The Memory Of Us

Chapter 16

Mina couldn't help but wonder if her reaction to Noah's words was a subconscious one, if some repressed part of her knew that all the deaths Khalil was responsible for were partly her responsibility too.

She kept trying to tell herself that they weren't, that she hadn't actually stabbed anyone or pushed anyone off a balcony so she was somehow absolved of any guilt, but the more she thought about it the more she came to the conclusion that she was ultimately at fault.

She was a murder.

She sat up frantically in her bed at the sudden realization, a new wave of tears on the brink of falling if she so much as blinked, but she quickly suppressed them at the sound of a swift and heavy knock reverberating on the other side of her closed bedroom door.

Swiping the back of her hand against each of her eyes respectively, she cleared her throat before calling out, "Come in!"

But it wasn't her grandmother on the other side of the door.

"Hi." Sahil said shyly as he crept into her room, closing the door softly behind himself without any noise. "Your grandma let me in." He said, throwing a quick nod over his shoulder at her closed door and, beyond, her grandma.

Mina sucked both her lips tightly into her mouth, Sahil was the last person she wanted to see at the moment, especially after Noah's comments about her ruining everything for everyone around her by essentially failing to choose him over Khalil.

Holding her shoulders, she criss-crossed both her arms over her chest. She hoped her voice was firm as she asked the boy who was now standing awkwardly in the middle of her room, "Sahil, what are you doing here?"

He shoved his hands deep into the pocket of his dark, baggy denim jeans.

They reminded Mina of something Khalil would wear and she immediately berated herself internally for the thought.

"Don't be mad-" Sahil bid her, digging a toe into the plush, rectangular rug in the middle of Mina's space. Mina had a feeling she already knew what had encouraged his impromptu visit, but she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

"-but Noah told me what happened between the two of you, and she's pretty upset-"

Just as she had expected.

Mina scoffed, licking her lips in utter disbelief as the unfamiliar anger she had been overtaken by in Noah's room mere hours earlier threatened to overtake her once more and the biting in her voice was evident as she assumed, "So, you came over here to mend the peace then?"

She dropped her hands into her lap now, twisting and wringing them back and forth in an attempt to satiate her rising anger.

Sahil, quickly sensing he had said the wrong thing, attempted to backtrack. "No." He said hastily, before backtracking yet again with a nervous shrug, "Maybe?" He said with a cautious frown.

Nodding, Mina ran a hand over her face in an attempt to calm herself. She tried to remind herself that it wasn't Sahil who she was angry with at the moment, but the line between her anger for him and for Noah often seemed to overlap, and now was no different and she couldn't keep the sharpness from her voice as she said, "Well, do me a favor and tell Noah to go to hell!"

Her tone was as placated as she could muster.

"Min-MJ!" Sahil called out to her, correcting himself before he could make the mistake of referring to her with the wrong name.

He reached out a hand as if to grab her but, realizing he was very obviously too far, he quickly dropped it.

His hands swung by his side awkwardly now, his fidgeting fingers dancing along the seams on the side of his dark jeans.