ALMOST US

Chapter One — The Boy I Was Looking For

I was eight years old when our families first became connected.

Not because of me.

Not because of Kadon.

Because of our families.

My dad knew Kadon’s older brother through business, and over the years, they became close. Their families knew each other, their businesses connected them, and somehow our lives were already crossing before either of us really understood it.

Kadon came from a huge family.

And when I say huge, I meanhuge.

He had twelve older siblings.

Twelve.

Even now, that number sounds crazy to me.

But at eight years old, none of this meant anything.

Adults were always talking about people I didn’t know.

Someone’s brother.

Someone’s business partner.

Someone’s family.

I’d hear names once and forget them five minutes later.

I didn’t know their children.

I didn’t know there was a boy named Kadon.

And I definitely didn’t know that one day I’d remember ridiculous little details about him better than I remembered entire years of my life.

Back then, the only friendship that really mattered to me was with Kiana.

She was my person.

The friend I actually cared about seeing at school. The one I had stories to tell. The one whose name didn’t disappear from my head after five minutes.

So the Alhafek family?

They were just people my dad knew.

AndSagonlawas just the name of their family business.

Life continued normally.

Until years later.

I was twelve when my dad mentioned the Alhafek family again.

By then, I was old enough to actually listen.

He told me their children went to my school.

“Try to find them,” he told me. “Become friends with them.”

Easy enough.

Except there was one tiny problem.

I had absolutely no idea who I was looking for.

No picture.

No classroom.

No face.

Nothing.

And considering there were thirteen siblings in that family, “find them” wasn’t exactly the most specific instruction my dad could’ve given me.

All I really had was a surname.

Alhafek.

And the connection to their family business.

Sagonla.

So suddenly, school became a search.

I’d walk through the hallways and look at people differently.

Could it be him?

Could that be one of them?

Obviously, I wasn’t walking around interrogating every student about their family business.

Although, considering what I eventually did to Kadon, maybe I wasn’t that far from it.

Eventually, I started hearing things.

There was a Syrian family at the school.

That caught my attention.

Could it be them?

Then I found out there was a Syrian boy in my art class.

His name was Kadon.

I’d seen him before.

Of course I had.

When you go to the same school as someone, you recognize faces even when you don’t actually know the people behind them.

We weren’t classmates, but we crossed paths in the hallways and shared art class.

He had brown hair.

Curly.

Brown eyes.

He was quiet.

Shy.

Not someone who walked into a room demanding everyone’s attention.

And as far as I knew, he was just some random boy in my art class.

What I didn’t know was that Kadon already knew exactly whoIwas.

I was the clueless one.

One day during art class, I finally decided to ask him.

I walked over.

“Are you Syrian?”

His face immediately changed.

And that was something I’d eventually learn about Kadon.

His face could never hide anything.

His expressions always gave him away before his words did.

But back then, I didn’t know him well enough to understand them.

He looked nervous.

“No.”

Then he tried changing the subject.

I stood there confused.

Okay...

That wasn’t the answer I’d expected.

I’d heard he was Syrian.

Why would he lie about it?

For a second, I wondered if I’d gotten the wrong person and had just walked up to some random boy asking about his nationality.

Great.

Very smooth, Amoura.

But something about his reaction made me ask again.

Eventually, he admitted it.

“Yes.”

Okay.

One piece matched.

Now I needed the important part.

“Is your family… Sagonla?”

He looked at me.

“Yes.”

I froze.

Wait.

There was no way.

I’d actually found him?

“Is your father Sagonla?”

He said yes.

My brain was moving faster than the conversation.

This was the family my dad had been talking about.

This entire time, one of them had literally been sitting in my art class.

But before I could even fully process that, Kadon said something that confused me even more.

He already knew whomyfamily was.

“Your dad is Majlesi, right?”

I stared at him.

“What?”

He knew?

I had spent all this time trying to find this mysterious family while one of them had apparently been walking around school already knowing exactly who I was.

For some reason, that felt almost unfair.

You knew this whole time?

I got ridiculously excited.

I’d done it.

I’d actually found them.

Or, more specifically—

I’d foundhim.

After that, Kadon and I became casual friends.

And when I say casual, I mean casual.

There was no secret love story happening at twelve.

No dramatic staring across classrooms.

No butterflies.

NoI knew from the moment I saw him.

Nothing.

We were kids.

We’d talk sometimes.

See each other at school.

Have normal conversations.

Maybe say hi when we passed each other.

He was shy.

Quiet.

And honestly, at that point, he was simply the boy whose family my dad knew.

But there is one memory from that time that stayed with me.

I wasn’t feeling good one day.

I don’t even remember exactly what was wrong anymore.

That’s the strange thing about memories.

Sometimes you forget the problem completely but remember the person who noticed.

Kadon noticed.

And he bought me chocolate.

That was it.

No huge speech.

No dramatic moment.

Just chocolate.

At twelve, I didn’t attach some enormous meaning to it.

I didn’t go home and write his name in a diary.

I didn’t think:

This boy is going to become important to me.

I probably ate the chocolate and continued my day.

But years later, out of everything that happened during that period of my life, I still remembered it.

Maybe because kindness is strange like that.

You don’t always know which small thing you’re doing is going to stay in somebody else’s memory.

To me, he was still just Kadon.

The shy boy from art class.

The boy with the curly brown hair and the expressive face.

The family friend I’d finally managed to find.

And then, almost as quickly as I’d found him—

he disappeared.

Kadon changed schools.

At first, it didn’t feel dramatic.

People changed schools all the time.

And we weren’t best friends.

We weren’t even close enough for me to think I was losing someone.

I probably assumed we’d somehow see each other again.

Our families knew each other, after all.

But days became weeks.

Weeks became months.

And eventually, Kadon became someone I used to know.

I didn’t have his phone number.

I didn’t have his address.

I didn’t have his social media.

There was no Instagram account sitting in my following list that I could message whenever I wanted.

There was nothing connecting twelve-year-old me directly to him.

All I had was what I’d known from the beginning.

His name.

Kadon.

His surname.

Alhafek.

And one connection between our families.

Sagonla.

Life moved on.

So did I.

Three years passed.

Three years sounds short when you say it quickly.

But between twelve and fifteen?

Three years can turn you into a completely different person.

By fifteen, I wasn’t the same girl who had walked up to a nervous boy in art class and asked if he was Syrian.

My brown hair was still curly, although I didn’t always wear it that way.

I had become obsessed with fashion.

Makeup.

Music.

Shopping.

I knew exactly which colors I liked—burgundy above almost everything else.

I loved autumn more than summer.

Red roses more than almost any other flower.

Candles scattered around my room.

Steak.

Ice cream.

Formula 1.

And for some reason, wolves had become my favorite animal.

I had grown into myself.

But I’d changed in ways that weren’t visible too.

Life had happened.

I’d met people.

Lost people.

Trusted people I probably shouldn’t have trusted.

And somewhere along the way, I’d learned something about myself.

When I liked someone, I didn’t know how to like them halfway.

Friendship or something more—it didn’t really matter.

If I cared about someone, I gave them everything.

My time.

My attention.

My loyalty.

Maybe that was a good thing.

Maybe it wasn’t.

At fifteen, I hadn’t decided yet.

I just knew I cared deeply.

And somewhere during those three years, Kadon became nothing more than one of those random people from my past.

Sometimes a person would remind me of him.

Sometimes his name would come up through our families.

And I’d remember:

Oh, yeah. Kadon.

The boy from art class.

The boy who bought me chocolate once.

The boy whose family knew mine.

And then I’d continue with whatever I was doing.

I never wondered where he was at night.

Never wondered what he looked like now.

Never wondered whether he remembered me.

I certainly wasn’t waiting for him to come back.

As far as I was concerned, that part of my life had ended quietly.

No goodbye.

No fight.

No heartbreak.

We’d simply become strangers.

Then cameMarch 18th.

I was at my dad’s store, going through another completely ordinary day.

I wasn’t thinking about twelve-year-old me.

I wasn’t thinking about art class.

And I definitely wasn’t thinking about Kadon.

Then the door opened.

Someone walked inside.

I looked up.

A tall boy.

Brown eyes.

Brown curly hair.

Older.

Handsome.

And one of the first things I noticed was his face.

There was something expressive about it.

The kind of face that looked like it could tell you what he was thinking before he even opened his mouth.

Exactly the kind of thing I noticed in a boy.

I looked at him the same way I’d look at anyone else walking into the store.

Because despite everything I had once known about him—

I had absolutely no idea who I was looking at.