The house wasn't big.
Just a narrow one-story tucked between hibiscus trees and sunburned fences, the kind of place where everybody's windows stayed open, and someone's radio was always playing too loud.
Inside, it smelled like rice, clean laundry, and coconut oil. Outside, the street hummed with scooters, dogs, and kids whose laughter ran faster than their feet.
Aya was one of them, barefoot, wild-haired, forever running toward the next sound of joy. She lived for the pulse of it: the slam of a screen door, the splash of a bucket, the faraway clang of the ice cream cart bell that made every child on the block sprint like survival depended on it.
Her world was warm and wide.
"Baby, hold the bowl for me," Mama said one afternoon, her voice soft but firm.
Aya held it steady, the spoon clinking against the metal rim as she mixed flour and sugar for the banana fritters that meant it was Sunday.
Mama always cooked with rhythm, hand on hip, wrist flicking quick as a dance.
"Can I taste it ?"
"Not yet."
"Please?"
"You'll eat half the batter again, mon poussin."
Aya grinned, tongue out, already sneaking a fingerful when Mama turned her back.
Her father—Papa to everyone, Abdu to no one but his friends, walked in just then, carrying the faint smell of rain on his shirt.
"Who's stealing the batter?"
Aya froze.
He looked at her, mock stern. "Not my little helper, I hope?"
She giggled, batter on her chin. "It wasn't me."
He crouched down, tapped her nose with a flour-dusted finger. "Ah, liar-liar fritter fryer."
She laughed until her stomach hurt.
That was childhood. Laughter, oil popping, cicadas screaming in the trees.
Every day a small golden movie.
When she wasn't helping in the kitchen, she was outside, riding her brother Rayan's old bike, too tall for her but perfect anyway, wind roaring in her ears. The island roads smelled like sugarcane and dust. Sometimes she'd race the wind until her eyes watered and her curls whipped into her mouth.
"Slow down, Aya!" her sister Sara yelled from the porch.
"Can't! I'm flying!" Aya shouted back.
And for a second, she really believed she was.
At night, when everyone else was busy talking or watching TV, Aya would sneak out to the balcony and talk to the moon. She didn't have the words for it then, but she always felt like the moon was listening. She told it about the things she couldn't say at the dinner table—how she wanted to grow up fast, how she wanted Mama to stop calling her baby, how sometimes she wished the world would stay exactly this soft forever.
The moon never answered, but it always stayed.
Then came the day the baby arrived. Sami, the tiny raisin with curls like hers and fists like thunder. Aya watched from the doorway, holding Mama's scarf to her face, trying not to cry from excitement. Everyone hovered. Everyone cooed.
And for the first time, Aya didn't know where to stand.
At first, she felt proud. She told everyone she was a big sister now. She kissed his forehead like a ritual. But as the days passed, she noticed how quiet her name sounded in the house. How Mama's arms were always full. How her chair at the table sometimes stayed empty because she'd gone to fetch diapers or hold the bottle.
She didn't hate the baby. She just missed being needed.
So she became Mama's shadow, her helper, her echo.
She fetched towels, folded clothes, learned the rhythm of care before she even learned division.
Sometimes, when Sami cried too long and Mama looked tired, Aya would hum softly beside the crib, whispering, "Shh, ti frère, Mama's here. I'm here."
And she was. Always.
That was Aya's first lesson in love: not the movie kind, not the fairytale, but the kind that meant showing up even when nobody clapped for you.