by Tahereh Mafi
“Anyway,” I said, “Ocean is my lab partner in another class. He just felt bad that Mr. Jordan was being a jerk.”
My brother still seemed skeptical, but he didn’t push it. I could feel him begin to pull away, to lose interest in the conversation, and it made me suddenly anxious. There was something I still wanted to say. Something that had been bothering me all day. I’d been deliberating for hours whether or not to ask the question—even how to ask the question—and, finally, I just gave in and made a mess of it.
“Hey, Navid?” I said quietly.
He’d just turned to grab something out of his bag, and he looked back at me. “Yeah?”
“Do you—” I hesitated. Reconsidered.
“Do I what?”
I took a deep breath. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Navid’s reaction to my question was so absurd I almost don’t even know how to describe it. He looked somehow shocked and confused and hysterical all at the same time. Eventually, he laughed. Hard. It sounded strange.
I was mortified.
“Oh my God, never mind,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry I even asked. That was so stupid.”
I was halfway across the room when Navid jogged—slowly, dragging his sneakers—after me, and said, “Wait, wait, I’m sorry—”
“Forget it,” I said angrily. I was blushing past my hairline. I was now standing way too close to Bijan, Carlos, and Jacobi, and I did not want them to hear this conversation. I tried desperately to convey this with my eyes, but Navid seemed incapable of picking up my signals. “I don’t want to talk about this, okay? Forget I said anything.”
“Hey, listen,” Navid said, “I was just surprised. I wasn’t expecting you to say something like that.”
“Say something like what?” This, from Bijan.
I wanted to die.
“Nothing,” I said to Bijan. I glared at Navid. “Nothing, okay?”
Navid looked over at the guys and sighed. “Shirin wants to know if I think she’s pretty. But, listen,” he said, looking at me again, “I don’t think I should be answering that question. That feels like a really weird question for a sister to ask her brother, you know? Maybe you should be asking these guys,” he said, nodding at the rest of the group.
“Oh my God,” I said, half whispering the words. I really thought I might murder my brother. I wanted to close my hands around his throat. “What is wrong with you?” I shouted.
And then—
“I think you’re pretty,” Carlos said. He was retying his shoelaces. He’d said the statement like he was talking about the weather.
I looked at him. I felt slightly stunned.
“I mean, I think you’re scary as hell,” he said, and shrugged. “But, yeah. I mean, yeah. Very cute.”
“You think I’m scary?” I said, and frowned.
Carlos nodded. He wouldn’t even look at me.
“Do you think I’m scary?” I said to Bijan.
“Oh,” he said, and raised his eyebrows. “Definitely.”
I actually took a step back, I was so surprised. “Are you serious? Do you all feel this way?”
And they all nodded. Even Navid.
“I think you’re beautiful, though,” Bijan said. “If that helps.”
My mouth fell open. “Why do you all think I’m so scary?”
They collectively shrugged.
“People think you’re mean,” Navid finally said to me.
“People are assholes,” I snapped.
“See?” Navid pointed at me. “This is the thing you do.”
“What thing?” I said, frustrated again. “People are flaming pieces of shit to me, like, all day long, and I’m not supposed to be mad about it?”
“You can be mad about it,” Jacobi said, and the sound of his voice startled me. He seemed, suddenly, very serious. “But, like, you seem to think everyone is horrible.”
“That’s because everyone is horrible.”
Jacobi shook his head. “Listen,” he said, “I know what it’s like to be angry all the time, okay? I do. Your shit—the shit you have to deal with—it’s hard, yeah. But you just—you can’t do this. You can’t be angry all the time. Trust me,” he said. “I’ve tried that. It’ll kill you.”
I looked at him. Really looked at him. There was something in Jacobi’s eyes that was sympathetic in a way I’d never experienced before. It wasn’t pity. It was recognition. He actually seemed to acknowledge me, my pain, and my anger, in a way no one else ever had.
Not my parents. Not even my brother.
I felt suddenly like I’d been pierced in the chest. I felt suddenly like I wanted to cry.
“Just try to be happy,” Jacobi finally said to me. “Your happiness is the one thing these assholes can’t stand.”
13
Thirteen
All afternoon, I’d been thinking about what Jacobi said to me. I got home and I took a shower and I thought about it. All through dinner, I thought about it. I sat at my desk and stared at the wall and listened to music and thought about it and thought about it and thought about it.
I locked myself in my bedroom and thought about it.
It was just past nine o’clock. The house was still. These were the quiet hours before my parents demanded I be asleep—the hours during which all members of my family performed a small mercy and left one another alone for a while. I was sitting in bed, staring at a blank page in my journal.
Thinking.
I wondered, for the very first time, if maybe I was doing this whole thing wrong. If maybe I’d allowed myself to be blinded by my own anger to the exclusion of all else. If maybe, just maybe, I’d been so determined not to be stereotyped that I’d begun to stereotype everyone around me.
It made me think about Ocean.
He kept trying to be nice to me and, in an unexpected turn of events, his kindness left me angry and confused. I pushed him away because I was afraid to be even remotely close to someone who, I was certain, would one day hurt me. I trusted no one anymore. I was so raw from repeated exposure to cruelty that now even the most minor abrasions left a mark. The checkout lady at the grocery store would be rude to me and her simple unkindness would unnerve me for the rest of the day because I never knew—I had no way of knowing—
Are you racist? Or are you just having a bad day?
I could no longer distinguish people from monsters.
I looked out at the world around me and no longer saw nuance. I saw nothing but the potential for pain and the subsequent need to protect myself, constantly.
Damn, I thought.
This really was exhausting.
I sighed and picked up my phone.
hey. why weren’t you in class today?
Ocean responded right away.
wow
i didn’t think you’d notice i was gone
can you get online?
I smiled.
jujehpolo: Hey
riversandoceans04: Hi
riversandoceans04: Sorry for bailing on you in bio
riversandoceans04: No one should have to slice into a dead cat by themselves
jujehpolo: It really is, like, the worst school assignment I’ve ever had
riversandoceans04: Same here
And then—
I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but I had this sudden, strange feeling that something was wrong. It was hard to tell from a few typed words, but I felt it in my gut. Ocean seemed off, somehow, and I couldn’t shake it.
jujehpolo: Hey, is everything okay?
riversandoceans04: Yeah
riversandoceans04: Sort of
I waited.
I waited and nothing happened. He wrote nothing else.
jujehpolo: You don’t want to talk about it?
riversandoceans04: Not really
jujehpolo: Did you get in trouble for ditching class?
riversandoceans04: No
jujehpolo: Are you in trouble for something else?
riversandoceans04: Lol
jujehpolo: Yes
riversandoceans04: But we’re still talking about it
jujehpolo: I’m worried I got you in trouble
And then, our messages crossed paths in the ether:
I wrote my brother didn’t bother you, did he? and Ocean wrote don’t worry, it has nothing to do with you
And then—
riversandoceans04: What?
riversandoceans04: Why would your brother bother me?
riversandoceans04: I didn’t even know you had a brother
riversandoceans04: Wait
riversandoceans04: You told your brother about me?
Shit.
jujehpolo: Apparently Mr. Jordan is supervising our breakdancing club
jujehpolo: He told my brother I ditched class with a guy today
jujehpolo: And my brother was mad
jujehpolo: It’s fine now. I told him what happened.
riversandoceans04: Oh
riversandoceans04: So what does that have to do with your brother bothering me
jujehpolo: Nothing
jujehpolo: He just thought we’d ditched class together
riversandoceans04: But we did
jujehpolo: I know
riversandoceans04: So your brother hates me now?
jujehpolo: He doesn’t even know you
jujehpolo: He was just being overprotective
riversandoceans04: Wait a second, who’s your brother again? He goes to our school?
jujehpolo: Yeah. He’s a senior. His name is Navid.
riversandoceans04: Oh
riversandoceans04: I don’t think I know him.
jujehpolo: You probably wouldn’t
riversandoceans04: So should I be worried?
riversandoceans04: About your brother?
jujehpolo: No
jujehpolo: Lol
jujehpolo: Listen, I’m not trying to freak you out, I’m sorry
riversandoceans04: I’m not freaked out
Sure he wasn’t.
I waited a few seconds to see if he’d say anything else, but he didn’t. Finally, I wrote:
jujehpolo: So you’re really not going to tell me what happened to you today?
riversandoceans04: That depends
riversandoceans04: A lot of things happened to me today
My stomach did a little flip. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was talking about us. Our earlier conversations. The lack of physical distance between our bodies as we stood on an unimportant sidewalk in the middle of an unimportant town. I didn’t know what any of it meant—or if it would ever mean anything. Maybe I was the only one experiencing these little stomach flips. Maybe I was projecting my own feelings onto his words.
Maybe I was nuts.
I hadn’t yet decided what to say when he sent another message.
riversandoceans04: Hey
jujehpolo: Yeah?
riversandoceans04: Can you get on the phone?
jujehpolo: Oh
jujehpolo: You want to talk on the phone?
riversandoceans04: Yeah
jujehpolo: Why?
riversandoceans04: I want to hear your voice
A weird, not exactly unwelcome nervousness flooded through me. My brain felt suddenly warm and like maybe someone had filled my head with fizzy water. I would’ve vastly preferred to have disappeared in that moment; instead of getting on the phone I wanted to dissect this conversation somewhere else, somewhere by myself. I wanted to pick the whole thing apart and put it back together again. I wanted to understand what seemed inexplicable to me. In fact, I would’ve been happy if I want to hear your voice had been the last thing Ocean ever said to me.
Instead, I wrote, okay
Ocean’s voice pressed up against my ear might’ve been one of the most intense physical experiences I’d ever had. It was strange. It made me surprisingly nervous. I’d talked to him so many times—he was my lab partner, after all—but somehow, this was different. The two of us on the phone felt so private. Like our voices had met in outer space.
He said, “Hey,” and I felt the sound wash over me.
“Hi,” I said. “This is weird.”
He laughed. “I think it’s nice. You seem real, like this.”
I’d never noticed it in person, with so much else to distract me, but he had a really attractive voice. It sounded different—good, really good—in stereo.
“Oh.” My heart was racing. “I guess so.”
“So your brother wants to kick my ass, huh?”
“What? No.” I hesitated. “I mean, I don’t think so. Not really.”
He laughed again.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.
“No.”
“Oh. Well. That’s probably for the best.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds nice.”
“Sometimes it really is nice,” I said, considering it. “My brother and I are pretty close. But we also went through a period where we would literally beat the shit out of each other.”
“Okay, that sounds bad.”
“Yeah.” I paused. “But he also taught me how to fight, which was an unexpected fringe benefit.”
“Really?” He sounded surprised. “You can fight?”
“Not well.”
He said, “Huh,” in a thoughtful way, and then went quiet.
I waited a couple of seconds before I said,
“So what happened to you today?”
He sighed.
“If you really, really don’t want to talk about it,” I said, “we don’t have to talk about it. But if you want to talk about it even a little bit, I’m happy to listen.”
“I want to tell you,” he said, but his voice sounded suddenly far away. “I just also don’t want to tell you.”
“Oh,” I said. Confused. “Okay.”
“It’s too heavy, too soon.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Maybe we can talk about my messed-up parental issues after I’ve learned your middle name, for example.”
“I don’t have a middle name.”
“Huh. Okay, how about—”
“You ask me a lot of questions.”
Silence.
“Is that bad?”
“No,” I said. “I just—can I ask you some questions?”
He said nothing for a second. And then, quietly, “Okay.”
He told me why his parents named him Ocean, that the story wasn’t that exciting, he said his mom was obsessed with the water and that it was ironic, actually, because he’d always had this strange fear of drowning and was a lousy swimmer and had never really cared for the ocean, actually, and that his middle name was Desmond, so he had not two, but three first names, and I told him I really liked the name Desmond, and he said it had been his grandfather’s name, there was nothing special about it, and I asked him if he’d known his grandfather and he said no, he said that his parents had split up when he was five and he’d lost touch with that side of his family, that he’d only seen his dad occasionally since then. I wanted to ask more questions about his parents but I didn’t, because I knew he didn’t want to talk about it, so instead I asked him where he wanted to go to college and he said he was torn between Columbia and Berkeley, because Berkeley sounded perfect but wasn’t in a big city, and he said he really wanted to live in a big city, and I said yes, you said that before, and he said, “Yeah. Sometimes I just feel like I was born into the wrong family.”
“What do you mean?”
“I feel like everyone around me is dead,” he said, and his anger surprised me. “Like no one thinks anymore. Everyone seems satisfied with the most depressing shit. I don’t want to be like that.”
“I wouldn’t want to be like that either.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think you’re in any danger of that.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Thanks.”
And
then he said, “Have you ever had a boyfriend?”
—and I felt the moment freeze all around me.
I had never had a boyfriend, I said to him, no, I had not.
“Why not?”
“Um.” I laughed. “Wow, where do I even begin with this? First of all, I’m pretty sure my parents would be horrified if I ever so much as intimated that I had feelings for a boy, because I think they still think I’m five.
“Second of all, I’ve never really lived in one place long enough for something like that to play out, and um, I don’t know, Ocean”—I laughed again—“the truth is, guys don’t, uh—they don’t really ask me out.”
“Well what if a guy did ask you out?”
I didn’t like where this was going.
I didn’t want to act out this scenario. Honestly, I never thought it would get this far. I was so certain Ocean would never be interested in me that I didn’t bother to consider how bad it would be if he were.
I thought Ocean was a nice guy, but I also thought he was naive.
Maybe I could try letting go of my anger—maybe I could try being kinder for a change—but I knew that even the most optimistic attitude wouldn’t change the structure of the world we lived in. Ocean was a nice, handsome, heterosexual white guy, and the world expected great things from him. Those things did not involve falling for a highly controversial Middle Eastern girl in a headscarf. I had to save him from himself.
So I didn’t answer his question.
Instead, I said, “I mean, it’s not a frequent occurrence in my life, but it actually has happened before. When I was in middle school my brother went through a phase where he was a total and complete asshole, and he’d go through my diary and find out about these rare, brave souls and hunt them down. He’d scare the shit out of them.” I paused. “It did wonders for my love life, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
And I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, exactly, but when Ocean said, “You keep a diary?”
I realized I hadn’t been expecting him to say that.
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”
“That’s really cool.”
And I knew then, somehow, that I needed to end this conversation. Something was happening; something was changing and it was scaring me.
So I said, a little suddenly, “Hey, I should probably get going. It’s late and I still have a lot of homework to do.”
“Oh,” he said. And I could tell, even in that small word, that he sounded surprised, and maybe—maybe—disappointed.
