Darius the Great Is Not Okay(17)

“Um. Okay. Mom?”

Mom called to Dad, who hadn’t noticed I’d been stopped. She tried to follow me, dragging Laleh, who skidded across the tile floor on her rubber soles, but the officer held up his hand, careful not to touch her.

“Only him.”

I wondered what I had done that made him single me out.

I wondered what made me such a target.

I wondered what it was he wanted.

Mom said something in Farsi, and the officer answered, but again, it was too fast for me to make anything out. Not that I could have made out much, unless they were talking about food.

Customs Officer II shook his head, took me by the elbow, and led me away.



* * *





There is an episode in the sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Chain of Command.”

Actually, it’s a two-part episode, so it’s “Chain of Command, Parts I & II.” In it, Captain Picard gets captured by Cardassians at the end of Part I, and spends most of Part II getting interrogated and tortured. The interrogator, Gul Madred, shines four lights in Captain Picard’s face and keeps asking how many there are.

Every time, Captain Picard answers “four,” but Gul Madred tries to break him by insisting there are five.

Customs Officer II led me to a small room.

There were four fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

When he sat down behind a large wood-grained desk—the kind where it was obviously not made of wood, but covered with something that looked like it—my heart thundered.

Unlike Customs Officer I, Customs Officer II did have the full and resplendent beard of a True Persian.

“Passport?”

His voice was deep, crisp, and heavy.

I dug through my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag, wishing again for my old backpack, my fingers fumbling for the passport I had slid inside only a few minutes before.

“Why are you in Iran?”

“Visiting my family,” I said. “My grandfather has a brain tumor.”

Customs Officer II nodded and wrote something down. He didn’t look particularly sorry about my grandfather’s brain tumor.

There was a dark window behind his seat—one of those windows that you can see through from only one direction.

I didn’t get why they were called two-way mirrors when they were really one-way windows.

“How long are you here for?”

“Um. Leaving April third.”

“You have your papers? Airline tickets?”

I swallowed. “My dad has everything.”

“Where is your father?”

“Outside.” I hoped.

I assumed Mom had stopped him, but it would not be the first time Stephen Kellner had accidentally left me behind.

Mom still liked to tell the story of my first real trip to the grocery store. Apparently I managed to climb out of the shopping cart on my own and start wandering the aisles, and Dad didn’t realize I wasn’t sitting in the cart until he reached the cash register.

I scratched my ear. Customs Officer II was still writing. I couldn’t read Farsi at all, not even food words, but it made me nervous.

There were four lights.

“What is in your bag?”

I was so nervous, I dropped it.

“Sorry. Um. It’s my homework. For school. And a book. And my medicine.”

He opened and closed his hand, gesturing for me to hand it over. I picked the messenger bag off the floor and passed it to him. He dug through it, pulling out my school papers and The Lord of the Rings.

He thumbed through The Lord of the Rings for a minute and then tossed it aside, digging deeper until he pulled out my little orange child-proof medicine bottle.

“You have prescription?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Um. At home. It’s written on the bottle.”

“What is this for?”

“Depression.”

“That’s all it’s for? What are you depressed about?”

My ears burned. I glanced up at the four lights and hoped I wasn’t going to be chained to the ceiling and stripped naked.

I hated that question: What are you depressed about? Because the answer was nothing.

I had nothing to be depressed about. Nothing really bad had ever happened to me.

I felt so inadequate.

Dad told me I couldn’t help my brain chemistry any more than I could help having brown eyes. Dr. Howell always told me not to be ashamed.

But moments like this made it hard not to be.

“Nothing,” I said. “My brain just makes the wrong chemicals is all.”

“Probably your diet,” Customs Officer II said. He looked me up and down. “Too many sweets.”

I swallowed away the sand in my throat. My ears burned hotter than a matter/antimatter reaction chamber.

Customs Officer II pointed at the Kellner & Newton logo stitched onto the corner of my messenger bag’s front flap. “What is this?”

“Um. My dad’s company. He and his partner are architects.”

Customs Officer II’s eyebrows shot up. “Architects?”

“Yes.”

And then he smiled, a smile so big and bright, it was like the room really did have five lights.

It was the most stunning (and alarming) transformation I had ever witnessed.