Normally, I was thrilled to get pizza—it was pretty much the best dietary indiscretion ever—but I could feel Dad watching me at every bite, flaring his nostrils.
First I had refused to cut my hair, and now I was eating pizza.
And there weren’t even any vegetables on it.
Laleh told us how her teacher had googled pictures of Iran to show the class where Laleh was going, which I thought was pretty cool.
“How about your day, Darius?” Mom asked.
“It was okay.”
“How were your classes?”
“Um. Econ was okay. Gym was okay.” I didn’t want to getinto being called a terrorist. “You heard about my backpack.”
“What happened to your backpack?” Laleh asked.
“Uh. It broke.”
“How?”
“Chip Cusumano broke it when he pulled on it too hard.”
“That was rude!”
Dad huffed. Mom glared at him.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Maybe if you...” Dad began, but Mom cut him off.
“We’ll get you a new one when we get home. But your dad has a bag you can borrow. Right?”
Dad looked at Mom. It was like they were exchanging telepathic messages.
“Right. Sure.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to borrow anything of Stephen Kellner’s.
But I didn’t have much choice.
We didn’t watchThe Next Generationthat night. There wasn’t time, with all the packing.
Besides,Star Trekwas when we acted like we were a real father and son.
Neither of us felt like acting that night.
I was folding up my boxers when Mom hollered that Mamou and Babou were on Skype.
“Mamou, Babou,” Mom said. “Darioush is here.”
Mom did that sometimes: call me Darioush instead of Darius.
Darioush is the original Persian version of the name Darius.
I had made it my Priority One Goal in life never to let TrentBolger, or any of his Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy, learn the Persian pronunciation of my name, which isDarr-yoosh.
It was an even more imperative goal, now that I was D-Bag.
