Before he could properly respond to that, she was settling down next to him, without even asking. He had to shuffle away quickly before their elbows bumped. He plopped down on the nearest bench.

She followed and frowned down at the screen. “This was a cartridge game, right? Why is it taking so long to load?”

“Maybe you were rough with it while you were playing Robin Hood earlier,” Ahmad grumbled, but without much heat to it.

She said they were friends. Since when, and how? Ahmad was too embarrassed to admit that he had no experience with friends to his teachers, much less perfect Winnie Williamson. He tried to think back over the previous days and weeks but was interrupted by Winnie’s whisper.

“Paheli.”

At the same moment, there was a wash of scent in the air. Cardamom and scalded milk, with a deep musky undercurrent—like a favorite uncle’s leather jacket slung carelessly over your shoulders when you were cold, bearing with it the remnants of his last cup of chai and maybe a sweet crumbling in the bottom of his pockets—wafted under Ahmad’s nose.

But he was stuck on the word. The hair rose on the back of his neck and he turned slowly to face her. “What did you just say?”

Winnie blinked at him. “That is what you call it, isn’t it? That city you’re always doodling in the margins of your notebooks.”

“How did you—”

“You’re not the only one who looks around during class.” Winnie beamed at him. “Your drawings for art are amazing! That’s why I knew we would make a great team. Are you drawing the world from this game?”

Winnie pointed downward and Ahmad followed her gaze. She was right. There were the blue-inked buildings of the skyline from his drawings on the case, and the odd flying rickshaws. When he hovered over the icon, it read in block letters: THE BATTLE.

And then, in smaller print, Paheli awaits.

“Is Paheli a real place or something?” asked Winnie. “Your sketches always look so real. It’s amazing.”

“Honestly, I always thought it was something I dreamed up,” Ahmad admitted. “I traveled to India and Bangladesh as a little kid with my parents and sister. I thought Paheli was from those memories.”

Except that it had always felt so real. Ahmad could never understand why the actual Taj Mahal and the experience of careening through Dhaka in the back of a rickshaw seemed dull and colorless in comparison to the new city cobbled together by his brain as he slept. It was a place of glittering palaces, of marble domes and marvelous creatures that he knew couldn’t be found anywhere else in the world.

“I don’t think it’s an actual place,” Ahmad said again aloud. “So this is weird.”

Winnie shrugged. “Won’t know until you play it, right?”