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Down and Across

Page 3

by Arvin Ahmadi


  She said nothing. Literally, it would cost me nothing.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. My housewarming gift to you.”

  “Seriously, Fiora, I’d love a free bike, but don’t you need it to get around to classes or your job or . . . whatever it is you do?”

  “What are you, my academic advisor?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m taking a summer class at GW. Sociology. Easy A.”

  Separately, I noticed she didn’t bring a helmet. I thought about my mother, who would kill me if she caught me riding without a helmet, because in her mind a helmetless death is not a matter of “if” but “when,” and her catching me was still distinctly possible from halfway around the world. Helicopter Moms are capable of exceptional feats.

  “Anyway,” Fiora said, “you’re the one who ran away to do big things.”

  Before I could respond, Fiora leaned the bike against the fence and took off down New Hampshire, waving goodbye from behind.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  Fiora swiveled around like a ninja, narrowing her eyes.

  “May I ask you a question, Saaket?”

  I gawked. Wasn’t she just running away from me?

  “Um, sure.”

  “What does the grit lady say about distractions? What if you don’t want to focus on the persistent and serious things in your life?”

  I cleared my throat and surprised myself with a quick answer.

  “Find new things, I guess.”

  THE HANOVER HOSTEL was smaller than it looked in the pictures online. The velvet armchairs and wooden tables in the lobby were more worn down than I had imagined, and the lighting much less charming. I walked over to the front desk.

  “One night, please,” I said.

  The hostel employee hardly looked up, his nose buried in a copy of Atlas Shrugged.

  “There’s a two-night minimum,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay.” I pulled out my wallet to pay in cash. Thankfully, I’d brought more than enough money.

  “ID?”

  Crap. There must have been a minimum age, too. I really should’ve spent less time looking at pictures on their website and more time reading the fine print.

  I made up an excuse on the spot, stumbling over my words as I explained how I’d lost my ID in Maryland and didn’t have anywhere else to stay for the night. The front-desk guy, who couldn’t have been much older than me, was clearly itching to get back to his Ayn Rand novel. He took my name and payment in cash for two nights, no questions asked.

  My room in the hostel was remarkably plain, with linoleum floor tiles and four empty bunk beds. Each bed had its own special flavor of stains: scarlet speckles, dusty brown blotches, even a large mustard island on one of the pillows. There was no winning with any of them.

  I picked the one with the pillow stain, comforting myself with the fact that I would only be in DC for one night, despite Fiora’s best efforts to keep me around. Not to mention I could just flip the pillow. I threw my backpack on the bed, changed into a blue polo shirt and corduroys, took a quick look in the mirror, and took off for Georgetown.

  Stepping outside and lingering in the shade of the small front porch, I could feel the heat waves looming on the other side. I whipped out my phone to pull up walking directions to Georgetown, specifically Professor Mallard’s office. Her office hours started in half an hour, and I wanted to arrive before any of her students.

  There was a small problem. Apparently, Georgetown the school was over a mile farther than Georgetown the neighborhood. So much for my “hostels near georgetown” Google search. Not only was I cutting it close on time, but it had to be nearly a hundred degrees outside. If I walked to her office, I would be late. If I ran, I’d show up looking like I had run a marathon—and not the metaphorical grit kind.

  I looked down from the porch; Fiora’s bike was still parked by the chain-link fence. I made an impulse decision to hop on and ride to campus. Fight and flight—how about that for psychology? The bike ride filled me with a kind of sugary upbeatness straight out of a Kidz Bop commercial. I floated past blocks of short, brightly colored town houses on M Street that lined up like candies on display in a boutique treat shop. The people were preppy and happy. Georgetown-the-school was a more majestic scene; I navigated one gargantuan Gothic building after another. Each building was made of thick gray slabs of stone. They soared into the sky, crowned with pointed roofs and wooden crosses that reminded me of the university’s Catholic ties. By the time I reached Cecily Mallard’s building, White-Gravenor Hall, I had considered converting at least three times.

  I threw my bike on the grass outside the building and made it to Professor Mallard’s office with a few minutes to spare. I stood outside her door catching my breath. I wanted to run through exactly what I would say to her, sentence by sentence. Instead, my brain did that thing where it explodes and freaks out with a million thoughts, all stepping on one another’s toes, fighting for my attention. Why was I the only person there? Didn’t Professor Mallard teach summer classes? Was her website outdated? Could I be at the wrong office? Maybe she had canceled office hours that day? How crazy was I really to try meeting this psychology professor who had no obligation to help me?

  I took a breath and pulled the brakes on my brain. I was stalling. I thought about the irony of having a mental breakdown in the Georgetown Psychology Department, which made me smile and calmed my nerves a bit. I took another breath, deeper, and opened the door.

  “What! The! Ffff— Damn it!” I jumped back as Professor Mallard shrieked and spattered coffee off her lips. I must have opened the door right into her and knocked the coffee out of her hands. She stood there drenched and, more noticeably, pissed. The Queen of Grit had become the Wicked Witch of Georgetown, except instead of melting into a puddle, she erupted like Vesuvius.

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry,” I said, offering my shaky hands as if they were paper towels and not the useless limbs that caused this disaster. “Are you okay? Is that hot?”

  “I’m fine,” the professor snapped. “I was just stepping out to reheat it.” She took a moment to collect herself as a tall Sikh student walked up, his mouth slightly agape. Professor Mallard looked at him apologetically. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Mandeep.” She looked back at me. “You’re here for office hours, I suppose? Come inside. Just . . . give me a moment to clean up.”

  Professor Mallard marched over to her desk, which sat at the end of a long and narrow office. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined both walls, packed tight with nonfiction titles like Handbook of Child and Adolescent Sexuality and Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations. Her desk, in stark contrast to the rest of the office, was uncluttered, with a picture frame and an abacus occupying the corners. The abacus had all the beads slid to one side, and the picture was your classic couple’s shot, showing Professor Mallard giving a piggyback ride to an older man.

  I sat silently across from the desk. Professor Mallard dabbed her blouse with a stack of napkins, digging in and rubbing firmly with each dab like she’d done this a million times before—head bent down, intensely focused. Locks of charcoal-black hair covered most of her face, though I could still make out a few soft freckles on her olive cheeks.

  “Ahem,” she said, head still down.

  “Oh! Hello, Professor. My, um, name is Scott Ferdowsi. Again, I’m so, so sorry about what just happened. I promise—”

  “Good afternoon, Scott. You must be in my summer course, yes?” Professor Mallard looked more petite in real life than I had imagined. This did not make her any less intimidating.

  “Yes?” she repeated.

  “I—No, I’m actually not.” I straightened my back and scooted to the edge of my seat.

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m not in your class.”

  Professor Mallard lifted her face. I could finally see her eyes—piercing
teal lasers that shot me down instantly.

  “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave, Scott. Office hours are for current students only.”

  I started to feel dizzy.

  “I’m going to be a senior in high school, and I took your Grit Quiz last week—”

  Professor Mallard raised her hand. “Scott, I’m sorry, but my time is limited. Feel free to email me, and I’ll do my best to respond.”

  Everything around me started to spin. I felt the rug pulled from under my feet, and now my vision was rumbling and spinning out of control. I wanted to throw up. I needed to leave.

  “S-sorry,” I said, trying my best to stand up and exit coolly.

  A small crowd had formed outside Professor Mallard’s office. I leaned against the closed door for a moment to collect myself, gasping for air. Then I ran. I shot past the cluster of students, down the halls and stairs of White-Gravenor until I was out of that damned psychology building. I collapsed on a bench, burying my face in my hands. Hyperventilating. The vertigo came rumbling back, and I hurled into a trash bin.

  Wasted time.

  Wasted money.

  Wasted energy.

  Most of all—wasted hope.

  I never thought I’d go on a “walk of shame” before college, but leaving Professor Mallard’s office after getting rejected sure felt like one. I tried my hardest not to think any more about our brief encounter. The disappointment would go away eventually—it always did. Something else would distract me soon enough.

  As I was biking through Georgetown-the-neighborhood, I stopped to watch a young man playing the violin at a street corner. He wore a tuxedo with bright red sneakers and was playing Justin Timberlake’s “Mirrors.” His music filled the busy corner with liveliness, but my eyes were focused on the violin nuzzled between his shoulder and neck. An old memory flashed across my mind.

  “Play it again.”

  I was eleven years old. Practically chained to a folding chair in the corner of my bedroom. My legs were crossed, and a clunky Persian guitar, the tar, rested on my lap. It had a long, delicate neck carved out of mulberry wood, and the sound came out of a hollow chamber shaped like a figure eight. I’d been playing tar for a few years, but that night I held the instrument like a baby that wasn’t mine.

  “Play it . . . again,” he repeated, sending shivers down my spine.

  My dad stood over my shoulders, the drill sergeant of my last-minute practice session. We’d been going for hours that night. It was the eve of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, and while I had known for months that I was performing in our local celebration, I’d waited until the night before to learn the song.

  My eyes shifted jerkily between the flimsy sheet music and my fingers as I plucked at the tar and sang along with the melody: “Mikham . . . beram . . . kooh.”

  I choked on the kh sound. My eyes quivered, and I held back tears. I hated this instrument. I hated Iranian music. Most of the time, the ancient lyrics meant nothing to me, but for once I understood them and could even relate.

  I want . . . to escape . . . to the mountain.

  “Relax. Relax, damn it.” Now my dad was hunched in his chair, massaging his temples. He wanted me to relax physically, not mentally. Everything about my posture was tight. My legs were crossed tight. My fingers pressed tightly into the neck of the tar. I even held the wax-covered pick tightly, “shaping the wax like kebab,” as my dad would say.

  I sang the next line without understanding the meaning, or why I was subjecting myself to this nightmarish practice session. I broke down.

  My father cursed in Farsi. I stormed out of the room, leaving my tar turned over sideways on the carpet. I locked myself in our small upstairs bathroom, still clenching the pick in my sweaty palms. I threw my head over the sink and sobbed loudly. You could say I was being overdramatic, but I preferred choosing my own performances.

  Eventually I looked up, confronting my reflection in the mirror. Pathetic. Confused. I was filled with anger toward my dad, but I couldn’t even empathize with myself. I began assessing my face, feature by feature, channeling my anger to my physical shortcomings. I hated my bushy eyebrows—unyielding caterpillars that lurked over my watery black eyes. My Mr. Potato Head nose, sniffling, looking wider than usual. Most of all, I glared at my mouth: not just for the fuzzy mustache that was beginning to grow over it, or the squashed M shape of my upper lip—but for the words that slipped out of it. A language I didn’t care to speak. Song lyrics I didn’t care to sing. Names of exotic food I was too embarrassed to bring to school lunches. Words that held me back from fitting in.

  I carried myself to my room and continued crying softly in the corner of my bed, curled into a ball, when I heard something fly over my head and smash into the wall. It was the miniature violin I kept on my desk, and it had shattered into a million little wooden shards. Dad stood by the door.

  “It’s not worth it,” he yelled, fists clenched at his sides. “You’re lazy, and you’ll never practice. Keep up this habit and you won’t ever amount to anything.”

  I brushed the splinters off my bed and cried myself to sleep. I probably dreamed of botching my performance—which I did.

  I never officially quit the tar. I just stopped playing. One skipped lesson turned into another, and then I was out of commission for three weeks with the chicken pox. This closed the musical chapter of my life for good. Every few months or so, my dad would suggest I take out my old tar and play some chords. My dad and I lived in our own fantasy worlds where I’d pretend my failures never existed and he, after some time, believed that I never failed but simply pressed pause. One of our fictions had to be true.

  I hopped off my bike to drop a dollar into the violin player’s case, watching the crisp bill swim in the air on its way down.

  I buried my latest disappointment in the ground with all the others.

  I hopped back on my bike and rode away.

  I HAD ALMOST reached the hostel when I noticed a bald, bearded man riding very close behind me on a neon-orange bike. He looked at least thirty and was wearing a tattered shirt. To be safe, I rode past the Hanover Hostel and made a right on a small road called Sunderland Place. The man also turned. He was following me.

  Fuck fuck fuck this isn’t good, I thought. Also not good: Sunderland Place wasn’t a real road. It was about one hundred yards long—one of those chode roads they use for drug deals and gang violence and now my impending death. I thought about making a sharp right at the end of Sunderland, but the guy was right behind me, practically breathing down my neck. There was no way I’d lose him with another turn.

  “Hey,” he said. I jumped in my seat. In my imagination, this man had a gun and would shoot if I even acknowledged his presence. We reached the end of Sunderland, and I made a spontaneous move—I veered into a sudden U-turn. My bike bounced off the curb and onto the road, brushing past the stranger’s bike. He stumbled and yelled: “Hey, what the hell, man? I’m trying to talk to you!”

  All right, I had temporarily paralyzed him. This time I jetted down Sunderland in what felt like a microsecond before turning left onto New Hampshire. I raced down the street, my face straight ahead. I was almost back at the hostel when I heard his voice getting louder from the other end of the block: “Hey! Kid! Hold the fuck up.”

  God. Damn. It. If I stopped at the hostel, he’d find me inside, or at least he would know where I was staying, so I kept speeding down New Hampshire. I turned right on L Street—now I was going against traffic—then made a sharp left, shooting past backpacked college students who ducked out of my way. . . . Kind of badass, I thought to myself, right? Wait, focus. I couldn’t hear his voice anymore, but I didn’t want to turn around, so I kept biking and turning onto random streets to lose He Who Must Be Right Behind Me.

  “Hey, kid . . .”

  Ah, shoot. Somehow he’d caught up fast. I pedaled faster, faster—

&nbs
p; “Hey! Stop!”

  Pedal, pedal, PEDAAALLLLLL—

  Whack.

  My face was covered in blood. I must have lost control of the bike and steered straight into a phone booth. I could feel stinging wounds all across my cheeks. My arms and legs were pretty messed up, too.

  I managed to lift up my head and assess my surroundings. There were signs for K Street and 22nd down the block. Then I froze. In front of me, there was a man’s shadow. Slowly I looked up and breathed a sigh of relief; this man was neither bald nor scruffy.

  “I tried yelling at you to stop”—the stranger chuckled—“but you were heading straight for that telephone booth. Like, you were impressively determined to take it down, so props for that, but honestly? You never had a chance.”

  “I—I don’t know what I was doing . . . I was running away from this guy who was chasing me and lost control and I guess just kept biking. And then—I . . .”

  “No worries, man,” he said. He grabbed my arm and helped me up. “Let’s get you cleaned up. I saw the health services building a block or two that way.”

  “What?” I must have wound up on another campus. “Oh, I’m not a student here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll be—” I tried standing up and fell over pathetically. “Fine.”

  “No, no way.” The stranger extended his hand to help me up. He thought for a moment, then spoke: “Here, I’ve got a plan. I’m Trent, by the way.”

  “I’m Scott,” I said. “Thanks for helping.”

  Trent hoisted my arm over his shoulder, and we limped together down the block. Normally I wouldn’t accept help from a stranger, but I was desperate—not to mention the only thing threatening about Trent was his good looks. He towered over me with an athletic build, dirty-blond hair, and a jawline so sharp it put other faces to shame. Trent wore a kelly-green polo with khakis and boat shoes. Unless he had plans to strangle me with an argyle sweater, I was pretty confident this stranger wasn’t going to kill me.

 

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