“Can’t I just stay home?”
My sister’s face was red and tear-streaked.
I must have missed a Laleh-pocalypse while I was in the shower.
“No,” Mom said, stacking plates in the sink. “You better be ready when I come back down.”
Mom’s voice was pinched, and her face was a storm cloud.
“Morning, Darius,” she said as she ran back upstairs.
“Hey, Laleh,” I said softly. I knelt down next to her, took her left shoe, and slipped it onto her foot. “What’s up?”
Laleh sniffled but didn’t answer. She watched my hands as I tied her shoe.
“Too tight?”
She shook her head.
I retied her right shoe, then took her hands in mine and bounced them a little.
“Laleh?”
“I just don’t wanna go to school today.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like it.”
I was surprised to hear my sister say that, because she had always enjoyed school before.
Laleh had the gift of being good at taking tests—a genetic trait our parents had failed to pass on to me—and always got gold stars on her assignments. Her teachers and classmates liked her too.
I pulled my sleeve down over my palm and brushed away Laleh’s tears.
Maybe this was why she’d been so quiet lately.
“How come?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did your teacher do something?”
She shrugged.
“Did one of your classmates?”
She shrugged again, but then nodded.
“Want to tell me?”
Laleh looked up at me and then back down at her shoes. “Micah and Emily won’t talk to me anymore.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Laleh’s voice cracked. “They keep calling me Lolly.”
That was preposterous. Micah and Emily had been Laleh’sfriends since first grade. They knew how to pronounce her name correctly.
