Love from A to Z(5)

Mom and Dad looked at each other and exchanged weird expressions, in between amusement and disbelief. Then Mom spoke. “The only flight you can take has a layover in London. I’m a bit worried about that.”

“Mom, all I have to do is get out of the plane and wait in the airport for another one. Please?”

She turned to Dad. “Well, it is just two hours. Not a long wait, really.”

He nodded.

I couldn’t stop myself from jumping up. I went to stand in front of them, my arms open slightly, a hug cue.

They took it, enveloping me in forgiveness. Mom spoke into my hair. “When we come back from Doha, you’ll only have a couple of months of school left. Can you promise us you’ll do your best until the end?”

I nodded. Everyone has a different definition of what “doing your best” means. For Mom and Dad, it means not rocking any boats.

For me it means fixing things that are wrong.

Dad let the hug go first, but it was to address me. “Going away on your own often changes you. Maybe this bit of time in Doha is just what you need.”

“I’m going to try to leave the angry part of me here for the next two weeks,” I said, turning back to the suitcase.

When I glanced up, Mom and Dad were exchanging looks again, so I felt the need to emphasize my commitment to calm. “I promise you I won’t cause any more ruckuses. Anyway, it’ll be easier, with less rude people around me.”

? ? ?

The less-rude-people thing hasn’t worked out.

Exhibit A: The hateful woman I’m stuck next to on the plane.

We’ve been in the air just under two hours, and this woman has made me get up from my seat four times already. I’ve been writing in you, Marvels and Oddities journal, on and off since the plane took off, and she won’t stop peering at my words.

I promised Mom and Dad I wouldn’t make a scene, so I’ve kept my responses limited to unrelenting smiles, but now . . . I think it’s time to get to her.

So to really freak her out, here, journal, have some Arabic words, written nice and big.





MARVEL: AIR


Air, as in what I’m flying through. Well, the plane I’m sitting on is flying through. Air.

(Also, air holds the cellular signals that will allow further communication between Kavi, Ayaan, and me. So that we can plot Mr. Fencer’s takedown.)



Oops, that went into oddities territory there.





ADAM


THURSDAY, MARCH 7


MARVEL: TOUCH


SINCE I STOPPED GOING TO classes two months ago, my dorm has gotten crowded.

It’s a good thing my roommate, Jarred, is practically never here. I mean it’s a good thing his girlfriend has her own place.

The tools are on my side, spread across my desk mostly, but somehow the things I make end up on his desk while they wait to be finished.

Jarred’s desk currently holds a working clock made out of an old marble chessboard, with chess pieces for numbers, awaiting another coat of sealant. A plastic-robot phone-charger station awaiting wiring. A tiny Canada goose, midflight, glued together from bits of discarded wood chips, awaiting painting. Several parts of a foam Boba Fett helmet awaiting assembly.

Also awaiting assembly: a gift for my sister, Hanna.

Yesterday I took the thin pieces of grooved balsa wood and fit them together in a grid pattern inside the box I’d already made. As the square compartments revealed themselves, smooth and flush without any screws or nails, I thought about touch.

I thought about how, without the ability to feel the wood, the plastic, the foam, the metal, without the sensation I get when I clasp the ryoba saw and the jolt from snipping a thick wire or the hum that goes through my fingers when I’m sanding, without all this I wouldn’t have anything, wouldn’t be happy.

I like that I still have the ability to touch. And that I can use it to make stuff.

So, since January, since second term started, I’ve just been making things.

I’ve dropped out of school.

I don’t want to run out of time.

? ? ?

Speaking of touch, I haven’t had a voluntary human touch in a long time. A real one, I mean.

In September, I hugged Dad and my little sister, Hanna, at the airport before leaving for London.

The last I-love-you touch.

Technically, you could say, what about on Fridays, Adam? At the mosque, after prayers, when everyone says salaam and hugs one another, you included?

Those hugs are cursory. They don’t go much beyond the shoulder-slam, hey-I-see-you-bro.

There’s another kind of touch: the kind kind. It means a lot—well, to someone who craves it.

I crave it. I haven’t stopped thinking about how much since I realized how long it’s been.

It was the tick marks above my bed, underneath the bunk on top of mine, that got me thinking about when I’d last extended my hand to anyone. Or anyone extended their hand to me.

Someone who lived in the dorm before me had recorded their days at university like a prison sentence, carving into the wooden slats under Jarred’s bed, and, one night a week ago, reaching up to run a finger over the tallies, I touched the gnawing in me.

I realized it had worked its way around inside, gouging, for a while.

It must be a hole I’ve carried since the start of freshman year. (Though sometimes I wonder if it carried over from years before that.)