My parents never talked to my teachers. They never called my school. They never threatened to call some other kid’s mother because her son threw a rock at my face. People had been shitting on me for having the wrong name/race/religion and socioeconomic status since as far back as I could remember, but my life had been so easy in comparison to my parents’ own upbringing that they genuinely couldn’t understand why I didn’t wake up singing every morning. My dad’s personal story was so insane—he’d left home, all alone, for America when he was sixteen—that the part where he was drafted to go to war in Vietnam actually seemed like a highlight. When I was a kid and would tell my mom that people at school were mean to me, she’d pat me on the head and tell me stories about how she’d lived through war and an actual revolution, and when she was fifteen someone cracked open her skull in the middle of the street while her best friend was gutted like a fish so, hey, why don’t you just eat your Cheerios and walk it off, you ungrateful American child.
I ate my Cheerios. I didn’t talk about it.
I loved my parents, I really did. But I never talked to them about my own pain. It was impossible to compete for sympathy with a mother and father who thought I was lucky to attend a school where the teachers only said mean things to you and didn’t actually beat the shit out of you.
So I never said much anymore.
I’d come home from school and shrug through my parents’ many questions about my day. I’d do my homework; I’d keep myself busy. I read a lot of books. It’s such a cliché, I know, the lonely kid and her books, but the day my brother walked into my room and chucked a copy of Harry Potter at my head and said, “I won this at school, looks like something you’d enjoy,” was one of the best days of my life. The few friends I’d made who didn’t live exclusively on paper had collapsed into little more than memories and even those were fading fast. I’d lost a lot in our moves—things, stuff, objects—but nothing hurt as much as losing people.
Anyway, I was usually on my own.
My brother, though, he was always busy. He and I used to be close, used to be best friends, but then one day he woke up to discover he was cool and handsome and I was not, that in fact my very existence scared the crap out of people, and, I don’t know, we lost touch. It wasn’t on purpose. He just always had people to see, things to do, girls to call, and I didn’t. I liked my brother, though. Loved him, even. He was a good guy when he wasn’t annoying the shit out of me.
I survived the first three weeks at my new school with very little to report. It was unexciting. Tedious. I interacted with people on only the most basic, perfunctory levels, and otherwise spent most of my time listening to music. Reading. Flipping through Vogue. I was really into complicated fashion that I could never afford and I spent my weekends scouring thrift stores, trying to find pieces that were reminiscent of my favorite looks from the runway, looks that I would later, in the quiet of my bedroom, attempt to re-create. But I was only mediocre with a sewing machine; I did my best work by hand. Even so, I kept breaking needles and accidentally stabbing myself and showing up to school with too many Band-Aids on my fingers, prompting my teachers to shoot me even weirder looks than usual. Still, it kept me distracted. It was only the middle of September and I was already struggling to give even the vaguest shit about school.
After another exhilarating day at the panopticon I collapsed onto the couch. My parents weren’t home from work yet, and I didn’t know where my brother was. I sighed, turned on the television, and tugged my scarf off my head. Pulled the ponytail free and ran a hand through my hair. Settled back onto the couch.
There were Matlock reruns on TV every afternoon at exactly this hour, and I was not embarrassed to admit out loud that I loved them. I loved Matlock. It was a show that was created even before I was born, about a really old, really expensive lawyer named Matlock who solved criminal cases for a ton of money. These days it was popular only with the geriatric crowd, but this didn’t bother me. I often felt like a very old person trapped in a young person’s body; Matlock was my people. All I needed was a bowl of prunes or a cup of applesauce to finish off the look, and I was beginning to wonder if maybe we had some stashed somewhere in the fridge when I heard my brother come home.
At first I didn’t think anything of it. He shouted a hello to the house and I made a noncommittal noise; Matlock was being awesome and I couldn’t be bothered to look away.
“Hey—didn’t you hear me?”
I popped my head up. Saw my brother’s face.
“I brought some friends over,” he was saying, and even then I didn’t quite understand, not until one of the guys walked into the living room and I stood up so fast I almost fell over.
“What the hell, Navid?” I hissed, and grabbed my scarf. It was a comfortable, pashmina shawl that was normally very easy to wear, but I fumbled in the moment, feeling flustered, and somehow ended up shoving it onto my head. The guy just smiled at me.
“Oh—don’t worry,” he said quickly. “I’m like eighty percent gay.”
“That’s nice,” I said, irritated, “but this isn’t about you.”
“This is Bijan,” Navid said to me, and he could hardly contain his laughter as he nodded at the new guy, who was so obviously Persian I almost couldn’t believe it; I didn’t think there were other Middle Eastern people in this town. But Navid was now laughing at my face and I realized then that I must’ve looked ridiculous, standing there with my scarf bunched awkwardly on my head. “Carlos and Jacobi are—”
“Bye.”
I ran upstairs.
I spent a few minutes considering, as I paced the length of my bedroom floor, how embarrassing that incident had been. I felt flustered and stupid, caught off guard like that, but I finally decided that though the whole thing was kind of embarrassing, it was not so embarrassing that I could justify hiding up here for hours without food. So I tied my hair back, carefully reassembled myself—I didn’t like pinning my scarf in place, so I usually wrapped it loosely around my head, tossing the longer ends over my shoulders—and reemerged.
When I walked into the living room, I discovered the four boys sitting on the couch and eating, what looked like, everything in our pantry. One of them had actually found a bag of prunes and was currently engaged in stuffing them in his mouth.
“Hey.” Navid glanced up.
“Hi.”
The boy with the prunes looked at me. “So you’re the little sister?”
I crossed my arms.
“This is Carlos,” Navid said. He nodded at the other guy I hadn’t met, this really tall black dude, and said, “That’s Jacobi.”
Jacobi waved an unenthusiastic hand without even looking in my direction. He was eating all the rosewater nougat my mom’s sister had sent her from Iran. I doubted he even knew what it was.
Not for the first time, I was left in awe of the insatiable appetite of teenage boys. It grossed me out in a way I couldn’t really articulate. Navid was the only one who wasn’t eating anything at the moment; instead, he was drinking one of those disgusting protein shakes.
Bijan looked me up and down and said, “You look better.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “How long are you guys going to be here?”