Almost Surely Dead

by Amina Akhtar

All New Yorkers have one giant, collective fear of being thrown on the subway tracks. That, and falling through a subway grate. But these two moments were when other New Yorkers would step in to help you. Every other time you were on your own.

“I had no choice,” my attacker said quietly, with that sad, strange smile on

his face.

There was smoke, I wanted to tell her. But I was certain I’d imagined that.

Death shouldn’t unnerve me this much; I was used to people dying around me. But this time it was different, and I couldn’t shake how it made me feel: like I hadn’t escaped, I’d only postponed things.

Because once your

family thinks you’re the source of all things wrong, you can never convince them otherwise.

It was as if guilt from generations had been piled onto me, so that her disappointment in me was the only thing that sustained me. Gave me life. I was born to be a failure.

How do you grieve someone

who hated you? I wasn’t sure how to, but I was trying.

Maybe if I sold weed, I’d have happier customers.

No one ever tells you how to get through grief, how to not let it take over your life. Because it does. Every part of your life is hit. And sometimes, just when you think you’re turning a corner, months after your loved one died, you get hit by something new all over again. It doesn’t stop. You just have to learn

how to live with it, until the pain of them not being in your life anymore becomes a dull ache.

Adnan—Nadia told me—was Jamal’s brother, but he’d died when he was born.