Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

Mom called around eight, and I put her on Skype so I could keep moving around the room. She wanted to know all about my flight and apartment, so I gave her the full flood of details, including what family gossip I’d gleamed from Shoshi.

“And what about Abe?” she said near the end. “Have you talked to him yet?”

I moved out of the camera’s sight while I rolled my eyes. “Mom, I’m sure I’ll see him at some point, but I just got here.”

“I know, but he plays football. I don’t understand why you don’t want to see him when he could help you with your job.”

“Mom, I’m not going to use my childhood friend as a leg up at work. That’s weird.”

Mom sounded long-suffering. “That’s networking, Tamar. That’s how people make connections.”

Even so.

When

I stepped out into the living room a few minutes later, a girl sat on the sofa with a computer in her lap. She had dark hair and skin halfway in between mine and Lucy’s. I lifted my hand, and then felt silly for waving inside our own apartment. “Hi. I’m Tamar.”

She looked up. “Oh, hi, I’m Sabeen. Nice to meet you.”

I gingerly sat on the edge of a chair. “So how long have you been living here?”

Her eyes flew up. “In America?”

I shrugged, embarrassed she thought I’d call her out on her accent after eight words, but curious nonetheless. “I actually meant in this apartment, but yeah, both I guess.”

She smiled a little. “Two months in the apartment. Four months in the States.”

“Cool. What for?”

“For a job. I’m an engineer.”

I must have looked surprised, which made me hate myself a little bit, because she laughed and said, “Yes, that’s right. I studied at the University of Baghdad. College of Sciences for Women.”

“Wow. And you just decided to move over here? Your job got you a visa?”

She grinned, lightning fast. “I’m still working on that. This country makes it a pain in the ass to get a visa, you know?”

I laughed, even though that seemed kind of awful. “So where do you work?”

“Downtown on the Elseneer Project.”

I nodded, and then shook my head. “I have no idea what that is.”

She laughed. It was light and soft and likeable. “Here, I’ll show you.”

She did, for an hour. I liked Sabeen, who seemed artsier than Jaz and less busy than Lucy, whom I’d met briefly this morning as she ran out of the apartment to rehearse for a show she apparently wasn’t even being paid for.

But Sabeen went out in the evening, and Lucy and Jaz were gone too, so on my second night in the city I found myself alone in the apartment. It should have been relaxing, but instead it uncovered a wellspring of restlessness, and I was suffocated by the intolerable loneliness of a night in the city with no one to see and nothing to do. The cat was back, curled on my chest and making it hard to think. My stomach buzzed with the anxiety of nothing, and my brain refused to focus. Everyone in the world had to be out there, partying until the sun came up, and I was alone and friendless and pathetic.

I paced around the apartment and tried to distract myself with videos, but really, more than anything, I wanted to be out in the city, carried along by the autumn wind like leaves tumbling in a gale.

I wanted magic.

My phone buzzed.

Halfway across the living room, I stilled. The screen of my cell had lit up, and as I stared at it I imagined it contained all the answers of the universe, that that text could be my entrance into a secret society, my invitation to Hogwarts.

I shook my head. I was being silly. It was probably Mom again.