Darius the Great Is Not Okay(8)

I was sorry too. But not as sorry as I should have been. And I felt kind of terrible for it.

The thing is, my grandfather’s presence in my life had been purely photonic up to that point. I didn’t know how to be sad about him dying.

Like I said, the well inside me was blocked.

“What happens now?”

“Your mom and I talked it over,” Dad said. “We’re going to Iran.”





SLINGSHOT MANEUVERS



It wasn’t like we could drop everything and leave the next day.

Mom and Dad knew it might happen. But we still had to get plane tickets and visas and everything.

So it was a couple weeks later when I sat down at the lunch table and announced, “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

I immediately executed Evasive Pattern Beta, a swift dodge to the left. My lunch companion, Javaneh Esfahani, tended to spray Dr Pepper out her nostrils if I surprised her at the lunch table.

Javaneh sneezed twice—she always sneezed twice after spraying Dr Pepper out of her nose—and wiped her face with one of the cafeteria-issue brown paper towels. She tucked a lock of hair blown loose by her violent sinus eruptions back into her headscarf.

Javaneh always wore her headscarf at Chapel Hill High School, which I thought was very brave. The sociopolitical landscape of Chapel Hill High School was treacherous enough without giving people an excuse to pick on you.

Javaneh Esfahani was a lioness.

She blinked at me. “Tomorrow? That’s fast. You’re serious?”

“Yeah. We got our visas and everything.”

“Wow.”

I mopped up the carbonated explosion on the table while Javaneh sipped her Dr Pepper through a straw.

Javaneh Esfahani claimed she was physiologically incapable of burping, so she always used a straw to drink her Dr Pepper from the can. To be honest, I wasn’t sure that was really a thing—being physiologically incapable of burping—but Javaneh was the closest thing I had to a friend at Chapel Hill High School, so I didn’t want to risk alienating her by prying too deeply.

Javaneh had the smooth, olive-toned look of a True Persian, arched eyebrows and all. I was kind of jealous of her—Mom had inherited Mamou’s pale coloring, which meant I didn’t even get a half dose of Persian melanin—but then again, Javaneh was constantly getting asked where she was from, something I mostly avoided until people learned my first name.

She grabbed a tater tot. “I’ve always wanted to see Iran. But my parents don’t want to risk it.”

“Yeah. My mom didn’t either, but . . .”

“I can’t believe you’re really going. You’re going to be there for Nowruz!” Javaneh shook her head. “But won’t you miss Chaharshanbeh Suri?”

“They were the cheapest tickets,” I said. “Besides. We might fly over a fire. That counts, right?”



* * *





Chaharshanbeh Suri is the Tuesday night before Nowruz. Which is weird since Chaharshanbeh technically means Wednesday. But I guess it sort of means the night before Wednesday. Either way, the traditional way to celebrate Chaharshanbeh Suri is with fire jumping.

(And a mountain of Persian food. There are no Persian celebrations that do not involve enough Persian food to feed the entire Willamette Valley.)

Mom and Dad always took us to the Chaharshanbeh Suri celebration at Oaks Park, where all the True Persians and Fractional Persians and Persians-by-Marriage—regardless of faith—gathered every year for a huge nighttime picnic and bonfire approved by the Fire Marshall of the City of Portland.

Stephen Kellner, with his long legs and Teutonic jumping strength, was an excellent fire jumper.

I was not a fan.

According to family legend, when I was two years old, Dad tried to hold me in his arms as he jumped over the fire, but I wailed and cried so much, he and Mom had to abandon the celebration of Chaharshanbeh Suri and take me home.

Dad didn’t try it again. Not until Laleh came along. When Dad held her in his arms and jumped over the fire, she squealed and laughed and clapped and demanded to go again.

My sister was a lot braver than me.

Truth be told, I was not that sad to miss Chaharshanbeh Suri. I was much more comfortable flying over a bonfire at 32,000 feet than I was jumping over one, even if it did deprive Stephen Kellner of another excellent opportunity to be disappointed in me.



* * *





After lunch, I headed to the nurse’s office. Because of Chapel Hill High School’s strict Zero Tolerance Policy toward drugs, the school nurse had to dispense all medications for Chapel Hill High School students.

Mrs. Killinger handed me the little crinkly paper cup with my pill in it. It was the kind used in every mental institution in every movie and television show ever.

Except Star Trek, of course, because they used hyposprays to deliver medication directly through the skin in compressed air streams.

There were slightly larger crinkly paper cups for water, which I poured from the drinking fountain in the corner of Mrs. Killinger’s office. I couldn’t bend over a drinking fountain and take medication that way; I either choked or accidentally spit my pills all over the basin. And I couldn’t dry-swallow my pills like Stephen Kellner either; the one time I tried, I got a Prozac lodged in the back of my throat and spent five minutes trying to hack it back up, while it slowly dissolved into skunky powder in my esophagus.