by Trent Reedy
Iowa City was about fifteen minutes north. Fifteen minutes there, the laser party, pizza, and fifteen minutes back meant maybe two hours. Two hours at Isma’s house. Alone. With Isma.
“Cool,” I said.
“So,” said Isma, “this is my house.” She motioned at the room we stood in. I took off my shoes and followed her. “The boring sitting room,” she said. A fancy red rug with many-colored swirls and patterns like flowers decorated the center of a smooth, polished wood floor. The leather couch and recliner weren’t faded and torn like our old, ratty furniture in the living room at home. A few large books rested on top of a coffee table in front of the couch.
“Where’s the TV?” I asked.
“Not in here. That’s why I call it the boring sitting room. Come on.” She took my hand and led me through an arch.
Just past the dining room with its big shiny wooden table gleamed the richest kitchen I’d ever seen outside of TV. The polished rock countertops reflected the shine off the metal appliances. They even had a dishwasher and one of those cool refrigerators with a water-and-ice thing in the door. “This is a really nice place,” I said.
Isma opened one of the refrigerator doors and reached inside. “You hungry?” She pulled out a frozen pizza.
“Always,” I said.
She put the pizza on the counter and took two brown glass bottles from the fridge. “Root beer?”
I nodded, and she popped the tops on the bottles and handed me one. “Can I help with the pizza?” I asked.
Isma laughed. “While I appreciate your noble attempt to avoid sexism, I think unwrapping the pizza, slapping it on a pan, and tossing it in the oven is really a one-person job. Besides, you’re my guest. Relax.” She pressed some buttons on the oven. “This will take some time to heat up. I’ll show you my room.”
I followed her down the hall, looking at the framed family photos and a strange painting that looked like random splashes of color on a bright white background.
Isma’s room resembled a museum. Paintings and photographs dominated almost all the available wall space. A few paintings were incredibly detailed, with colored swirls and lines like the rug in the sitting room, all neatly signed in the corner by Isma. One photo showed a white building that looked like a pyramid with a rectangular tower at the top. I stepped up to look at it more closely. An arched opening ran through the middle of the pyramid at the bottom, and a fountain sprayed columns of water in the air in front of the structure.
“The Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran,” Isma said. “Isn’t it beautiful? I’ve only visited Iran once, when I was a little girl. I barely remember it. I keep this picture up as a reminder of what a great place Iran is, no matter how many drones our president sends to spy on it.”
A closet took up one wall of the room. Another wall featured a little brown desk with her laptop, lamp, and a few comic books. I noticed that her light-switch plate was a pink sparkly unicorn, the switch right in the middle of its belly. She sat down on her bed in the corner.
“Cool room,” I said. “Except … you know … nice unicorn.”
“Oh my gosh.” Isma put her face in her hands. “Oh my gosh. Don’t look at that stupid thing. I’m so embarrassed.” She peeked at me from behind her hands. “When I was really little, I had a thing for unicorns. They made me feel really magical or something. I had a unicorn lamp on my desk, unicorn toys, a unicorn stuffed animal, and yes, that switch-cover thing. Daddy somehow thought I still wanted it up when we moved here, even though I got rid of all that stuff. I’ve been meaning to take it down for a long time now. But I hardly notice it.” She frowned at me. “Who notices switch-plate covers besides you? And it’s not like anyone ever comes in here.”
I held my hands up in surrender. “It’s okay.” I couldn’t hold back my laugh. “No, it’s cool. Really.”
She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Okay, if you’re going to make fun of my unicorn-light thing, I am going to see if the oven is hot enough to put the pizza in.”
She left me alone in her bedroom, so I looked around. Each rug painting must have taken about a hundred different colors, and the patterns repeated in the weaves of the rug, so she would have had to get each little flower, every swirl and splash of color, exactly right. I knew she loved art, but I didn’t know she had this level of talent.
A big white paper on her desk caught my eye. Isma had made a pencil sketch of the two of us walking along the street, holding hands. It looked so much like us that I would have thought she’d traced it from a photograph if I didn’t know better. Somehow she’d even drawn the lighting and shade right, with beams from the streetlight shining down through the leaves in the tree above.
“It’s hot enough,” Isma said.
I jumped and spun around. “Huh?”
“The oven was heated up, so I put the pizza in.” She sat on her bed and patted the space next to her. From where I stood by her desk, I could see down her shirt if I looked. If I were that kind of guy. Which I wasn’t, I reminded myself.
“Have a seat.” She patted the bed again.
We’d kissed, but I had never made out with a girl, not on her bed and everything. I hadn’t expected her to be this direct. “This is a pretty good plan you came up with.”
“What do you mean?” She sat back with her hands on the bed a little behind her, shaking her head to toss her hair back.
I sat down next to her and leaned toward her. “To get me alone here like this.”
“What?” She slid back until she hit the wall, and burst into laughter.
“What?” I sat up straight. “What’s so funny?”
“You thought …” She put her hands to her face again for a moment, then slowly drew them down to look at me. “You thought this was … all …” She pointed back and forth from me to her. “You thought this was all to seduce you?”
My cheeks felt hot. I was such an idiot. “No, I didn’t think … I mean …” I started to slide off the bed, but she grabbed my hand and pulled me back until we were sitting close. She kissed me on the cheek, and then our lips met. She smiled. “You’re so cute.” She placed her hand on my cheek. “But I just wanted to show you something.”
She bent down and pulled a leather-covered album from under the bed, resting it on her lap and running her hand over it. “I’ve never shown this to anyone. Not my parents or my brother, definitely not anyone at school.”
She opened the book. More of her art lit up the page, but instead of pictures of rugs, a woman with wings soared through the sky, with a city built on a floating island in the background behind her. She wore silver armor and carried a short shining sword in one hand and some futuristic gun in the other. “This is one of my original characters. I call her Ariana.”
She flipped the page and showed me a picture of Iron Man in a desert village blasting away at some thugs with guns. “I loved in the first Iron Man movie how he goes and fights those Taliban guys. I wanted to see more of that, so I drew it.”
On the facing page, Captain America ran up a hill. Vehicles exploded in the distance and bullets bounced off his red, white, and blue shield. I looked at the full-color drawings carefully. “These are great! They’re just like the real thing. Unbelievable.”
“Why? Can’t girls like comics?”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes. They can like whatever they want. I meant, the pictures are unbelievably good. And a lot of girls just don’t like comics … usually.”
Isma turned back to the winged warrior woman. “That’s because all the girls in the comic books have huge boobs and tiny waists. No real woman could ever look like that. Comic book girls make Barbie dolls look like scale models for medical school.” She tapped Ariana’s chest. “See, her armor is just a gently curved plate, not two ridiculous steel cones.”
She showed me a new spread with two more pictures of Captain America, one showing him swinging from a rope over fire, the other with him standing in a city, lifting his shield to hold back an angry mob, while th
ree darker-skinned kids huddled behind him.
“You really like Captain America?” I asked.
“Yeah, why not?”
“Nothing. I’m surprised, that’s all. I just always thought —”
“What? Because my parents come from Iran? I was born here. Why can’t I like Captain America? Why can’t he be my hero too? Who decided —”
I put a finger to her lips. “I just always thought he was kind of boring. A guy running around with only a shield? Spider-Man and Superman were a lot more fun.”
“Cn I twk nw?” she mumbled against my finger, and then kissed it. I took my finger from her lips. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to argue all the time.”
She went to the back of the album and slipped a wrinkled Captain America comic book out of a pouch. The cover showed a giant Captain standing in the background with the ruins of the World Trade Center towers in New York City in front of him. He was looking down, pressing his hand to his eyes as if he was crying.
“This is why he’s my favorite. I found this copy in a box of back issues at Wizards Comic Shop in Iowa City a few years ago.” Isma turned the pages of the comic book, showing Captain America dressed in normal clothes, digging through the 9/11 wreckage for survivors. “Here.” She tapped a page where a white guy attacked a darker-skinned man with a knife. “This guy who was born in New York, but whose father comes from Jordan, is about to get stabbed by this other man who just lost someone on 9/11.” The next page showed Captain America blocking the knife with his shield. He stood there with light shining from behind him as the white guy collapsed to his knees, crying. “Captain America says that Americans should stick together no matter what country their parents came from.” She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Anyway, I always liked comics, but after I read this one, my favorite was Captain America, and I decided that what I want to do with my life is draw for Marvel or DC or some other comics company.”
She showed me more of her art, a mix of characters from comics and TV, plus a lot of superheroes she made up. When we’d seen them all, she closed the book. “What do you think?” she whispered.
“They’re all amazing,” I said. “How do you make all those pictures so realistic and everything? When I try to draw people, I’m stuck with stick figures or blobs that sort of look like cows.” She laughed. “You’re really good, Isma. Incredible. My dad left me a bunch of his old comic books. Some Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and this cool super team he really liked, the New Warriors, the heroes for the nineties. I even found a drawing that I guess he’d made of the New Warriors beating up the Fantastic Four. His picture was pretty realistic, but it wasn’t half as good as yours.”
“You still read your dad’s old comics?”
“I’ve read most of them. Now I read from the college-bound section of the library so someday I can get into a good university.”
Isma got up on her hands and knees, leaning close to me and smiling. “You’re always so focused on the future. Don’t forget to enjoy the here and now.” She leaned forward, and we kissed. My hands slid around her lower back. She ran her fingers up the back of my neck and through my hair. The more we kissed, the more I wanted to kiss her. Our breathing came on heavy and we held each other closer.
“Isma,” I whispered when we’d parted for a moment. We kissed again. “Isma.” I gently eased her back.
“What?” She looked concerned. “Is something wrong?”
For the first time in a long time, everything seemed perfect, and I had no worries about my timing, no hesitation. “Will you go to the homecoming dance with me?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Okay,” she said, as if I’d just asked her the most casual question. Then she laughed. “I’d love to. It will be great.”
I placed my fingers under her chin to kiss her. Once again, we lost ourselves with each other.
When the timer on the oven beeped, I wanted that oven and all the ovens in the world to die fiery deaths and go away. “Come on.” She grinned so her nose wrinkled. “I’m hungry.”
A few minutes later, we sat at the dining room table having pizza and soda, talking easily like we did at school, as if we hadn’t been totally making out moments ago. I filled her in about Dad’s most recent letter. We laughed about the way our science teacher, Mr. Dettmering, would get so far off the subject during his lectures. We complained about the school lunches. We hung out for a long time, a great time, made even better since we kept stealing kisses, and I could still feel where her fingers had been on my shoulders and neck.
“I’m so excited about the homecoming dance,” Isma said. “I wasn’t allowed to go last year, so I just sat around in my room.”
“I went,” I said. “Wish I hadn’t. I had no date and felt like such a loser.”
“Well, not this year,” she said. “We’ll have tons of fun. There’s this dress I saw at the mall. If I could convince Mom that it’s okay —”
Headlights flashed in the front window as a car pulled in the driveway. I heard the rumble of the garage door opening.
“They’re early!” Isma jumped up from her chair. “Quick! You have to get out of here.”
So her parents didn’t know I was going to be here? There was no doubt I was in trouble. If I went running out the front door, they would only think worse of me. Plus, maybe if I stuck around, I could take some of the heat that would otherwise fall on Isma. “They’ve already seen my truck parked outside,” I said. “They’ll know someone is here. Anyway, better to talk to them than to just run away.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the chair. “They’ll think the truck belongs to the neighbors or something. And you don’t know my parents.”
“Isma?” A voice came from the living room as the front door opened.
“Oh no,” Isma whispered, wide-eyed.
“Isma, how many times have I told you not to leave your shoes in the middle …” Isma’s mom came into the living room and froze at the sight of me. She dropped the mail she’d been carrying, the envelopes fluttering to the floor.
A moment later a boy came running in from the door to the garage. “I want to go back already! I was the best shooter.” He stopped when he saw me. “Who are you?”
A tall man with dark skin, a thick, round middle, and gray flecks in his short-cropped black hair followed the boy into the room. He looked at me, then Isma, then me again.
“Majid, go to your room, please,” said Isma’s mother.
“What did I do? I didn’t do anything! I shouldn’t have to —”
“Now!” the woman shouted.
Majid sighed and glared at me as he went down the hall. His door slammed a moment later.
The two adults in the living room stared at the two of us in the dining room. Nobody moved for a long time. I gripped the back of the chair so hard my fingers hurt. I’d invited Isma to my house without permission. Now she’d done the same thing. I watched Isma’s dad watching me, considering the gap between him and my shoes by the door. Could I make it to them before he caught me? Forget the shoes. They were the cheapest brand possible, already falling apart. I could leave them and still escape with my life.
“Mom, Dad, this is Mike,” Isma said.
Isma’s mother motioned toward the hallway. “Isma, come with me, please.”
Isma shifted her weight. “We were just having pizza.”
Her father coughed. “Do as your mother says.”
She shot me a look that said … what? I’m so scared or I’m sorry about this or I can’t believe this is happening? I couldn’t tell what she meant because I was trying to give her a look that said, Don’t you dare leave me here with your big, scary father.
“Now, Isma,” the woman said more forcefully.
Isma sighed and followed her mother.
“I cannot believe you have betrayed our trust like this.” Her mother’s voice echoed down the hallway before a door closed. Isma’s muffled protests came next, followed by her mother, louder than she’d been
since she got home: “Right now you will be quiet and listen to me!”
Isma’s dad frowned in the direction of the argument. I felt like I should say something.
“I’m really sorry about all this, Mr. Rafee. We really were just having pizza. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble. I guess I should be going.”
“You may call me Asad,” he said. He probably wanted me to know his name before he killed me. “And your name is?”
“Huh?” I said. “Oh. Mike — Michael Wilson.” Then I added, “Sir.”
“When you call me ‘sir,’ I feel like I’m teaching in my classroom at the university. Please.” He held his hand up. “Really. Call me Asad.”
“Yes … Asad.”
“You’re not even listening to me!” Isma shouted from the other room.
“Follow me,” said Isma’s dad.
He led me down a different hallway and opened a door, motioning me inside and closing it after us. This seemed to be his study. A shiny wooden desk rested in the middle of the room. Three-foot-tall cupboards were attached to the bottom of the walls. Above them stood bookshelves packed with hundreds of books. I would have given just about anything for a library like this, and normally I would want to read all the book spines to make a quick inventory of the collection, but tonight I stood there, unable to move.
Isma’s dad pointed to one of two short-backed leather chairs in front of his desk. “Please sit down.”
I obeyed immediately. Mr. Rafee took a crystal bottle as big around as a basketball at the bottom from a ledge behind his desk. A golden-brown liquid filled half of the bottle. He picked up a short crystal glass from a tray, then he poured himself a drink, put the bottle back down on his desk, and sat down behind it.
“Mike. Are you and my daughter dating?” He closed his eyes and sniffed his drink as he swirled it around in his glass. “Are you … romantically involved, or whatever the kids call it today?”
The phrase “romantically involved” sounded like a psychological disorder or something. I swallowed and licked my lips. “I like her,” I said quietly.
