Saint Modesta didn’t cut it for our bonfire this year. Not enough representation over there, if you know what I mean.”
Nasreen covered her smirk with her hand. Saint Modesta High School was a private Catholic school with a high acceptance rate to Ivy League schools. For all her sixteen years, including the choice of her high school, Nasreen’s parents had prepped her for Ivy League greatness. Or perhaps pretentiousness.
All it did for Nasreen was make her the token Muslim Desi girl in any of the friend groups that she was invited into at school. Eventually, she decided that sometimes it was better to be alone.
“I thought this bonfire was about bringing the schools together, not dividing us,” Nasreen said.
He snorted. “You’ll catch my drift once everyone else shows up.”
As Nasreen traveled between the groups, hot-dog boy’s comment started making sense.
There were three pits. The farthest north was Huntington High School’s firepit, and going south were Monarch Beach, then Valley. An invisible wall separated the groups. The prefix inter- in the title of the event didn’t require that the schools mixed, so they didn’t. Excluding the students assigned to various committees, Nasreen was the only one who breached the invisible borders.
She skirted around the pits, starting with Valley, where they had Maria Cookies instead of graham crackers, then tiptoeing around MB, where there were too many coolers to count and students were wildly overdressed for the beach, and finally arriving at Huntington’s pit, where the students lounged on blankets and kept it laid-back. Not a cocktail party like MB and not a rave like Valley. Huntington’s vibe was just chillin’.
For what felt like a full day but was only fifteen minutes, Nasreen searched the beach like a fish out of water. Her stomach growled, and she picked at her nails relentlessly.
“Hey, Saint Modesta!”
Nasreen shut her eyes, searching for patience under her eyelids.
It was the first boy, from MB. The boy with the hot dogs. He dropped off a cooler, spreading the wealth of the more affluent students of MB. The social-class cues hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Nasreen flashed him a look. Perhaps a snarl at the nickname. “What is it?”
He quirked his brows. “You’re making your rounds. I knew you were cut out for a committee.”
That was the problem. Nasreen knew she fit the mold of committee member because she was consistently on one or two committees year-round. She wanted to loosen up for one night, to stop calculating the appropriate participation in high school events needed to avoid the title of high school outcast.
“Sup, Choudhry.”
Nasreen and hot-dog boy both turned their heads at the last name, but no one meant to call her. No one here even knew her, not yet at least. Turning back, he smirked at her. “Hope we’re not cousins.”
Nasreen really didn’t need this Choudhry chatting her up. She slipped away and continued her search, arching her neck to get a glimpse of hijabis’ faces as the wind whipped up their scarves. But however many times she circled, her someone didn’t show up. Another quarter of an hour passed, and Nasreen’s heart raced. Did she let something slip in her messages? Had she already been caught?
The sun was properly setting now, and the oranges melted into the pinks into the purples into the light blues. Though the colors deepened and darkened into the night, there was plenty of light left in the day.
Sunset dared to last forever.
“Heads up!”
Nasreen glanced in the direction of the warning. A football whacked full force against the side of her head. A sound like her glasses cracking foreboded a sharp pain from behind her ear where the temple tip pressed into her tender skin. Luckily, her glasses were indestructible, as proven by all the cracks, snaps, and whacks they’d taken.
“My bad.”
As her head began to throb, the boy grabbed the ball and ran back over to his friends. She had a few choice words that she didn’t use. Nasreen’s teachers and classmates described her as having monk-like patience. In any case, it wasn’t the fault of the kid who didn’t catch the overthrown ball, but the dude who threw it. Nasreen stared at the shirtless guy, who snickered with his other topless buddies beside the MB pit. For all Nasreen’s patience, she had a practiced glare that spoke volumes. The shirtless guy maintained his no-apology stance, not even providing a polite bow of the head to her. He gave her a cocky shrug from his ten yards away. For a second, she wished she could punch him right in his glistening white pecs, but she willed that thought away.
“You okay?” Somehow Choudhry found her again. He followed her glare. “Don’t worry about Qays. He’s cool. Last year he took our school all the way to the soccer CIF state championship and—”
“I’m gonna stop you there,” she said as she looked away from the arrogant so-called high school star named Qays and promptly erased his name from her memory. “He’s just another terrorist to me.”
Choudhry choked on laughter. “Should we unpack that?”
“No,” Nasreen scoffed. “Don’t act like you and your friends don’t call each other terrorists on a daily basis.”
Every Muslim teenager called their friends terrorists at one time or another. It was ownership of a slur reappropriated as a joke. And the cycle of rebranding continued. At least, that was what Nasreen told herself.
Choudhry accepted this with a shrug.
“I’m going for a walk,” Nasreen said finally. “If I don’t come back before my curfew, don’t bother telling my parents. I’ll just never go back home.”
He knit his brows, though his smile appreciated the quip. “How would I know your parents?”
“Cousins, remember, Choudhry?”
He flashed her an easy grin, and she wondered if she came across as abrasive as she felt inside. So many years of being the only Pakistani American in her classes had made her exceptional at hiding the brash side of herself so that she could be warm and approachable. But on the inside she felt coarse and cold. When she was with others who looked like her, she unraveled into the harshest parts of her.
Precious seconds ticked by as Nasreen walked north, past the pits, to the lavish beach homes that dotted the cliffside.
Maybe this bonfire would be a total mistake. Nasreen was trying to set things right, but everything could blow up in her face. Nasreen hoped that her plans weren’t all for nothing, because despite acting the model student, she had one or two secrets of her own.
Looking back at the pits, she knew without a doubt that she wasn’t the only one.
HIGH SCHOOLERS IN AND AROUND LA REGARDED QAYS AS a specimen of raw yet sculpted beauty.
Qays knew this. Light brown hair preened into curls with a fade: the trademarked Arab fuckboi hairstyle. Soccer, weight lifting, and hookah: the patented Arab fuckboi hobbies. A killer smile and charming stubble interrupted by his strongly hooked nose: courtesy of his Levantine roots, which, some might argue, was where Arab fuckbois originated.
No one minded Qays’s burly nose, not even him. Humans found absolute perfection unnerving anyway. Qays’s nose set him apart, and he embraced it. His indifference toward it made him more alluring, and he knew that too.
He was also aware that he wasn’t obligated to apologize to the girl with the glasses who had been standing in the line of his throw. As high school royalty, he didn’t need to adhere to social niceties, and so he didn’t.
Qays always did what he wanted, and anything he didn’t want, he did only if it needed to be done. He didn’t care much for what others expected of him, but he was the high school soccer phenomenon with the 4.4 GPA, the soon-to-be senior with express interest from Stanford men’s soccer and a scholarship on the table, so he never fell short of expectations. Rather, he dabbled in the sport of exceeding them.
It wasn’t that Qays needed Stanford with all the schools and soccer programs scrambling to get on his wait list, but the added interest never hurt.
Qays loved added interest.
Like the girls. So many girls. He heard their giggles as he passed, smelled the lingering vanilla scent every time he turned corners. But no matter how many girls lined up for him, no matter how much flirting came about naturally for him, he hadn’t taken the step to really date any of them. Not yet anyway. His thoughts on that subject were still undetermined.
Omar, Qays’s carbon copy in the acceptable best-friend kind of way, gestured to the collection of girls from MB, Valley, and Huntington spying him, disguising their smiles behind feathery fingers. “Your fan club keeps growing. They’re coming from all over.”
Qays barked a laugh, catching the football one-handed. “What can I say? I have a wide range of influence.”
“What happens when you curve all of them for Kelsey?”
Qays’s mouth perked up with a naughty grin. “Who the hell is Kelsey?”
“There’ll be a Kelsey,” Omar said, shoving his friend.
But Qays didn’t think there would be. For all his Adonis good looks, he knew Adonis came from Lebanon and was the son of a king of Syria, where Qays’s grandparents lived after the Palestinian diaspora in the ’60s. He’d be true to Adonis’s roots, not pander to the white narrative just because it was easier.
He didn’t remember these facts solely to bag the 5 on his AP Art History exam; he knew them because Qays committed his legacy to memory. His Arab blood ran thick.
“Yo, what time is it?” Omar asked the boys. The sun, like everything in LA, was moving fast.
“Blunt o’clock,” Qays muttered, taking the cue. Omar passed him the soccer ball this time, and Qays walked closer to the squad of spectators.
He turned up his charm, from where it rested at medium all the way to high. Flicking the soccer ball up and juggling it, he hit it with some around the worlds and crossovers, toe bounces and knee catches in between for fun. He gathered admiration from his growing audience, dazzling with 360 turns and hamstring catches and hops. He kept his head down, not because he needed to concentrate for these simple tricks but because it made him look like he was doing this for his enjoyment alone. Yeah, right.
When he finished, he gave an exaggerated bow for the applause as his excuse to survey the crowd. His eyes landed on one girl, and he was immediately drawn to her.
She stood aside from the others, overlooked, inconsequential. Everything about her demeanor whispered lackluster. She was slight in stature despite her height and willowy frame. If Qays hadn’t thought she was vaguely familiar, he might not have seen her at all.
He stalked over, the collective whispers not nearly as amusing as the grunts and huffs around him. Because Qays had chosen, and she should not have been his type.
“Hey, don’t I know you?” he asked, sneaking a peek at her. Girls liked confident, shy boys, and he was practiced in being this contradiction.
She nodded almost imperceptibly. After several attempts to clear her voice, she managed, “You tutored me last year.”
“Oh, right!” He snapped his fingers and locked eyes with her, tugging at his memories. “I remember you.” Though Qays’s charm was on its highest level, he wasn’t lying. Last year, his AP English teacher asked them to choose between doing a semester-long research project or tutoring English language learners at an after-school program at Valley High. Of course, Qays had chosen to tutor students over hours of research and writing a fifteen-page report. So for the first semester of his junior year, he spent evenings helping students write essays about the most obscure things, from their favorite meals to their worst experiences. And since most of the students were refugees, the stories were pretty heavy.
“You do?” she asked, her tone hopeful.
Qays felt like he did, but it had been a while and he couldn’t help but be a flirt. “Of course. But just for fun, remind me your name.”
“I’m Muzhda,” she said, her mouth relaxing into a smile. Qays’s chest squeezed, and he felt himself smile against his will. He was surprised he hadn’t remembered her quicker. She had distinct, artfully drawn brows that eased away from each other, and her parted lips revealed the slight gap between her two front teeth. Her scarf swept around her gaunt face, allowing peeks at her soft brown hair. Her face was carved and chiseled in the most unexpected places. Beautifully, Qays thought; she had the unique face of a model who wasn’t necessarily pretty, but whose stark features transformed gracefully as the eyes grew accustomed. She was beautiful.
He recalled he’d noticed her charms when he first sat with her over an essay about her first pet. Time went quickly for Qays; people passed him like the pages of a book flipping in the wind. But her smile brought her back to him all at once.
Beauty wasn’t a monolith. Qays had the good looks that littered Instagram. Muzhda had the editorial allure of Vogue.
He’d made a mistake. He usually picked out strangers whom no one noticed. From afar, Muzhda in a plain black dress cinched at her waist was unmemorable. But face-to-face, the ruby-gem belt around her waist ricocheted light, and a part of her glittered like lightning.
Qays noted how her eyelashes were so long they touched the hood of her eyes.
“This is awkward.” Muzhda giggled, and her copper skin flushed. “I guess you don’t remember me.”
He regretted choosing Muzhda now, but he couldn’t take it back. It’ll be fine, he thought. This is routine.
Qays recuperated. “No, no, I promise I remember you. I just wanted to see if you could do a favor for me.” He glanced down. Glanced up. Bit his lip.
The red on Muzhda’s cheeks matched her belt. Qays knew she’d blush just like that—he was a fuckboi, after all—but he didn’t expect his own cheeks to feel warm too. By the end of the first semester last year, he’d started to look forward to tutoring Muzhda, and it seemed his body hadn’t forgotten those feelings, even if his mind had.
“A favor?” Muzhda shook her shoulders, maybe in a shudder, maybe in an am-I-awake moment.
He shrugged. “You seem trustworthy.” And a good deal enamored.
She squinted at him, eyes searching. “MB’s soccer star asking a favor from a Valley girl?”
Qays frowned at the unfortunate nickname for female students at Valley. The traditional Valley Girl came from affluent suburbs and was nothing like the Valley girls of Valley High, the skid row of LA high schools. Usually Qays wouldn’t think twice about it, but hearing it from Muzhda made him uncomfortable.
The world was full of contradictions. Like Qays’s draw to Muzhda. Yet here he was, so captivated that it puzzled him.
She leaned close, and he got a whiff of rose. Not the vanilla he’d expected.
“I assume the favor involves danger.” Muzhda’s voice rumbled.
Qays searched for his voice.
“Or crime?”
He swallowed hard.
She leaned away and waved a hand around her. “Because there are plenty of MB girls here to do your bedding—I mean bidding.” She roared with laughter.
Qays fought his perplexity and wondered how he’d put her out of his mind so easily last year. “What can I say? You fit the job description perfectly.”
“Not sure if you’re being racist or classist.”
Qays flashed a celebrity smile. “Neither. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.”
Muzhda’s eyes, which he noted were an ancient shade of hazel, narrowed. “Then why not do it yourself? Sorry, the Valley/MB crossover doesn’t compute for me,” she said with a lift of her chin. “Not when you’re adding that to the Afghan/Arab mix and the jock/nobody mix. Something’s up.”
“Nothing’s up.”
“I’m not an idiot, Qays.”
He had made a mistake. His errand runners were always submissive, eager-to-please, already-in-love-with-him strangers. He excelled at picking them out of a crowd. But Muzhda was none of those.
He was flummoxed, in more ways than one. Not since the seventh grade had a stranger had this much control over his primal senses. And he felt foolish that in trying to find the demurest girl, he’d stumbled upon a girl who was more than a pretty face vying for his attention. If this were The Bachelor, he would need only one rose, and he would hand it right over to her if she said his name one more time.
These feelings were fast and foreign to him. But he couldn’t back out now. He needed to fully commit. His boys’ night depended on it.
“Can’t I just be chatting you up?” he asked, deepening his voice. “Reconnecting with one of my students?”
“Sounds unlikely.”
“Say I thought you were the prettiest girl here.”
“I’d call you a liar.”
“But you are the prettiest girl here.” And not a word of that was a lie. His heart even skipped a beat. The traitor.
She blushed. “Save it for the others.”
“Don’t act like you weren’t watching me from the moment I arrived.”
“I specialize in long-distance cute-boy observation, but I’m not trying to go to second base like some of us.” She cocked an eyebrow at him.
He placed his hand over his bare chest, right over his heart, and Muzhda’s gaze shamelessly followed it. “Are you calling me a player?”
She bit her lip to suppress a smile. “I hear the rumors.”
Qays grinned. He was enjoying himself too much, a big no-no with errand runners. He didn’t deny the rumors, though that was all that they were. He watched her, forgetting himself.
Muzhda swayed under his stare. “So, about that favor?”
“Oh, that.” Qays didn’t want her to go. He was starting to think the errand wasn’t worth it anymore. A part of him didn’t mind bantering with Muzhda all night by the fire, but Omar and his other friends were waiting on him. So he went for it. “There’s a package in locker 208 by the bathrooms. Do you think you could get it for me?”
Muzhda pouted slightly, and it did a number on Qays’s imagination. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“What’s in the package?” she asked.
“It’s best you don’t know,” he replied.
“It’s safe?”
“As much as it is legal.”
They exchanged grins.
Muzhda acted coy. “Then why can’t you get it yourself?”
He spread his arms out like Christ the Redeemer. “Wouldn’t want to taint that soccer-star image.”
She smirked. “Because your image is such a white sheet.”
“My parents think so.”
Muzhda rolled her eyes and slipped something off her wrist. She dropped it into Qays’s open palm.
“What’s this?” he asked, passing it between his hands. It was a plain bracelet, beads alternating black and red, just like her outfit. Circular white beads spelled out MUZHDA, finished off with a heart-shaped gem.
“Wear it,” she ordered.
Qays hesitated.
“I’m not stupid,” she explained. “I’m not getting your mystery, maybe dangerous, quasi-legal package if you don’t have the courage to wear a bracelet with my name on it.”
Qays could only smirk to hide his jaw dropping.
“Think of it as collateral,” she added.
“For you or me?”
“Both.”
He wore the bracelet, and she smiled, her eyes bright. At least Qays knew she enjoyed his company just as much as he did hers.
She turned to hide her smile, inching away slowly. “I’ll go get your package, and we’ll make the swap.”
“It’s 11-31-07.”
“Your birthday?” Her eyes sparkled.
“November only has thirty days.”
Muzhda stuck her tongue out at him, and Qays felt like his brain melted out of his ears a little.
He recomposed himself. “It’s the combination.”
Muzhda faced him as she walked backward toward the Valley pit, toward the pier and the lockers. “Locker 208, 11-31-07. See you in a bit, Qays Sharif.”
Qays watched her black silhouette fade into the night, slipping away from him. He looked around at the others, shyly wondering if they’d just witnessed her like he had, but everyone was looking up at the sky with bubbling anticipation. Innocently unsuspecting of what would come for them with the first fireworks.
IF HER TRIANGLE-SHAPED, YELLOW-TINTED SUNGLASSES crafted with a tangle of metal wiring made any statement at all, it was that Samia lived for the aesthetic.
She hopped out of the still-dripping-wet Taycan. Samia’s parents didn’t understand why the car wash charged their cards every time she went out with their car, but she couldn’t stop. A pearl-white car is only a car straight out of the car-wash tunnel. Anything more than a thin layer of dust made it look like a dirty toy, which totally soiled Samia’s look.
Throwing the long end of her amber jersey hijab to one side, she pressed her lips together to smooth out her lip gloss. With delicate fingers she gave her eyelashes a little boost. She straightened the pearl hair clip attached to her scarf and adjusted her glasses low on her nose because the sun had already set. Light lingered in the air, but not for much longer, and Samia cursed the traffic on the 10 for making her late.
“Whoa there.” A voice crept up behind her.
She jumped. Grimy beach parking lots were not the place for surprise visits. As soon as she turned, her heart rate sank back down. “Oh, it’s just you.”
Abdullahi shut the door to his new Civic, which gave off a middle-class vibe Samia hoped she’d never have to endure. “You’re late too?” he asked.
“I’m never on time,” Samia answered. Her makeup didn’t do itself; neither did hems on her bell-bottoms. If Samia’s conscience blocked her from making her parents pay for every expensive clothing item on her wish list, she’d make impeccable knockoffs of them.
Abdullahi sighed. “I didn’t think I’d be here again.” Though they weren’t technically walking together, Samia paced herself with him, feeling safer now that he was within earshot. She’d known Abdullahi since kindergarten; they went to the same schools. . .
That was what Nasreen told her parents to gain a whopping fifteen-minute extension to her curfew, ringing in at the ever-desirable 10:00 PM.
Though she was thrilled with the extension at first, arriving at the beach quickly fizzled her excitement. The MSA’s Inter–High School Independence Day Bonfire Spectacular wouldn’t get going until around the time she’d have to head home. Her parents stood by their curfew even though she explained to them that this was a Muslim event for Muslims, hosted by several Muslim Students Associations. Repeating the word Muslim that many times should’ve confirmed her safety to her mama and baba, yet it didn’t get her any more leeway.
She trudged away from the boardwalk and over to the sand, sunshine blending into orange as the sun drew farther away from the earth. The chilly night breeze from the months of May and June lingered into these first days of July. She held her elbows tighter and kicked herself for not bringing a jacket despite her mama’s reminder.
As she approached the bonfire pits, she stopped near a boy with an impressive beard for a high schooler and a tank top that flashed a big USA in neon red and blue. He glanced up, cocking his eyebrow at her.
“Here to help set up?” the boy asked, hoisting a bright blue cooler onto a foldable table like it weighed nothing. Though twice her height, he looked her age, and his parents likely also came from one of the nooks and crannies of South Asia. “Hey, don’t I know you?”
Nasreen shook her head in disbelief. Or perhaps belief.
She was certain he hadn’t seen her around; no one here had ever seen her except maybe in passing at one of the mosques in the city. She definitely wasn’t on a setup committee, nor a cleanup one, nor a planning one. Nasreen was a spectator, spectating, but more specifically waiting for someone to arrive for a conversation that had to be had. She’d delayed it long enough, and now she couldn’t keep living with the discomfort of her secrets. Secrets made her irritable and want to throw up. And the more this boy watched her, the more her temper shortened and her stomach gurgled. Perhaps that was just her hunger because she hadn’t been able to eat all day. Or it was anxiety about how she would find her way out of the hole she’d dug herself into. She usually had a knack for hiding away at the first sign of trouble, but this time was different. This time she’d created the trouble, and confronting it—or rather her—made her feel hot and itchy.
Just try to enjoy the festivities for a little while.
The boy emptied the cooler, full of an egregious amount of halal hot dogs, onto the table. “Are you from Monarch Beach High?”
He was hell-bent on conversation.
Nasreen pushed her black-rimmed glasses up along the bridge of her nose like she always did when she was nervous. She was never good at talking to boys.
“No,” she replied, though she recognized some of the faces of Monarch Beach High School from the masjid. “I go to Saint Modesta High.”
“Oooh, drip.” He raised his fist to his mouth and looked like he’d just eaten a spoonful of cayenne pepper. “Are you, like, the only Muslim there?”
That’s the first time I’ve heard that one, thought Nasreen. The lack of originality was precisely why she didn’t bother with boys. She rolled her eyes in response.
“Here, you can help with the dogs,” he offered, but Nasreen made no move to help. He paused, tongs in one hand and a bag of coal in the other. “Or, um, you can help at the Huntington pit next door, or the Valley pit to our left. Sorry, Saint Modesta didn’t cut it for our bonfire this year. Not enough representation over there, if you know what I mean.”
Nasreen covered her smirk with her hand. Saint Modesta High School was a private Catholic school with a high acceptance rate to Ivy League schools. For all her sixteen years, including the choice of her high school, Nasreen’s parents had prepped her for Ivy League greatness. Or perhaps pretentiousness.
All it did for Nasreen was make her the token Muslim Desi girl in any of the friend groups that she was invited into at school. Eventually, she decided that sometimes it was better to be alone.
“I thought this bonfire was about bringing the schools together, not dividing us,” Nasreen said.
He snorted. “You’ll catch my drift once everyone else shows up.”
As Nasreen traveled between the groups, hot-dog boy’s comment started making sense.
There were three pits. The farthest north was Huntington High School’s firepit, and going south were Monarch Beach, then Valley. An invisible wall separated the groups. The prefix inter- in the title of the event didn’t require that the schools mixed, so they didn’t. Excluding the students assigned to various committees, Nasreen was the only one who breached the invisible borders.
She skirted around the pits, starting with Valley, where they had Maria Cookies instead of graham crackers, then tiptoeing around MB, where there were too many coolers to count and students were wildly overdressed for the beach, and finally arriving at Huntington’s pit, where the students lounged on blankets and kept it laid-back. Not a cocktail party like MB and not a rave like Valley. Huntington’s vibe was just chillin’.
For what felt like a full day but was only fifteen minutes, Nasreen searched the beach like a fish out of water. Her stomach growled, and she picked at her nails relentlessly.
“Hey, Saint Modesta!”
Nasreen shut her eyes, searching for patience under her eyelids.
It was the first boy, from MB. The boy with the hot dogs. He dropped off a cooler, spreading the wealth of the more affluent students of MB. The social-class cues hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Nasreen flashed him a look. Perhaps a snarl at the nickname. “What is it?”
He quirked his brows. “You’re making your rounds. I knew you were cut out for a committee.”
That was the problem. Nasreen knew she fit the mold of committee member because she was consistently on one or two committees year-round. She wanted to loosen up for one night, to stop calculating the appropriate participation in high school events needed to avoid the title of high school outcast.
“Sup, Choudhry.”
Nasreen and hot-dog boy both turned their heads at the last name, but no one meant to call her. No one here even knew her, not yet at least. Turning back, he smirked at her. “Hope we’re not cousins.”
Nasreen really didn’t need this Choudhry chatting her up. She slipped away and continued her search, arching her neck to get a glimpse of hijabis’ faces as the wind whipped up their scarves. But however many times she circled, her someone didn’t show up. Another quarter of an hour passed, and Nasreen’s heart raced. Did she let something slip in her messages? Had she already been caught?
The sun was properly setting now, and the oranges melted into the pinks into the purples into the light blues. Though the colors deepened and darkened into the night, there was plenty of light left in the day.
Sunset dared to last forever.
“Heads up!”
Nasreen glanced in the direction of the warning. A football whacked full force against the side of her head. A sound like her glasses cracking foreboded a sharp pain from behind her ear where the temple tip pressed into her tender skin. Luckily, her glasses were indestructible, as proven by all the cracks, snaps, and whacks they’d taken.
“My bad.”
As her head began to throb, the boy grabbed the ball and ran back over to his friends. She had a few choice words that she didn’t use. Nasreen’s teachers and classmates described her as having monk-like patience. In any case, it wasn’t the fault of the kid who didn’t catch the overthrown ball, but the dude who threw it. Nasreen stared at the shirtless guy, who snickered with his other topless buddies beside the MB pit. For all Nasreen’s patience, she had a practiced glare that spoke volumes. The shirtless guy maintained his no-apology stance, not even providing a polite bow of the head to her. He gave her a cocky shrug from his ten yards away. For a second, she wished she could punch him right in his glistening white pecs, but she willed that thought away.
“You okay?” Somehow Choudhry found her again. He followed her glare. “Don’t worry about Qays. He’s cool. Last year he took our school all the way to the soccer CIF state championship and—”
“I’m gonna stop you there,” she said as she looked away from the arrogant so-called high school star named Qays and promptly erased his name from her memory. “He’s just another terrorist to me.”
Choudhry choked on laughter. “Should we unpack that?”
“No,” Nasreen scoffed. “Don’t act like you and your friends don’t call each other terrorists on a daily basis.”
Every Muslim teenager called their friends terrorists at one time or another. It was ownership of a slur reappropriated as a joke. And the cycle of rebranding continued. At least, that was what Nasreen told herself.
Choudhry accepted this with a shrug.
“I’m going for a walk,” Nasreen said finally. “If I don’t come back before my curfew, don’t bother telling my parents. I’ll just never go back home.”
He knit his brows, though his smile appreciated the quip. “How would I know your parents?”
“Cousins, remember, Choudhry?”
He flashed her an easy grin, and she wondered if she came across as abrasive as she felt inside. So many years of being the only Pakistani American in her classes had made her exceptional at hiding the brash side of herself so that she could be warm and approachable. But on the inside she felt coarse and cold. When she was with others who looked like her, she unraveled into the harshest parts of her.
Precious seconds ticked by as Nasreen walked north, past the pits, to the lavish beach homes that dotted the cliffside.
Maybe this bonfire would be a total mistake. Nasreen was trying to set things right, but everything could blow up in her face. Nasreen hoped that her plans weren’t all for nothing, because despite acting the model student, she had one or two secrets of her own.
Looking back at the pits, she knew without a doubt that she wasn’t the only one.
HIGH SCHOOLERS IN AND AROUND LA REGARDED QAYS AS a specimen of raw yet sculpted beauty.
Qays knew this. Light brown hair preened into curls with a fade: the trademarked Arab fuckboi hairstyle. Soccer, weight lifting, and hookah: the patented Arab fuckboi hobbies. A killer smile and charming stubble interrupted by his strongly hooked nose: courtesy of his Levantine roots, which, some might argue, was where Arab fuckbois originated.
No one minded Qays’s burly nose, not even him. Humans found absolute perfection unnerving anyway. Qays’s nose set him apart, and he embraced it. His indifference toward it made him more alluring, and he knew that too.
He was also aware that he wasn’t obligated to apologize to the girl with the glasses who had been standing in the line of his throw. As high school royalty, he didn’t need to adhere to social niceties, and so he didn’t.
Qays always did what he wanted, and anything he didn’t want, he did only if it needed to be done. He didn’t care much for what others expected of him, but he was the high school soccer phenomenon with the 4.4 GPA, the soon-to-be senior with express interest from Stanford men’s soccer and a scholarship on the table, so he never fell short of expectations. Rather, he dabbled in the sport of exceeding them.
It wasn’t that Qays needed Stanford with all the schools and soccer programs scrambling to get on his wait list, but the added interest never hurt.
Qays loved added interest.
Like the girls. So many girls. He heard their giggles as he passed, smelled the lingering vanilla scent every time he turned corners. But no matter how many girls lined up for him, no matter how much flirting came about naturally for him, he hadn’t taken the step to really date any of them. Not yet anyway. His thoughts on that subject were still undetermined.
Omar, Qays’s carbon copy in the acceptable best-friend kind of way, gestured to the collection of girls from MB, Valley, and Huntington spying him, disguising their smiles behind feathery fingers. “Your fan club keeps growing. They’re coming from all over.”
Qays barked a laugh, catching the football one-handed. “What can I say? I have a wide range of influence.”
“What happens when you curve all of them for Kelsey?”
Qays’s mouth perked up with a naughty grin. “Who the hell is Kelsey?”
“There’ll be a Kelsey,” Omar said, shoving his friend.
But Qays didn’t think there would be. For all his Adonis good looks, he knew Adonis came from Lebanon and was the son of a king of Syria, where Qays’s grandparents lived after the Palestinian diaspora in the ’60s. He’d be true to Adonis’s roots, not pander to the white narrative just because it was easier.
He didn’t remember these facts solely to bag the 5 on his AP Art History exam; he knew them because Qays committed his legacy to memory. His Arab blood ran thick.
“Yo, what time is it?” Omar asked the boys. The sun, like everything in LA, was moving fast.
“Blunt o’clock,” Qays muttered, taking the cue. Omar passed him the soccer ball this time, and Qays walked closer to the squad of spectators.
He turned up his charm, from where it rested at medium all the way to high. Flicking the soccer ball up and juggling it, he hit it with some around the worlds and crossovers, toe bounces and knee catches in between for fun. He gathered admiration from his growing audience, dazzling with 360 turns and hamstring catches and hops. He kept his head down, not because he needed to concentrate for these simple tricks but because it made him look like he was doing this for his enjoyment alone. Yeah, right.
When he finished, he gave an exaggerated bow for the applause as his excuse to survey the crowd. His eyes landed on one girl, and he was immediately drawn to her.
She stood aside from the others, overlooked, inconsequential. Everything about her demeanor whispered lackluster. She was slight in stature despite her height and willowy frame. If Qays hadn’t thought she was vaguely familiar, he might not have seen her at all.
He stalked over, the collective whispers not nearly as amusing as the grunts and huffs around him. Because Qays had chosen, and she should not have been his type.
“Hey, don’t I know you?” he asked, sneaking a peek at her. Girls liked confident, shy boys, and he was practiced in being this contradiction.
She nodded almost imperceptibly. After several attempts to clear her voice, she managed, “You tutored me last year.”
“Oh, right!” He snapped his fingers and locked eyes with her, tugging at his memories. “I remember you.” Though Qays’s charm was on its highest level, he wasn’t lying. Last year, his AP English teacher asked them to choose between doing a semester-long research project or tutoring English language learners at an after-school program at Valley High. Of course, Qays had chosen to tutor students over hours of research and writing a fifteen-page report. So for the first semester of his junior year, he spent evenings helping students write essays about the most obscure things, from their favorite meals to their worst experiences. And since most of the students were refugees, the stories were pretty heavy.
“You do?” she asked, her tone hopeful.
Qays felt like he did, but it had been a while and he couldn’t help but be a flirt. “Of course. But just for fun, remind me your name.”
“I’m Muzhda,” she said, her mouth relaxing into a smile. Qays’s chest squeezed, and he felt himself smile against his will. He was surprised he hadn’t remembered her quicker. She had distinct, artfully drawn brows that eased away from each other, and her parted lips revealed the slight gap between her two front teeth. Her scarf swept around her gaunt face, allowing peeks at her soft brown hair. Her face was carved and chiseled in the most unexpected places. Beautifully, Qays thought; she had the unique face of a model who wasn’t necessarily pretty, but whose stark features transformed gracefully as the eyes grew accustomed. She was beautiful.
He recalled he’d noticed her charms when he first sat with her over an essay about her first pet. Time went quickly for Qays; people passed him like the pages of a book flipping in the wind. But her smile brought her back to him all at once.
Beauty wasn’t a monolith. Qays had the good looks that littered Instagram. Muzhda had the editorial allure of Vogue.
He’d made a mistake. He usually picked out strangers whom no one noticed. From afar, Muzhda in a plain black dress cinched at her waist was unmemorable. But face-to-face, the ruby-gem belt around her waist ricocheted light, and a part of her glittered like lightning.
Qays noted how her eyelashes were so long they touched the hood of her eyes.
“This is awkward.” Muzhda giggled, and her copper skin flushed. “I guess you don’t remember me.”
He regretted choosing Muzhda now, but he couldn’t take it back. It’ll be fine, he thought. This is routine.
Qays recuperated. “No, no, I promise I remember you. I just wanted to see if you could do a favor for me.” He glanced down. Glanced up. Bit his lip.
The red on Muzhda’s cheeks matched her belt. Qays knew she’d blush just like that—he was a fuckboi, after all—but he didn’t expect his own cheeks to feel warm too. By the end of the first semester last year, he’d started to look forward to tutoring Muzhda, and it seemed his body hadn’t forgotten those feelings, even if his mind had.
“A favor?” Muzhda shook her shoulders, maybe in a shudder, maybe in an am-I-awake moment.
He shrugged. “You seem trustworthy.” And a good deal enamored.
She squinted at him, eyes searching. “MB’s soccer star asking a favor from a Valley girl?”
Qays frowned at the unfortunate nickname for female students at Valley. The traditional Valley Girl came from affluent suburbs and was nothing like the Valley girls of Valley High, the skid row of LA high schools. Usually Qays wouldn’t think twice about it, but hearing it from Muzhda made him uncomfortable.
The world was full of contradictions. Like Qays’s draw to Muzhda. Yet here he was, so captivated that it puzzled him.
She leaned close, and he got a whiff of rose. Not the vanilla he’d expected.
“I assume the favor involves danger.” Muzhda’s voice rumbled.
Qays searched for his voice.
“Or crime?”
He swallowed hard.
She leaned away and waved a hand around her. “Because there are plenty of MB girls here to do your bedding—I mean bidding.” She roared with laughter.
Qays fought his perplexity and wondered how he’d put her out of his mind so easily last year. “What can I say? You fit the job description perfectly.”
“Not sure if you’re being racist or classist.”
Qays flashed a celebrity smile. “Neither. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.”
Muzhda’s eyes, which he noted were an ancient shade of hazel, narrowed. “Then why not do it yourself? Sorry, the Valley/MB crossover doesn’t compute for me,” she said with a lift of her chin. “Not when you’re adding that to the Afghan/Arab mix and the jock/nobody mix. Something’s up.”
“Nothing’s up.”
“I’m not an idiot, Qays.”
He had made a mistake. His errand runners were always submissive, eager-to-please, already-in-love-with-him strangers. He excelled at picking them out of a crowd. But Muzhda was none of those.
He was flummoxed, in more ways than one. Not since the seventh grade had a stranger had this much control over his primal senses. And he felt foolish that in trying to find the demurest girl, he’d stumbled upon a girl who was more than a pretty face vying for his attention. If this were The Bachelor, he would need only one rose, and he would hand it right over to her if she said his name one more time.
These feelings were fast and foreign to him. But he couldn’t back out now. He needed to fully commit. His boys’ night depended on it.
“Can’t I just be chatting you up?” he asked, deepening his voice. “Reconnecting with one of my students?”
“Sounds unlikely.”
“Say I thought you were the prettiest girl here.”
“I’d call you a liar.”
“But you are the prettiest girl here.” And not a word of that was a lie. His heart even skipped a beat. The traitor.
She blushed. “Save it for the others.”
“Don’t act like you weren’t watching me from the moment I arrived.”
“I specialize in long-distance cute-boy observation, but I’m not trying to go to second base like some of us.” She cocked an eyebrow at him.
He placed his hand over his bare chest, right over his heart, and Muzhda’s gaze shamelessly followed it. “Are you calling me a player?”
She bit her lip to suppress a smile. “I hear the rumors.”
Qays grinned. He was enjoying himself too much, a big no-no with errand runners. He didn’t deny the rumors, though that was all that they were. He watched her, forgetting himself.
Muzhda swayed under his stare. “So, about that favor?”
“Oh, that.” Qays didn’t want her to go. He was starting to think the errand wasn’t worth it anymore. A part of him didn’t mind bantering with Muzhda all night by the fire, but Omar and his other friends were waiting on him. So he went for it. “There’s a package in locker 208 by the bathrooms. Do you think you could get it for me?”
Muzhda pouted slightly, and it did a number on Qays’s imagination. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“What’s in the package?” she asked.
“It’s best you don’t know,” he replied.
“It’s safe?”
“As much as it is legal.”
They exchanged grins.
Muzhda acted coy. “Then why can’t you get it yourself?”
He spread his arms out like Christ the Redeemer. “Wouldn’t want to taint that soccer-star image.”
She smirked. “Because your image is such a white sheet.”
“My parents think so.”
Muzhda rolled her eyes and slipped something off her wrist. She dropped it into Qays’s open palm.
“What’s this?” he asked, passing it between his hands. It was a plain bracelet, beads alternating black and red, just like her outfit. Circular white beads spelled out MUZHDA, finished off with a heart-shaped gem.
“Wear it,” she ordered.
Qays hesitated.
“I’m not stupid,” she explained. “I’m not getting your mystery, maybe dangerous, quasi-legal package if you don’t have the courage to wear a bracelet with my name on it.”
Qays could only smirk to hide his jaw dropping.
“Think of it as collateral,” she added.
“For you or me?”
“Both.”
He wore the bracelet, and she smiled, her eyes bright. At least Qays knew she enjoyed his company just as much as he did hers.
She turned to hide her smile, inching away slowly. “I’ll go get your package, and we’ll make the swap.”
“It’s 11-31-07.”
“Your birthday?” Her eyes sparkled.
“November only has thirty days.”
Muzhda stuck her tongue out at him, and Qays felt like his brain melted out of his ears a little.
He recomposed himself. “It’s the combination.”
Muzhda faced him as she walked backward toward the Valley pit, toward the pier and the lockers. “Locker 208, 11-31-07. See you in a bit, Qays Sharif.”
Qays watched her black silhouette fade into the night, slipping away from him. He looked around at the others, shyly wondering if they’d just witnessed her like he had, but everyone was looking up at the sky with bubbling anticipation. Innocently unsuspecting of what would come for them with the first fireworks.
IF HER TRIANGLE-SHAPED, YELLOW-TINTED SUNGLASSES crafted with a tangle of metal wiring made any statement at all, it was that Samia lived for the aesthetic.
She hopped out of the still-dripping-wet Taycan. Samia’s parents didn’t understand why the car wash charged their cards every time she went out with their car, but she couldn’t stop. A pearl-white car is only a car straight out of the car-wash tunnel. Anything more than a thin layer of dust made it look like a dirty toy, which totally soiled Samia’s look.
Throwing the long end of her amber jersey hijab to one side, she pressed her lips together to smooth out her lip gloss. With delicate fingers she gave her eyelashes a little boost. She straightened the pearl hair clip attached to her scarf and adjusted her glasses low on her nose because the sun had already set. Light lingered in the air, but not for much longer, and Samia cursed the traffic on the 10 for making her late.
“Whoa there.” A voice crept up behind her.
She jumped. Grimy beach parking lots were not the place for surprise visits. As soon as she turned, her heart rate sank back down. “Oh, it’s just you.”
Abdullahi shut the door to his new Civic, which gave off a middle-class vibe Samia hoped she’d never have to endure. “You’re late too?” he asked.
“I’m never on time,” Samia answered. Her makeup didn’t do itself; neither did hems on her bell-bottoms. If Samia’s conscience blocked her from making her parents pay for every expensive clothing item on her wish list, she’d make impeccable knockoffs of them.
Abdullahi sighed. “I didn’t think I’d be here again.” Though they weren’t technically walking together, Samia paced herself with him, feeling safer now that he was within earshot. She’d known Abdullahi since kindergarten; they went to the same schools. . .
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Six Truths and a Lie
Ream Shukairy
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