Page 63 of You Had Me at Hello World
Trinity pecks her on the cheek and melts away into a separate conversation.
Aisha’s face slams shut. “Okay. I don’t want them coming in here.” She steels her shoulders and slips out into the hallway. We follow.
At the other end of the corridor, her parents are walking toward us. Their anger is this black, poisonous fog. They see Aisha, and Aisha sees them. It feels like I’m about to witness an execution.
“You guys should go,” Aisha mumbles out of the corner of her mouth. “I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire.”
Khoi folds his arms. “We can’t ditch you.”
“It’ll be worse if you stick around.” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder. “Take the back stairwell.”
“But…”
I touch his arm. “Khoi, we should leave.” If Aisha wants us gone, then we should respect that.
We turn away. When we’re picking our way down the stairs, Mr. Chadha starts shouting in Punjabi. As his voice echoes, we exchange worried looks.
“Should we stick around to make sure she’s okay?” Khoi asks.
“I don’t know if she wants us to hear this,” I say. Whenever Michael was being terrible, I never wanted an audience. There is something uniquely humiliating about being powerless against an adult authority figure.
“We can’t donothing.”
I grit my teeth, irked. Khoi freakin’ Astor. In his world, everything can be fixed. Everything is possible, like it’s Narnia or something. Why can’t he understand that there are certain heartbreaks that can’t be mended with a hug?
No, I’m not being fair. It isn’t like he’s lived such a cutesy, wholesome life either. I know that. It’s just easy to forget sometimes.
We’re both silent as we exit the building. It’s a muggy, overcast day, like the clouds are on the verge of bursting. Like the sky is about to cry.
“Suggestion,” I say. “Let’s walk the motorcycle instead of riding it.”
We trudge back to the dorms and return the keys to Haru. Khoi seems sad, and he excuses himself to crash before dinner. So I try to work on Hello World, but my thoughts keep floating back to Aisha. Her parents had major control freak energy. No wonder she was trying to hide her dance stuff from them.
What’s it like to have parents who are total opps? I hate how conflict-allergic my mother is, but I can’t imagine her getting pressed with me for doing something I love. I can’t imagine her trying to make me into someone I’m not. Even when I ran away for Alpha Fellows, she never gave me shit. She just wanted to know I was okay. I never realized that other parents might’ve been absolutely unhinged about it.
Aisha limps into the dorm room around dinnertime, followed by her father. My roommate’s eyes are red and puffy, ringed with smudged makeup.
“Where’s your luggage?” Mr. Chadha asks.
“Under my bed.”
Aisha drags out her suitcase and silently starts packing—stacking books, pulling clothes out of the dresser, tossing loose papers into the wastebasket. Watching her sweep her life into a suitcase makes me feel awful. It’s like she’s deleting her entire presence from this room.
“Do you need help?” I offer, because I don’t know what else to do. “I’m pretty good at rolling socks.”
“We’re fine, thanks,” Mr. Chadha says curtly.
Once Aisha’s things are packed, Mr. Chadha moves to leave, but she says, “I still have stuff in the bathroom.”
“Go get it, then.”
She leaves, and then it’s me and her father standing in awkward silence.
I shouldn’t say anything. This situation is above my pay grade.
But Khoi would speak up. Khoi would want to try. And even though his naive optimism can be so extra, it also makes me feel like I should do more.
It’s now or never. I can’t sit this one out. I can’t just let her leave like this.
