Brody cracks a grin. “Deal.”
On Monday, you ask Frau if you can switch to an open seat toward the front of the class, so you don’t have to sit by Mariana.
You hate being in the front row, hate all the eyes on you as you raise your hand to get Pluspunkte, but whatever. Anything’s better than the awkwardness.
After acing another quiz—this time on accusative articles—and working through a set of dialogues, you pack your backpack and head to history.
History, which is its own kind of awkward, since you sit right behind Farshid, who saw your utter humiliation.
You hate him for that.
You sit through Ms. Suchecki’s lecture on the 1920s and the stock market crash and the Great Depression, but you only half listen. You keep thinking about the dance. About Mariana. And Reggie. And Brody. You stare at the back of Farshid’s neck, which is brown, and smooth, and thick. You can actually see the muscles that connect it to his shoulders. Maybe Brody was right: Maybe he is a bit of a freak.
That doesn’t stop the girls liking him, though. You even saw Mariana ask him for a dance, and he did, blushing the whole time, and you hate him for that.
You hate how he looks like a man and you look like a breadstick.
And you hate how small he makes you feel every time he looks at you. Not because you’re not some sort of weird teenaged bodybuilder like him, but because he’ll never let go of what you said back in September. That word, that one word, that you didn’t even mean. But that doesn’t matter to him. He thinks he’s so perfect. He thinks he’s never made a mistake.
“Dayton?” Ms. Suchecki calls your name. Crap, crap, crap. You’re supposed to be reading aloud now, but you lost your spot.
“Black Tuesday,” Farshid mutters, and you find the paragraph he’s talking about, and you hate him for that, too. That he managed that small kindness. Like he thinks he’s so much better than you.
He’s not.
“So,” Ms. Suchecki says near the end of class. “Let’s talk about your World War Two projects.”
Soft groans ripple through the room. Ms. Suchecki only ever assigns partner projects, and last semester, for your project on the American Civil War, you had to do all the work yourself, because Ryder was completely useless.
Ms. Suchecki pulls a beat-up Royals cap from her desk, already filled with folded scraps of paper. “You know the drill. Pull a number. Whoever you match with is your partner.”
The hat makes its way down the rows. Some people dig, like if they search hard enough, they can get matched up with a friend. It doesn’t seem to work, though.
The cap reaches Farshid. He pulls out a slip. “Fourteen?” he says, quiet, like he’s embarrassed by it.
No one says anything. No one else has pulled fourteen yet. Thecap snakes its way down the row and back to you. You reach in and grab the first one you can, praying it’s not a five, which is what Ryder pulled.
Except it’s even worse.
You unfold your paper and stare at the number written in blue felt-tip ink.
Fourteen.
PART 4march
20FARSHID
You’ve noticed lately that if you clench your fist and turn your wrist a certain way, there’s this vein that pops up on your forearm. Your arm gains still aren’t where you want them to be, but this feels like a step in the right direction.
The door at the top of the stairs cracks open, and your mom shouts down.
“Farshid, are you almost done?”
“Almost,” you tell her, relaxing your hand and grabbing the vacuum cord so you don’t run over it (again).
Almostmight be stretching the truth a bit. The basement is a mess, and for maybe the first time, it’s not your fault.
Your LEGO collection is long-since packed up, in plastic tubs neatly stacked in the storage room. Your dad asked if you wanted to sell your collection, a suggestion that horrified you, though you’re not sure why exactly, because it’s not like you’re going to play with them anymore, you’re too old for LEGO sets now. They might be worth something someday, though.
