With a lot of pleading, begging, and bribing, I convince Enzo to help me move one last time. That run in with Owen and Hannah made the decision for me. I'm just going to have to suck it up and learn to co-exist with Jamie. 

My parents aren’t thrilled about this development, but even they can’t argue with my horrible track record. I promise them I just need a little more time to figure things out, and find somewhere to live that won’t threaten my life or bank account. I tell them I’ve even got a new job, although I leave out the part where it doesn’t pay anything. I also agree to help with the selling process by going through the horde of stuff that’s been collecting dust in the attic for ten years. That seals the deal.

It’s a nice day for moving, and I take that as a good omen. Early June in St. Martin’s is when you get those sixty-five degrees and sunny days that I live for. As Enzo, Amanda and I pull into the driveway, we’re greeted by a bright blue sky full of puffy clouds and a fresh lake breeze that plays with my curls and flutters under my jacket collar. I’m so glad to be back on the island again.

“You know Enzo,” I say as I shut the truck door, “I really just needed your truck. Amanda and I can move these boxes ourselves, so if you want, you can head back now.”

Aunt Meryem’s old furniture never got moved, so I left my old bedframe, dresser, and mirror in storage at my parents’ house. I figured I’d do everyone a favor and not make us carry them up a flight of stairs for the seventh time. 

“Using me for my vehicle?” Enzo clasps his chest like he’s hurt. “Nah, I’ll stick around a while.”

Is it my imagination, or does he glance at Amanda when he says that? Interesting.

The garage door opens, and Jamie comes out with a ladder in tow. My instinct is to turn away and ignore him, but the girls said that hiding is a sign of weakness. Instead, I try out that look Ciara was teaching me. Icy. Terrifying.

Jamie doesn’t even glance my way.

“Hey Enzo,” he says, on his way towards the back of the house.

It doesn’t feel like a sign of weakness when he ignores me. It feels very cool and uncaring and annoying. 

Enzo left his keys in the center console, so while he and Amanda open up the tailgate, I hop into the driver’s seat and start the truck up again. It’s an old enough model that it doesn’t have Bluetooth, but I don’t mind. I hit Preset 5 on the radio. Once, it played Enzo’s favorite local rap station. Now it’s tuned to Fly 105.5: Hits of the 90’s and Aughts! 

An old Sugar Ray song blasts over the speakers, which Enzo and I both like to turn up as loud as our ears can stand. I leave the door open when I get out and the music projects all through the yard.

“Lissa!” Jamie shouts, from somewhere I can’t see. “Turn that trash off!”

Ha ha. Score one for me.

Enzo raises his eyebrows at me when I join them, but doesn’t say anything. 

We make quick work of unloading my stuff. Despite the fact that I really did it to bug Jamie, the upbeat music actually makes the job feel fun. I get the whole house to myself, but I pick my childhood bedroom as home base, for old times’ sake. Being back here has got me giddy like it’s Christmas morning. As soon as the truck is empty, I can’t help dragging Amanda all over the house to open up the windows and give her the grand tour. 

Ever since I was a kid, Aunt Meryem’s cottage has felt magical, like any door you step into could lead to Narnia or a fairy glen. When she was still alive, the house thrived with flowers and vining plants, blooming out of mismatched pots in a riot of colors. Now there’s just the remains of the garden she planted around the front porch. She taught me the names of all of the flowers, and I repeated them over and over because they sounded like a spell; yarrow and bellflower and widow’s tears, larkspur and aster and phlox, and the wisteria vines that were always my favorite. I decide I’m going to fill as many mason jars and tin cans as I can find with flowers.

“Your aunt really liked her colors,” Amanda notices, as I show her around the kitchen that’s still painted sage green with canary yellow cabinets. 

“Most of it’s Lissa’s fault,” Enzo calls from the living room. 

“It is not!” I yell back. I only picked out the color for her front door. Peacock blue. She let me help her paint it and everything.

“What does this mean?” Amanda traces her fingers over the faded Arabic words written on the wall that overlooks the kitchen table. 

I don’t speak Arabic—my mother was never taught so she couldn’t teach me—but Aunt Meryem had translated them for me.

“It says ‘Because you are my tribe’.” The memory of so many breakfasts, sipping hot chocolate on cold winter mornings while Aunt Meryem read to us, stirs in my chest. “It’s from a poem by Nizar Qabbani, about a woman who defies her tribe to be with the man she loves. When he asks her why, she tells him, ‘because you are my tribe’.”

Amanda has hated poetry for as long as I can remember, and I can’t help laughing at the look on her face. 

“My grandmother left Bahrain because she loved an American man,” I explain. “And Aunt Meryem followed because she loved her sister. She told us that the quote means family and home are things you choose, and you make them with the ones you love.”

Amanda arches one eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure biologists would argue with that definition.”

I’m not surprised by her cynicism, but I still punish her with a smacking kiss to her cheek. She wipes it off and pushes me with a shriek of, “Germs, Lissa!” and I just cackle. 

Being in Aunt Meryem’s kitchen again makes me itch to cook something. I haven’t done a lot of cooking in the past few years because my dad is the chef in our family, and he’s much better than I am. But I like to experiment with more types of cuisine than just Italian. And I brought a handful of groceries with me that I’ve already loaded into the fridge.

“Hey, why don’t I make dinner for the three of us?” I suggest, raising my voice so Enzo can hear.

“Sounds good to me,” my brother answers, poking his head through the doorway between the two rooms. “Hey Amanda, I bet I can do more one armed push-ups than you.”

Amanda stiffens, outrage in her eyes. “You absolutely can’t.”

“I don’t know, I’m pretty ripped.” He flexes to prove this. I remember Ciara calling him a ‘snack’ and my gagging is not at all faked. 

Amanda looks at me. I know she’ll stay if I ask her to, because she’s the type of person who will always help out if there’s work to be done. However, she’s also easily frustrated by things that don’t come naturally to her, and that very much includes cooking. I get a flashback to the time I tried to teach her how to make bread and she got so angry that she actually broke my wooden spoon.

“Go.” I shove her out of the kitchen. “Put him in his place.”

I tune out their arguing about the terms of the bet and open up my fridge, trying to figure out what I’ll make. My aunt’s favorite was French food, followed by South American, but she cooked Bahraini whenever she missed her old home. I don’t have the ingredients to whip up a French pastry or any of the spices needed for a good chimichurri sauce. What I do have is eggs and vegetables. 

It takes fifteen minutes and a couple substitutions, but when I carry three plates of baid tamat into the living room, I’m proud of the end result. 

“Fifty-eight,” Enzo counts, only nodding at me as I set the food down on the coffee table. “Fifty-nine. Sixty.”

Amanda, sweaty and flushed, with her right arm behind her back, keeps a steady pace on the floor. I’m incredibly impressed. On a good day, I can do maybe ten push-ups, with both arms.  

Then Amanda’s phone rings with the Shark Tank theme song and she drops, scrambling to answer it.

“Yes?” She listens for a moment, her whole body tense. “Of course. Give me ten minutes.”

The call ends, and turning to me, she says, “I’m sorry, I gotta run.”

Enzo looks smug. “I win.”

Amanda’s mouth drops open. “That doesn’t count. It was work! I had to answer.”

He scratches his head. “I wonder what I’m going to spend my ten dollars on. There’s just so many things—I feel like the sky’s the limit.”

If looks could kill, Enzo would be chilling with Aunt Meryem right now. Amanda stomps right up to him and sticks a finger in his face.

“This is not over,” she seethes.

I try to hold in a giggle as she stalks towards the door, snatching her purse with more aggression than seems necessary. 

“You want a ride?” Enzo asks.

“I’ll run!” she snaps, and slams the door behind her.

He falls back onto the couch, looking way too pleased with himself. “Is she always that competitive?”

“This is nothing. You should have seen her when the girls softball team lost the tournament with Stevensville.” I sit in the overstuffed armchair across from him and fold my legs up under me. “Do you like her?”

He shrugs, taking a big bite of his baid tamat and talking around it. Brothers. “She’s cute. It’s fun to make her mad. I don’t know.” Swallowing, he says, “This is really good, Lissa. Taste just like Aunt M’s.”

“Thanks,” I beam. “Hey is it just me, or is it kind of weird to be here without her?”

Enzo nods. “She’s been gone for forever, but I keep waiting for her to come around the corner and yell at me for putting my feet on her furniture.” 

I let my head fall back, studying the ceiling. It looks empty without the pothos vines that used to grow. “I can’t believe Mom and Dad are selling this place.”

“I know.” Enzo’s agreement surprises me. “Didn’t she always say she wanted you to have it?”

“Because Gina and Christy swore they’d never live in St. Martin’s,” I remember. “And you and Marco didn’t appreciate beautiful things.”

“Aldo used to tell her he’d take care of it for her.”

“She didn’t want it to be taken care of. She wanted it to be loved.” That’s why she said it would be mine. I was the only one who loved it like she did. 

“I don’t get why she didn’t put that in her will.”

“I guess she just trusted Mom more.” Even I hear the bitterness in my voice. I’ve got to get over that. It’s not my parents’ fault that they’ve got no use for an extra house. Or that the only kid who wants it is a hopeless space case.