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.
That was before Dr. Howell switched me off Prozac, which gave me mood swings so extreme, they were more like Mood Slingshot Maneuvers, powerful enough to fling me around the sun and accelerate me into a time warp.
I was only on Prozac for three months before Dr. Howell switched me, but it was pretty much the worst three months in the Search for the Right Medication.
* * *
Dad never really talked about his own diagnosis for depression. It was lost to the histories of a prior age of this world. All he ever said was that it happened when he was in college, and that his medication had kept him healthy for years, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. It wasn’t a big deal.
By the time I was diagnosed, and Dr. Howell was trying to find some combination of medications to treat me properly, Stephen Kellner had been managing his depression so long that he couldn’t remember what it was like. Or maybe he’d never had Mood Slingshot Maneuvers in the first place. Maybe his medication had recalibrated his brain right away, and he was back to being a high-functioning Übermensch in no time.
My own brain was much harder to recalibrate. Prozac was the third medication Dr. Howell tried me on, back when I was in eighth grade. And I was on it for six weeks before I experienced my first Slingshot Maneuver, when I freaked out at a kid in my Boy Scouts troop named Vance Henderson, who had made a joke about Mom’s accent.
I’d been dealing with jokes like that my entire life—well, ever since I started school, anyway—so it was nothing new. But that time it set me off like a high-yield quantum torpedo.
It was the only time in my life I have ever hit anyone.
I felt very sorry for myself afterward.
And then I felt angry. I really hated Boy Scouts. I hated camping and I hated the other boys, who were all on their way to becoming Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy.
And then I felt ashamed.
I made a lot of Mood Slingshot Maneuvers that afternoon.
But I wasn’t ashamed of standing up for Mom, even if it did mean hitting Vance Henderson. Even if it did mean leaving a perfect red palm-print on his face.
Dad was so disappointed.
A NON-PASSIVE FAILURE
Chapel Hill High School had two gymnasiums, supposedly called the Main Gym and the Little Gym, but most of us called them the Boys’ Gym and the Girls’ Gym, because the boys were always in the larger Main Gym.
This, despite Chapel Hill High School’s Zero Tolerance Policy toward sexism.
I was halfway down the stairs to gym when I heard him: Chip Cusumano.
I kept my head down and took the stairs faster, swinging myself around the rail as I reached the landing.