Adam is seven years old the day he meets Yusuke Amin.
Sometimes, when he recalls the memory, he imagines them even younger. He thinks of them as four or five, on the crest of when real memories begin. But to Adam, Yusuke's always been there. Every gap in his hazy, dreamlike childhood memories are filled with the shape of him; he's never alone, they're hand in hand, and he's safe. There's no world where they aren't best friends.
It isn't true of course. Adam goes seven years without his best friend.
And first, he must go a week without his mama.
Zahra Fakhoury dies in an unremarkable way. She dies like many people do—accidentally. A man falls asleep at the wheel and eight thousand pounds of steel collides, one car going thirty-five and the other going seventy-two. It's instant. But Adam doesn't know that until years later, when his father can finally find the words to talk about the accident. Zahra never suffers, not even for a second; her spine snaps as easily and delicately as a flower stem. But the man dies slowly. He hurts, for hours. And it isn't until years later that Adam no longer finds satisfaction in that man's misery. In the end, he mourns them both. The spontaneity of death and the cruelty of God's hand.
But for now, Adam is seven years old and his mama has died a week ago.
There's a woman in the kitchen that he doesn't know. It isn't a place for strangers. This is where Adam and his mama make ma'amoul together. Where he sits nightly to do his homework, where his baba drinks coffee and reads. Old paperbacks, a pen behind his ear that he occasionally whips to the yellowed pages to scribble a thought. This is where Adam catches mama and baba, slow dancing with their hands linked, her long hair a wavy tumble that hides her face as it rests on her husbands shoulder.
Adam's father hasn't been in the kitchen since—well, since. But he's there now. With the woman.
"Thank you," Nasser says, both hands clasping around hers. He bows over them. Adam's baba is not a small man, but in that moment he seems so…tiny. "Thank you, Chieko. Please, let me—let me pay you." He turns, but doesn't make it far. One of his hands touches the kitchen counter. It lands directly in front of the coffee maker. Mail has piled up beside it. Nasser's shoulders shake, like he is going to come apart and become a million pieces of a man.
"Hi," Adam says, stepping closer to his crying father. Chieko, the stranger, turns to him. She's tall, the same height as his father, but with a willowy thinness. Her hair is the sort of silky black that shines blue underneath the bright white kitchen light. It falls in a straight curtain that frames her thin face. Adam tucks himself shyly behind his father's leg and feels a hand gently brush through his curly hair.
"Hello, Adam," Chieko says. He flattens himself further against baba. She smiles at him. The sort of warm smile he hasn't seen in a week. Something inside him fractures, wounded and comforted all the same. She reaches a hand out to her side and suddenly, a boy appears. A small thing, with skin a shade darker than hers, but the same unmistakable sharp features. "This is my son, Yusuke. We're going to spend some time here, if that's alright with you?"
Adam looks up at his father. In a voice, scratchy with disuse, he says, "Are you going back to work now?" It feels too soon for the world to continue. The passage of time for a seven-year-old is measured more so in experiences. A lost tooth, Saturday cartoons, his mother's funeral.
"Introduce yourself to Yusuke," baba replies. He takes Adam's shoulders. His hands are wet from wiping away tears. They create little spots on Adam's blue Power Rangers shirt. But he doesn't get a chance to speak.
"My mom says I have to be nice to you." Chieko makes a hissing sound, flapping an admonishing hand at her son. Adam stares at the boy in front of him.
He says it aloud and suddenly, that makes it real. She isn't coming home, he wasn't dreaming, she's dead. Something that had been hollowed out of Adam suddenly fills. Overflows, overwhelms. Pushing, hurting. It crowds everything else inside him, between his bird fragile ribs, the narrow passage of his throat. It pushes behind his teeth, swells inside his skull and threatens to pop his eyes. Suddenly, he feels as though that's all there is to him anymore. The grief. The reality. There's so much pain in such a small body that he ejects himself. Suddenly weightless, suspended in a motherless world, heavy with the dread and yet rising, like something suddenly untethered. Up and up and up. He sees himself, top down, watching his father's hand brushing through his hair, all of them standing in the kitchen where she made cookies.
"Oh," the boy, Yusuke says. He steps forward. He looks so serious; the expression on a seven year old boy is almost comical. Then Yusuke points at Adam's shirt. "Do you…wanna watch Power Rangers?"
The world slings back together like a rubber band snapping. The Earth suddenly has gravity once more. Adam is inside the kitchen. He stands there, alive, his father's hand warm and heavy on his head. He looks down at his shirt. Then up again.
"Yeah," Adam says. He steps forward and takes Yusuke by the wrist. He does want to watch Power Rangers. He really does. "I have a TV in my room."
“Your own TV? Like it’s your TV?”
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