Darius the Great Is Not Okay(13)

I never drank pu-erh. It was the one category of tea I could never learn to love. It smelled like compost and tasted like week-old sushi, no matter how many kinds I tried or how many steepings I did.

The pimple bled for a long time. I scrubbed at its remains in the shower with my oil-control acne-fighting face wash, and my forehead was still stinging as I got dressed.

Without my backpack, I had to use one of Dad’s messenger bags from work as my carry-on, or “personal item.”

Like I said, I didn’t understand the point and purpose of messenger bags. The one Dad lent me had his company logo on it: a stylized K and a stylized N, made out of scale rules and T-squares and drafting pencils, even though Kellner & Newton had been entirely digital since before I was born.

I’d packed my suitcase the night before, but I had left the Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag for the morning. That was a mistake.

Stephen Kellner of Kellner & Newton was not very pleasant at 3:30 in the morning. Especially since he was clearly still mad at me.

“Darius.” He poked his head in my room. “We’ve got to go in thirty minutes. Why are you still packing?”

“It’s just my carry-on. I’ll be ready.”

“Don’t forget your passport. Or your meds.”

I had already checked five different times that my passport was in the front pocket of the Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag. And I’d checked my meds three times.

I said, “I got it, Dad.”

It was hard to fit books into the messenger bag. My backpack, of blessed memory, could fit four schoolbooks in it, but the Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag was clearly designed for product placement and not storage capacity. I was only able to squeeze one book in, sandwiched between the packets of homework I planned to do on the plane.

I chose The Lord of the Rings, since I hadn’t read it in over a year, and it was long enough to last me a good portion of the trip.

I also had to fit in a pyramid tin from Rose City Teas: some loose leaf FTGFOP1 First Flush Darjeeling I bought as a gift for Mamou. It had this sort of fruity, floral scent, but the taste was smooth.

FTGFOP means Finest Tippy Golden Flowering Orange Pekoe, which is the highest grade of tea leaf, and the “1” means the very best of the FTGFOP leaves.

Mr. Apatan got mad if I ever mentioned tea grading at Tea Haven. He said it was “elitist.”

I really hoped Mamou would like the tea. Persians are notoriously picky about their tea—like I said, I had to keep the ingredients in genmaicha a secret from my own mother—but I couldn’t think of anything else that would make a nice enough gift.

It was hard to shop for someone I barely knew, even if it was my own grandmother.

“Darius!” Dad bellowed from downstairs.

“Coming!”



* * *





My sister did not function well at 4:30 in the morning, which is when we pulled into the parking garage at Portland International Airport.

I was grateful—grudgingly—for the Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag, because I was able to sling it in front of me and carry my sister piggyback through the airport until we reached security, while Mom and Dad pulled our luggage. It was windy, and Laleh’s fine hair kept blowing into my mouth. It smelled like strawberries, because of her shampoo, but it did not taste like strawberries at all.

“You got her?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“Okay.” Dad glanced at Laleh’s sleeping face for a moment and then back at me. “Thanks, Darius.”

“Sure.”

The woman in front of us at the TSA Security Checkpoint was wearing knee-high combat boots. Who wears knee-high combat boots on an airplane? They were black leather, with steel toes and acid-green laces that ran from ankle to bony kneecap, where they ended in neon bunny ears.

Combat Boot Lady wore a too-large Seattle Seahawks jersey and a pair of sweat shorts, which I felt somehow explained everything.

The combat boots were too large for the gray plastic tubs, so Combat Boot Lady tossed them onto the conveyer belt behind her bin of less than 3.4 ounces of fluids (in a clear plastic bag) and stepped through the backscatter X-ray chamber.

The TSA agent at the scanner yawned and stretched so hard, I thought the buttons would pop off his uniform and fly everywhere. I could smell his coffee breath from the other side of the line.

He scratched his nose and nodded at Combat Boot Lady.

“Laleh.” I jiggled her legs up and down where they rested in my elbows. “Time to wake up.”

“I’m tired,” Laleh said, but she let me put her down. She was still in her pajamas, except for her little white tennis shoes.

My sister had the cleanest white tennis shoes of any eight-year-old ever. I didn’t know how she kept them so pristine.

“We can sleep on the plane. But you have to go through the scanner first.”

I tossed my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag on the conveyer belt, double-checked all my pockets, and waited for Laleh to get the all-clear so I could take my turn in the scanner.

I stood with my arms above my head and had to resist saying “Energize!”

I felt like I was on a transporter pad, except no one ever had to hold their hands above their head for three seconds on the Enterprise.

I was “randomly selected” for an enhanced screening after that, even though my messenger bag had nothing liquid, gel, or aerosol in it.