The Green Bicycle by Haifaa Al Mansour Page B

Sara, not Mariam.
    Please, please don’t let it be
that
Abeer,
she thought, digging her nails into her palms.
    â€œOf course,” her mother was saying. Leila must have told her the boy’s name. Her mother laughed. “He’s a playboy, just like his father.” She laughed again.
    In her bedroom, Wadjda grimaced, trying not to imagine the whole terrible scene—and her role in it.
    â€œYou have to admit, his father’s good-looking,” her mother said with a giggle.
    Wadjda moved to her desk chair. Perching on the edge, she craned her body toward the door, hoping to hear any bit of information that would place this story far from her, her school, and stupid Abeer—who’d probably gotten caught red-handed with the note Wadjda had delivered.
    â€œThe religious police? Mariam must be dying!” The shock and delight of having a genuine scandal to talk about had transformed her mother. “Come now, they should have married her off a long time ago. Pretty girls are curses on a family.”
    Wadjda drew herself up into a ball. If only she could shrink away further and disappear into nothing. Trying to assess the magnitude of what was to come felt overwhelming. She heard the front door open and buried her head in her arms, wishing there were some sort of escape hatch through which she could bolt to freedom.
    â€œI have to go, Leila,” she heard her mother say happily. “Our father’s home!” This was, Wadjda knew, the way wives referred to their husbands—as “our father.” “Keep me in the loop on this Abeer scandal.
Yalla,
bye.”
    A second later, the door to Wadjda’s room swung open.Her mother stuck her head in, her eyes darting about distractedly. Already, she’d removed the casual bandanna she wore to cook and started to fix her hair.
    At the desk, Wadjda tried to look busy—and tried
not
to think about Abeer.
    â€œGo and say hello to your father while I get dinner ready.” Her mother was clearly distracted. Her eyes kept darting toward the front door, but something in Wadjda’s shallow breathing alerted her to trouble. She looked more closely at her daughter and asked, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
    Wadjda looked back at her like a deer caught in the headlights. Her mother smiled ruefully and went back to fixing her hair. Tucking the glossy strands behind her ears, she said, “Don’t worry, Wadjda. We won’t marry you off. . . . Not just yet!”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    W adjda walked slowly into the
majlis
, the formal living room her mother reserved for her father and his guests. It felt like a foreign space in her cozy home, and it made her even more nervous.
    It’s only a matter of time before Father, and everyone else, figures out what I did
, she thought. The scene she imagined made her legs shake even more. The Abeer scandal would be huge.
    In the
majlis
, her father sat on the floor in front of the large flat-screen HDTV, leaning against a multicolored cushion, playing a video game on his beloved Xbox. His
ghutra
and
iqal
were folded up next to him. Wadjda’s eyes went instantly to his brand-new cell phone, tossed casually on top of the pile. It was his third in as many months.
Probably shoots laser beams out the bottom or something
, she thought, lips twisting wryly.
    On her father’s right, a string of light blue prayer beads lay within arm’s reach. Usually, the sight of this familiar object made Wadjda smile. It meant her father was home. But today, even that joy was temporarily banished.All she could think about was taking Abeer’s note to the boy. How could she have been so stupid? Such a mess for forty Riyals.
    Enough
. Lingering by the door made her look suspicious, like a bad guy in an old movie. Wadjda squared her shoulders and stepped forward. At the sound of her footsteps, her father turned and smiled at her.
    If he only knew!
In her defense, Wadjda