Of all her friends, she knew Nadia the least. She’d met Aliyah first, when they were both students at the Catholic school in the neighborhood. Reema had never felt like an outsider until the fifth grade, when her aunt, who was visiting from the West Bank, showed up with her mother to pick her up after school. It was meant to be a surprise, but it changed everything.

As Reema walked out of the classroom building, in single file behind her classmates, she sensed the commotion in the courtyard. Several students gasped and giggled, while others just stared at some point at the end of the blacktop. She saw her math teacher, a tall angular woman with long, red hair, roll her eyes and walk huffily back into the building.

Reema’s eyes followed the direction in which her classmates were pointing, and there was her aunt, standing by the fence next to the tetherball pole. A sickening wave flooded Reema’s stomach as she realized her aunt was wearing her white hijab. Of course, she knew this—she’d seen her aunt every day this week—but she suddenly imagined how her aunt must appear to her classmates.

“Who’s that?” she heard people—mothers and children—whisper to each other.

“That’s my aunt,” she said fiercely to nobody in particular, then walked over stiffly. During the three-block walk home, her mother and aunt chatted easily while Reema hugged the straps of her backpack closer to the center of her chest. She avoided looking across the street, where two of her friends were walking home with their own mothers. Cars passed between them, offering Reema a temporary reprieve from their stares.

The next day in school was the first time anyone called her a “towelhead”—she felt like she had been slapped in the face. Aliyah approached her after that, stayed close by, even though she was in the seventh grade, two whole years older. Before the Christmas break, they were both towelheads, and by the end of the year, Nadia and Hanan had joined their camel jockey circle.

Hanan’s thoughts usually poured forth from her lips. She showed her love with passion and demonstrated her hate with rage. Once, when an eighth-grade boy called her “sand eater,” she punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. “I guess you’re eating it now,” she tossed back. Nadia was more reserved, her face a pleasant mask she rarely removed. Lately that mask had been firmly fixed, opaque, impossible to penetrate. She was brave, not openly like Hanan, but in her own, subtle way.

Nadia opened the door and greeted her with a kiss on each cheek. “Come in—I haven’t seen you in such a long time!”

“We’ve both been busy, I’m sure.”

“Yes, but that’s no excuse.” Nadia walked ahead of her to the living room, and Reema noticed her gait had resumed much of its natural grace.