The Summer We Came to Life by Deborah Cloyed

fanned atop her W magazines. The metal coasters were in a perfect stack.
    Good, the nausea was subsiding. Kendra picked up the magazines and knocked them against the table to straighten and refan them. The vacation club picture fell forward on the table.
    Kendra saw now what had made the initial noise. A clover leaf, suspended in a plastic holder, that had stayed taped to the back of the picture ever since Mina gave it to her ages ago. The tape finally gave, and now it sat on the coffee table looking up at her. She picked it up and closed it inside her palm.
    Kendra blinked slowly and her head rang with Mina’s characteristic chuckle. Most little girls giggle, but Mina had chuckled, almost Buddha-like, as if she’d been through this before and found all things amusing.
    Kendra remembered perfectly the day Mina had given her the clover. They were fourteen and Kendra had had her worst day of school ever.
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    Mina’s backyard, Springfield, VA, 1994
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    â€œHe said he didn’t want to kiss a black girl.” Kendra kicked at a fallen acorn on Mina’s back deck. “He said it in front of everyone.” She looked up. “I’m not black.”
    Mina looked at Kendra calmly but with sympathy. “Yes, you are.”
    Kendra wrinkled her eyebrows. “I’m not. I mean, okay, I am. But, you know, I’m not black. Like you’re not Iranian.”
    â€œI’m not?” Mina chuckled.
    Kendra rolled her eyes. “You’re not helping.”
    â€œI’ll be right back.”
    Kendra waited on the porch, watching shadows fall across the lawn. She slapped at a mosquito on her ankle. When a light turned on in Mr. Bahrami’s study, she tried to see inside. What did that man do in there all day and night? Not that her dad was home very much lately. Working on another big discrimination case. Kendra wondered what her dad would say if she tried to talk to him about the boy. Never mind, she knew what he would say. The struggle continues, Kendra. Jeez, men. For the hundredth time that year, Kendra wished her mother was black instead of her father.
    â€œHere.” Mina slipped back onto the porch brandishing something shiny.
    Kendra looked at the square of plastic. Inside was a bright green four-leaf clover, plucked one day in its prime and now embalmed against ever aging another day. Kendra looked at Mina curiously.
    â€œAre we going to talk about the stupid boy?”
    â€œNope.”
    Kendra huffed. “Mina—”
    Mina met her eyes. “Because that stupid boy doesn’t matter.” Mina again held out the clover leaf.
    Kendra took it and held it up to the porch light.
    â€œIt’s for good luck,” Mina said with a smile. “With all the things that will matter.”
    â€œI don’t believe in good luck.”
    Mina chuckled. “I know you don’t.”
    â€œYou have to work hard to get what you want in life. Practice and planning. My mom’s the one who believes in all that other…silliness.” Kendra gave Mina her most stern, serious face.
    Mina chuckled again. “I’m sure you’re right, KJ. But just in case one day you find out you’re wrong, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Right?”

CHAPTER
15
    AT THREE IN THE MORNING, I WAS AWAKENED by a strange noise. I sat upright in bed, then lay right back down as a wave of nausea rolled over me in the pitch-black room. The noise came again. It was the low growl of a pit-bull and it was coming from my stomach.
    I bolted barefoot to the bathroom nearest our room. I barely had time to swish my hair out of the way before vacating the entire contents of dinner. The force of it was terrifying, and dropped me to my knees. Then a new sound came from my midsection—a sloshy gurgling.
    For the next seven minutes, all I could do was whimper as life passed by in excruciating intestine-twisting pain, cursing Jesse’s exotic salad, doused in amoeba water, and my