My heart skipped a beat. I stood outside the smelly airport bathroom, between the men’s and women’s bathrooms. I was confused. “Are you still at graduation?” I asked.
“No. We looked for you after the ceremony, but you weren’t there.”
I considered my next words carefully. “Did you talk to any of my classmates . . .”
“We asked some of them if they knew where you were,” my dad said. “Joonam, azizam, what’s wrong?”
My life, my dear. Whenever I got upset, my dad went overkill with Persian terms of endearment.
“What happened?” I heard my sister pipe up in the background.
“Where are you, Amir?” my mom asked.
I was freaking out. My mom and dad sounded so genuinely concerned over the phone. They sounded like they loved me. It made me feel like even more of a fraud.
An announcement blared overhead: “Welcome to New York-Kennedy International Airport . . .”
My mom and dad started talking all at once, interrupting each other. “Amir, are you at an airport?” “Amir, are you in New York?” “Amir, what’s wrong?” Amir, Amir, Amir . . .
I hung up the phone.
I stood there, motionless, in the middle of the bustling airport. Jake hadn’t told them. He’d backed out.
Someone’s suitcase bumped into my leg then, so I moved. I wandered aimlessly around the airport. I had no idea what to do. I felt lost, with my duffel and all the sounds. The people around me. I realized I still had my earbuds in.
My plan had backfired.
I couldn’t go back home. If I did, I’d have to explain to my parents why I had run away and deal with the ensuing explosion in person. And even if I did manage to come up with an excuse for why I’d skipped my own graduation, Jake would still be holding my secret over me. Maybe he hadn’t backed out, after all. Maybe he had instead figured out a way to level up his blackmail.
I found a bathroom and went into a stall. (I’ve watched enough teen movies to know that this is the best place to deal with life crises.) I checked my phone again and saw that Jackson had texted me. So had my friends from Maryland. My mom must have gotten in touch with them.
Today’s choose-your-own-fucked-up-adventure was supposed to go down one of two ways. If my parents told me they accepted me as gay, I’d come right back home. If they didn’t, I would start a new life. But what was I supposed to do now?
I stumbled out of the bathroom and nearly smacked headlong into one of those glowing departures boards. I stared up at the endless list of cities.
Why was I so afraid of going home? Why couldn’t I be brave, march right up to my parents and tell them what had happened, the reason I wasn’t at my own graduation? Why couldn’t I come out to them? Why couldn’t I just say the words?
My eyes flickered around the list of cities. Chicago. San Francisco. Atlanta. Each one was an invitation, an escape hatch, a safe haven.
My phone was buzzing. It had been buzzing the entire time, I realized, like I had a vibrator strapped onto my thigh. But I couldn’t pick up. I just couldn’t. But I also couldn’t stay in New York; my parents knew that I was here. They could find me here.
I had to go somewhere else. Chicago. San Francisco. Atlanta.
I ran my hands over my jean pockets and felt the outline of my passport. Why had I brought my passport? I don’t know. Maybe some part of me, when I imagined the possibility that I might not go back home, saw this as some kind of national emergency, one where I might even need to flee the country? Crazy, I know.
On the other hand, looking at the list of possible destinations, it didn’t seem so crazy now. I had my Wiki money. I could go anywhere. And why not somewhere outside America? London. Paris. Barcelona.
That was when I looked to the right of the departures sign and saw a gelato shop. Bright, heavenly lighting, and an array of the most colorful ice cream flavors I’d ever seen in my life. I stepped toward the light to better inspect the rainbow colors, the strawberry reds, the chocolates and vanillas.
Now that I think of it, it’s wild how a gelato shop can change the literal course of your life.
Interrogation Room 38
Roya Azadi
BEFORE WE GO further, ma’am, please allow me to apologize for my son’s startling behavior on that airplane today. I assure you it was completely out of the ordinary for him, and nothing to worry about—just a private family matter. And please allow me to apologize for my daughter. I understand why you want to speak with her, and I appreciate that you’ve allowed me to be in the room during your questioning. But she has been very emotional this past month, with her brother gone. Haven’t you, Soraya? Look, she’s rolling her eyes now because she doesn’t like it when I put words in her mouth. What teenage girl does?
My purse? Yes, of course you may have a look. Here.
Those are all hand sanitizer bottles. I assure you, they are less than—oh, no, that one is, yes, that one is more than three ounces. I am so sorry. It was on sale at CVS, and I wasn’t thinking . . .
That is my phone. You need my password? Of course. Soraya, please, calm down. It’s fine.
That is a picture of me with my students. I posted it on Instagram at the end of the school year. I teach at a Farsi school, and when I teach, I wear the hijab. You see, I am not wearing it now, but the class takes place at a mosque, so I wear it then.
That—that is my friend Maryam’s Instagram page. Those are Quran verses. She is quite devout. I do not see how this is relevant to—um, yes. I, I understand the verse. It is about finding your path when you are lost. It is quite peaceful, I assure you. Though it is in Arabic, not Farsi. Officer, Islam, like any religion, is very complex, and people practice it in many different ways, and I hope you don’t—
I understand you have to do your job and ask questions. Absolutely. I completely understand. And I appreciate your patience with us, with my husband—I understand your colleagues needed to question him separately, because of a past issue. We are more than happy to answer whatever questions you have. But please know that what happened on the plane, it is a sensitive matter, a delicate issue that we are still working through as a family. Soraya was correct earlier, when she assumed what I would have wanted to say. In our culture, these matters are usually dealt with privately.
That? It is a picture I took at Amir’s graduation ceremony, when we first discovered that he was missing. We got to the auditorium early, to get good seats—we had very good seats, in the third row on the right side of the stage.
I first noticed Amir was missing when I saw he wasn’t seated in the front row. He should have been in the front row—according to the program, seating was alphabetical. Amir Azadi. Soraya and my husband both said it had to be some kind of mistake, that he must have gotten seated somewhere in the sea of other kids, but I knew something was wrong. Blame it on my maternal instinct. I’d lost my son one time before, at Disney World, and I felt the same stomach-churning I had felt then. He had wandered off back then, Amir, on some kind of necessary adventure. When we found him, he was in a minor brawl with Goofy. He had really angered the man in the Goofy costume; apparently, Amir had punched him in the nose. He was only five. It was a misunderstanding.