by Tahereh Mafi
My heart sank.
I hadn’t talked to Ocean in three days. I wanted to. I really, really wanted to, but I was trying to do what I thought was the right thing. I didn’t want to lead him on. I didn’t want him to think that there was potential here, between us. He tried, twice, to catch up with me after class, but I brushed him off. I did my best to avoid his eyes. I didn’t go online. I kept our bio conversations as brief and boring as possible. I was trying not to engage with him anymore, because I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. But I could tell he was both hurt and confused.
I didn’t know what else to do.
There was a small, cowardly part of me that hoped Ocean would realize on his own that I wasn’t an option worth exploring. He seemed fascinated by me in a way that felt familiar but also entirely new, and I wondered if his fascination would wear off, like it always did in these kinds of situations. I wondered if he’d learn to forget about me. Go back to his friends. Find a nice blond girlfriend.
It was confusing, I know, how I’d gone from wanting a new friend in this school to suddenly wishing I could hit undo on the whole thing. Though, to be fair, I’d been looking for a platonic friend, preferably female. Not a boyfriend, not anything even close to that. I’d just wanted, like, a normal teenage experience. I wanted to eat lunch with friends, plural. I wanted to go to the movies with someone. I maybe even wanted to pretend to give a shit about the SATs. I don’t know. But I was beginning to wonder if a normal teenage experience was even a thing.
“Hey, can we go? I’m starving.” It was Navid, tapping me on the shoulder.
“Oh. Yeah,” I said. But I was still staring at the door through which Ocean had disappeared. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”
16
Sixteen
I showed up to Mr. Jordan’s class the next day, as promised, but my return was weirder than I’d expected. I hadn’t realized that everyone would’ve known—or even noticed—that I’d walked out of class and hadn’t been back most of the week. I didn’t think anyone would care. But when I took my normal seat, the kids in my little cluster looked at me like I’d sprouted wings.
“What?” I said. I dropped my bag on the ground next to me.
“Did you really try to drop the class?” This, from one of the girls. Her name was Shauna.
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“Wow.” The other girl, Leilani, was staring at me. “That’s crazy.”
Ryan, the fourth member of our group—a guy who always talked at me and never looked me in the eye—chose that moment to yawn. Loudly.
I frowned at Leilani. “Why is that crazy? Mr. Jordan made me super uncomfortable.”
Neither of the girls seemed to think this was an acceptable answer.
“Hey, why did Ocean follow you out the other day? What was that about?” Leilani again.
Now I was truly stunned. I couldn’t begin to imagine why they cared about any of this. I hadn’t even realized Leilani knew who Ocean was. This class was an elective, so there was flexibility in the roster—we weren’t all in the same grade; Leilani and Shauna, for example, were juniors. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess he felt bad.”
Shauna was about to ask me another question when Mr. Jordan clapped his hands together, hard, and called out a greeting.
“All right everyone, we’re switching things up today.” Mr. Jordan was dancing the cha-cha in front of the room. He was so weird. I laughed, and he stopped, caught my eye. He smiled and said, “Good to see you again, Shirin,” and people turned to stare at me.
I stopped laughing.
“So,” he said. He was speaking to the class again. “Are you guys ready for this?” He paused for just a second before he said, “New groups! Everyone stand up.”
The class groaned, loudly, and I agreed with the collective sentiment. I definitely didn’t want to meet any more new people. I hated meeting new people.
But I also understood that this was kind of the point.
So I sighed, resigned, as Mr. Jordan started sorting us into new clusters. I ended up across the room, sitting with three new girls, and we all avoided looking at each other for a few minutes.
“Hey.”
I turned, startled.
Ocean was sitting, not next to me, exactly, but near me. In a different group. He was leaning back in his chair. He smiled, but his eyes looked wary, a little worried.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he said.
He had a pencil behind his ear. I didn’t think people actually did that, but he currently had an actual pencil behind his ear. It was so cute. He was so cute.
“You dropped this,” he said, and held out a small, folded piece of paper.
I eyed the paper in his hand. I was pretty sure I hadn’t dropped anything, but then again, who knew. I took it from him, and, just like that, the worry in his eyes warmed into something else.
I felt my heart speed up.
Has anyone else figured out that you’re always listening to music in class? Are you listening to music right now? How do you listen to music all the time without failing all your classes? Why did you delete your AIM profile that first time we talked?
I have so many questions.
I looked back at him, surprised, and he smiled so hard he almost laughed. He looked very pleased with himself.
I shook my head, but I was smiling, too. And then I deliberately pulled the iPod out of my pocket and hit play.
When I turned back around in my seat, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
The three other girls in my cluster were now staring blankly at me, looking possibly more confused by my existence than I’d expected.
“Don’t forget to introduce yourselves,” Mr. Jordan bellowed. “Names are important!” And then he picked up the large mason jar that sat on his desk every day and said, “Today’s topic is”—he pulled a piece of paper out of the jar, read it—“the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! This one should be really good,” he said. “Hamas! Terrorism! Is Iran complicit? Talking points will be on the board! Have fun!”
I dropped my head onto my desk.
It will probably surprise no one to hear that I was terrible at ignoring Ocean.
I pretended, really hard, to appear uninterested in him, but that’s all it was. I was just really good at pretending. I’d denied myself permission to think about him, which somehow made it so that I thought about him all the time.
I noticed him too much now.
He seemed to be everywhere, suddenly. So much so that I started wondering if maybe I was wrong, if maybe it wasn’t mere coincidence that kept bringing us together. Maybe, instead, he’d always been there, and maybe I’d only just begun to see him. It was like when Navid bought that Nissan Sentra; before Navid got the car, I’d never, ever noticed one of them on the road before. Now I saw old Nissan Sentras everywhere.
This whole thing was stressing me out.
I felt nervous, even just sitting in the same class with him. Our work in bio had become more difficult than ever, simply because I was trying to dislike him and it wasn’t working; he was almost bionically likable. He had this really calming presence that always made me feel like, I don’t know, like I could let my guard down when I was with him.
Which, somehow, only made me more nervous.
I thought being quiet—speaking only when I absolutely had to—would help defuse whatever tension existed between us, but it only seemed to make things more intense. When we didn’t talk, some invisible lever was still winding a coil between our bodies. In some ways, my silence was more telling than anything else. It was a breathless sort of standoff.
I kept trying to break away, and I couldn’t.
Today—it was now Monday—I only made it through thirty minutes of ignoring Ocean in bio. I was tapping my pencil against a blank page in my notebook, avoiding the dead cat between us and instead trying to think of things to hate about him, when Ocean turned to me, apropos of nothing, and said,
“Hey,
am I saying your name right?”
I was so surprised I sat up. Stared at him. “No,” I said.
“What? Are you serious?” He laughed, but he looked upset. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. Turned back to my notebook. “No one ever says my name right.”
“Well, I’d like to,” he said. He touched my arm, and I looked up again. “How am I supposed to say it?”
He’d been pronouncing my name Shi-reen, which was better than most people; most people had been saying it in two hard syllables: Shir-in, which was very wrong. It was actually pronounced Shee-reen. I tried to explain this to him. I tried to tell him that he had to roll the r. That the whole thing was meant to be pronounced softly. Gently, even.
Ocean tried, several times, to say it correctly, and I was genuinely touched. A little amused.
“It sounds so pretty,” he said. “What does it mean?”
I laughed. I didn’t want to tell him, so I shook my head.
“What?” he said. His eyes widened. “Is it bad?”
“No.” I sighed. “It means sweet. I just think it’s funny. I think my parents were hoping for a different kind of kid.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean no one has ever accused me of being sweet.”
Ocean laughed. He shrugged, slowly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess you’re not sweet exactly. But”—he hesitated; picked up his pencil, rolled it between his hands—“you’re, just, like—”
He stopped. Sighed. He wouldn’t look at me.
And I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I definitely wanted to know what he was thinking but I didn’t want him to know that I wanted to know what he was thinking, so I just sat there, waiting.
“You’re so strong,” he said finally. He was still staring at his pencil. “You don’t seem to be afraid of anything.”
I didn’t know what I’d been hoping he’d say, exactly, but I was surprised. So surprised, in fact, that I was rendered, for a moment, speechless.
I so rarely felt strong. Mostly I felt scared.
When he finally looked up, I was already staring at him.
“I’m afraid of lots of things,” I whispered.
We’d just been looking at each other, hardly breathing, when suddenly the bell rang. I jumped up, feeling unexpectedly embarrassed, grabbed my things, and disappeared.
He texted me that night.
what are you afraid of? he wrote.
But I didn’t respond.
I walked into bio the next day, prepared to make the herculean effort to be an aloof, boring lab partner yet again, when the whole thing finally just fell apart. Collapsed.
Ocean ran into me.
I don’t know what happened, exactly. He’d sidestepped too fast—someone had been rushing between the lab tables with a sopping dead cat in their hands—and he’d slammed into me just as I was walking up. It was like something out of a movie.
His body was hard and soft and my hands flew up, found purchase around his back and he caught me, wrapped his arms around me, said, “Oh— Sorry—” but we were still pressed together when instinct forced my head up, surprised, and I tried to speak but instead my lips grazed his neck, and for one second I could breathe him in, and he let go, too fast, and I stumbled; he caught my hands, and I looked at him, his eyes wide, deep, scared, and I pulled back, broke the connection, reeling.
It was the clumsiest production of physical interaction; the whole thing lasted no more than several seconds. I’m sure no one else even noticed it happen. But I saw him touch his neck where my mouth had been. I felt my heart stutter when I remembered his arms around me.
And neither of us spoke for the rest of the period.
I grabbed my bag when the bell rang, ready to run for my life, when he said my name and only the very basic rules of etiquette held me in place. My heart was racing, had been racing for an hour. I felt electric, like an overcharged battery. Things were sparking inside of me and I needed to go away, get away from him. Sitting next to him all through class had been profound and excruciating.
I’d had many unimportant, insignificant crushes on boys before. I’d had pathetic daydreams and silly fantasies and had devoted many pages in my journal to entirely forgettable people I’d known and quickly discarded over the years.
But I had never, ever touched someone and felt like this: like I was holding electricity inside of me.
“Hey,” he said.
It took a lot of effort to turn around, but I did, and when I did, he looked different. Like maybe he was just as terrified as I was.
“Hi,” I said, but the word didn’t make much sound.
“Can we talk?”
I shook my head. “I have to go.”
I watched him swallow, the Adam’s apple moving up and down in his throat. He said, “Okay,” but then he walked up to me, walked right up to me, and I felt something pop inside my head. Brain cells dying, probably. He wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at the two inches of floor between us and I thought maybe he was going to say something but he didn’t. He just stood there, and I watched the gentle motions of his chest as he breathed, in and out, up and down, and I felt a faint spinning in my head, and like my body had overheated, and my heart would not stop, could not stop racing and finally he whispered the words—without touching me, without even looking at me—he said, “I just need to know,” he said, “are you feeling this, too?”
He looked up, then. Looked me in the eye.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t remember how. But he must’ve found something in my eyes because he suddenly exhaled, softly; he glanced, just once, at my lips, and he stepped back. Grabbed his bag.
And left.
I wasn’t sure I would ever recover.
17
Seventeen
I was a complete idiot at practice.
I couldn’t remember how to do simple things. I kept thinking about the fact that Ocean and I had only touched by accident and what if we’d touched on purpose and wow, I wondered if my head would just explode. I also kept thinking that I didn’t want to get my heart broken. I didn’t know what could ever come of this, of us, or how we’d ever navigate these murky waters and I didn’t know what to do.
I felt like I’d lost control.
Suddenly all I could think about was kissing him. I’d never kissed anyone before. A boy had been dared to kiss me once and he’d kissed me on the cheek and it was not repugnant, exactly, but the whole thing had been so awkward that even the memory bothered me.
I was, in this regard, woefully underprepared.
I knew my brother had kissed lots of girls. I didn’t know what else he’d done, and I didn’t ask. In fact, I’d had to tell him to shut up about it several times already because for some reason he always felt comfortable sharing these details with me. I think my parents had known about his many relationships, but I also think they were happy to pretend they didn’t. I was also pretty sure my parents would’ve had simultaneous heart attacks if they knew I was even thinking about kissing a boy, which, surprisingly, did not at all factor into my considerations.
There was nothing about the idea of kissing Ocean that felt wrong to me. I just didn’t see how kissing him would help anything.
Just then, my brother threw his water bottle at me.
I looked up.
“You okay?” he said. “You look sick.”
I felt sick. Like maybe I had a fever. I was sure I didn’t, but it was weird how hot my skin felt. I wanted to climb into bed and hide. “Yeah,” I said, “I feel kind of weird. Do you mind if I cut out early? Head home?”
My brother came forward, collected his bottle. Pressed a hand against my forehead. His eyes widened. “Yeah. I’ll take you home,” he said.
“Really?”
He looked suddenly annoyed. “You think I’d let my sister walk home with a fever?”
“I don’t have a fever.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You do
.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d gotten home earlier than usual, so my mom and dad weren’t back from work yet. Navid brought me water, gave me medicine, and tucked me into bed. I didn’t feel sick, though, I just felt strange, and I didn’t know how to explain it. There was nothing apparently wrong with me except that my temperature had spiked.
Still, I slept.
When I awoke, the house was dark. I felt woozy. I blinked and looked around, parched, and grabbed the bottle of water Navid had left me. I drained the bottle, rested my hot head against the cool wall and wondered what the hell had happened to me. Only then did I notice my phone on my bedside table. I had five unread messages.
The first two were from six hours ago.
hey
how was practice?
There were three more messages, sent ten minutes ago. I checked the time; it was two in the morning.
you’re probably asleep
but if you’re not, will you call me?
(i’m sorry for using up all of your text messages)
I wasn’t sure I was in the right headspace to call anyone at the moment, but I didn’t think it through. I pulled up his number, called him right away—and then I burrowed under my covers, pulling the sheet up over my head to help muffle my voice. I didn’t want to have to explain to my parents why I was wasting precious phone minutes talking to a boy at two in the morning. I had no idea what I’d say.
Ocean picked up on the first ring, which made me wonder if maybe he was hiding from his mom, too. But then he said “Hi,” out loud, like a normal person, and I realized that no, it was just me whose parents were up her ass all the time.
“Hi,” I whispered. “I’m hiding under my covers.”
He laughed. “Why?”
“Everyone is asleep,” I said quietly. “My mom and dad would kill me if they found me on my phone this late. Also, minutes are expensive.”
He said, “Sorry,” but he didn’t sound sorry.
“I have a fever, by the way. I’ve been in bed this whole time,” I explained. “I just woke up and saw your messages.”
“What?” he said, alarmed. “What happened?”
