Down and Across
Page 1
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018
Copyright © 2018 by Arvin Ahmadi
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Ebook ISBN: 9780425289891
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Ahmadi, Arvin.Title: Down and across / Arvin Ahmadi.
Description: New York : Viking, [2018]. | Summary: “Sixteen-year-old Scott Ferdowsi’s impromptu trip to a famous professor for advice about success turns into a summer of freedom that brings him answers in unexpected places”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017005389 | ISBN 9780425289877 (hardback) Subjects: | CYAC: Runaways—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. |Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. | Iranian Americans—Fiction. |Washington (D.C.)—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A343 Dow 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005389
Version_1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Prologue
Week OneChapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Week TwoChapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Week ThreeChapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Week FourChapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Answer Key
Acknowledgments
I suppose I do have one unembarrassing passion— I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.
—Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief
We as human beings seem to have a natural compulsion to fill up empty spaces.
—Will Shortz
EIGHT MORNINGS BEFORE running away, I found myself at McDonald’s, wondering about the direction of my life. It was one of those moments that should have felt important. I should have said to myself: Hey, Self! You’re having a Pivotal Moment in a Sentimental Place. On a scale of 1 to Serious, I should have rated this occasion at least a 9. But I didn’t. My Serious Scale didn’t even register. Not a single cell in my brain cared to define that morning in the grand scheme of things. Or in any scheme of things, really.
That morning I wondered about dirty tables. The one in front of me had almost certainly just been wiped down, still freshly wet and slippery. I imagined the motions the McDonald’s employee made cleaning that surface: up, down, up, down. Left to right. Loop-de-flippin’-loop, like a drunk man on a Zamboni joyride. Still, the table reeked, so I knew they cleaned it with a dirty rag. This conundrum hijacked my focus. On one hand, sure, it was better for the environment to clean hard surfaces with a rag. But then, wasn’t the rag just transferring gunk from one surface to another?
“Pay attention,” he snapped. “I’m trying to understand what you want.”
Right. My dad. He clenched his hands tight, the skin bunching up around his knuckles. I felt guilty. Not for anything I had actually done, but for what I wasn’t doing.
We sat at our usual booth in the very back. It was like our boxing ring. In one corner: Me, Scott Ferdowsi, my lanky five-foot-ten frame slouched like a golden arch. Fighting to quit a summer internship that hadn’t even begun yet. In the other corner: My dad. Fighting to keep me on the right track, any track, because I’d been known to derail.
“I know what I don’t want,” I said, stabbing my plastic fork into a rubbery glob of eggs. “I don’t want to look at microscopic mouse poop for the rest of my life. Research is boring.”
My dad chuckled. “What could be more exciting than mouse poop?”
I glanced over at the table next to us. A girl in a sparkly Frozen costume was stomping her My Little Pony toy into her hash browns.
“Horse poop,” I said. “Perhaps I will become an equestrian.”
Dad scrunched up his face. “Saaket bash,” he hissed. Be quiet.
“I am,” I teased softly. My Iranian name is Saaket, which means “quiet” in Farsi. It’s one of my best jokes: “Be quiet!” “That’s my name!”
Dad didn’t laugh.
“When are you going to get serious, Saaket? This is your life. You need to stop playing games and plan for your future.”
Bingo. It would be his usual lecture. I rolled my eyes and slid lower into the tattered cushion to get comfortable. If there’s one thing Iranian parents love more than chelo kebab and their children, it’s making a point.
“You’re all over the place,” he said, waving his hands frantically. “Look at the opportunities you’ve already screwed up. High school! You get accepted to a very nice high school, but you hardly study. You’re pulling lousy grades.”
Jab.
“Last summer. I got you a job with Majid’s law firm. You quit after three weeks.”
Punch.
“And now, after I pulled every mediocre connection I have to get you an internship at the university lab, you’re giving up before you even start.”
Knockout.
He kept going, as if he hadn’t just put me down over and over: “You know, I was reading a study the other day by a very famous professor at Georgetown . . . Cecily Mallard. She’s a genius, Saaket. Really! They just gave her an award that is specifically for geniuses. The genius award, it’s—”
“Okay, Dad,” I moaned. “What did she say?”
My dad paused dramatically and pointed his finger upward, à la eureka. “Grit,” he said. “She discovered that the best predictor of success isn’t IQ or how wealthy your parents are, or even your grades. It’s grit. Do you know what that is?”
“Nope, but I’m sure—”
“It’s a person’s ability to stick with something. To focus. To really follow through. Tahammol. It’s treating everything you do like a marathon, not a sprint.”
“Come on, Dad, a summer internship isn’t a marathon. It’s, like, the JV track meet that nobody watches. I don’t need a participation ribbon for—”
“You’re missing the point, Saaket.”
“Scott,” I said curtly. “It’s Scott. I’ve been going by Scott since kindergarten.”
“Sorry,” he replied, only half-sincere. “Scott, you’re missing the point. When you set your mind on something, you need to give it a shot and persist.”
“Mouse poop.”
“Yes, mouse poop,” he said, gritting his teeth. “You were excited about it a few weeks ago. You were cracking jokes: ‘poopular’ this and ‘micropoopic’ that.”
I buried my face in my hands, wondering if my dad was at all embarrassed by the words he had uttered in a public place. Probably not.
He sighed deeply, as if I were the one exhausting him and not the other way around.
“You’re almost seventeen years old, Scott. In a few months you’ll be a senior, filling out applications for college. What in the world do you care about? What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”
“I don’t know, Dad.”
“See? That’s exactly the problem!” His eyes lit up. “Pesaram. My son. You need to start thinking about your future. You could study engineering, or you could go to medical school. Those are both respectable fields. I just”—he threw his hands up—“I just want you to care about something, Scott. I can’t think of a single thing you’re gritty about. I’m not calling you a failure, but I only wonder if we should have kept you more focused.”
Clearly my dad was calling me a failure. I held my breath as a stream of shortcomings bogged down my mind. My grades. My SAT score. The Earth Club I let wither away like the ozone layer. The mystery novel I got bored with writing after three chapters. All those instruments I used to play.
“Are you paying attention?” he barked. “I need to know you’ll take this internship seriously while your mother and I are away. This is important.”
“Important for you or for me?”
His eyes jumped. “For you,” he said, forcing the words out slowly. “You’re almost an adult now.”
“If I’m almost an adult, then why can’t I go to Iran with you and Mom?”
“Here we go again. We’ll take you one day, I promise, but now isn’t the right time. It’s a critical summer for your future. And with everything going on with Baba Bozorg . . .”
We both got quiet. Dad broke the silence with two taps on the table.
“This is the right plan. You stay home and do your internship. We deal with Baba Bozorg’s health.” His voice cracked, and he forced a smile. “Don’t you always say we should trust you more? Well, here’s your trust. One month!”
“One month,” I repeated.
“June fourteenth to July fourteenth. Precisely one month. I asked the travel agent what kind of discount we would get for such a nice coincidence—”
“Dad, you’re so lame.”
“We’re coming back on your birthday! I believe that is the opposite of lame.”
“Uh-huh.”
“In fact, your mother and I are very cool. We suspect you might throw a birthday party with your fellow interns, and we are cool with that.”
“I’m the only intern. And I’m sure you’ll be calling twenty-four/seven.”
Dad dropped his buddy act. “One phone call a week, that’s all. Look, we’re trying to meet you halfway. Please, focus on your internship.”
I didn’t have it in me to keep arguing, so as usual, I gave up. “Okay, Dad. I’ll do the stupid internship.”
We sat there silently for the rest of breakfast like boxers with their foreheads pressed together, dripping sweat, too tired to throw the last punch. I didn’t finish my eggs. Instead, I imagined my parents in the airplane to Iran, gazing out the pressurized window at the chalky sky and everything beyond it—stars and galaxies and dark matter–type craziness. I imagined the big bang, which created our scattered universe: scattered, but acceptable. Indefinitely incomplete.
I wondered: Why aren’t I allowed to be indefinitely incomplete, too?
The next morning, I hugged my parents goodbye in the kitchen. Once again I didn’t finish my breakfast. I left a few flakes of Raisin Bran in the bowl, dumped it in the sink, and took off to catch the bus to my internship in Philly.
Exactly one week later, I boarded a different bus to Washington, DC.
Everything happened so quickly. I drew a blank as soon as I stepped onto the Greyhound. Technically I was running away. I knew that. The stream of gut-punching, sweat-inducing adrenaline made that much clear, even if it would only be for two days. But for a brief moment I couldn’t recall why I was doing it, like I’d stumbled into the kitchen in the middle of the night but forgotten what exactly I wanted. The reason was escaping me.
Then the bus jolted forward, and I remembered.
Fucking grit.
WEEK ONE
I INHALED DEEPLY, then exhaled. This is happening, I whispered under my breath as I drifted down the aisle.
The bus smelled cheap. It didn’t reek, but it had a sterile stench that was on par with the cleaned-by-a-rag whiff of a McDonald’s table. I lifted my chin up to look around. Virtually every seat was filled with strangers, and for the first time in my life, I saw an extra layer of meaning in that word. Not that there’s anything inherently strange about a man in a business suit drinking wine straight from the bottle, or an all-girls punk rock band, or a person with teardrops tattooed on his face, but when you put these unique individuals together inside a moving box . . . voilà. Strangers. Noah Webster must have ridden this very bus when he wrote the definition. But who was I to judge? I was the token teen with a half-baked plan, so I suppose I added to the strange vibe.
I made it to the back of the bus and found two seats by the bathroom, which added a truly special touch to the smell situation. Strategically, I plopped my backpack down in one seat and myself into the other. First I would pretend to be asleep to ward off potential seatmates. They would have no choice but to assume the backpack belonged to someone else. Then, when everyone was seated, I would sprawl out across both seats and sleep like a king. It was a foolproof plan.
Seconds after I closed my eyes, though, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Is anyone sitting there?”
I opened my eyes and rubbed them pathetically, gazing up like a lost puppy. A remarkably pretty girl towered over me. She had wispy blonde hair and the kind of deep blue eyes that suck you right in. No high cheekbones or sharp jawline or anything—her face was confidently undefined. Round, but in a sweet way. Her lips, on the other hand, were inhumanly voluminous, and she pursed them while she asked. She knew no one was sitting there. She was totally onto me.
“Yeah, someone’s sitting there,” I lied. I wasn’t going to let an attractive girl distract me from my plan. “They’re, uh, in the bathroom.”
She scanned the packed bus and pointed at the bathroom, smirking.
“Do they know they left the door open?”
Ugh. I never get away with anything. I pushed my backpack to the ground, and the girl took a seat without missing a beat.
She turned her head and looked up at me with those eyes. They had this intense nonchalance that I couldn’t bear to look at, so I lowered my gaze, which meant staring at the arch formed by the small of her back, which was her ass. I shot my attention back upward. Eye contact with her chin would have to do.
“I’m Fiora,” she said. The words flowed from her mouth like waves, rhythmic and decisive. “Did you really think you’d get away with that imaginary friend stunt?”
My mouth dropped. I couldn’t find any words.
“I don’t blame you,” Fiora said. “You’d think it would be emptier on a Monday morning. Who travels to DC on a Monday?”
Still no words, but I furrowed my brows this time, because, well . . .
“Right. Us. Normally I leave Philly on Sundays. But last night was my mom’s birthday, and it’s been . . . Oh. You’re a complete stranger.”
“That’s correct,” I finally said.
“And I’m talking your ear off.”
“Yes.”
Confident as she was, there was something desperate about Fiora’s expression. Her lips quivered like the words were scratching to escape. May
be she had wild stories from the weekend. Maybe it was family drama. Whatever her situation, I had my own story to figure out, so I decided to stage an exit.
“It’s nice to meet you, Fiora. I’m really tired and . . . Well, I’m going to take a nap, if that’s all right.”
She chuckled. “Your choice, pal.”
Fate had placed a beautiful and friendly girl in the seat next to me, but grit demanded that I stay focused on the task at hand. I put in earbuds and shut my eyes. In a matter of hours, I would be standing face-to-face with the leading expert on this subject I had become so obsessed with.
When I first heard about Professor Cecily Mallard, I thought she was full of shit—another motivational speaker-thinker-quack my dad thought could save my potential or whatever. Grit sounded like a self-help guide for parents with kids like me.
On Monday when my parents left for Iran, I started my internship, which was actually full of shit. Approximately 98 percent of my job involved collecting feces from lab rats and preparing them for various tests. It stank. It reeked—even more than all of those poop puns. I recognize that fecal research is tied to natural pathogens and pulmonary symptoms and other virtuous science-y things. But it’s still poop. I was squinting at it for eight hours a day and taking notes on its density and hue in a lab notebook. Most of the time I wanted to stab my head with a micropipette.
That first night after work, I showered and popped one of my mom’s Lean Cuisines into the microwave. I was ready to surf the web. It was going to be a long and lonely summer without my best friends, Jack and Kevin, who were away on a highly selective teen tour of Southeast Asia. In the absence of friends, parents, or a car—sore subject—our family PC was my only portal to the outside world.
One link led to another, and eventually I found myself on Professor Mallard’s Wikipedia page. She sounded legit, and her lecture on YouTube had about a zillion views:
CECILY MALLARD: It’s not students with the highest IQ who consistently succeed. It’s not the best-looking ones or the ones from wealthy families. It’s the grittiest. The ones who keep trying, even when they fail. The single most reliable predictor of success is grit.