Chapter 1

KHAATOOOO!

There was a big puddle of spit on my little brother’s forehead.

It was mine. But, PHEW, he was still sleeping.

Let me tell you what happened: I had been in my bed, attempting to have a good night’s sleep, when suddenly I was being chased through the playground by a teacher who had GREEN SLIME OOZING out of his ears and slugs for fingernails! It was a dream. A BAD dream, of course. When I woke up, I was extremely happy that I wasn’t about to be a monster’s dinner. I breathed slowly to get my heartbeat back to normal, instead of like it was on a TRAMPOLINE. I remembered that my mom told me to spit toward my shoulder three times if I have a nightmare. That’s supposed to get rid of SHAYTAN, who is the uglyhead who causes bad dreams.

I REALLY wanted to get rid of Shaytan! So I conjured up a bucketful of spit in my mouth and SHOT it out over my left shoulder. THAT’LL TEACH HIM!

I just hoped it would dry before morning so nobody would know I’d spat on my little brother by accident.

I put my head back on the pillow for an eighth of a second, but then I heard a really loud and really annoying sound. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!

(See? VERY loud and VERY annoying.)

It was Esa. I guess he’d noticed the spit ball after all and wasn’t impressed. 

Mom appeared at the door to our room in her pajamas, looking all bleary-eyed. 

She said, “What’s the matter, Esa?”

Esa was still busy wailing, so I said, “Spit ball.”

“Not again, Omar!”

“WAAAAAAAAAA!”

I covered my head with the pillow.

Then Dad came in saying that it would be nice if we could have AT LEAST 1 NIGHT in the week where poor Esa isn’t woken up by my SHENANIGANS. I asked him what that means for the BILLIONTH time. He rolled his eyes for the BILLIONTH time.

I heard my big sister, Maryam, growling in her room. (She definitely doesn’t like mornings very much.) 

Mom said it was almost Fajr time anyway. I wondered if Allah was going to give me a reward for waking them up for Fajr.

Chapter 2

The reason I had been having bad dreams, especially bad dreams about teachers, was because I was going to be starting at a new school. This made me feel like there were SNAKES IN MY TUMMY and some of them were sneaking up and squeezing my heart. I don’t like things to change. It would be so much more convenient and better for everybody if things always just stayed the same.

Take my pajamas, for example. They are utterly comfortable pajamas, which have somehow molded their shape to my body and become my second skin. A weird second skin that I can take off and put on, like some kind of cool human lizard. My mom tried to throw them away and make me wear crispy pajamas that DON’T EVEN HAVE DINOSAURS ON THEM.

This is change. It’s super annoying. 

One big, fat, huge change had already happened to me. We had to move, which is the reason I had to start at a new school. All this happened because Mom got her DREAM JOB. When she told me, I couldn’t help wondering what she meant exactly by DREAM JOB. Did it mean that adults have super-boring dreams all about jobs? If that was true, I wasn’t looking forward to being an adult, because at the moment I dream about fun stuff, like being on a ROLLER COASTER that turns into a FLYING PIG. Sometimes, they’re even better than movies! Well, apart from the scary ones that make me feel really lucky when I wake up and realize they’re not for real.

So, anyway, the job that Mom must have dreamed about all the time was too far from where we lived before, so we had to move. The moving bit was VERY, VERY, X 100 ANNOYING because Dad said I couldn’t put all the 1,267 important things from my room in the boxes to take to the new house. He didn’t actually count my things, but he likes to say exact numbers when he is talking so he can sound smart. He said I had to choose the ones I love most and give the rest to charity. 

Why didn’t he understand that I LOVE THEM ALL?

But then he said he would be very proud of me if I could choose, because I would have done better than Mom, who had already packed lots of what Dad called “boxes of hoarded goods.” I like Dad being proud of me (especially because it normally means PASTRIES for breakfast), so I chose 56 things to take with me. I counted them really carefully so I could be precise when Dad asked (and also make sure that nobody sneakily gave anything away without me noticing).

The good news was that the new house was super, super cool. When we first saw it, Maryam and I ran straight into the backyard and whooped, because it was at least twice the size of our old one. We planned out where we could put a soccer net and Esa’s swing set, and Maryam did loads of cartwheels to prove just how massive it was. 

That was the first time we saw the little old lady who lives next door. She peeped over her fence and said, “Humph.” And she put her nose higher in the air as if she was smelling something there that she didn’t like.