by Tahereh Mafi
Ali had finally drawn back but I felt the whisper of his touch at the base of my spine, felt his chest move as he inhaled, exhaled. Softly—so softly it was little more than an idea—his fingers traced the indentation at my waist, the curve of my hips. He said, “God, Shadi, you’re so beautiful sometimes I can’t even look at you,” and I’d just stood there, my heart jackhammering in my chest, my eyes closing on a sound, a desperate sound that escaped my lips, shattered the dream. I’d come back to myself with a terrifying awareness, walked back into the house without a word, without looking back.
Ali and I never discussed that moment, never even alluded to it. I think maybe we both knew, even then, that it was the beginning of something—something that might tear our lives to shreds.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the memory, pressed my forehead to my knees. Seeing Ali yesterday had broken the barricade in my mind meant to hold back precisely this kind of emotional stampede.
I needed to pull myself together.
I lifted my head, shoved my hands in my coat pockets, let the weather push me around. It wasn’t raining, not yet, but it had been storming all day, crows circling, trees rattling. I loved watching things breathe, loved watching branches sway, leaves hanging on for dear life. I didn’t mind the terrible gusts that nearly knocked back my scarf. There was something brutal about the wind, the way it slapped you in the face, left your ears ringing.
It made me feel alive.
The winds were currently too strong to allow a comfortable perusal of the newspaper, but there was a single cigarette abandoned in the linty lining of my right pocket, and I rolled it between my fingers, clenched and unclenched it in my fist. I nearly smiled.
These cigarettes had belonged to my brother.
I confiscated them before they came for his things, stole them out of their hiding places along with his weed, his dirty magazines, a box of condoms, and a single glass pipe. I didn’t want him to do anything more to break my parents’ hearts from beyond the grave. I didn’t want him to be defined by his weaknesses any more than I wanted to be defined by mine. It seemed a terrible injustice to be exposed in death, to be found out as predictably human, as frail as everyone else.
My father knew, of course. Or at least suspected.
My father was a connoisseur of all things—he had, in fact, given this mantle to himself. He loved to hear himself speak aloud the truths he’d decided were holy, and he felt strongly about all manner of diverse subjects: worthy hobbies, the best attributes, a precise work ethic, the exact ratio of water to espresso in an Americano. He had many ideas about the world, ideas he’d spent his entire life honing, and which he often felt compelled to share, loudly, with the still-forming clay of his children. My dad often declared that he and my mother were decent, pious people who’d brought their children up to be better than drug addicts. Those were his words, my father’s words, the ones he’d shouted when my brother came home with bloodshot eyes, smelling vaguely of weed for the umpteenth time.
My brother was a lazy liar.
Mehdi, too, drove a Honda Civic. A Honda Civic SI, bright blue, eighteen-inch rims. He’d modified it himself, put in a special exhaust, illegal blue lights, an insane sound system, a garish lip kit. He was expressly forbidden from drinking the alcohol he drank, expressly forbidden from dating the girls he dated, expressly forbidden from sneaking out of the house at night, which he did, nearly all the time. It was my window he used to climb out of, mine because of the ledge, the tree, the easy drop to the ground and the distance from my parents’ bedroom. He’d always kiss me on the forehead before he left, and I’d always leave my phone under my pillow, waiting, waiting for the buzz of his late-night text message asking me to unlock the front door.
My father had never been cruel, but he had always been cold. He loved rules, and he demanded respect from his children. He no doubt thought he was doing the right thing by trying to control Mehdi, but my dad had been so focused on the differences between them that he never seemed to understand that they were also the same.
Unyielding.
My father tried to break him, so my brother became water. My father tried to contain him, so my brother became the sea.
I heard a sudden crash.
I got to my feet in time to see two cars collide, slide, spin wildly out of control. Screeching tires, the horrifying sound of metal devouring metal, glass shattering. Old panic rose up inside of me, stole my breath. I was running before I understood why, tearing across the grass in a frenzy. I fumbled for my phone and realized I didn’t know where mine was, didn’t remember what I’d done with it, didn’t know where I’d left—
“Call 911!” I screamed at someone, my lungs on fire.
I was sprinting, realizing too late that I was still wearing this terrible backpack, deadweight dragging me down, and yet, for some reason, it didn’t occur to me to drop it, to throw it aside. The asphalt was slick underfoot, some parts of the road flooded, and I barreled through the shallow rivers, not even feeling the icy water penetrate my skin. My heart thundered in my chest as I approached the wreckage, my emotions spiraling dangerously. I was only vaguely aware of myself, only vaguely aware that I might be overreacting, that perhaps I was the wrong person for this job, that perhaps there was an adult or a doctor around who could do better, be better, but somehow I couldn’t stop, didn’t know how.
One of the cars was discernibly worse off than the other and I headed there first, yanking on the damaged driver’s side door until it opened with a miraculous groan. Inside, the driver was unconscious, her head bowed just above the steering wheel, a single line of blood trickling down her face.
Please, God, I thought. Please, please.
I reached around her, registering dimly that the airbags had not deployed, and tried to unbuckle her seat belt. It wouldn’t unlatch. I yanked at it desperately, tried to rip the thing out from its base, but it wouldn’t yield.
I heard the distant sound of sirens.
I yanked again at the seat belt, and this time, the girl stirred. She lifted her head with pronounced slowness, bleary eyes blinking open. She was maybe my age, just a kid, another kid, just a kid.
“Are you okay?” The scream of my voice startled me. “Are you all right?”
She frowned, looked around, realization dawning by painful degrees. I watched as her confusion gave way to understanding, understanding quickly giving way to a fear so profound it sent renewed horror through my body.
“Are you okay?” I said again, still hysterical. “Can you feel your legs? Do you know your name?”
“Oh my God,” she said, and clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God, oh my God, ohmygodohmygod ohmygod—”
“What is it? What’s wrong? The ambulance is almost here, someone called 911, don’t—”
“My parents,” she said, dropping her hands. Her face had paled. Her body had begun to tremble. “I just got my license. I’m not on the insurance yet. My parents are going to kill me, oh my God.”
Something broke in me then, broke me down. I began shaking uncontrollably, my bones like dice in a closed fist. I sagged to the ground, knees digging into the wet, gritty asphalt. “Your parents,” I said, gasping the words, “will be h-happy. So happy you’re a-alive.”
Thirteen
I heard shouting, deafening sirens, heavy, running footfalls. I dragged myself out of the way, staggered upright, headed for the sidewalk. I’d neither seen anything useful nor had I done anything of value; I did not need to leave behind my residue on the wreckage.
Besides, I hated talking to the police.
I made it to the sidewalk and stared at my feet, my heart beating erratically in my chest. I’d been fighting tears all day, all week, all year; it was exhausting. I often promised myself I’d cry them free when I got home, that I’d find a safe place to experience my anguish in full, and yet, I seldom did. It was not an exciting extracurricular activity, not the sort of thing most kids looked forward to upon arriving home from school. So I h
eld them in. They remained here, unshed and overfilling my chest, pressing painfully against my sternum. Always threatening.
I looked up at the gray sky, watched a bird until I was thinking of birds, thought of birds until I was thinking of flight, thought of flight until I saw a plane, watched the plane until it soared away, left me behind.
Changed the subject.
A gale of wind tore past me and I stumbled, heard the trees shudder in the distance. The clouds were fattening, the birds were feverish. I didn’t feel at all like myself but I was at least upright, nearly walking, so I figured I should continue on in this vein, trudge home, try to make it back before the rain knocked me sideways.
I’d only managed a few feet before I heard someone call my name.
Shout it, scream it.
I turned around, slightly stunned, and saw Ali standing not fifty feet away, planted in the middle of the sidewalk. His appearance alone was surprising enough, but what I couldn’t understand was his face. Even from here, I could tell he was livid.
Fight or flight? Fight or flight?
I made no decision and instead waited for him to stalk over to me, his anger appearing to grow exponentially with every footfall. He wasn’t quite ten feet away when he started yelling again, gesticulating at nothing when he said, “What the hell were you doing? What were you thinking?”
I frowned. I opened my mouth to protest my confusion but he was nearly upon me now, a footstep or two away from walking straight through me, and I wondered whether he would stop.
“Why would you run into the middle of a car accident?” he shouted. “You’re not a paramedic. You’re not trained for that. This isn’t some kind of—” He stopped short suddenly, his words dying in his mouth.
“Jesus. I’m sorry. Don’t cry. I’m sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair, seemed agitated to an unnecessary degree. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
I hadn’t realized I was crying. Horrified, I turned around, walked away, wiped at my cheeks with trembling hands.
“Wait—where are you going?” he said, keeping up.
I was still moving, now staring at a distant stoplight. I waited for the red light to turn green, waited for my body to stop shaking before I said, as steadily as I could manage, “What are you doing here?”
“What do you mean? I was picking my sister up from school.”
I stopped walking.
In the last year of my friendship with Zahra, Ali refused to drive his sister to school, refused to pick her up. I thought I knew why—it seemed obvious he was trying to avoid me—and my hypotheses were occasionally validated by Zahra’s mom, who’d suddenly become my only ride to and from school. It was a lot of work for Zahra’s mom to shuttle us around everywhere, and she’d been looking forward to bullying Ali into doing some of the work for her. She’d complain about him as she took us around, making empty threats to take away his car, lamenting the fact that she could never get her son to listen or take direction. I often felt like Zahra’s mom made the drives more for me than she did her own daughter; she seemed to know, somehow, that if she didn’t show up for me, no one would. Of course, this was a baseless theory, one I found both comforting and embarrassing, but I’d been grateful to her nonetheless—most of all for never making me feel like a burden.
The day I realized Zahra and I were no longer friends was the day I arrived at the after-school pickup before she did. I’d seen Zahra’s mom, waved hello. I’d just begun walking over to her car when Zahra showed up and said Oh my God, stop following me around everywhere. And for once in your life, get your own ride home. That was the day she tore off my head and filled me with a humiliation so dense I nearly sank straight into the earth. There were some things I had not yet learned how to forget.
Slowly, I turned around.
Ali was staring at me. Ali the liar, standing there lying to my face.
“Since when,” I said to him, “do you pick up your sister from school?”
He frowned. “I pick her up all the time.”
Liar.
He could only dare to lie like this because he had no idea that my own mom never took me anywhere anymore. Up until two months ago I’d sat beside his sister in his mother’s red minivan every single day; I still saw his mom’s car come and go in the school parking lot.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
It was becoming clear to me now that there was something Ali had come here to say, and I decided to give him the chance to say it before I disappeared from his life—because I intended to disappear, this time for good. I didn’t want to be accosted by Zahra anymore. I was sick of her accusations, sick of being made to feel like a terrible person—in perpetuity—for something I hadn’t even done.
I took an unsteady breath.
Ali had lied to me, and though I saw no point in exposing his lie, I did not also see the point in making this easy for him. Instead, I kept my eyes on his, the deep wells of brown, the shatteringly dark lashes. Mostly I stared at his face so I wouldn’t stare at anything else; I worried he’d catch me grazing his neck with my eyes, touching his shoulders with the tilt of my head.
He’d always been hard to ignore.
Ali loved soccer, was religious about the sport not unlike many men—especially Iranian men—but his obsession was unique in that he actually played the sport, and kicking that ball around had honed his body into something beautiful. I knew this because I had seen him, on a single occasion, by pure accident, without his shirt on. I had walked the hallowed halls of the shrine that was his home for six years, had been attacked by the evidence of his existence since I was eleven. I didn’t even need to see him without his clothes on to know why the female contingent loved him. He was a rare specimen. And it had always driven Zahra insane.
Finally, Ali broke.
“What?” he said, and sighed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Why did you come here?”
He turned away, shoved both hands through his hair. Most guys wore so much gel in their hair these days you could break the strands with a hammer. Ali did not appear to care for this trend.
“I didn’t know,” he said finally. “About your dad.”
I held my breath.
“I wanted to apologize. For all of it. For not knowing. For forgetting about Mehdi. I just—I needed to say it.”
My anger died on the spot. The feeling deserted me so quickly I felt light-headed in its absence. Limp.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s okay. There’s no reason for you to know things about my life.”
Ali exhaled, frustrated. “I just wish I’d known. Sometimes I ask Zahra how you’re doing, but she never tells me much.”
“Hey, maybe in the future”—I hesitated—“maybe you shouldn’t talk to Zahra about me. At all. She’s not— She’s getting the wrong idea.”
Ali frowned. “I don’t talk to her about you. I almost never talk to her about you. But after I left the hospital I went to pick her up from school, and she saw your backpack in my car. When she asked me about it I told her I’d given you a ride to the hospital.”
“Oh.”
“And, I mean, she asked me what happened, and I explained, and then I asked her about your dad and then . . .” He trailed off. His face cleared, realization imminent.
“Okay. Yeah, I might’ve asked her a lot of questions about you last night.” He looked over his shoulder suddenly. “Speaking of which, I should probably go. She’s waiting for me.”
I nodded, looked at nothing. And then I swallowed my pride and said, “When you see her, will you please tell her that there’s nothing happening between us?”
Ali spun back around like I’d slapped him. “What?”
“Or maybe you can tell her that nothing ever happened between us? Because she thinks”—I shook my head—“I don’t know, she came up to me today, and she was really upset. She seemed to think that we, that, I don’t know—”
“Are you joking?” Ali blinked, stunned, took a step back. “
Please tell me you’re joking.”
“What? Why?”
“I can’t believe you’re still doing this. I can’t believe you’re still letting her do this to you, even now, when she’s not even—Listen, Shadi, I don’t need anyone else’s permission to live my own life. And you shouldn’t, either.”
“She’s not just anyone else,” I said quietly. “She’s your sister.”
“I know she’s my sister.”
“Ali—”
“Listen, I don’t care, okay? This isn’t about us. You told me to jump off a cliff, and I did. I jumped off a fucking cliff. I cut myself out of your life because you asked me to, because you can’t see that my sister is just jealous of you, that she’s always been jealous of you, and can’t stand the idea of you being happy.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
“I’m not trying to change your mind anymore,” he said. “All right? I moved on. And if I’m standing here right now asking questions it’s only because I’m worried about you, because we used to be friends.”
I flinched. “I know that.”
“Then stop letting my sister dictate the terms of your life. Or mine, for that matter. Make your own choices.”
“Ali, she was my friend,” I said. “My best friend.”
“Your best friend. Wow. Okay.” He nodded, then laughed. “Tell me something, Shadi—what kind of best friend doesn’t want you to be happy? What kind of best friend doesn’t care if she hurts you? What kind of best friend denies you the right to make decisions for yourself?”