Chapter Text
wednesday 9:35
WISH U WOULD
“Maybe I’ve realized that it goes against my values to watch girls lose all of their self-respect for a pinecone attached to their russehat.”
It feels deeply satisfying to make Vilde flinch on purpose instead of just by being Muslim for once. It feels like power when she spins on her heel and leaves them there, gaping and confused. It’s not, though. She can tell by the way her stomach immediately drops when she clears the threshold to the hallway, and how she has to fight to keep her gaze forward, don’t check to see if they’re looking, just walk.
“Sana!”
Sana’s eyes flicker to the door of her Biology classroom down the hall, and she decides she isn’t going to stop. She can hear the steps behind her get faster until Eva catches her by the wrist and tugs gently.
Sana turns back violently. “What?”
“Whoa,” Eva says, taking a step back with her palms raised in surrender. “Serious? What happened? You didn't even tell us first?”
Sana purses her lips, crosses her arms across her chest. It’s not Eva’s fault, she knows that. Eva is just part of the whole thing. “So?”
Eva’s eyebrows screw together. Her heart is so sweet that her expression isn’t even tinged with frustration yet and it makes Sana angry. She doesn't understand people who aren’t mad when they deserve to be mad. Sana doesn’t think she’s ever felt close to grace like that, where she could look on someone being rude to her with curiosity rather than hostility.
“So,” Eva says slowly, drawing out the word with her lips in a perfect O. “You’re the one who wanted to join with Pepsi-Max and now you're ditching us with them?”
Sana tips her chin up, just enough that she has to look down at Eva. “You’re fine without me.”
Eva stares at her, soft confusion on her face, just a small tightening around the eyes, tilt of her head. Sana gets an ugly urge to say something completely rude, like does it really matter to you if i’m around when you're so drunk you can't even stand every weekend.
“Biology,” Sana says in dismissal, shrugging with one shoulder and turning back towards the classroom.
wednesday 17:46
the boys
thursday 11:59
fake, fake, fake
“Sana, are you joining us?” Eva says, and Sana snaps to attention.
“Huh?” Sana says, eyebrows furrowing as her mind backtracks to try and recover the topic of conversation.
“Hallo?” Eva singsongs playfully. “Are you even in there lately?”
Sana purses her lips in what she hopes is an approximation of a smile and shrugs. “Sorry. Studying.”
“O-kay,” Eva says, drawing out each syllable. “Are you joining us for Maccas?”
Sana peers back down at her notes before looking up to reply, like she’s checking on her progress. Like there’s any chance in hell that she’d spend recreational time with Noora. She trains her gaze on Eva. “No, no thanks.”
Eva nods, and she raises her thumb to her mouth, chewing on the cuticle as she waits for Noora to gather her bag. Then her eyes go wide. “Oh my god, Ramadan hasn’t started yet, right?”
There was a time where Eva remembering Ramadan might have made her feel seen, feel loved. But today, it just makes her feel defensive, more aware of her otherness than before. Sana wonders how deep this anger has drilled down, wonders what it’s doing to her heart. Sana stares at her for a moment longer before shaking her head curtly.
Eva relaxes, shouldering her backpack. Noora tilts her head, and Sana’s eyes dart over to her.
“Do you want us to get you anything?” Noora says, gaze clear and direct, untroubled. It’s so tacitly ridiculous in the face of everything that’s happened that Sana wants, suddenly and urgently, to slap her. Her palms tingle with it. She blinks and the urge dissipates.
“No thanks,” Sana says shortly, shifting to settle more fully against the window, clicking her pen open and closed.
“Alright,” Eva says, turning to leave. “Talk to you later!”
They leave after that, but Sana doesn’t bother looking up to watch them. She looks out the window and sees them come out and embrace Vilde where she’s chatting with Sara. It makes Sana feel sick to her stomach, the betrayal and shame and anger all bubbling red and possessive in her chest. She extends the nib of her pen with a click and presses the point into her thumb for something to focus on.
“Did Sara steal your friends or something?”
“Huh?” Sana jumps, and her head snaps around painfully to see Isak, hands gripping the straps of his backpack and leaning close to peer over her shoulder out the window. “No!”
“No?” He takes a step back, grinning once he catches sight of her murderous expression “Okay, I’m kidding.”
Sana rolls her eyes, and slides her eyes back to the scene at the window so she doesn’t have to look at him. His eye is still kind of blacked, and it’s a nasty reminder of yet another thing gone to shit.
She expects Isak to wander away after that, but he stays, following her gaze out the window. “Fake, fake, fake,” he says, shaking his head. “Ugh, girls.”
His tone, and her stubborn loyalty makes her turn and shoot him a sharp look.
“You’re calling girls fake?” she asks in disbelief. She raises her eyebrows, looks intentionally towards Eva. “I know plenty of girls who are much less fake than you.
“Ow, jeeze, fucking harsh.” He flinches, eyes darting to look at Eva down on the grounds and back to Sana. “Not– not all girls, Jesus Christ, obviously. Just – you know, those girls. Sara. Pepsi-Max, all of them.”
He gestures as Sara wraps her arms around Vilde, and they giggle, falling together in a skinny, blonde, carefree bundle. Sana’s heartbeat speeds, gassed up with scorn and judgement, vicious and thick.
Isak scoffs. “Like, look now – Sara doesn’t even like Vilde.”
Sara furrows her eyebrows and stares at him. “How do you know that?”
“She told me,” he says, raising an eyebrow at her.
She squints at him. “You talk to Sara?”
Isak looks back out the window, exhaling before looking back at her from the corner of his eye and commenting wryly: “We were in a relationship.”
“Hm,” Sana hums in acknowledgement, feeling odd and off-balance. It doesn’t feel like remembering something she forgot at all – it feels like something imported from a whole different universe, seams on the memory still showing where it was cut and pasted into the fabric of reality. “That’s right.”
Sana stares at Sara and tries to remember what it was like to see her and Isak together. Vilde tucks her face contently into Sara’s neck, and Sana’s mind immediately supplies an image of Vilde and Magnus spitting coffee into each other's mouths. She thinks it was probably much like that.
“How did you stand it?” she asks distantly.
He doesn't respond right away. Both of their minds are far away, trapped behind glass.
“It wasn’t a very sexual relationship, to put it that way,” Isak replies. “We mostly chatted. I was more of an online therapist than a boyfriend, honestly.”
Sana looks back over at him as he continues, mouth quirked up in a dry grin, “I would’ve loved some payment for all that time I spent reading shit talk about russ friends and stuff. I couldn’t give more of a fuck.”
She hates Sara, but she can’t stop herself from biting out, “Don’t you think lying about having feelings for her balances it out?”
Isak looks at her like she’s spoken in Arabic, and she replays the sentence in her mind to make sure that she hadn’t.
“Hallo?” she prompts, leaning forwards a bit and tilting her head for emphasis.
Isak shakes himself out of whatever was holding him in place, and huffs out a laugh. “Okay, Sana.”
Anger flares in her stomach at the dismissal, but his black eye keeps her quiet.
“Hey! Sister species are species which are determined morphologically?” he asks with an expectant grin.
“No,” she says bluntly. “Sister species are species which are similar in exterior traits, but which can be completely different genetically.”
He smiles cheerily and replies, “I’ll go hang myself now, then!”
He turns on his heel and disappears up the stairs, but his parting words settle heavily in her stomach. Sana stares after him for a long time, eyes narrowed and mind working.
thursday 12:15
thursday 18:55
the one & only
Sana can barely stand to look at Elias lately and his texts send twisting waves of repulsion and humiliation through her chest. She reads Can you cook some food for us? and her mind flashes back, Vilde said he calls her slave; I mean, they're gay and those boys are Muslim, so; no wonder she’s psycho.
She locks her phone and sits back against her headboard. The light is dying outside of the window, past the oranges of sunset and into the depressing grays of dusk. She tries to empty her mind, let go of her anger, but it just claws her insides, pulsing and bright red. She clenches her jaw and her leg bounces against the sheets, energy desperate to escape her body any way it can.
Her phone buzzes in her hand and she jerks to attention. Sara Nørrstelien posted in Flawless since ‘99.
Sana’s hovers her thumb over the notification. She could put it down, turn away. She left the group. She doesn't need them. The screen dims and she presses the home button to awaken it.
She swipes the notification open with her thumb, and brings it closer to her face, scanning the page intently.
the One and Only bus boss!
The queen is back!
Hallo, it wasn't me!! who's in my facebook?
Hehe it was me❤️
Vilde. Sana presses her teeth to the inside of of bottom lip, biting until the pain makes her features scrunch. Heat burns, hot and immediate through her chest, her temples, the back of her neck.
Sana breathes out heavily through her nose, and her hands grip the phone tighter. She wants desperately to tear her eyes away from the screen but she can't, as the messages continue rolling in.
She sees scenes between the messages: scrubbing Vilde’s vomit out of the fabric of her favorite shirt, I still don't get why Sana didn't want to join…; the weight of her body in her arms as Sana carries her out of a party where these same girls were mocking her, She said it was the values of russe? But she never had an issue before.
Her vision jumps, like she’s short circuiting, scanning the caption and the image over and over again.
Probably her parents then. They must not want her to be on a bus because of all the drinking and they're Muslims. That’s a lot of temptation
Sana’s mouth falls open when she sees it’s Sara who has the fucking audacity—her fingers move across the keyboard so fast she barely makes contact with the screen, her rage blurring the letters under her hands. It’s not because I’m muslim it's because you're a fucking FAKE B—
She throws her phone away from her. It hits the bedspread as she pushes herself up to her feet, breath coming heavy and quick as she paces the length of the room, mind working on a loop—I have to do something, I have to do fucking something, they can't just get away with this, they can't— she approaches the door to her room and rips it open, aiming to go out to the basketball court.
Sana barely makes it a step across the threshold before she hears Elias’ laugh rising above the unintelligible yelling that hovered around the five boys like a cloud. The breath leaves her body all at once, stepping backwards back into her room and shutting it behind her with a bang.
“Sana?” Mamma’s voice carries down the hall, and even the boys fall quiet waiting for her response.
Her whole body jolts when the adhan rings out from her phone on the bed. The loud, clear voice sounds hard-edged and mocking to her ears in a way that it never has before and she needs it to stop. The world is suddenly all razor edges; she presses her back against the door and closes her eyes tight against the sound, paralyzed.
“Sana!” Her mother’s voice sounds closer now. Sana forces her eyes open and hurriedly cries out, “I’m fine, it’s fine!” and scrambles over to the bed to silence her phone.
She perches on the edge of her bed, phone still open to the post, where they’ve moved on from speculating about her oppression to who was going to hook up with the hot guys from Bakka this weekend.
The room goes still around her.
Sana’s eyes blur staring at the light of the screen, and she blinks away the discomfort. She takes a deep, steadying breath and looks out the window, focusing on moving her mind away from the outragepanicfear and into something more useful.
She comes away with different kind of anger, black and smooth. It lines her stomach, her throat, leaves her ice-cold and clear-headed.
Her phone buzzes and Sana looks down. Is it ok if Magnus invites the boys? He says sorry there was drama last time❤️
Her thoughts make several leaps at once, fake, fake, fake, before she navigates to her messages and opens her conversation with Isak. The smile that spreads across her face isn’t something she wants to look at, but damn does it feel good.
friday 13:05
friday 13:35
friday 16:00
summertime sadness
Their tea cups sit between them on the table, steaming. Sana wraps her hands around the cup, pressing her palms to the burning porcelain until her hands get used to the heat. They both stare into the depths of their tea.
Sana catches the refrain of the song playing through the small speaker perched on top of the bed’s headboard in the corner. She lifts her head, raises her eyebrows. “This song, seriously?”
Even’s head jerks up. His eyes drift to the speaker and he smiles, just a small upturn of the corner of his mouth. He runs the pad of his thumb over the edge of his teacup. “Don’t you get sad in the summer?”
Sana doesn't know how to answer that, but there's so much about Even that makes him the kind of person you don't want to hurt. She doesn't want him to feel bad about being sad in the summer. It's not so different to how she’s spent her summer, mad as hell.
So she smiles back at him, the same small gesture. It’s the first for her in a while, and she feels too exposed all at once, looking back down at her hands to hide it.
She’s been angry for so long, almost two whole weeks without interruption. Even’s quiet softness and the nervous way his long body curls over his cup makes her feel like a wild animal trying to handle something small and breakable. She finds herself thinking, absurdly, What do people talk about when they don't hate each other?
“Elias listens to Lana Del Rey,” he says suddenly, and she looks up at him, eyebrows raised.
“You think I don't know that?” Sana asks, incredulous. “He acts like our flat is soundproof. He’s been learning to play guitar, too, probably to impress that girl he thinks we don't know about.”
Even barks out a laugh, and he has the kind of joy that travels. Sana smiles back, satisfied.
“Isabell from Bakka, still?” he inquires, eyebrows raised and mouth slack, expectant.
Sana shrugs. “I don't have details, just the soundtrack.”
Even breathes out a laugh at that, and the tension in his body releases. He stretches back in his chair, bracing his hands behind his head, and looks out the window as a fire truck idles down the block below. She raises her cup to her lips, smile still playing around her mouth.
*
“He made me promise, you know, right before you walked in, that I would keep my clothes on,” Even says, bringing his thumb to his mouth to lick off the last of the sticky crumbs clinging there. “And we just laughed about it. So after that, I decided to just keep a good humor about it all.”
Sana nods, smiling. They’re sprawled on the rug beside the bed, wax paper littered with the remnants of Sana’s mother’s chebakia spread between them. “You’re doing well,” she says.
“I’m doing well,” he affirms, leaning back and propping himself up on his palms. “Just taking things day by day, minute by minute.”
Sana sits up, crossing her legs and leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “I’m sorry for dragging up the past, then.”
“No, no,” he says, looking out the window now. “I think — it’s like, I made it such a big deal, and built it up so much in my head.”
Sana looks at him intently, leaning forward. He looks full of life, white shirt and the late afternoon sun lighting him up. It’s hard to imagine him any other way.
He continues, “I was trying to protect people. Or that’s what I told myself. But it doesn't work like that. People cared about me. When I pushed them away, it didn't change anything, it just hurt them.”
He lets out a long, intentional breath, lips rounded to shape the air as it passes. He looks back over at her. “Like what happened with the fight—,” he breaks off, eyebrows furrowing.
Sana realizes she hasn't been breathing enough and takes a deep breath through her nose, sitting up straighter on the exhale. She thought she had come here to… she didn't even know, now. Snoop through Isak’s chats, and get revenge on Sara? It seems so stupid in hindsight, across from Even’s soft heart, trying so hard to do good for himself.
It’s clear now, the way the whole room has leaned in to listen to them, from the seriousness etched into Even’s brow, that this moment is why she was brought here, subhanallah.
He purses his lips, looks down at his lap. “Have you ever been so sad about something, that you can’t even talk about it? And then—like, because of that, you’re upset about it for so long, for so much longer than it seems like you should be.”
Sana stares at him, her heart beating fast in her chest as it fills with the thin, anxious burn of recognition. She looks down at her lap, blinks rapidly until her heart settles.
“And then,” he says, voice low. “by the time you can talk about it, you think it’s never the right moment to bring it up. So you just carry it around, even if you're better, you're still carrying it around. And it just gets bigger and bigger until it’s just a black cloud that you can't even get near without… I don't know. I don't know.”
He sighs, and Sana looks up at him from under her brow, chin still tucked close to her chest. “Sorry. My mind is in a million places. But what I’m trying to say is, if I just talked to Isak, or to the boys—I don't know why I was so ashamed of what happened. I still am. When I think about it, I feel like—like a fucking coward. It’s like I’m back in that place again in my mind.”
“Ugh, I’m sorry, Sana,” he breaks off suddenly, sitting up and scrubbing at his eyes. “Fun Friday, yeah? I’m glad Isak is out.”
Sana shakes her head, quickly, emphatically. Her chest hurts, looking at him. “You don't have to apologize.”
“I’m so much better now,” Even says, meeting her eyes, gaze filled with sincerity. “But you have to know—it's not that I don't still have highs and lows. It’s as unpredictable as ever.”
He smiles wryly before continuing, “But it’s better now because—I’m learning that it’s not wrong? It’s not something to be ashamed of, to be bipolar. It just is. I just am.”
Sana nods, humming lowly in affirmation as she smiles at him. The gravity in the air lets up a bit, the both of them sitting in comfortable silence. She drags a finger through the last of the syrup clinging to the paper between them.
“You talked to Isak about it, then?” Sana says, bringing her finger to her mouth and peering at him seriously.
“I—yeah,” he says, but he fidgets uncomfortably with the fibers of the rug. “I mean—yeah. I talked to him about Mikael, and the boys, and all that. It was good. He had built it all up in his head, because I was hiding so much, that's why he got so jealous. I forget sometimes that he’s dealing with his own stuff too.”
Sana recalls yesterday in the hallway, I’ll just go hang myself now, then!, and lets the silence prompt him. She thinks it's not the kind of thing to push someone to talk about.
He's quiet, fingers pulling apart the fibers of the rug absently.
After a while, she says, “That’s good.”
She takes a breath. “I’m still sorry about Elias, and the rest of them,” she says, trying to meet his eyes. “Islam isn't—I mean, I don't think that Islam says there's anything wrong with being gay.”
“Huh?” Even says, head jerking up. “Oh, no—no, Sana. That—this,” he gestures widely with one hand. “That’s not what happened. They’re not… I mean, I don't have any reason to think they're homophobic, do you?”
There’s a rattle at the door, and both of them look over in time to see it swing open to a slightly pink and smiling Isak, hair damp and curling. Even glances back at her and grins apologetically before pushing himself to his feet and going to greet Isak.
Sana feels full of fondness as she watches the lovely, easy way that Even fills the whole room with his excitement, buzzing around Isak as he settles into their home and inquires about his day. She thinks that if anyone deserves to be this happy, it is Even and it’s made even sweeter by their conversation, how she knows now that he has fought for this, fights for it every day of his life.
“Sana-sol!” Isak greets her cheerily. “You spilled all of my secrets then?”
She rolls her eyes, but smiles, something small. She looks at Even over Isak’s shoulder as she says, “No, I decided it’s up to you what to share about your past.”
Isak grins, dropping into a chair to untie his shoes. “You’re a good person, Sana.”
Sana feels taken aback, thinks about what she came here to do and stays quiet.
“I agree,” Even chimes in, dropping a kiss to the top of Isak’s head. “Only a saint would bring chebakia and listen to a lame old man like me whine on a Friday afternoon.”
“Huh?” Isak says, looking around. “There were sweets? And no one saved me any?”
Sana raises her eyebrows at him. “That's what you get for swimming instead of studying.” She glances at her phone for the time and gets up, grabbing her notebook out of her backpack as she joins him at the table. “Speaking of, I have to leave in an hour, so if you want any chance of passing this test, you better sit down and listen to me.”
Isak sighs, a long suffering thing and opens his notes. He opens his laptop, and squints at the time. “Even, don't you have to be at work?”
Even swears under his breath, glancing down at his watch from where he'd been leaning casually against the wall and watching them with amusement. Isak rolls his eyes as Even shifts into a flurry of movement, grabbing jacket and keys.
“Playtime is over,” he says, flipping to the middle of their Biology textbook with a thump.
Sana has felt very tired for a long time, as long as she can remember, her mind full of memories, words, feelings, spread across too many eras, and cultures, and people.
But she finds the energy to laugh now. It’s something about Isak’s put upon misery, and Even, still fighting for the smile on his face, and a sudden closeness with a power that feels like light, like love, that draws it out of her. It’s a loud, clear sound, and it feels like coming up for air.
“Yeah. Let’s go, bitches.”