by Adib Khorram
DIAL BOOKS
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New York, NY 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Adib Khorram
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Khorram, Adib.
Title: Darius the Great is not okay / Adib Khorram.
Description: New York, NY : Dial Books, [2018] | Summary: Clinically depressed Darius Kellner, a high school sophomore, travels to Iran to meet his grandparents, but it is their next-door neighbor, Sohrab, who changes his life.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009825| ISBN 9780525552963 (hardback) | ISBN9780525552987 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Friendship—Fiction. | Grandparents—Fiction. | Depression, Mental—Fiction. | Iranian Americans—Fiction. | Americans—Iran—Fiction. | Iran—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K5362 Dar 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009825
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Jacket art © 2018 by Adams Carvalho
Version_1
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
THE CHIEFEST AND GREATEST OF CALAMITIES
TRUCK NUTS
THE DISTINGUISHED PICARD CRESCENT
MOBY THE WHALE
SLINGSHOT MANEUVERS
A NON-PASSIVE FAILURE
INTERMIX RATIO
OLYMPUS MONS
TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS
THE DANCING FAN
THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN-IRANIAN RELATIONS
A HOLODECK VISION
SOCCER/NON-AMERICAN FOOTBALL
THE AYATOLLAH’S TURBAN
STANDARD PARENTAL MANEUVER ALPHA
THE DESSERT CAPITAL OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
SINS OF THE FATHER
THE KOLINAHR DISCIPLINE
BETTE DAVIS EYES
PERSIAN CASUAL
MY COUSIN, THE RINGWRAITH
MAIN SEQUENCE
THE BORG OF HERBS
THE KHAKI KINGDOM
A TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL
THE TOWERS OF SILENCE
YESTERDAY’S ENTERPRISE
FATHER ISSUES
MAKE IT SO
CHELO KABOB
THE VIRGO SUPERCLUSTER
THE AGE OF BAHRAMIS
MAGNETIC CONTAINMENT
FIRST, BEST DESTINY
THROUGH A WORMHOLE
THE CRACKS OF DOOM
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
DARIUS THE GREAT
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOR MY FAMILY,
FOR ALWAYS KEEPING THE KETTLE ON.
THE CHIEFEST AND GREATEST OF CALAMITIES
Steam belched and hissed. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.
Smaug the Terrible was furious with me.
“What does it mean, ‘filter error’?” I asked.
“Here.” Mr. Apatan wiggled the hose where it fed into Smaug’s gleaming chrome back. The blinking red error light went dark. “Better?”
“I think so.”
Smaug gurgled happily and began boiling once again.
“Good. Were you pushing buttons?”
“No,” I said. “Just to check the temperature.”
“You don’t have to check it, Darius. It always stays at two- twelve.”
“Right.”
There was no use arguing with Charles Apatan, Manager of the Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court. He was convinced, despite all the articles I printed out for him—he refused to read web pages—that each and every tea should be steeped at a full boil, whether it was a robust Yunnan or a fragile gyokuro.
Not that Tea Haven ever got such fine teas. Everything we sold was enriched with antioxidants or enhanced with natural super-fruit extracts or formulated for health and beauty.
Smaug, the Irrepressibly Finicky, was our industrial-strength water boiler. I named it Smaug my first week on the job, when I got scalded three times in a single shift, but so far the name hadn’t stuck with anyone else at Tea Haven.
Mr. Apatan passed me an empty pump-action thermos. “We need more Blueberry Açai Bliss.”
I shoveled tea from the bright orange tin into the filter basket, topped it with two scoops of rock sugar, and tucked it under the spigot. Smaug, the Unassailably Pressurized, spat its steaming contents into the thermos. I flinched as boiling water spattered my hands.
Smaug, the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities, was triumphant once more.
* * *
As a people group, Persians are genetically predisposed to like tea. And even though I was only half Persian, I had inherited a full-strength tea-loving gene sequence from my mom.
“You know how Persians make tea?” my mom would ask.
“How?” I would say.
“We put hell in it and we damn it,” she would say, and I would laugh because it was funny to hear my mom, who never used colorful metaphors, pretend to curse.
In Farsi, hel means “cardamom,” which is what makes Persian tea so delicious, and dam means “to steep.”
When I explained the joke to Mr. Apatan, he was not amused.
“You can’t swear at the customers, Darius,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to. It’s Farsi. It’s a joke.”
“You can’t do that.”
Charles Apatan was the most literal person I knew.
* * *
After I replenished our strategically located sample thermoses with fresh tea, I refilled the plastic cups at each station.
I was categorically opposed to plastic sample cups. Everything tasted gross out of plastic, all chemical-y and bland.
It was deeply disgusting.
Not that it made much difference at Tea Haven. The sugar content in our samples was high enough to mask the taste of the plastic cups. Maybe even high enough to dissolve them, given enough time.
The Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court was not a bad place to work. Not really. It was a significant upgrade over my last job—spinning the daily special sign at one of those take-it-and-bake-it pizza places—and it would look good on my resume. That way, when I graduated, I could work at an artisanal tea store, instead of one that added the latest superfood extract to whatever dismal fannings the corporate tea blenders could find at the steepest discount.
My dream job was Rose City Teas, this place in the Northwest District that did small-batch, hand-selected teas. There were no artificial flavorings in Rose City’s tea. But you had to be eighteen to work
there.
I was stuffing the cups into their spring-loaded dispenser when Trent Bolger’s hyena laugh rang through the open doorway.
I was completely exposed. The entire front of Tea Haven was composed of giant windows, which, though tinted to reduce sun exposure, still offered a full and enticing view of the wares (and employees) inside.
I silently wished for the sun to bounce off the window, blinding Trent and cloaking me from what was sure to be an unpleasant encounter. Or, at the very least, for Trent to keep on walking and not recognize me in my work uniform of black shirt and bright blue apron.
It did not work. Trent Bolger rounded the corner and instantly got a sensor lock on me.
He grabbed the doorframe and swung himself into the store, followed by one of his Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy, Chip Cusumano.
“Hey! D’s Nuts!”
Trent Bolger never called me Darius. Not if there was a suggestive nickname he could use instead.
Mom always said she named me after Darius the Great, but I think she and Dad were setting themselves up for disappointment, naming me after a historical figure like that. I was many things—D-Hole, D-Wad, D’s Nuts—but I was definitely not great.
If anything, I was a great target for Trent Bolger and his Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy. When your name begins with D, the sexual innuendos practically write themselves.
At least Trent was predictable.
* * *
Trent Bolger was not technically a bully. Chapel Hill High School—where Trent, Chip, and I were sophomores—had a Zero Tolerance Policy toward bullying.
It also had Zero Tolerance Policies toward fighting, plagiarism, drugs, and alcohol.
And if everyone at Chapel Hill High School tolerated Trent’s behavior, that meant he wasn’t a bully.
Right?
Trent and I had known each other since kindergarten. We were friends back then, in the way that everyone is friends in kindergarten, before sociopolitical alliances begin to cement, and then, by the time third grade rolls around, you find yourself spending every game of Heads Down, Thumbs Up with your head down and your thumb up, completely ignored by your entire class until you begin to wonder if you’ve turned invisible.
Trent Bolger was only a Level Two Athlete (Level Three at best). He played something-back on the Chapel Hill High School junior varsity football team (Go Chargers). And he was not particularly good-looking, either. Trent was almost a head shorter than me, with close-cropped black hair, blocky black glasses, and a nose that turned up sharply at the end.
Trent Bolger had the largest nostrils of anyone I had ever seen.
Nonetheless, Trent was disproportionately popular among Chapel Hill High School’s sophomore class.
Chip Cusumano was taller, better-looking, and cooler. His hair was long and swoopy on top, with the sides shaved. He had the elegant sort of curved nose you saw in statues and paintings, and his nostrils were perfectly proportioned.
He was also nicer than Trent (to most people if not to me), which of course meant he was far less popular.
Also, his real name was Cyprian, which was an even more unusual name than Darius.
Trent Bolger shared his last name with Fredegar “Fatty” Bolger, a Hobbit from The Lord of the Rings. He’s the one that stays home in the Shire while Frodo and company go on their adventure.
Fatty Bolger is pretty much the most boring Hobbit ever.
I never called Trent “Fatty” to his face.
* * *
It was a Level Five Disaster.
I had avoided letting anyone at Chapel Hill High School know where I worked, specifically to keep that knowledge from falling into the hands of Trent and the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy.
Chip Cusumano nodded at me from the doorway and began to examine our line of brightly colored steeper mugs. But Trent Bolger headed straight for my station. He was wearing gray swishy shorts and his Chapel Hill High School Wrestling Team sweatshirt.
Trent and Chip both wrestled in the winter. Trent was junior varsity, but Chip had managed a spot on the varsity roster, the only sophomore to do so.
Chip had on his team sweatshirt too, but he wore it with his usual black joggers, the kind with stripes down the sides that taper around the ankles. I never saw Chip in swishy shorts outside of gym class, which I assumed was for the same reason I avoided them.
It was the only thing we had in common.
Trent Bolger stood in front of me, grinning. He knew I couldn’t escape him at work.
“Welcome to Tea Haven,” I said, which was the Corporate Mandated Greeting. “Would you like to sample one of our fine teas today?”
Technically, I was also supposed to produce a Corporate Mandated Smile, but I was not a miracle worker.
“Do you guys sell tea bags?”
Across the store, Chip smirked and shook his head.
“Uh.”
I knew what Trent was trying to do. This was not Chapel Hill High School, and the Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court did not have a Zero Tolerance Policy toward bullying.
“No. We only sell mesh strainers and biodegradable sachets.”
“That’s a shame. I bet you really like tea bags.” Trent’s grin crept up one side of his face. He only ever smiled with half his mouth. “You just seem like the type of guy who would really enjoy them.”
“Um.”
“You must get tea-bagged a lot, right?”
“I’m trying to work, Trent,” I said. Then, because I had the tingly feeling that Mr. Apatan was somewhere close by, carefully watching and critiquing my customer service, I cleared my throat and asked, “Would you like to try our Orange Blossom Awesome Herbal Tisane?”
I refused to call it tea when it did not contain any actual tea leaves.
“What’s it taste like?”
I pulled a sample cup out of the stack, filled it with a pump of Orange Blossom Awesome, and offered it to Trent, using my flat palm as a sort of saucer.
He downed it in one swallow. “Ugh. This tastes like orange juice and balls.”
Chip Cusumano laughed into the empty tea tin he was examining. It was one of our new spring-patterned ones, with cherry blossoms on it.
“Did you brew it right, Darius?” Mr. Apatan asked behind me.
Mr. Apatan was even shorter than Fatty Bolger, but somehow he managed to take up more space as he stepped between us to fill a sample cup of his own.
Fatty winked at me. “Catch you later. D-Bag.”
D-Bag.
My newest suggestive nickname.
It was only a matter of time.
Trent nodded at Chip, who grinned and waved innocently at me, as if he hadn’t just played accomplice to my humiliation. They jostled each other out the door, laughing.
“Thank you for visiting Tea Haven,” I said. “Come again soon.”
The Corporate Mandated Farewell.
“Did he just call you tea bag?” Mr. Apatan asked.
“No.”
“Did you tell him about our mesh baskets?”
I nodded.
“Hmm.” He slurped his sample. “Well, this is right. Good job, Darius.”
“Thanks.”
I had done nothing worthy of praise. Anyone could brew Orange Blossom Awesome.
That was the whole point and purpose of Tea Haven.
“Was that a friend of yours from school?”
Clearly the nuances of my interaction with Fatty Bolger, the World’s Most Boring Hobbit, were lost on Charles Apatan.
“Next time, have him try the Blueberry Bliss.”
“Okay.”
TRUCK NUTS
The bike rack for the Shoppes at Fairview Court was located at the far end of the shopping center, right outside one of those clothing stores that catered to Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy like Fatty Bo
lger and Chip Cusumano. The kind that had pictures of shirtless guys with abdomens that could only be expressed in integers.
Five different kinds of overpowering cologne waged war in my sinuses as I passed the store. When I made it out into the parking lot, the sun was still up, barely, but the mercury lights had come on. The air smelled dry and vacant after weeks of rain.
I had been riding my bike from Chapel Hill High School to the Tea Haven at the Shoppes at Fairview Court ever since I got the job. It was easier than getting a ride from either of my parents.
But when I got to the bike rack, my bicycle was gone.
Upon closer inspection, that was not technically true—only part of my bike was gone. The frame was there, but the wheels were missing. The bike slumped against the post, held on by my lock.
The seat was missing too, and whoever had taken it had left some sort of blue blob in its place.
Well, it was not a blue blob. It was a pair of blue rubber testicles.
I had never seen blue rubber testicles before, but I knew right away where they had come from.
Like I said, there was no Zero Tolerance Policy toward bullying at the Shoppes at Fairview Court. There was one toward stealing, but apparently that didn’t cover bicycle seats.
My backpack sagged on my shoulders.
I had to call my dad.
“Darius? Is everything okay?”
Dad always said that. Not Hi, Darius, but Is everything okay?
“Hey. Can you come pick me up from work?”
“Did something happen?”
It was humiliating, telling my father about the blue rubber testicles, especially because I knew he would laugh.
“Really? You mean like truck nuts?”
“What are truck nuts?”
“People hook them on the hitch of their truck, so it looks like the truck has testicles.”
The back of my neck prickled.
In the course of our phone call, my father and I had used the word testicles more than was healthy for any father-son relationship.