“Not really.”
Mom looked at me.
“I’m going to miss Mamou.” I swallowed. “And Babou.”
Mom smiled when I added that.
I think I meant it too.
I think I really did.
“But...”
“I understand, sweetie.”
“Thanks.”
I sat in the kitchen, drinking tea with Babou and Laleh and readingThe Lord of the Rings. I had finished the book but there were still the appendices.
I always read the appendices.
Babou was reading too, a green book with gilded pages. The sugar cube tucked in his cheek made his voice sound funny and his cheek puff out like a squirrel’s. Laleh sat on his lap, listening to him read in Farsi, or occasionally slurp his tea. Her head kept nodding, but she refused to go to bed.
She did not want to go home.
She was much more Persian than I was.
“Darioush-jan,” Mamou said. She smiled at us from the doorway.
She did not want us to go home either.
I wished I could take her with me.
“Sohrab is here. He wants to say good-bye.”
Red Alert.
Sohrab waited for me in the doorway, staring at the welcome mat, with his hands behind his back. He hadn’t set foot inside the house.
He looked smaller and flatter than I had ever seen him.
He had walls inside him now.
“Uh,” I said.
He looked up.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You didn’t come over today. I was worried.”
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted that.”
He shuffled his feet. He was wearing the new cleats I had gotten him.
“They are perfect,” he said. “My favorite color. You noticed?”
