“I’m fine. I saw Babou yesterday.”
“How is he?”
“Not very good.” He sighed. “Mamou thinks it won’t be long now.”
“Oh. Is she okay?”
“Your grandma is strong. Like you, Darioush. But . . .” He looked off to the side for a moment. “It’s hard for her. She won’t tell anyone when she needs help. Maman and I have to force her to slow down.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I love your grandma. And your grandpa.”
“Me too.” I wiped at my eyes. “I wish I could be there.”
“I wish you could too.”
“Thank you. For taking care of them.”
Sohrab’s brown eyes crinkled up into a squint as he smiled at me.
Sohrab Rezaei always smiled with his whole face.
“Always, Darioush. Ghorbanat beram. Always.”
* * *
Ghorbanat beram is one of those perfect Farsi phrases you can’t quite translate into English.
The closest thing is: I would give my life for yours.
Sometimes it was just hyperbole.
But for Sohrab, it was literal.
And it was literal for me too.
That is what it means to have a best friend.
THE GOOD TABLE
I was a little nervous about going to school Wednesday morning.
First, because we had our opening game that evening. And second, because Trent Bolger had been fiddling suspiciously with his phone when he saw me with Landon, and Trent loved spreading misinformation.
But when I got to school, no one said anything at all.
Either Trent hadn’t made his move yet, or he had and no one cared.
By the time I got to Conditioning class, which I shared with Trent and a couple guys from the soccer team, it seemed like it was the latter: He’d been disappointed by the results of his rumormongering. Trent kept glaring at me, especially when I greeted Jaden and Gabe, two seniors on the team.
“All good, Darius?” Gabe asked. Our starting forward was brown-skinned and the shortest guy on the team, but he was also the fastest runner I had ever seen.
“A little nervous.”
“Don’t be. You’ll be fine,” Jaden said. He was a Fractional Korean—he laughed when I called him that the first time, but then he adopted it himself—and tall, but not as tall as me or Chip. He played midfield.
“Thanks.”
Gabe glanced over at Trent, then lowered his voice.
“You know Trent’s going around telling people he saw you with a guy last night?”
“I kind of figured he would.”
Gabe grinned. “You got a boyfriend?”
“Maybe. I dunno. We’re just hanging out.”
“Anyone we know?”
“I don’t think so. He goes to private school in Vancouver.”
“Cool. You don’t mind people knowing?”
“Not really.”
“All right. We got your back, though. Just say the word.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
It still felt weird for people at school to actually have my back.
“Thanks.”
* * *
“Partner up for front squats,” Coach Winfield said. “Light load. Ten reps. Three-second hold.”
I stifled a groan. Squats were the worst, but front squats with a three-second hold at the bottom were tantamount to a crime against humanity.
At least they were good for my butt.
You could tell Coach Winfield was a football coach, because whenever there was a football game, there would always be stretching or jogging or some kind of “active recovery” for Conditioning. But that sort of collusion never extended to soccer games.
I partnered up with Jaden, since we could use the same rack height, and Gabe was next to us, partnered with Trent.
It was hard to tell who was more unhappy with that arrangement.
To be fair, Trent Bolger never seemed happy these days. I’d always been Trent’s Priority One Target, but now that I was friends with Chip, and part of the soccer team, I had people on my side.
Trent hadn’t been able to find a new Target, though. He just spent his time trying to make me miserable, and never quite succeeding.
There had been this great gravitational shift in the stellar alignment of Chapel Hill High School, but Trent was operating off old star charts.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“Don’t look at my ass, Dairy Queen,” Trent muttered when Coach Winfield was out of earshot.
“Then try moving it,” Gabe said. “Some of us would like to get a set in.”
I stopped myself from laughing, but I didn’t stop myself from grinning. Trent just didn’t know how to navigate this new paradigm.
And I wanted to cry a little bit too.
It felt good, having Gabe stand up for me.
It felt good to have a team.
* * *
Game days for the Chapel Hill High School varsity men’s soccer team were a lot less intense than for the football team, but I didn’t mind that. The football players had to wear their jerseys all day, and the cheerleaders their uniforms, and there were Spirit Assemblies and altered schedules to accommodate them.
There were no Spirit Assemblies for the soccer team. So the day of our first game, I finished fourth block like usual, then headed to the bike racks to meet Chip.
Flat gray clouds had rolled in while we were in class. I pulled my hood up to protect myself from the cold drizzle tapping a soft, steady rhythm against the back of my neck.
As I unchained my bike, Chip came down the stairs, his keys jangling from the carabiner clip on his messenger bag. He had at least ten keys on there, even though only two of them were actually useful. The rest were random keys he’d found and added to his keychain—like a blackened skeleton key that looked like something from the eighteenth century—“for the aesthetic.”
“Sorry. Had to ask Mr. Gerke about an assignment, but somehow we got on the topic of Germany and the European Union’s economy and I’m still not sure how.”
“Mr. Gerke can be like that. Come on. We better hurry if we want to get the Good Table.”