S. K. Ali - Misfit in Love

Misfit in Love

S. K. Ali

Author of Saints and Misfits and Love from A to Z

Also by S. K. Ali

Saints and Misfits

Love from A to Z

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text 2021 by Sajidah Kutty

Jacket illustration 2021 by Mary Kate McDevitt

Jacket design by Lucy Ruth Cummins 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Interior design by Tom Daly

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ali, S. K., author.

Title: Misfit in love / S.K. Ali.

Description: First edition. | New York : Salaam Reads, [2021] | Series: A Saints and misfits novel ; vol 2 | Audience: Ages 14 up. | Audience: Grades 1012. | Summary: Janna Yusuf and her friends are planning for her brothers nikah. But what started as a simple marriage ceremony is turning into the biggest event of the summerand a chance for Janna to finally reveal her crush or so she thinks Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020038920 (print) | LCCN 2020038921 (ebook) | ISBN 9781534442757 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534442771 (ebook)

Subjects: CYAC: WeddingsFiction. | Family lifeFiction. | MuslimsUnited StatesFiction. | LoveFiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A436 Mis 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.A436 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038920

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038921

A Land Called Paradise and Hold On

Words and Music by Kareem Salama

Copyright 2004 Kareem Salama

All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission of Kareem Salama

To my daughter, Bili, because I love you, and because you love weddings

Bismillahi rahmani araheem

The honor of your presence is requested at

the marriage of

Sarah Iman Mahmoud

and

Muhammad Ibrahim Yusuf

Saturday, the seventeenth of July,

at five thirty in the evening

At the residence of Haroon Sultan Yusuf

700 Lakeview Road

Mystic Lake, Indiana

The couple requests donations

to Islamic Relief USA

in lieu of gifts

THURSDAY, JULY 15

WEDDING PREP DAY

To do:

• Chill while waiting for Nuah to arrive tomorrow
• Go meet Mom at her hotel

Im in the water. Floating on my back, staring at the bluest sky there must have ever been in the history of blue skies.

My burkini, almost all four yards of it, swells up around me and serves as a flotation device. Im buoyed, butsecret smileits not only because of the burkini.

Nuahs coming tomorrowfor the entire weekend.

And I have a plan.

Now that Im finished with school and will be starting college in the fall, Im ready to actually tell Nuah that that well, I guess, that we can be a thing? I dont know what else to call it when you say yes, I like you back to someone like Nuah, whos interested in me, but also interested in following Islam.

Which means there are rulesbut the rules will still lead to us being together.

I spread my arms out in the lake and let my secret smile take over my face, remembering the words of the scholar and spiritual poet Rumi.

Rumi said, Only from the heart can you touch the sky, I tell the sky, my eyes probing the blue expanse, my left hand pulling up my burkini pants, which are beginning to ride low again, their waistline weathered from overuse. And I believe him.

Janna, are you talking to yourself again?

I dont need to lift my head to know that its my brother Muhammad. And that hes on the dock, throwing our two little half brothers into the lake, one by one, each time they scramble back onto the dock in turn saying, Again!

Hes giddy, my big brother.

In exactly two days hes getting married to the love of his life, Sarah. And its all happening on the grounds of this lakeside estate house right here that Dad bought and renovated last summer in grand fashion.

I mean, theres even a perfect white gazebo by the water. Dad had wanted it to be his wife Lindas sanctuary spacewith white couches and some kind of tulle hanging off the entire structure, doing double duty as a practical mosquito net and an ethereal fantasy thing.

But Linda is more of a chasing-after-the-kids-in-her-leggings person, so the gazebo is a neglected thing of beauty, lying in wait for its moment to shine.

That moment began a week ago when white-overalled workers descended on the gazebo to perk it up. Remove the couches, dismantle the net, give it a fresh coat of paint, fix the trellis roof.

This weekend everyone Muhammad knows, and I mean everyone, is driving up either three hours from Eastspring, our hometown, or an hour down from Chicago to see Muhammad and Sarahs relationship get solemnized in that gleaming white gazebo.

Its THE wedding of the Muslim community round these parts.

Wedding preparations have been going on for weeks now, led by Dad and Muhammad, as Sarah is scrambling to finish a masters degree and her family is throwing an official reception of their own next year.

But this event here by the lake is going to be a monstrous affair, and its kind of unnerving. I cant even move around Dads place without bumping into strangers measuring distances or erecting beams or looking me up and down as I flop around in my (signature) ripped, faded, slouchy clothes.

Big Fat Muslim Wedding is on everyones lips. Like three-hundred-guests bigwhich is huge for being a private wedding in Dads backyard.