chapter 5

Ghost

I DON'T UNDERSTAND. What's the problem?

They were stretched out side by side on the smooth kitchen tile. It

seemed an odd place to lie down, until you realized that it was the

coolest part of a house that shimmered and scorched in the

afternoon heat.

"The problem," Suraya said quietly, "is that I don't want to go."

But it is a good opportunity for you, is it not? Bigger school. Better

teachers. Pink turned over so that the cold tile pressed against his

back, and sighed with pleasure. Is that not what you want?

"I'm happy where I am." Suraya's dark hair spread around her on

the floor like a halo, and her face wore a frown that had appeared

the day before, when her mama had made the big announcement.

"Since you've done so well in your exams, I think it's best that

you go to school in the big town," she had said, smoothing the folds

of her worn baju kurung and avoiding Suraya's eyes, which had

grown wide with shock, then dawning horror. "The village school will

not be challenging enough for you. I should know, I teach there. And

challenges are the best way to grow and learn."

Suraya had said nothing for a long time, appearing to be

concentrating hard on moving the rice and fish curry on her platefrom one side to the other. When she did speak, her voice was low

and quiet. "When do I start?"

"On the first day of school, with everyone else. In two weeks."

Her mother got up and busied herself with putting away leftover curry

into an airtight plastic container and wiping down the kitchen

counters with a damp rag.

"And how will I get there?"

"You'll take the bus in the morning—there's a school bus that will

pick you up from the stop just down the road."

"By myself?" Pink heard the uncertain wobble in her voice, and

he knew Mama did too, because she clicked her tongue impatiently

as she reached up to massage her sore neck. "It's only forty minutes

away. That's nothing. You're twelve now, after all, thirteen this year.

You're almost a woman, old enough to take care of yourself."

That was the end of the conversation, and Suraya had not

stopped frowning since.

"Only forty minutes," Suraya muttered darkly now, splayed on the

kitchen floor. "It might as well be light years away. I'll be more of an

outcast there than I ever was here."

Maybe the new school might be an opportunity for new friends,

Pink suggested. On the ceiling, they were watching two cicaks warily

circle each other in a complicated dance, their little lizard eyes

darting from each other to a hapless bug crawling in the space

between them.

"Considering my track record, I wouldn't bet on it." The smaller

cicak darted forward, and before the other realized it, he'd made off

with his spoils to a dark corner, leaving the bigger one gaping in his

wake.

"I thought for sure the bigger one would get it," Suraya said.

Fortune favors the bold.

There was a silence. "All right," Suraya said. "All right. I get it."

She turned her head to look at him. "And you'll be there with me,

right? You'll stay with me the whole time?"

A warm glow spread through his chest, and he smiled to himself.

Their relationship had shifted the day of the mosquito incident all

those years ago; he'd felt her grow wary of him, felt her choose her

steps carefully around him, as though he was a bomb that might gooff any minute. He'd worried that it would never go back to the way it

was. Now it seemed that he was, happily, completely wrong. She still

needed him after all. I am bound to you, he said softly. Until the end.

She nodded and shut her eyes.

In the shadows, the cicaks chirped.