The TSA agent at the scanner yawned and stretched so hard, I thought the buttons would pop off his uniform and fly everywhere. I could smell his coffee breath from the other side of the line.
He scratched his nose and nodded at Combat Boot Lady.
“Laleh.” I jiggled her legs up and down where they rested in my elbows. “Time to wake up.”
“I’m tired,” Laleh said, but she let me put her down. She was still in her pajamas, except for her little white tennis shoes.
My sister had the cleanest white tennis shoes of any eight-year-old ever. I didn’t know how she kept them so pristine.
“We can sleep on the plane. But you have to go through the scanner first.”
I tossed my Kellner & Newton Messenger Bag on the conveyer belt, double-checked all my pockets, and waited for Laleh to get the all-clear so I could take my turn in the scanner.
I stood with my arms above my head and had to resist saying “Energize!”
I felt like I was on a transporter pad, except no one ever had to hold their hands above their head for three seconds on theEnterprise.
I was “randomly selected” for an enhanced screening after that, even though my messenger bag had nothing liquid, gel, or aerosol in it.
“Where are you headed?” asked the officer—a burly guy with dark, angular eyebrows and a round face—as he ran the little brown paper over my hands.
“Um. Yazd. I mean, we’re flying into Tehran. But my grandfather lives in Yazd.” The officer stared at me, still holding my palm with one of his blue-gloved hands, which made me nervous. “He has a brain tumor.”
“Sorry to hear that.” The machine beeped. “Good to go.”
He threw away the paper swab and looked me over again.
“I didn’t realize your people did the dot thing too.”
“Um. The dot thing?”
“You know.” He tapped his index finger against his forehead, right between his robust eyebrows.
I placed a fingertip in the same spot on my own forehead andfelt the scabbed-over ruins of Olympus Mons, which is what I had decided to name the remains of my pimple.
Olympus Mons is the highest peak on Mars. It’s a volcano nearly sixteen miles high, and it takes up more square mileage than the entire state of Oregon. Technically, Olympus Mons would have been a better name for the pimple in its un-popped state, since the scab looked more like a crater than a volcano, but it was the best I could do at three in the morning.
“Um.” My ears burned. “It was a pimple.”
The officer laughed so hard, his face turned red.
It was deeply embarrassing.
TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT
That morning, we flew from Portland to New York. Our connection to Dubai wasn’t until the evening.
I slept all the way to JFK, with my head against the window and my knees pressed up against the seat in front of me. Since New York was three hours ahead of Portland, it was past lunch by the time we landed. We ate a cursory meal in the food court (I had a salad to appease Dad, who was unhappy I had finished off the cold pizza for breakfast), and then Laleh used the rest of our interminable layover to visit every single store and stall in JFK’s Terminal 4.
Our flight to Dubai was fourteen hours, and we crossed another eight time zones. I was wide-awake. Laleh had acquired a bag of Sour Patch Kids while she browsed Terminal 4, and the combination of sugar and temporal distortion proved an incendiary one.
She turned around and stuck her face between her and Dad’s seats, peppering Mom with questions about Iran, about Yazd, about Mamou and Babou. Where were we going to sleep? What were we going to do? What were we going to eat? When would we arrive? Who was going to get us at the airport?
A knot started forming, right in the middle of my solar plexus.
All those questions were making me nervous, because Laleh wasn’t asking the really important questions.
What if they didn’t let us in?
