Darius the Great Is Not Okay(14)

“Where are you headed?” asked the officer—a burly guy with dark, angular eyebrows and a round face—as he ran the little brown paper over my hands.

“Um. Yazd. I mean, we’re flying into Tehran. But my grandfather lives in Yazd.” The officer stared at me, still holding my palm with one of his blue-gloved hands, which made me nervous. “He has a brain tumor.”

“Sorry to hear that.” The machine beeped. “Good to go.”

He threw away the paper swab and looked me over again.

“I didn’t realize your people did the dot thing too.”

“Um. The dot thing?”

“You know.” He tapped his index finger against his forehead, right between his robust eyebrows.

I placed a fingertip in the same spot on my own forehead and felt the scabbed-over ruins of Olympus Mons, which is what I had decided to name the remains of my pimple.

Olympus Mons is the highest peak on Mars. It’s a volcano nearly sixteen miles high, and it takes up more square mileage than the entire state of Oregon. Technically, Olympus Mons would have been a better name for the pimple in its un-popped state, since the scab looked more like a crater than a volcano, but it was the best I could do at three in the morning.

“Um.” My ears burned. “It was a pimple.”

The officer laughed so hard, his face turned red.

It was deeply embarrassing.





TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT



That morning, we flew from Portland to New York. Our connection to Dubai wasn’t until the evening.

I slept all the way to JFK, with my head against the window and my knees pressed up against the seat in front of me. Since New York was three hours ahead of Portland, it was past lunch by the time we landed. We ate a cursory meal in the food court (I had a salad to appease Dad, who was unhappy I had finished off the cold pizza for breakfast), and then Laleh used the rest of our interminable layover to visit every single store and stall in JFK’s Terminal 4.

Our flight to Dubai was fourteen hours, and we crossed another eight time zones. I was wide-awake. Laleh had acquired a bag of Sour Patch Kids while she browsed Terminal 4, and the combination of sugar and temporal distortion proved an incendiary one.

She turned around and stuck her face between her and Dad’s seats, peppering Mom with questions about Iran, about Yazd, about Mamou and Babou. Where were we going to sleep? What were we going to do? What were we going to eat? When would we arrive? Who was going to get us at the airport?

A knot started forming, right in the middle of my solar plexus.

All those questions were making me nervous, because Laleh wasn’t asking the really important questions.

What if they didn’t let us in?

What if there was trouble at Customs?

What if it was weird?

What if no one liked us?

Laleh finally tired out at about midnight Portland time, though I had no idea what the local time was, or even what time zone we were in. She turned around and leaned against Dad’s shoulder and fell asleep.

Mom played with my hair, twisting the curls around her fingers, as I steeped a sachet of Rose City’s Sencha (a Japanese green tea) in the little paper cup of hot water I got from our flight attendant.

I pulled the sachet out and dropped it in the empty cup of water I’d used to take my medicine.

“Hey, Darius. Can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure.”

Mom pursed her lips and dropped her hand.

“Mom?”

“Sorry. I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s . . . I just want you to be prepared. People in Iran don’t think about mental health the way we do back home.”

“Um.”

“So if anyone says anything to you, don’t take it personally. Okay, sweetie?”

I blinked. “Okay.”

Mom’s hand returned to my head. I sipped my tea.

“Hey. Mom?”

“Hm?”

“Are you nervous?”

“A little.”

“Because of me and Dad?”

“No. Of course not.”

“How come, then?”

Mom smiled, but her eyes were sad. “I should have gone back a lot sooner.”

“Oh.” The knot in my solar plexus tightened. Mom pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear as I stared out the window.

I had never flown over an ocean before. It was night out, and looking down at all that black water below, capped white where the moon glinted off the swells, left me feeling like we were the last humans left alive on planet Earth.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m a little nervous too.”



* * *





It was night again when we landed at Dubai International Airport. We had flown all the way into one day and back out again.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken my medication. Or brushed my teeth. And my face felt oily enough to generate two or three more Olympus Mons–sized pimples.

My body said it was yesterday, but the clocks said it was tomorrow.

This is why I hate time travel.

“Our flight’s in three hours,” Mom said as I stood and stretched, bending over Laleh’s seat to try and extend my back. “We should grab some dinner.”