YOU KNOW, YOU DON’T have to follow me all the way home—unless you aren’t done with getting me in trouble today.”
Winnie Williamson nearly knocked over the city trash can she was casually standing behind. Ahmad waited, trying his best not to squirm in sympathy as she shook off a McDonald’s wrapper clinging to her sleeve and smoothed down her curls.
“I’m not following you! We just happen to be walking in the same direction.”
But Winnie wouldn’t quite look him in the eye. Ahmad felt exasperation writhing like a trampled snake in his gut. It helped loosen his tongue.
“You live four blocks down from school, Winnie, in Lenox Hill. And this is Central Park. You actually walked past your building to keep on following me!”
“I needed fresh air,” Winnie insisted, her fingers still busily fluttering to her hair, and then down to check her pockets. “And . . . well, I guess I wanted to make sure you were okay. After everything that happened earlier.”
Ahmad was not okay. He was entirely done with today. Sure, it hadn’t been as bad as it could be. He escaped with only a few hours of solitude and no parental intervention. But at what cost? He wasn’t sure.
And now, Winnie Williamson was following him home, occasionally leaping behind utility poles and stationary taxis like a spy for the CIA. And that wasn’t even the strangest part of the day. Winnie Williamson had, apparently, snuck a package out of the school office for him. Winnie Williamson, who had never even acted like she knew he was alive, had burst into a conference room and told two of their teachers that she was his partner in crime. And that whatever punishment he got, they better be ready to give her as well. He still couldn’t believe it.
“Why do you care?” Ahmad mumbled gruffly. “You didn’t get in trouble.”
Of course she hadn’t. Mr. Willis hadn’t even believed she was part of the situation. He only frowned and shook his head.
“Winnie, I know you’re always ready to stand up for a classmate in need, and I appreciate that. But Ahmad has committed a serious action with serious consequences. I want you to head back to class.”
Winnie said nothing. She just looked at Ahmad, and all he could do was stare back at her. He wasn’t sure what she was up to. Winnie Williamson and Ahmad Mirza lived in entirely different worlds. There were many days where he wished they didn’t, where he wanted them to at least share the same space for an hour so maybe they could talk.
Maybe they could become friends.
Even with that silent hope, he never pictured her rushing up to him in an otherwise deserted hallway, pressing a yellow envelope in his hands, and whispering, “This is yours.”
But she had.
“Even if I didn’t get in trouble,” Winnie said, snatching him back to the street corner they stood on, “I wanted to make sure you didn’t get into it either. I was in the office and just saw your name on it. It seemed like it was important, and I really didn’t think it was going to be such a big deal.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Ahmad couldn’t keep some of that familiar sass off his tongue. Winnie didn’t have to do that long, eyes-down shuffle through the hall every afternoon with a teacher’s hand pressed on her shoulder. Winnie’s conversations with teachers were all smiles, and “Yes, Mrs. Evans” and “Of course, Mr. Willis.” How would she ever begin to imagine how different their experiences were?
Winnie scuffed her sneakers against the ground. In a soft mumble Ahmad wasn’t sure he was meant to hear, she added, “It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
Before he could respond, though, Winnie seemed to realize where they were. “Hey. This isn’t your way home either.”
Ahmad rolled his eyes, stopping in front of an empty park bench. Around this time of day, people were still trickling out of work and school. There was hardly anyone around, except a few old ladies gossiping and one or two joggers. He slid off his backpack and sat down beside it.
“I needed some fresh air.”
Winnie leaned forward, pushing an errant curl behind her ear. Ahmad instinctively pressed his back to the bench.
“What?”
“You’re going to open that package, aren’t you?” Her eyes sparkled with anticipation.
“Why do you care so much?” Ahmad hugged his arms around his waist, hiding the fact that, yes, his Nintendo Switch was already in his hands. The cartridge was plugged in, and the game loading. But he wasn’t ready to share. He didn’t know why, but he felt like he needed time to examine it on his own, before his parents (or anyone else!) got involved. He was sure school had already made that traitorous call home. Or maybe Farah had returned to dutiful daughter mode and told on herself. Being able to check it out before it was confiscated felt important.
But it wasn’t only that. It was the way it felt when he held it. There was an electric spark when he had his hands on the case, like putting a finger on a frayed wire or touching a doorknob after shuffling over a fluffy carpet. It didn’t just feel like a regular old game.
It felt like there was something alive in there.
Winnie put her hands on her hips. “I helped you get that, if you remember.”
“It’s not like I asked you to!” Ahmad blurted out. He could feel his ears turning red. Keep going, Ahmad. Just dig the hole. Remind her who you are and why no one sticks around you too long. “And besides, even if I did, why would you go ahead and do that? It’s not like we’re f-friends or anything.”
Winnie paused. And then, there was that radiant, dimpled smile she seemed to reserve only for teachers. “Who says we aren’t?”
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?”
She shifted on the bench, and Ahmad prepared himself to shuffle closer to the edge, but she paused.
“Hey, what’s this?” She leaned in over his shoulder. Ahmad impatiently tapped his fingers against his rectangular Switch screen to zoom in on what she noticed.
“It’s really weird, but this game seemed to come with some sort of bizarre avatar system, like one for a game you would play online,” Ahmad said, peering closely at the screen. “You choose them to represent your character. Oh, do you want one of the controllers?”
“Yeah!” Winnie hummed distractedly. “Is it just me, or do these avatars seem really detailed?”
“In what way?” he asked.
She leaned in and tapped against the screen. “The hair on this one looks just like mine. All my frizzy curls. They look so real. . . .”
Ahmad looked up at her.
Winnie’s brow was furrowed. “Ahmad,” she said, “do you have something to tell me?”
Oh no.
He knew that tone of voice.
It was the same tone Mrs. Evans used on him when she had her doubts about who actually started the skirmish at the lunch table or threw an eraser at her back when she was writing on the board.
“No. Like what?”
“You were just freaking out at me for following you home, but this avatar on the screen totally looks like me! It’s even the same shade of brown as me. Did you talk to your sister about me or something?”
“I didn’t! I swear!” Ahmad spluttered. “I just—it doesn’t really look like you.” But he had to admit, it certainly did.
Winnie raised her eyebrows and tapped her finger against the screen. Under her touch, the avatar twitched and shook out its—her—fluffy tight curls in a very Winnie way.
“Well, maybe it does, but I really don’t know how! Honest, I don’t!”
Ahmad really didn’t. He wasn’t the type of kid who was in school plays or exhibitions, so Farah had no opportunity to size up his schoolmates. Besides, this type of deliberate friendship arranging was more of Ma’s embarrassing style.
But it was bothering him now: How could this be?
Before either of them could say more, though, the machine in Ahmad’s lap caught their attention. “It’s ready,” Winnie whispered.
Ahmad took a deep breath and clicked start. For a moment, the screen flickered—and then returned to the same menu. He growled in frustration. “All that time and it won’t even turn on?”
“Let me try,” Winnie said, and took the Switch from his hands. She tapped one of the avatars—the girl that she said looked just like her—and dragged it to the center of the screen.
They waited one moment.
Two.
Ahmad shook his head.
“Forget it. Nothing’s working right today.”
He reached out to take the machine back from Winnie. Their hands met over the avatar.
With a sudden crackle and pop, the machine’s screen went dark.
And around them, the world froze.