Vaneh Assadourian: Jude, skety. Two. Our city does not look like what they show on TV of Syria. I remember the first time Fatima and I saw a story about Aleppo on the news. We felt proud. I know that is strange to say, childish maybe. It felt strange even then, but it also felt like the rest of the world saw me. But our city does not look like Aleppo, before or after. It is not sprawling and noisy with buildings pressed up against one another like they are crammed together in an elevator with no room to breathe. Our city is on the sea. It sits below the mountains. It is where the rest of Syria comes when they want to breathe. "No one is going to come this year," Fatima says, and I wonder if that is because there is no one left who needs to breathe?

Three. Fatima is 24 days, six hours, and 11 minutes older than me. She did the math. Fatima hates math but loves when she comes out on top. We have always been friends. Mama and aunt Amal have known each other since they were girls. We live across the courtyard from them and sometimes when I was little, I would squeeze my eyes shut at night and pretend that Fatima and I were dreaming the same dream. When I was little, it was easy to imagine that. Fatima and I were always in step, four feet pointed in the same direction, but the last few months have been different. Fatima feels kilometers ahead of me now. Her dark curls aren't on display anymore, tumbling to her shoulders in unruly waves that remind me of laughter. Her head is wrapped in silk scarves that are bright and colored like jewels. She is one of the first girls in our grade to cover. She has bled between her legs. I am still waiting to bleed, to feel like I have something worth covering.

Four. Fatima and I almost always have our asroneyeh together. Either mama makes it or auntie Amal. Fatima likes to have olives, green and black, so fat that you can stick your fingers inside of them and eat them one by one. I think olives tastes like the sea and all that salt makes me dizzy. I eat the jebneh and the bread that mama gets from Hibah's bakery around the corner because she knows it is my favorite. Hibah makes her bread as fluffy as a pillow. I eat so much of it that mama always has to remind me that asroneyeh is supposed to help me last until dinner, but is not dinner. During asroneyeh we drink tea, or Fatima drinks tea and I drink sugar and mint with a side of tea.

We watch all the American movies that we bought with our Eid and birthday money. We watch Julia Roberts fall in love and we watch Sandra Bullock track down criminals and we watch Reese Witherspoon go to law school. Fatima and I both want to be movie stars. Fatima also wants to be a doctor, but I only want to be a movie star. The wanting pulse is so hard in my chest that it sometimes hurts. My older brother Issa used to watch the movies with us. He would sometimes even act them out with us, standing up on the couch, imitating Reese's way of speaking English all slow and sugary. He used to until one day, Baba came home from work early and walked in on us acting out the movies. Baba didn't say anything, not even Jude, skety. He didn't even look at me. Only at Issa. He shook his head and walked into his bedroom.

Five. Fatima and I like to find bits and pieces of ourselves in the faces of movie stars. We have decided that Fatima has Sandra Bullock's dark eyes that are so expressive you could tell if she was laughing, even if her mouth was covered. Speaking of mouths, I have one and it is big like Julia Roberts'. At least, that's-