American Dervish: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar

down below that he wanted to climb, too.
    “You can’t climb the tree by yourself,” Otto said to him. “You’re too small.”
    I pulled myself up into the tangle of branches, finding the footing that led me to the branch where Satya was perched. In the window directly facing us, Gina was sitting on her bed with her boyfriend, kissing.
    “She looks cute,” Satya said.
    “She is,” I said.
    I didn’t know Gina well—she was three years older than me—but she’d lived across the street from us for almost two years now, and for most of that time, she’d been going out with the stocky, curly-haired boy sitting on her bed. I didn’t know his name—Gina didn’t talk to me, or any of the younger neighborhood boys—but I knew they were together because I used to see him walk her home from school. My own school, Mason Elementary, got out before the junior high did, and there were more than a few times when I would be out on the front lawn and see them appear at the end of the street, Gina with her books pressed to her chest, that boy by her side, slowly pushing his bike along. And there were also times when, passing through the living room—which had a clear view of Gina’s garage—I would find the two of them standing in the empty bay, kissing.
    One afternoon, as I watched at the living room window, Mother came up behind me. “Look at that, ” she said with disgust, “the training of a white woman…How old is she?”
    “I don’t know…Fourteen?”
    “ Fourteen? ”
    “I think.”
    “ Fourteen, ” she repeated, “and look at her.”
    Gina’s boyfriend was caressing her hair now as he stared into her eyes, the two of them looking lost in dreamy oblivion, enveloped in a sweet and perfect mist.
    Mother continued, sharply: “Already using herself, using her body to get men. It’s shameless. They’re like animals…No…They’re worse than animals. Even animals have some self-respect.” Then she turned to me abruptly. “Go to your room. You don’t need to be staring at prostitutes. You’ll end up like your father. Go…go!”
    Back in the tree, Satya had inched his way farther out onto the branch, trying to get a better view. Gina’s boyfriend was now reaching beneath her pink sweater as he pecked at her lips. “Check it out,” Satya said. “He’s going to second base on her.”
    “Second base?”
    “First base is kissing. Second’s up the shirt. Third’s down the pants. A home run’s all the way.”
    I had no idea what he was talking about. “All the way?” I asked.
    “Sex? You know what sex is, right?”
    I stared at Satya, not knowing what to say. All I knew was that I’d heard the word.
    He smiled. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what sex is?”
    In the window, Gina’s boyfriend had lifted her sweater to reveal her smooth, flat belly and a white bra above it.
    “What’s going on in there?” Otto asked in a whining voice, peering up at us.
    “Shut up,” Satya hissed. I watched him, his eyes wide with wonder over the napkin he still wore over his nose and mouth. I wondered if that’s what my eyes looked like when Mother caught me at the window. Staring at prostitutes, she’d called it.
    Satya realized I was looking at him. “What is it?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” I said.
    “I don’t know what you’re looking at me for. You’re missing the real action.”
    “I don’t want the real action. ”
    “What’s wrong with you?”
    I pulled the napkin from my face and started to climb back down the tree.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Home,” I said with disgust.
     
    Back at the house, Mina and Nathan were still sitting on the patio. Even at twenty yards, I was struck by her. She looked different. Sharper. Even more magnetic than usual. Her face held my gaze, and I felt a stinging tug in my stomach, an urgency. She was separate from me, and I needed to close that gap, to seize her somehow, to make her my own.
    I didn’t understand it.
    I stepped up onto the patio,