The opportunities for rhyming were too gruesome to consider.
I squeezed myself into frame, looming over Mom’s shoulder. Mamou and Babou were squeezed next to each other in two seats. Babou sat back a bit, looking at the monitor over the rim of his glasses.
“Hi, maman!” Mamou said. Her smile looked ready to burst through the screen. “I’m so happy to see you soon.”
“Me too. Um. Do you need anything from Portland?”
“No, thank you. Just you come.”
“Okay. Hi, Babou.”
“Hello, baba,” my grandfather said. His voice was gravelly, and his accent was heavier than Mamou’s. “Soon you will be here.”
“Yeah. Um. Yeah.”
Babou blinked at me. He didn’t smile, not really, but he didn’t frown either.
This is how most of my conversations with Babou went.
We didn’t know how to talk to each other.
I studied my grandfather in the monitor. He didn’t look any different. He had the same severe eyebrows, the mustache that quivered when he spoke, the distinguished Picard Crescent (though his was a bit fluffier, since his hair was curly like mine).
But according to Mom and Dad, he was dying.
I didn’t know how to talk about that. About how sad I was. About how bad I felt.
And I didn’t know how to tell him I was excited to finally meet him either.
I mean, you can’t just tell your own grandfather “Nice to meet you.”
I had his blood in me. His and Mamou’s. They weren’t strangers.
But I was about to meet them for the first time.
My chest started to clench up.
“Um.” I swallowed. “I better go finish packing.”
Babou cleared his throat. And then he said, “See you soon, Darioush.”
OLYMPUS MONS
Here’s the thing:
No one should have to wake up at three o’clock in the morning.
My phone was set to play theEnterprise’s RED ALERT sound as an alarm, but even with the klaxon going off, I wanted to pull the pillow over my head and go back to sleep.
But waking up at three in the morning wasn’t even the worst part. That was waiting for me when I looked in the mirror.
My forehead had become host to an alien parasite: the biggest pimple I’d ever had in my entire life.
It was glowing red and ominous between my eyebrows like the Eye of Sauron, lidless and wreathed in flame. It was so massive, it emitted its own gravitational field.
I was certain that, if I popped it, the implosion would suck me, my family, and our whole house into a singularity we’d never escape.
But I did pop it. I couldn’t travel with an alien organism inhabiting my face.
