Deya looked away, toward the approaching school bus. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”
Once the bus had disappeared around the corner, Deya plucked the bookstore card from her pocket and read the address again: 800 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
She squinted at the tiny print, realizing for the first time that the bookstore wasn’t in Brooklyn, it was in Manhattan. A mixture of panic and nausea rose inside her. She’d only been to Manhattan a handful of times, always in the back seat of Khaled’s car. How was she supposed to get there on her own? She took a deep breath. She’d have to ask for directions just as she’d planned. Nothing had changed. She walked to the nearest subway station on Bay Ridge Avenue and descended the dark steps, her heart pounding furiously, beat-beat-beat. The station was crowded with strange faces, and for a moment Deya wanted to turn around and run home. She froze, watching the people push past her, listening to the beeping sounds their cards made as they swiped them through the metal barricades. There was a glass booth at the back of the platform, with a man slumped behind the counter. Deya approached him.
“Excuse me, sir.” She pressed the business card against the glass. “Can you tell me how to get to this address?”
“Broadway?” His eyes shot to the top of his head. “Take the R train. Manhattan bound.”
She blinked at him.
“Take the R train,” he said again, slower. “Uptown toward Forest Hills–Seventy-First Avenue. Get off at Fourteenth Street–Union Square Station.”
R train. Uptown. Union Square Station. She memorized the words.
“Thank you,” she said, reaching inside her pocket for a bundle of one-dollar bills. “And how much is a train ticket?”
“Round trip?”
She sounded out the unfamiliar combination of words. “Round trip?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“Round trip. To get to the city and back.”
“Oh.” She felt her face burn. He must think she was a fool. But it wasn’t her fault. How was she supposed to understand American lingo? Her grandparents had only allowed them to watch Arabic channels growing up.
“Yes,” she said. “Round trip, please.”
“Four dollars and fifty cents.”
Almost half her weekly allowance! She slipped the warm bills through the glass. Luckily, she saved most of her vending-machine money. She only spent it on books, which she bought from yard sales, school catalogs, even off her classmates, who’d become accustomed to selling her their used novels over the years. She knew they felt sorry for her because she didn’t have a normal family.
There was a loud rumble in the distance. Startled, she grabbed the mustard-yellow subway card and hurried toward the metal poles. Another rumble, more aggressive this time. From the sudden movement around her, Deya realized the sounds were coming from the trains, and that people were rushing to catch them. She hurried along with them, mimicking their ease, swiping her card through the metal groove in one smooth motion. When the card didn’t register, she swiped it again, more carefully this time. Beep. It worked! She pushed through the turnstile.
In the darkness of the platform, Deya bit her fingertips and stared anxiously around her, the racket of passing trains making her jump. A man caught her attention as he walked to the end of the platform. He unzipped his pants and a stream of water began to pour onto the tracks in front of him. It took her a few moments to realize he was urinating. Her breath came in short bursts and she turned away, focusing her attention on a rat scurrying across the tracks. Soon she heard another rattle, then a faint whistling sound. Looking up, she could see a light shining from a tunnel beyond the end of the platform. It was the R train. She took a deep breath as it zoomed past her and shuddered to a halt.
Inside the train was loud, crammed with the onslaught of daily life. Around her people stared absently ahead or into their phones, transfixed. They were Italian, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Jamaican—every ethnicity Deya could possibly imagine—yet something about them seemed so American. What was it? Deya thought it was the way they spoke—their voices loud, or at least louder than hers. It was the way they stood confidently on the train, not apologizing for taking up the space.
Watching them, she understood yet again what it meant to be an outsider. She kept picturing them looking down at her like