Letner passed out the cameras and wrote down which number each of us had.
Amira fingered the camera in front of her like it was something suspicious. “This is a camera,” I said slowly in English.
“This is a camera,” she repeated quietly.
Beside me, Carmina and Mariam snapped pouty-lipped pictures of each other, the standard selfie pose. Even though Mr. Letner had said not to take selfies, they couldn’t help themselves. When I looked around the room, a lot of other people were doing the same thing. “Can you get one of both of us?” Carmina asked me, holding her camera out.
I hesitated. Did Mariam realize how excluded I felt watching the two of them? “And then take one of me and Sadia,” Mariam said to Carmina.
They turned their chins down and gave a coy look to the camera. Then I gave my camera to Carmina, and Mariam and I huddled together. But before she took the photo, I held up my hand. “Wait.” Amira was on my other side. “Come on, you should be in the picture, too. It’s your first day at a Canadian school,” I said to her in Arabic. I held out my arm for her to slide closer. She looked like she was about to shake her head, but then she relented and joined us. Carmina took the photo and passed the camera back to me. I looked at the image. Mariam and I were grinning, but Amira just stared into the camera, her eyes open, wide and wary.
Chapter 6
I walked Amira back to the office to meet her parents when the lunch bell rang. She held the camera in her hands like it was a treasure. She hadn’t taken any photos yet; it was almost like she was worried she’d break it. “How did it go?” Mrs. Mooney asked as we sat waiting for Amira’s parents in the office. I turned to Amira, who gave Mrs. Mooney a shy smile. “Sadia, can you translate this list of school supplies for Amira’s parents? And there’s the media release letter.” She rattled off all the other information I’d have to explain. So much for lunch. It was going to take me half an hour to go over all this with them.
There was a bustle in the office entrance as Mr. and Mrs. Nasser walked in. They greeted their daughter and me with anxious smiles. They had lots of questions for Amira, but she looked exhausted and waved them off. I remembered what those first weeks had been like. Trying to make sense of what everyone was saying was tiring! My brain hurt when I got home after school, new words and images swirling through my head. And when it was time to go to sleep, my brain was so jumbled with English and Arabic words that I couldn’t turn it off. “The school needs you to sign some things,” I told Amira’s parents. I showed them all the papers, doing my best to explain what they meant. There was also a paper copy of the permission form from Mr. Letner. He’d asked me to translate it for them and have them sign it for him. Mr. Nasser gave me a puzzled look as I’d explained the project, but scribbled his signature anyway. Dad used to question some of the activities the school planned when we first moved here, too. He’d gone along with them, though, just like Mr. Nasser did, but there was a big difference between how schools were run in Syria and in Canada.
Amira didn’t say goodbye as she left the office. She bowed her head and shuffled behind her parents, even when her mom took her hand and tried to pry some information out of her. I knew how she felt. It was like a tidal wave of information had just splashed over her, and she’d only been at school for a few hours. She could never explain it all to her mother. I glanced at the clock. Basketball tryouts started in five minutes. I’d have to run to the cafeteria, scarf down my lunch, and then head to the gym with food sloshing in my stomach.
I don’t think Mr. Letner knew what a stir he was going to cause when he gave us those cameras. Kids from other classes kept posing in the hallway, begging us to take their pictures. And before basketball club, no one wanted to practise. Instead, we asked Jillian to do jump shots so we could practise taking action shots.
“Will you take one of me?” I asked Josh, handing him my camera. I held the basketball against my hip and smiled. He held the camera up to his eye for a second but didn’t take the picture.
“Nah, it’s all wrong,” he said, shaking his head.
“What is?” I asked, confused.
He nodded to the wall behind me. “It would look better if you were at the top of the key with the hoop behind you.” Josh walked over to me and pulled me by my elbow into a better position. Then he took the basketball and bent my arm so it was balanced on my palm.
“I feel like one of those fake people in a store window,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“A mannequin,” he said. “Yeah, except mannequins don’t have killer crossovers.”
His compliment made me blush. My crossovers weren’t that good.
He took three giant steps backward. It was only as I smiled into the camera that I saw Mariam staring at me from behind Josh, her eyes narrowed. I stood awkwardly as Josh played around with the settings and circled me, trying to get just the right angle and lighting. Mariam glared at me and went off in a huff.
“Oh, great,” I muttered.
“Cameras away!” Mr. Letner shouted. “They shouldn’t be out during basketball practice.” He picked up his clipboard. “Same deal as last time. Drills and then a scrimmage.” This time, I made sure my hijab was on securely so I wouldn’t get any more bloody noses. I held my own when we scrimmaged, and the bell for the end of lunch came too soon. There was a stampede for the change rooms, but I had an idea for a photo and hung back.
“Josh,” I said. “Can you help me with something? I want to take a photo of a ball being tossed into the bin.”
He gave me a funny look but agreed. “Yeah, sure.”
He stood a few metres back, far enough that he wasn’t in the shot, and tossed the ball in an arc toward the bin. It landed, jostling the others so they bounced. I snapped a few shots in a row of the ball moving through the air and then landing in the bin, jostling the others. “Cool,” I said, reviewing them. “Thanks!”
“No problem.”
Allan came out of the boys’ change room just as I was about to go into the girls’. “Hey, man, what are you doing?” I heard him ask Josh.
“Taking some pictures with Sadia,” Josh answered.
“Sadia?” Allan mocked. “Why are you wasting your time with her? Dude, Jillian Triggs was here. That’s who I’d be taking pictures of.” I could imagine him moving his eyebrows up and down suggestively.
Josh snorted and didn’t say anything for a minute. “Yeah, I know, right?”
I froze for a second, my throat tightening at their words. I let the door shut silently behind me, grateful that the other girls were too intent on getting changed to question the scowl on my face. Allan’s scornful tone echoed in my head. A waste of time? Was that what Josh really thought of me?
“How was basketball?” Mariam asked when I sat down beside her for English. I wasn’t in the mood for her snarky tone. Did she really want to know, or did she just want to accuse me of flirting with Josh? The same Josh who had just “wasted his time” with me. I tried to ignore her, but she asked again.
“It was fine,” I said curtly and hoped she’d drop it.
“Are you hiding something?” She grabbed my camera out of my hands and started going through
