“Yeah.”
Sohrab dug the toes of his cleats into the doormat and chewed the inside of his cheeks.
Things hadn’t been this awkward between us since that day in the bathroom, when Ali-Reza and Hossein had compared my foreskin to religious headgear.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” My ears were on fire. If there had been any weary Hobbits around, looking for somewhere to melt the One Ring of Power, they wouldn’t have needed a volcano. “I’m sorry about your dad,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
I couldn’t stand how sorry I was.
I wanted to reach out for him, to put my hand on his shoulder, to let him excrete stress hormones or scream or do whatever he needed to do.
But the walls weren’t just inside him.
They were between us.
I didn’t know how to breach them.
“It’s not your fault,” Sohrab said. “I’m sorry for what I said to you.”
“Don’t be.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I was hurting. And you were there. And I knew how to make you hurt as bad as me.”
He still wouldn’t look at me.
“I’m so ashamed,” he said. “Friends don’t do what I did.”
“Friends forgive,” I said.
“I didn’t mean it, Darioush. What I said. I want you to know.” He finally met my eyes. “I’m glad you came. You are my best friend. And I never should have treated you that way.”
He chewed on his lip for a moment.
“Can you come out? For a little while?”
I glanced back at Dad, sitting on the couch watching soap operas with Laleh. He nodded at me.
“Sure.”
THE CRACKS OF DOOM
I followed Sohrab down the silent street. He had something flat and rectangular clutched in his right hand, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
I tried to swallow away the lump in my throat, but all that did was move the lump down to my heart.
Being around Sohrab had never made me so nervous before.
The park—our park—was dark and empty. The mercury lights around the restroom cast the whole thing in a dim orange glow, barely enough to see the links of the fence as we climbed. Sohrab did an awkward one-handed climb, careful not to drop whatever it was he was holding.
We sat with our legs over the edge of the roof, surveying our Khaki Kingdom one last time. Sohrab didn’t say anything, and I didn’t, either.
When had the silence between us crystallized?
I rubbed my palms on my pants to try and get the mesh marks off them.
When I couldn’t take the quiet anymore, I said, “I’m so sorry about your dad.”
