Darius the Great Is Not Okay(15)

“Is it dinner?” My body didn’t think so. All I could think about was a hot cup of tea. I had been cultivating a headache for the last few hours—the kind of headache that felt like it was going to pop my eyes right out of my skull—and caffeine usually helped.

Laleh was hangry, the first sign of an impending Laleh-pocalypse. She dragged her feet down the jet bridge, holding my hand and staring at the floor desultorily, until we stepped into the terminal and she caught the scent of Subway.

Subway was my sister’s favorite restaurant.

The glow cast by the white and yellow letters instantly rejuvenated her. She wrenched her hand out of mine and sprinted straight for it. I chased her, my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag banging against my legs.

I detested messenger bags.

“Can we have Subway?” Laleh asked.

“We have to ask Mom and Dad.”

“Mom? Dad? Can we?” Her voice was getting whinier by the second, the pitch rising higher and higher like a teakettle on the cusp of whistling.

“Sure, sweetie.” Mom studied the menu. Even in the United Arab Emirates, Subway was Subway. The menu was pretty much the same as it was in Portland, except for a seafood sub and a chicken tikka masala sub.

Dad shifted his own Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag on his shoulder. His was dark leather with the logo embossed on it—much nicer than my canvas-and-polyester one. “What do you want?”

“Um.” My stomach gurgled.

I had eaten two meals on the plane—a sort-of dinner and a sort-of breakfast—and though neither of them left me that satisfied, I did not want Subway.

I couldn’t stand the smell of Subway—not since my old job spinning signs for the pizza place. It had been across the parking lot from a Subway, and ever since, I couldn’t smell baking Subway bread without feeling trapped and claustrophobic from the porcupine costume I was forced to wear.

What kind of pizza place has a porcupine for a mascot?

“Um,” I said again. “I don’t really feel like Subway.”

“You can’t keep eating Laleh’s Sour Patch Kids.”

Stephen Kellner was extremely attentive to my dietary indiscretions.

I studied the menu. “Um. The chicken tikka masala sub?”

Dad sighed. “There’s nothing with vegetables that sounds good?”

“Stephen,” Mom said. She looked at Dad, and they seemed to be exchanging some sort of subspace communiqués. Laleh rocked back and forth on her heels and glanced at the counter. She was dangerously close to full-on Laleh-geddon.

“Never mind. I’m not that hungry anyway.”

“Darius,” Mom said, but I shook my head.

“It’s fine. I have to use the bathroom.”



* * *





I stayed in the bathroom as long as I could.

I still had some of Laleh’s Sour Patch Kids left.

But when I couldn’t hide any longer, I found Mom, Dad, and Laleh seated around a brushed-steel table with little blue hourglass-shaped stools. Laleh had demolished her meatball sub, leaving gallons of sauce spread around her mouth: a conquering Klingon warrior drenched in the blood of her enemies. She was licking her fingers clean, ignoring Mom and Dad’s conversation.

“You can’t keep trying to control him,” Mom said. “You have to let him make his own decisions.”

“You know how he gets treated,” Dad said. “You really want that for him?”

“No. But how is making him ashamed of everything going to fix it?”

“I don’t want him to be ashamed,” Dad said. “But he’s got enough going on with his depression, he doesn’t need to be bullied all the time too. He wouldn’t be such a target if he fit in more. If he could just, you know, act a little more normal.”

Mom glared at Dad as soon as she saw me. “Here,” she said, pulling out a seat for me. “You sure you don’t want something? We can go somewhere else.”

“I’m okay. Thanks.”

“You feeling all right?” Mom pressed the back of her hand against my forehead. It was greasy from being on the stuffy plane for so long.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Sorry.”

Dad wouldn’t look at me. He kept studying his hands, wiping at them with his white Subway-brand napkin, though I doubted they were dirty, since he’d eaten a salad.

Stephen Kellner always ordered salad at Subway.

“I’ll be right back. Anybody need anything?”

Mom shook her head. Dad grabbed his empty water cup and took it back for a refill.

Once he was out of earshot, Mom said, “Darius . . .”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Don’t be mad.” She squeezed my hand. “He just . . .”

Laleh chose that moment to let out a huge, resonant burp.

Unlike Javaneh Esfahani, Laleh was perfectly capable of burping.

I laughed, but Mom was appalled.

“Laleh!”

“Sorry,” she said, but at least she was smiling again.

Thankfully, the meatball sub had averted the impending Laleh-clysm.

She was still giggling when Dad sat back down. He dipped his napkin in his ice water and handed it to Laleh for her to clean off her mouth, but it was a lost cause.