Femme Fatale.

43

*_*
Zahra pulls out of Carla's grip and flings open the door. "Leave me," she orders.
"You can go," this is my room, remember?"
For a moment they glare at each other, stubborn as cats on the stable wall, full of mutual resentment and something darker, the old sense of rivalry between girls. Like there is only really room in the world for one girl. The sense that every fight could be to death.
Carla moves away first. "We are supposed to be friends, be on the same side."
Zahra slams the door shut. "It's our room," she stipulates.
*_*

CARLA:
"You are skating on melting ice, dancing on the end of his fingertips. You know you can't hold him forever so why not end this madness before it chokes you?"

Zahra laughs at the accuracy of my description. "It's like being in love. I want to see him all the time."

"You're always in love," I say crossly. "You're like a big butter ball, always oozing love for someone or the other. It's always seep seep seep with you: passion and feeling and desire. It makes me furious!"

She smiles at me. "Because you are all ambition and it makes you stoop too low a times." She says.

My eyes gleam. "Maybe but what else is there?"

Lax hovers between us,tangible as a ghost.

"Don't you want to know if I have seen her?" She asks. It is a cruel question and I know she asks it to see pain in my eyes, but I give her nothing for her malice. My face is cold and hard, for I have finished weeping for love and I will never weep for love again.

"No," I say, my voice harsh. "So you can let her know I never mention her name. She's dead for me. I can be dead for her. All I want to do is get out of this grave and get back to my studies. All that is left for me is ambition."

Zahra nods, nibbling her fingers. I can almost see the calculations of her brain as she picks over what I am saying. Then she makes a little noise and leaps to her feet. "Oh very well then," she says irritably. "You might as well help me dress. There's a tennis tournament and I have to attend."

"For him, Teacher Juma. Don't you fear he might fancy another?" I whisper to her as I brush her hair.

"Oh no one matters," she says confidently. "Not for a moment. This is my time, this will be my term. I will have him dancing at the end of my string. Nothing will set him free of my spell. It doesn't matter what any girl does. He is besotted. He is mine for the taking."

"Just for this term? Just these three months?" I ask.

Zahra looks thoughtful. "Oh, who can hold a man for long? He's on the very crest of the wave of his desire, I can hold him there. But at the end of it, the wave has to break. No one stays in love forever."

"We are still in our first year of school. If you want easy grades and special attention for the rest of highschool then you'll have to hold him longer that three months. D'you think you could hold him for a year? For three?"

I could have laughed aloud to see the confidence drain from her face.

"By the time our second year ends, if at all you can keep him that long, he won't be hot for you anymore anyway. You'll be on the wane, Zahra. You'll be half forgotten."

She thumps down in the bed and slaps the pillow. "Don't you ill wish me. I wake every day with an utter determination to have my own way. Anything can happen for me."

She moves to her cabinet and rakes through it to find her sportswear. One hand the tiny romper and the other her special golden hijab. She hurries to dress and tie the hijab around her head. She pushes it far back on her head so that her dark hair shows.