Darius the Great Is Not Okay(12)

“Thanks.”



* * *





Mom ordered pizza for dinner, to avoid having a big mess to clean up before we left. It was a thin crust, half pepperoni, half pineapple.

Laleh loved pineapple on her pizza.

Normally, I was thrilled to get pizza—it was pretty much the best dietary indiscretion ever—but I could feel Dad watching me at every bite, flaring his nostrils.

First I had refused to cut my hair, and now I was eating pizza.

And there weren’t even any vegetables on it.

Laleh told us how her teacher had googled pictures of Iran to show the class where Laleh was going, which I thought was pretty cool.

“How about your day, Darius?” Mom asked.

“It was okay.”

“How were your classes?”

“Um. Econ was okay. Gym was okay.” I didn’t want to get into being called a terrorist. “You heard about my backpack.”

“What happened to your backpack?” Laleh asked.

“Uh. It broke.”

“How?”

“Chip Cusumano broke it when he pulled on it too hard.”

“That was rude!”

Dad huffed. Mom glared at him.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Maybe if you . . .” Dad began, but Mom cut him off.

“We’ll get you a new one when we get home. But your dad has a bag you can borrow. Right?”

Dad looked at Mom. It was like they were exchanging telepathic messages.

“Right. Sure.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to borrow anything of Stephen Kellner’s.

But I didn’t have much choice.



* * *





We didn’t watch The Next Generation that night. There wasn’t time, with all the packing.

Besides, Star Trek was when we acted like we were a real father and son.

Neither of us felt like acting that night.

I was folding up my boxers when Mom hollered that Mamou and Babou were on Skype.

“Mamou, Babou,” Mom said. “Darioush is here.”

Mom did that sometimes: call me Darioush instead of Darius.

Darioush is the original Persian version of the name Darius.

I had made it my Priority One Goal in life never to let Trent Bolger, or any of his Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy, learn the Persian pronunciation of my name, which is Darr-yoosh.

It was an even more imperative goal, now that I was D-Bag.

The opportunities for rhyming were too gruesome to consider.

I squeezed myself into frame, looming over Mom’s shoulder. Mamou and Babou were squeezed next to each other in two seats. Babou sat back a bit, looking at the monitor over the rim of his glasses.

“Hi, maman!” Mamou said. Her smile looked ready to burst through the screen. “I’m so happy to see you soon.”

“Me too. Um. Do you need anything from Portland?”

“No, thank you. Just you come.”

“Okay. Hi, Babou.”

“Hello, baba,” my grandfather said. His voice was gravelly, and his accent was heavier than Mamou’s. “Soon you will be here.”

“Yeah. Um. Yeah.”

Babou blinked at me. He didn’t smile, not really, but he didn’t frown either.

This is how most of my conversations with Babou went.

We didn’t know how to talk to each other.

I studied my grandfather in the monitor. He didn’t look any different. He had the same severe eyebrows, the mustache that quivered when he spoke, the distinguished Picard Crescent (though his was a bit fluffier, since his hair was curly like mine).

But according to Mom and Dad, he was dying.

I didn’t know how to talk about that. About how sad I was. About how bad I felt.

And I didn’t know how to tell him I was excited to finally meet him either.

I mean, you can’t just tell your own grandfather “Nice to meet you.”

I had his blood in me. His and Mamou’s. They weren’t strangers.

But I was about to meet them for the first time.

My chest started to clench up.

“Um.” I swallowed. “I better go finish packing.”

Babou cleared his throat. And then he said, “See you soon, Darioush.”





OLYMPUS MONS



Here’s the thing:

No one should have to wake up at three o’clock in the morning.

My phone was set to play the Enterprise’s RED ALERT sound as an alarm, but even with the klaxon going off, I wanted to pull the pillow over my head and go back to sleep.

But waking up at three in the morning wasn’t even the worst part. That was waiting for me when I looked in the mirror.

My forehead had become host to an alien parasite: the biggest pimple I’d ever had in my entire life.

It was glowing red and ominous between my eyebrows like the Eye of Sauron, lidless and wreathed in flame. It was so massive, it emitted its own gravitational field.

I was certain that, if I popped it, the implosion would suck me, my family, and our whole house into a singularity we’d never escape.

But I did pop it. I couldn’t travel with an alien organism inhabiting my face.

I swear it smelled like natural gas and pu-erh tea when it ruptured, which was weird and gross.