Darius the Great Is Not Okay(70)

“What do you want, Darioush?”

“I’m sorry,” I squeaked. That lump was still there. “What happened?”

Sohrab’s face burned like a brand-new star. I could almost hear him grinding his teeth.

“They say he was stabbed. In prison.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God.”

Sohrab’s eyes drilled into me. He jerked his chin at the countertop. “What is that?”

I swallowed and picked up the box.

“This—I got it. For you.”

Sohrab stared at me like I was speaking Klingon.

“What is it?”

“Shoes. Cleats. For football.”

“You came here to give me shoes?”

“Um.” The lump had turned into sand. I was getting squeakier by the second. “Yeah. For our game today.”

Sohrab’s eyes flashed. He smacked the shoebox out of my hands and then shoved me.

He didn’t push me hard, but I stumbled back, because I wasn’t expecting it.

I wasn’t expecting the look in his eyes.

“Get out. Go away. Leave!”

“But—”

Sohrab cut me off.

“You are so selfish. My father is dead and you come over to play football?”

Sohrab kicked the box of cleats across the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’re always sorry. God.”

My heart felt like a warp core about to lose magnetic containment and breach.

“I . . .” The sand in my throat had spread to my eyes.

“Stop crying! You’re always crying! Pedar sag. Nothing bad has ever happened to you. You do nothing but complain. You’ve never had anything to be sad about in your life.”

I couldn’t speak.

I just stood there, blinking and crying.

“Go away, Darioush,” he said.

And then he said, “No one wants you here.”

No one wants you here.

Sohrab turned and left, slamming the living room door behind him.

And then he screamed.

His voice shattered like glass.

Everything he said was true.

No one wants you here.

I knew it was true.

I stumbled out the back door.

No one wants you here.

I ran.





FIRST, BEST DESTINY



My socks crunched over gravel and concrete.

I had left my shoes at Sohrab’s house.

I couldn’t go back for them.

And I couldn’t go back to Mamou’s either.

I just kept running.

I was a coward.

Sohrab had left that off his list.

Clouds had rolled in off the mountains, casting the whole of Yazd in gauzy gray light. Without the sun, the old houses weren’t blindingly khaki anymore. They were brown and dirty and sand-worn.

There was litter everywhere: white plastic lavoshak wrappers, and empty plastic bottles crusted yellow with dried-out doogh; scrunched up sun-faded newspapers and pictures of my new, unfortunate namesake, the real Ayatollah, frowning up at the gray sky.

I didn’t like Iran anymore.

I wanted to go home. To Portland, not to Mamou’s.

I kept thinking about Sohrab. About his father. How he would never see him ever again.

I thought about Stephen Kellner. How sometimes I wished I saw him less.

I thought about how selfish I was.

I really hated myself.



* * *





    My foot was bleeding.

I had sliced my heel when I climbed the chain-link fence to our spot in the park. We were supposed to celebrate Sizdeh Bedar there.

I didn’t think that was going to happen anymore.

From the Jameh Mosque, the azan sounded, piercing the quiet afternoon. All across Yazd, people faced the qibla to pray, a titanic multicellular entity focused on the same moment in space-time.

My throat clamped up, a compression wave that traveled down my chest and into my stomach.

Another containment failure.

I wiped my face against my Team Melli jersey, the one Sohrab got me for Nowruz.

No one had ever gotten me a gift like Sohrab had. One that showed he understood me perfectly. One that made me feel like I belonged.

No one had ever invited me to play soccer or hang around on rooftops or stand around a Ping-Pong table eating lettuce.

No one ever made me feel like it was okay to cry. Or bumped shoulders with me and made me smile.

I shook so hard, I thought the bathroom was going to lose molecular cohesion and collapse into a vibrating pile of dust.

I was never going to stop crying.

Sohrab was right about me.

Sohrab was right about everything.

I crossed my elbows over my knees and buried my face in the little hollow I had made.

I wished I had the One Ring, so I could have vanished.

I wished I had a cloaking device so no one would ever find me.

I wished I could just disappear forever.



* * *





“Darius?”

It was impossible.

How had Stephen Kellner located me?

The chain-link fence rattled as he hoisted himself up. “There you are.”

“Hey.” My throat didn’t work right. I sounded like I had swallowed a pineapple with its skin still on.