I might’ve actually done okay at that, with all theStar TrekI watched.
“I loved that,” Chip said. He leaned over the table to look at her paper. “Where you make your own constellations?”
Laleh nodded.
Sure enough, the paper was covered with connect-the-dots figures of Laleh’s devising.
“These look great,” I said.
“We have to come up with a story for them.”
“What are you going to do?”
“It has to be about our family.”
“What about our trip to Iran?”
“I don’t know,” Laleh said. “What if they make fun of me?”
“For what?” Chip asked.
“For being Iranian,” I said, but then I turned to Laleh. “I bet Miss Shah won’t let them. Didn’t you say some of your classmates were Fractional Kids too?”
“I guess.”
Chip said, “Would people really make fun of her?”
“I mean... people made fun of me.”
I didn’t say it out loud. That Chip and Trent had been the onesmaking fun of me, the way Micah and Emily and other Proto-Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy had been making fun of Laleh.
But I think Chip understood what I was saying anyway.
He got this serious look on his face and nodded.
And then he turned to Laleh and said, “Your brother’s right. You should talk about Iran. So your classmates will understand you.” He swallowed. “That’s how you make friends.”
Laleh looked from Chip to me, and then back down at her paper.
“Okay.”
And then she said, “Will you help me?”
“Sure.” I scooted closer.
“You too,” she told Chip, though her cheeks reddened again as she said it.
He grinned. “All right.”
Laleh pointed to one of the stick-figure constellations she’d made, one that might’ve almost had a mustache. “This one is going to be Babou.”
FULL PERSIAN MOTHER
Saturday morning I tried Sohrab again.
He still didn’t answer.
I thought about calling Mamou again, but I couldn’t call her every time I couldn’t reach Sohrab.
