He reached for my hand and took the twigs away from me, his skin brushing against mine. “I’ll put them back,” he said, and then flung them as far as he could. Most of them landed in Santa’s sleigh.
“That’s not very nice,” I said. “Someone worked very hard on that wreath.”
“That someone is in Mexico for the holidays and miraculously let me stay behind this time,” he said. “And when that someone comes back home, Christmas season will be over and the wreath will end up in the Dumpster.” He eyed me up and down with a mixture of fascination and disdain. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re like one of those girls who always does the right thing. You always turn in your homework on time. You give up your seat on the bus for old people. You pick up your dog’s shit even when no one’s looking.”
“I don’t have a dog. But if I did, yes, of course I would do that.”
“You don’t have a dog? No wonder you’re so uptight,” he said with a smile. Was I imagining it or was he flirting with me?
“I’m not uptight.”
“Sure you are. I mean, come on, you’re visiting your teacher during the holidays. Who does that?”
“My teacher?”
“Mrs. Vargas?” So Encarnación Vargas was a teacher. “What do you want? Extra credit for some Spanish verbs you conjugated in your spare time? Advice on your translation of a Neruda poem? Or are you just here to give her a reason to shame me for not going to college?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t even know you, but I came all the way over here to shame you.”
“Well, you’ve succeeded. I feel a deep sense of shame. I feel it in my bones. In fact, it’s so bad that I think I need to dull this pain.” He pulled a joint and a lighter out of his pocket, and sparked the paper, thick clouds of smoke exiting his mouth like smog. He held the joint out to me. “Want some?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Of course not. You’ve probably never smoked.”
“That’s not true,” I lied.
He let out a puff of smoke as he stared me down. Awkwardly, I took out my phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Um, going back home,” I said as I opened an app.
“Hey, wanna give me a ride to downtown LA? I can’t deal with the bus, can’t afford an Uber, and my parents won’t let me drive their car. Punishment.”
“For what?” I asked.
“I got arrested,” he said. And then he added, “Once. It wasn’t a big deal.”
I probably should have been focused on the fact that I was alone with someone who had been arrested. I don’t think I’d ever even met someone who had been arrested. But what I couldn’t stop thinking about is the fact that he used the words my parents. That’s when it suddenly hit me that if Encarnación Vargas was his mother, and Encarnación Vargas was my mother, then me and the tall, jacked-up dude with the tattoos and the shaved head were . . . brother and sister? Ew, had I been flirting with my brother? I felt a sudden desire to scrub myself hard with the roughest loofah I could get my hands on.
I conjured up a mental microscope and analyzed each of his features with newfound fascination. His eyes were darker than mine. His nose was longer than mine. His body was taller, and thicker. His mouth was wider. But our skin tones were close enough, and our hair color matched. I was wondering whether we had the same father as well when he snapped his fingers in front of my eyes and yelled, “Yo. Take a picture and Snapchat that shit.”
I came out of my reverie. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just, um . . . thinking about something. How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” he said.
It didn’t make sense. He was two years older than I was. That would mean Encarnación had him before me. Why would she have kept him and given me up? I wanted to understand, but I didn’t want to ask him. What if he didn’t even know I existed? I couldn’t betray the trust of my biological mother before even meeting her.
“And what’s your name?” I asked.
“Lots of questions. Just tell me if I can hop in your ride or not.”
“I’m not getting in a car with some dude whose name I don’t know,” I shot back.
“Said the girl who just called an Uber,” he snapped.
“My parents don’t let me use Uber,” I said. “I use an app where all the drivers are female and background-checked.”
“Wow,” he said. “You really like rules.”
“And I know the driver’s name,” I said, looking at my phone. “It’s Joni, and she drives a black Prius. She looks very trustworthy.” I held out the phone to him, showing him a picture of a smiling brunette.
“Point taken,” he said with a smile. “I’m Enrique, but my friends call me Rico.”
“Nice. Like Enrique Iglesias,” I said.
“I am nothing like that douche.”
“I’m gonna call you Iglesias.” Was I flirting? No, I was just teasing him . . . like a brother.
“You are definitely not gonna call me Iglesias.”
“Do you want a ride or not?”
He shrugged, accepting defeat. He ran into the house and emerged holding a large black suitcase.
“Um . . . am I taking you to the airport?” I asked.
“Nope. Just to downtown LA.”
“Are you a . . .” I searched for the right words and finally came up with, “A dealer of narcotics?”
“No, ma’am, I am not a dealer of narcotics. I am a law-abiding citizen of these United States of America.”
“Except you were arrested,” I shot back.
“She pays attention,” he said. “I like that in a woman.”
“Are you talking to me or about me?” I asked.
“Both,” he said, with a smile. “That’s how I roll.” He took one last hit of his joint, then put it out on the bottom of his sneaker. “So,” he said. “Is the interrogation over, or do you wanna see my passport? I look real cute in my picture.”
“How’d that happen?” I teased.
“Oh, you know, they used a real soft-focus lens.”
A black Prius drove up, and Joni waved to us. “Follow me, Iglesias,” I said, and then I asked Joni if she was okay making an extra stop.
Once we were both in the backseat headed toward downtown LA, he turned to me and asked, “So what’s your name, anyway?”
“Daria,” I said.
“Daria. I like it,” he said. “A most resplendent name.”
“Big word,” I said.
“Hey, just because I’m not in college doesn’t mean I’m dumb.” He wasn’t smiling when he said this. I had obviously hit a nerve.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like that. My name means ocean in Farsi.”
“I’m gonna call you Ocean,” he said.
“You do that, Iglesias.”
Finally, we pulled over in a bustling neighborhood just outside the garment district. Iglesias exited the car and took his suitcase out of the trunk. I followed him out. “It was nice to meet you,” I said.
Iglesias shook my hand. “Hope it’s not the last time.”
I blushed a little, then couldn’t help but ask, “So what’s in the suitcase?”
“Why don’t you come with me and find out?”
I knew my parents would start wondering where I was, but I couldn’t resist the offer to spend more time with him. So I followed Iglesias as he zigzagged past crowds of people toward a historic art deco movie theater that had been converted into some kind of chaotic bazaar. Inside, people set up booths and sold shoes, and socks, and dolls, and Michael Jackson T-shirts, and Bibles, and churros, and stuffed animals. I remembered Auntie Lida describing the bazaar in Tehran to me. She said it was an endless swirl of vendors, each of them begging you to buy from them, the scent of leather and silver and baklava merging in the broiling air. I thought this was the closest I would get to Tehran’s bazaar, since my parents would never let me visit Iran.
Iglesias said hello to almost every vendor in the makeshift mall, some of them high-fiving him as he walked inside. Then he finally reached a small area at the center of the former lobby, opened his suitcase, and began setting up the fake purses he had inside, gold Chanel and Fendi logos glimmering as they caught the light. As he pulled a beige clutch out of the suitcase, I had to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just . . . my mom has that bag.”
“Yeah, maybe she bought it from me.”
“Maybe she did,” I said, knowing full well that she bought it in Beverly Hills, and not wanting to reveal this for some reason.
“So now you know my secret,” he said. “Disappointed?”
“I mean, I’m not gonna lie, it would’ve been more exciting if you were a money launderer, but I’m okay with the fact that you sell fake handbags.”
“Hey, they’re not fake,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” I said, grabbing a Chanel clutch and inspecting it. “This is clearly made out of some kind of PVC. And the diamond stitching isn’t even consistent throughout. And the stamp says ‘Made in Paris.’”
“Because it was made in Paris,” he asserted.
“Chanel bags never say ‘Made in Paris,’” I said. “They say ‘Made in France’ or ‘Made in Italy.’”
“Anything else?” he asked.
I held the bag up and inspected it further. I thought back to my first trip to the Chanel store with Sheila. She told me that a girl’s first Chanel bag was a rite of passage to womanhood. She explained the intricacies of the bags to me, showing me the detail in the stitching, explaining everything that made the bag so special. “When you graduate from college,” she told me, “I will buy you your first Chanel bag. And then you will be a woman. And I will be so happy, and so sad.”
I handed the bag back to Iglesias. “The hardware is all wrong. Chanel bags have hardware that is either all silver or all gold, but not both.”
“Whoa,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll get on that.”
“So you make these too? Or you just sell them?”
“I work for the dude who makes them. But I draw the designs.”
“Oh, cool, so you’re a designer? That’s what my friend Joy wants to do.”
“I’m an artist,” he said proudly. “And in case you’re wondering, that’s what I got arrested for. I’m not a drug dealer or a thief. I just like to make walls more beautiful with paint. Not that my parents see it that way. All they see is that I have a record now.”
“Well, a lot of artists get arrested, right?” I asked, wanting to make him feel better. “Maybe it’s a badge of honor.”
He shrugged. He obviously didn’t love talking about it. “So how do you know so much about bags?” he asked. “You make ’em too?”
“Um, no,” I said. “I do not make fakes.”
“Hey, they might not be ‘Made in France,’ but they’re not fake,” he said. “They’re right here in front of you. You can touch them. You can hold them. You can see them. What’s more real than that?” He smiled, and his eyes zeroed in on mine. Yeah, he was definitely flirting.
On my way home, I got a text from Joy. The Authentics were going to Kurt’s favorite vegan pastry shop. I stood across the street, watching my friends inside, eating and laughing.
I had every intention of running in, ordering a vegan brownie, and telling my friends everything. But I didn’t know where, or how, I would begin. How would I tell them that I was adopted? How would I confess to them, especially Kurt, that I had finally met a cute guy who seemed to like me, and he might just be my brother? And how could I reveal that my parents had lied to me for so long, knowing how harshly my friends—especially Caroline—would judge them? Though it was messed up, I wanted to protect my parents from the judgment I knew they deserved.
I had never kept a secret from the Authentics, but that moment seemed like the time to start. Instead of going in, I texted Joy.
Me: Hey, I can’t make it. Have some extra rice cream 4 me.
And then I texted Kurt.
Me: Sorry I’ve been MIA. We R all good.
Me: Tell your mom that she should watch a Kiarostami movie for every Shahs of Sunset episode she watches. For balance!
Iglesias was wrong, I thought to myself. I was standing right in front of them, but in that moment, I was definitely a fake.
I couldn’t take my mind off Iglesias that night, and apparently he was thinking about me too. I was sitting at dinner with my parents, Amir, Andrew, and Auntie Lida when my phone dinged.
“Daria,” Baba said. “No phones at the dinner table.”
“Is it one of your friends, the Authorities?” Lida asked.
“The Authentics,” Sheila corrected with a laugh. Then she added, “It’s her father and I who are the Authorities.”
Amir gave me a sympathetic smile and mouthed the words two more years to me.
“Let me just put the phone on silent,” I said. But when I looked at my phone, I quickly realized it wasn’t one of the Authentics texting me. It was a new Snapchat message from Iglesias, who I had followed before we said good-bye. “I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing my phone and turning it so no one but me could see it. “I’ll put the phone away after this.”
I opened up Snapchat and a picture of Iglesias popped up. In the picture, he was holding up a Chanel bag in front of his bare torso. I noticed the bag had far superior stitching than the ones I had seen. This guy worked fast. Like what you see, Ocean? the text read. Before I could even process the hotness of his muscular shoulders, the photo disappeared. I quickly texted him back, I hope you’re talking about the bag, because I do not need to see this much of you, okay. I immediately felt bad and wanted to say something else, but Baba was glaring at me, so I put the phone away.
“Is everything okay?” Lida asked.
“Fine,” I said. What was I supposed to say? No, my biological brother, who you probably don’t even know exists, is sexting me right now.
These were the topics that were discussed during our family dinner: my sweet sixteen party, the good news from Baba’s environmental impact report, the state of women’s fashion in Tehran, the fact that Amir and Andrew finally succeeded in putting a crib together, and my sweet sixteen party again.
I participated in a grand total of zero of those conversations. I was thinking about Iglesias, and how I wanted to see that picture of him again, and about how rude I was to him, and about how if there was one person in the word I could talk to about what was going on, he was the best choice.
The next morning, while Sheila and Auntie Lida went to Pilates, I decided to go see Iglesias again. I could see his face harden as I approached his booth at the bazaar. He was in the middle of a sale to a man. When the man walked away, I approached Iglesias apprehensively. “Congratulations on the sale,” I said. He just cocked his head, willfully ignoring me. “Do you think that man’s girlfriend or wife will ever know he bought her a fake?”
“Why are you so obsessed with calling these fake?” he asked, annoyed.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re probably mad at me ’cause of my super-rude Snapchat reply, but there was a reason—”
“I’m not mad at you,” he said, interrupting me. “Damn, you think everything’s about you, huh? I can’t just be in a shitty mood because of something else.”
“Of course you can. But still, I want to apologize. I was really rude to you when you, um, sent me that, um, you know, picture of yourself.”
“You don’t need to make a thing out of it, okay? I thought you were into me, and you weren’t into me. End of story. If you wanna buy a bag, go ahead. Otherwise, we don’t really need to talk about it.”
“But that’s the thing,” I said. “It’s not the end of the story.” I fidgeted with a hangnail on my index finger, yanking it until a drop of blood appeared at the periphery of my fingernail.
“So you are into me?” he said, with a h
alf smile.
“No!” I yelled a little too loud. “I mean, I don’t mean it like that. I do think you’re cute or not even cute, more like hot, honestly, but I can’t think you’re hot, or cute! That’s the thing.” I took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m going to explain now.”
“I get it,” he said. “You have a boyfriend.”
“No!” Now I was blushing. “You’re going to think I’m totally crazy.”
“Oh, I already think that.”
I looked around the bazaar, wanting to look anywhere but into his eyes. I caught sight of a seven-year-old boy holding his baby sister in his arms, feeding her a bottle of milk. Somehow that little boy, taking such good care of a baby, gave me strength in that moment. “Here’s the thing,” I said, still stalling. “The thing is that . . .” He looked at me impatiently. Finally, I just blurted it out. “The thing is that I’m your sister.”
He laughed so hard that his eyes began to tear up. “You are a trip to Mars,” he said.
“I’m not joking, Enrique.”
He stopped laughing. I guess he must have known I was serious since I used his real name. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“I didn’t come to the house because Encarnación Vargas is my teacher. I came because she’s my mother.” He stared at me, slack-jawed, so I continued, “I just found out, and I wanted to see her. And I didn’t mean to lie to you, but I thought I should talk to her first in case you didn’t know about me. Did you know about me?” He shook his head side to side, his mouth still wide-open. “And I would’ve waited to tell you. But then you sent me that picture, and I realized I had to tell you, because you’re my brother, so you can’t flirt like that again. And I just want you to know that you have great shoulders. I just reacted that way because you’re my brother, okay?” I took a deep breath. “Will you please say something?”
“This is a lot to take in,” he said.
The Authentics Page 6
