I could never get my parents to care about my life at school. They never volunteered for anything; they never showed up to school functions. They didn’t read the newsletters. They didn’t join the PTA or help chaperone school dances. My mom only ever set foot on campus to sign the papers for my registration. Otherwise, it just wasn’t their thing. The only time they’d ever taken an interest was right after 9/11, when those guys pinned me down on my way home from school. Navid basically saved my life that day. He’d shown up with the cops just before those dudes could bash my head into the concrete. It had been a premeditated incident; someone had heard them talk, in class, about their plans to come after me, and tipped off Navid.
The cops never arrested anyone that day. The police lights had scared the guys enough to back off, so when the officers got out of the car I was sitting on the sidewalk, shaking, trying to untangle my scarf from around my neck. The cops sighed, told these two assholes to stop being stupid, and sent them home.
Navid was furious.
He kept telling them to do something, that those guys should be arrested, and the cops told him to calm down, that they were just kids, that there was no need to make this so dramatic. And then the officers walked over to me, where I was still sitting on the ground, and asked me if I was okay.
I didn’t really understand the question.
“Are you okay?” one of the cops said again.
I wasn’t dead, and for some reason I figured that must’ve meant I was okay. So I nodded.
“Listen,” he said, “maybe you should reconsider this whole . . . getup.” He gestured vaguely at my face. “Walking around like this all the time?” He shook his head. Sighed. “I’m sorry, kid, but it’s like you’re asking for it. Don’t make yourself a target. Things are complicated in the world right now. People are scared. Do you understand?” And then, “Do you speak English?”
I remember shaking so hard I could barely sit straight. I remember looking up at the cop and feeling powerless. I remember staring at the gun holstered at his hip and being terrified.
“Here,” he said, and offered me a card. “Call this number if you ever feel unsafe, okay?”
I took the card. It was a number for Child Protective Services.
That wasn’t the beginning—this wasn’t where my anger started—but it was a cauterizing moment I would never forget.
When I came home that day, still so stunned I hadn’t figured out yet how to cry, my parents were transformed. It was the first time they’d ever seemed small to me. Petrified. My dad told me then, that day, that maybe I should stop wearing my scarf. If maybe it would be better for me that way. Easier.
I said no.
I told him I was fine, that everything would be fine, that they didn’t need to worry, that I just needed to take a shower and I would be fine. It was nothing, I said. I told my parents I was fine because somehow I knew they needed the lie even more than I did. But when we moved away a month later, I knew it wasn’t coincidence.
I’d been thinking about it a lot, lately. All the bullshit. The exhaustion that accompanied my personal choice to wrap a piece of cloth around my hair every day. I was so tired of dealing with this crap. I hated how that crap seemed to poison everything. I hated that I cared at all. I hated how the world kept trying to bully me into believing that I was the problem.
I felt like I could never catch a break.
I paused before pushing open the door to my house, my hand frozen on the handle. I knew my mom was cooking something because the crisp, cool air was infused with a delicious aroma. It was that perfect, perfect smell that would always take me back to the specific feeling of being a child: the scent of onions being sautéed in olive oil.
I felt my body relax.
I stepped inside, dropped my bag, and sank into a seat at the kitchen table. I leaned into the familiar, comforting sounds and smells of home, holding on to them like a lifeline, and I stared at my mom, who was, unquestionably, a human being of the superior variety. She dealt with so much. She’d survived so much. She was the bravest, strongest woman I’d ever known, and though I knew she faced all kinds of discrimination on a daily basis, she only rarely discussed it. Instead, she pushed through every obstacle, never complaining. I aspired to her levels of grace and perseverance. She worked all day long and came home just before my dad did, cooked up an amazing meal, and always had a smile, a slap to the back of the head, or a devastating piece of wisdom to impart.
Today, I wanted desperately to ask her what to do. But I knew I’d probably get the slap to the back of the head, so I reconsidered. Instead, I sighed. I looked at my phone. I had six missed calls and two text messages from Ocean—
please call me
please
—and I’d already looked at them about a hundred times. I kept staring at his words on my phone, feeling everything all at once. Just the memory of kissing him was enough to make me flush. I remembered him, every inch of him. My mind had recorded the moment in surprising detail, and I replayed it, over and over again. When I closed my eyes I could still feel him against my lips. I remembered his eyes, the way he’d looked at me, and my skin felt suddenly hot and electric. But when I thought about the fallout—the weirdness I would inevitably be forced to deal with at school the following day—I felt awful and embarrassed. I felt so dumb that I hadn’t known his place in the hierarchy of this stupid school, I felt dumb that I’d never asked him what he did in his free time. I felt suddenly frustrated that I’d ditched all those pep rallies. I would’ve seen him when they paraded all the basketball players out into the center of the gym.
I would’ve known.
But I was now knee-deep in metaphorical cow shit, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think ignoring Ocean was an option anymore—in fact, I’m not sure it ever was—but I also didn’t know if talking to him would help, either. I’d already tried that. Today, in fact. That was the whole plan. I thought I was being mature by ending things in person. I could’ve been—in fact, would’ve preferred to have been—a coward who sent him a simple, unkind text message, telling him to leave me alone forever; but I’d wanted to do the right thing. I thought he deserved to have a proper conversation about it. But I’d somehow screwed everything up.
I dragged my feet that night. I stayed downstairs with my parents for far longer than I normally would. I ate dinner slowly, pushing my food around my plate long after everyone else had left the table and said, “I’m fine, just tired,” to my parents’ many concerned questions. Navid didn’t say much to me except to shoot me a sympathetic smile, which I appreciated.
Nothing helped, though.
I was stalling for time. I didn’t want to go up to my room where the closed door, the quiet, and the privacy would force me to make a decision. I was worried I would cave and call Ocean back, that I would hear his voice and lose my ability to be objective and then, inevitably, agree to try, to see what happens, to ultimately be alone with him on another, imminent occasion because wow, I desperately wanted to kiss him again. But I knew that this whole situation was hazardous to my health. So I put it off.
I managed to put it off until three in the morning.
I was lying in bed, wide-awake, completely incapable of shutting down either my brain or my body, when my phone buzzed on the table beside me. Ocean’s message was at once simple and heartbreaking.
:(
I don’t know why it was the sad-face emoticon that finally broke through my defenses. Maybe because it seemed so human. So real.
I picked up my phone because I was weak and I missed him and because I’d been lying there, thinking about him for hours already; my brain had succumbed long before he’d texted me.
Still, I knew better.
I clicked through to his number and I knew—even as I hesitated, my finger hovering over the call button—I knew that I was only inviting trouble. But I was also just, you know, a teenager, and my heart was still too soft. I was not a paragon of anything. I was definitely not a saint, as my brother had so clearly pointed out. Not a saint, not by a long shot.
So I called him.
Ocean sounded different when he picked up. Nervous. I heard him exhale, just once, before he said, “Hey.”