Becoming Jinn by Lori Goldstein Read Free Book Online

down and hide behind the couch cushions. I can’t think about that on top of everything else. When my rapid heartbeat slows, I inch back up and peer over the pillows. Henry is turning off the spigot. He wipes his glasses with the end of his shirt before he returns them to their perch on the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He couldn’t have seen me. I sit back up. He looks right at me. And waves.
    Though I’m technically an adult, at least in the Jinn world, my childish response is to duck behind the cushions again.
    â€œAzra!” My mom enters the room with a bowl so full of chips that she needs to levitate the top ones to prevent them from cascading over the side. “It’s freezing. What are you doing with that window open?”
    Henry’s still standing there when I shut the window. I turn around to see a bottle of wine hovering above the coffee table.
    â€œCare for a glass?” Samara says.
    Four wineglasses swoop into the room, landing underneath the bottle of wine just as the cork shoots out of the neck. The red liquid flows in an arc into the suspended stemware.
    I grab a curtain in each hand and draw the fabric over the front windows.
    It’s a normal Saturday in the Nadira household.

 
    6
    Wine is delicious.
    Samara persuades my mother to allow Laila and I half a glass each, a small indulgence to celebrate my entry into Jinn adulthood. She presses my mother on why human rules should apply. “It’s bad enough they have to go to their schools, why should they have to do everything like them?”
    This marks the first thing I have no objections to all day.
    Traditionally, along with sweets, Jinn love alcohol. My mother has never allowed me a single taste before today. By the time I finish my glass, I have an inkling why. The warmth of my cheeks penetrates my whole body. It’s like apping in place. Which, apparently, I’m not allowed to do.
    â€œNo apporting,” my mother says.
    I make a face. Normal high school kids get the lecture about not drinking and driving.
    â€œI’m serious, Azra,” my mother says. “I gave in, at least do what I ask, okay?”
    I mumble a “fine” and lick the last red droplet clinging to the rim of my glass. Laila places her own empty glass on the table. She drank as fast as I did.
    The knock on the door prevents me from angling for a refill.
    Laila climbs across my lap and scrambles over the arm of the sofa. She seizes the doorknob but doesn’t turn it. Instead she waves me over with her free hand. “Come on, Az. Let’s open it together.”
    The alcohol appears to have dulled my groan reflex. If my mother knew that, she’d probably change her tune and make me use wine instead of milk in my morning cereal.
    Positioning myself by the door, I let Laila fling it wide open. I stumble back when, instead of the members of our soon-to-be Zar, before me stands Henry holding a string in his hand. I follow the string up to the balloon it’s tied to, the balloon that reads, “Happy Sweet Sixteen!”
    Ah, Henry doesn’t know that for me, the only thing sweet about turning sixteen is the slowly digesting wine in my stomach.
    Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck prickles, and my “thank you” lodges in my throat. The room hums with static electricity. Thanks to Yasmin and Hana’s earlier visits, I know exactly what this means. Laila begins to move out from behind the open door, but I shove her aside in the same instant that a glass shatters behind me.
    Samara’s shrill voice cries, “Azra, app, appi—”
    I’m already launching myself out the front door. I collide with Henry just as eight assorted Jinn materialize out of thin air in my living room. I slam the door shut and pry myself off of Henry’s chest. I search his eyes, whose same greenish hue as Jenny’s leaves me momentarily speechless, for any sign that he caught a