Tangerine

HER GRANDMOTHER WARNED her not to fall into the trap. She didn't say what it looked like, or when or how one might typically encounter it. She used the article “the,” not “a,” as if there was only one trap to fall into, and everyone must look out for it at all times.

She does not remember the exact sentence her grandmother used. In her head, it was a one-word sentence, although she is certain her grandmother couldn't have uttered the word “trap” on its own. It must have been part of something like “beware of the trap,” but she can only recall the Arabic word her grandmother chose to use for “trap”: el-tahelké. A floating, singular word, like a tangerine hanging from the ceiling.

He gave her a Band-Aid to cover the childish scratch now stamped on her knee, like the ephemeral tattoo her mother once tried to convince her to get instead of a real one. She pulled up a chair facing his desk, crossed her legs—placing the injured knee over the other, slightly bent forward—crossed her arms, and opened her mouth.

A verbal diarrhea. Was he even listening to her? He could either focus on her rambling or edit the articles, and judging by the quality of the writing in the next day's print, he wasn't listening.

She said: “Would you believe me if I told you that my only wish is to go back to the beginning of things? To when I was fifteen years old. I wasn't particularly aware of anything that happened to me before that, so it doesn't matter. I just wish I could go back to my first conversation with Isabel on MSN Messenger.

“I met her for the first time at a conference about the younger generation's reading habits (or lack thereof) held by a bunch of old people. Very creative topic and not patronizing at all. I said something about TV shows not encouraging the youth to read. They actually took it into consideration and debated it for a while. At the end of the event, a young man with ginger curly hair and weird eyeglasses approached me and my two classmates, Jessica and Joanna. The schoo