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"I don't know, man," said Saira dubiously. "Maybe you should wait till next week and talk to Amina. I'd get her right now for you, but she's doing some online tutoring thing."
"No, I need help, like, now. Please?" Aneesa begged, grabbing her laptop as if that would somehow increase the power of her plea through FaceTime. "Look, you're the only other lesbian in the family!"
"That we officially know of," said Saira.
"That we officially know of," Aneesa agreed, "but what am I supposed to do, go up to Salima Auntie like 'oh hey, any tips on how to land a really great platonic roommate like yours?'"
"There's no help from Salima," Saira agreed. "She's stone cold. When I was twelve, I cried every day for three days straight and she still wouldn't let me ride her motorcycle."
Aneesa said nothing.
"Don't tell me she let you ride it!"
"I mean, I was fifteen at the time, but—"
Saira appeared to be smoldering so hard that her hair might just light on fire.
"—that's beside the point! Saira, I'm begging you. I don't know who else to ask. Look! I'm making the prayer hands emoji in real life." Aneesa demonstrated.
"Eugh, stop that." Saira ran her hand through her hair. "Okay, what about those nerds you keep going on about? You know, the kids with the stage plays and robots?"
"Oh..." Aneesa made an ambiguous face. "Eleanor and Fabiola are great, but they were friends with her first—I don't know if they're the right ones to ask for advice."
"They're both dating, so they have to know something. Plus, they know her, so they can tell you what not to do. What's the worst that could happen?"
When Saira put it like that, it sounded reasonable, but Aneesa knew better.
"I just..." Aneesa gestured helplessly. "I don't want drama, right? Like, I don't want this to turn into a 1920s speakeasy themed event, with flapper dresses and a "high production value". I don't want her friends blabbing it to her ex, who then blabs it to her other ex (who is also his ex), who then blabs it to his buddy on the swim team, who then blabs it to their best friend, who then blabs it to her homeroom teacher, who then makes us all do excruciating class presentations on Queerness and Identity in the Modern Era in a vain attempt to make us Comfortable With Vulnerability In the Public Sphere—"
"Where is this coming from?" Saira interrupted.
"I don't know!" Aneesa threw her hands in the air. "It's just the sort of thing that happens at my school when you tell anyone literally anything about your private life. Look, what did you say when you asked Amina to be your girlfriend?"
Saira muttered something, looking off-camera. It was the first time since sixth grade that Aneesa had seen her looking unsure of herself.
"What?" Aneesa prompted.
"I said," said Saira through gritted teeth, and then it all came out in a rush: "I-told-her-I-couldn't-imagine-how-shit-life-would-be-without-her. Or something."
Faintly, in the background of Saira's call, Aneesa could hear Amina calling, "Love you too!"
Saira grunted, but she did look a little bit pleased. Scratch that, very pleased.
"Love you!" she called back, then glared at the camera. "And then I kissed her," she added, as if a little offended that she had to say it out loud.
"Oh, God," said Aneesa, putting her face in her hands. The idea of kissing Devi? Absolutely superb, unsurpassable. The idea of attempting to kiss Devi in order to get to the bit where she was kissing Devi? No! No!
"You're no help at all," she said. "I'm just going to pine after her in deadly gay pain for the rest of the semester, and then when I do my summer break internship. That's three months. I'll get over her in time to be super normal for senior year."
"Yeah, that's not gonna happen," said Saira, in the voice of someone who has been there, done that, and done it very thoroughly indeed.
Aneesa slumped down so her head was on the desk, and Saira could only see the top of her head. Granted, it was still a cute look, because she had a tiny orange barrette thing going on. But it radiated despair.
"I just want to skip to the part where she knows," said Aneesa. "Like, even if she says she's not interested, I've been dying about it for so long, I just want this part to be over."
"Then tell her," said Saira.
Aneesa groaned into the desk.
"You know what helps with stage fright? Practice." There was dead silence for a long moment, and then Saira prompted, with admirable patience, "Hi, Aneesa."
"Hi, Devi," Aneesa said miserably.
"Louder?"
"Hi, Devi," said Aneesa, not much happier, but definitely louder. "Maybe we should do that thing where we get into a huge argument because we're both sleep deprived from staying up late doing a group project--you, because you're a perfectionist, me, because I procrastinated. But instead of storming off, you kiss me, that kind of thing?"
"Do it again," said Saira.
"Hi, Devi. Would you ever consider going to the movies with me, except instead of going to Rave Cineplex, I take you to a drive through movie theater that doesn't exist to watch an indie murder movie that's just good enough to make us not sorry we came, but just bad enough that you won't be annoyed that I'm interrupting the storyline when we start making out? Maybe like a foreign language film, like something from Norway where there's a lot of snow and then everything is a metaphor for the bleakness of human loneliness? But we're not lonely, obviously, and there's free popcorn?"
"Again."
"Hi, Devi, would it be better if we did something incredibly normal, like, I don't know, going to get boba in the city during the national Model UN conference, but it's actually all a plot to help you get revenge on your nemesis from the national Model UN conference last year, and obviously I prove my devotion to you by being incredibly quick-witted and a great liar and you think it's SO sexy and then the next day you're wearing my blazer when you go collect your award but everyone's too scared of you to talk shit?"
"That was a very aggressive one," said Saira.
"Sorry."
"No, I liked it. Do you have any that make sense, though?"
"Uh. Hi, Devi," said Aneesa to her desk. "You make me crazy. You make me absolutely lose my mind. Why are you so stubborn? Why do you always have to be right about everything? Why do you end up getting obsessed with, like, everyone but me? Because I really think. We should go. On. A. Date." She punctuated each of her last words with a thump of her fist on the table.
"You're getting better," said Saira. "Are you feeling better?"
"No," said Aneesa. "Still just wish it was over."
"Okay, then," said Saira.
"What does that mean?" Aneesa looked up and squinted at her computer suspiciously. She knew that tone of Saira's voice perfectly well.
"Give it a second," said Saira.
"Give what a second?"
Aneesa's phone went ping! She checked her texts.
Hey, your cousin just sent me a voice memo.
It was Devi.
Aneesa gaped at her computer, then at Saira, then back again.
"Get it, got it, good," said Saira. "Go team." And with that, before Aneesa could issue any pleas, threats, or otherwise, Saira disconnected the FaceTime.
In response, Aneesa threw her phone across her room, onto the heap of clothes on her chair which had been worn once but weren't really dirty enough to put in the laundry. She then threw herself onto her own bed, and, failing to envision any scenario in which she could convince Devi that Saira's voice memo was some sort of fake, proceeded to treat herself to a little bit of a breakdown. It mostly consisted of her muttering, "Oh my god," over and over, with a light sprinkle of pillow-punching. Then she progressed to concocting schemes of revenge against her cousin.
Ping!
That couldn't be a good sign, right? Double-texting? Aneesa lifted her head and stared suspiciously across the room, as if the phone might fly across the distance and hit her directly in the forehead.
Ping!
At this point, Aneesa's self-preservation kicked in. If there was one thing she knew about Devi--and hell, at this point, she knew pretty much everything about Devi--it was that once Devi really got on a roll in one of her rants, you were doomed. You had to cut her off early, before she gathered momentum, or she'd flatten you like a Jeep rolling downhill.
Peeling herself off the bed, Aneesa walked over to her phone and picked it up gingerly.
I do actually love boba, was Devi's second text. Oh. The third text: And making out.
Aneesa decided to shelve her schemes of revenge. Just for now.