Darius the Great Is Not Okay(71)

Dad wiped his palms on his pants and sat down beside me, so close, our elbows bumped.

I scooted away so we weren’t touching.

“We were worried about you.”

“Sorry.”

“Mr. Rezaei said you left Sohrab’s house hours ago. Have you been up here the whole time?”

I shrugged.

Dad rested his hand on the back of my neck, but I shook him off.

“He told us what happened.”

“About Sohrab’s dad?”

“Yeah. And about you and Sohrab.”

I felt another containment failure coming on.

I couldn’t let Stephen Kellner see me cry.

So I said, “What made you look for me here?”

Dad nodded up at the Jameh Mosque. “This seemed like the kind of place you would like.”

I bit my lip and blinked.

“Don’t cry, Darius.” Dad tried to wrap his arm around me, but I leaned away.

“I can’t help it, okay?”

Dr. Howell likes to say that depression is anger turned inward.

I had so much anger turned inward, I could have powered a warp core.

But without the proper magnetic field strength, it exploded outward instead.

I couldn’t sit down anymore, even though my foot hurt when I put weight on it.

“Sometimes I can’t help crying. Okay? Sometimes bad shit happens. Sometimes people are mean to me and I cry. Sorry for being such a target. Sorry for disappointing you. Again.”

“I’m not disappointed—”

I snorted.

“I just want to make sure you’re healthy. Your illness can run away with you before you even know it.”

“No, you just want me to be like you. You want me to ignore it when people are mean to me. When Trent bullies me. When Sohrab . . .”

I swallowed.

“You don’t want me to feel anything at all. You just want me to be normal. Like you.”

I picked up a jagged piece of roof and hurled it off into the empty park. My chest was about to explode, hurling matter and antimatter out until they annihilated everything nearby.

“You won’t even watch Star Trek with me anymore,” I whispered. “I’ll never be good enough for you.”

All my anger had fled, imploding back into my chest, slipping down the event horizon of the churning supermassive black hole inside me.

Slingshot Maneuver.

Dad’s face had turned red and blotchy. “Darius.” He sighed and uncrossed his long legs to stand up. “You’ve always been good enough for me. I loved you from the first moment I saw your little hands on the ultrasound. And felt your little feet kicking in your mom’s belly. I loved you the first time I got to hold you and look into your beautiful brown eyes and know you felt safe in my arms.”

Dad’s hands twitched like he wished I was still a baby he could hold.

“And I’ve loved you more every day. Watching you grow up. Watching you grow into yourself. Watching you learn to cope with a world I can’t always protect you from. But I wish I could.”

He cleared his throat.

“Being your dad is my first, best destiny.”

It wasn’t true.

How could he say that?

“Remember those stories you used to tell me?”

I sniffled.

“Remember? When I was little?”

“Of course.” He closed his eyes and smiled. “I loved putting you to bed.”

“Then why did you stop, if you loved it so much?”

Dad bit his lip. “You remember that?”

“I remember.”

Dad sighed and folded himself back down to sit on the ledge of the roof. He glanced up at me but didn’t hold my eyes—just patted the spot beside him.

I sat down, but farther away from him.

Dad looked up, like he was going to speak, but then looked at his hands and swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, up and down.

“You’re wrong. I want you to feel things, Darius. But I’m scared for you. You have no idea how scared. I take my eyes off you one moment and if it’s the wrong moment, you could be drowning in depression, bad enough to . . . to do something. And I can’t protect you from that. No matter how hard I try.”

“I’m not going to hurt myself, Dad.”

“I nearly did.”

All the atmosphere on the rooftop fled, blown away by Dad’s explosive admission.

“You . . . what?”

“When you were seven. My meds weren’t doing their job. And I got to thinking about how you and your mother would be better off without me.”

“Oh.”

“I got so bad, I was thinking about it. All the time. Dr. Howell put me on a pretty strong tranquilizer.”

“Um.”

“It made me into a zombie. That’s why I couldn’t tell you stories. I could barely tell the time of day.”

I didn’t know.

“I lost myself for a long time, Darius. I didn’t like who I became on those pills, but they saved my life. They kept me here. For you. And your mom. And by the time I was doing better and Dr. Howell tapered me off, your sister was born and I just . . . things were different. She was a baby, and she needed me. And I didn’t know if you even wanted stories anymore. If you were ever going to forgive me.”