“Jasoos? What’s jasoos? Nia, does she think you’re Jesus?” she asked her daughter. Then she turned to me, exasperated. “She’s not Jesus! She can’t even step into a church without breaking out in hives.”

“Listen to me. No, I am not jasoos,” Antonia swore, her palms up. “I work at the American embassy. I’m here representing America as a diplomat. I help to build . . . teach English. I took you in because that man said you were not safe in Kabul. I brought you here to keep you safe.”

“Which is exactly what Jesus would do,” Tilly added.

My hands trembled. I looked from one woman to the other, knowing my life depended on my ability to make the right decision, to remember everything my mother and father had taught me, to think of them without breaking in two, to know when to run and when to stay, to know how much of myself I would have to shed to carry on. My foot was on fire. With my ears buzzing as loud as jet engines, it was hard to see or hear my own thoughts.

Maybe Boba had been wrong about me. Maybe Malalai’s warrior blood did not course through my veins.

I fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Chapter 13

I woke with a groan, stiff-limbed and groggy. As I blinked, my vision came into slow focus. I saw a dresser, its drawers marked with scrapes so deep they left the wood’s pale flesh exposed. A lapis pendant dangled from the two carved spires at the top of the mirror. Sunlight fell on the blue stone with veins of white mineral. A medicine bottle sat at the end of the dresser.

I peeled the blanket off and listened to the soft pad of footsteps in the hall and Tilly’s hushed voice. Otherwise, it was oddly silent. In the way Boba never realized just how loud the television was until my mother would shut it off, I hadn’t understood the volume of the thrumming in my head until it was no more.

A change of clothes sat on the edge of the bed—a shirt, pants, and even underwear in my size. The clothes on me were damp with sweat. I hid behind the door and fumbled to put them on hastily. I opened the door a sliver, then a little more.

“Well, look who woke up on the right side of the bed today!” Tilly exclaimed when I limped out of the bedroom. I had to look up to meet her eyes.