I should’ve, but I’d been willfully blind. I’d been so mired in grief I could hardly survive my parents’ nightly fights, could hardly survive the rigorous demands of my junior year. I wasdesperate for even the scraps of the familiar, desperate to hold on to the friend who knew my history, to the escape that was her home. I’d not been able to spare the emotional expense necessary to see what was right in front of me—that my best friend had begun to hate me.
Hateme.
When the bell rang, I turned in a blank exam.
Last Year
Part III
My mom was waiting for me after school, her champagne-colored minivan wedged between two nearly identical models. I knew her minivan was a champagne color—not a variation on beige, not a sort-of-brown—butchampagne, specifically, because the salesman who’d sold it to my parents had emphasized the color as a selling point.
My poor parents had been scandalized.
They’d sat the salesman down and explained to him that they did not drink alcohol, they did not want achampagnecar, could they please have a different one.
I smiled now, remembering this story—Mehdi loved telling it at social gatherings—and trudged toward our drunken minivan, Zahra trailing behind. The after-school pickup was always a logistical nightmare, but my mom had long ago founda way to manage it: she arrived half an hour early, and usually she brought a book. Today, however, she was squinting through her reading glasses at the glossy pages of a magazine, a publication I wasn’t immediately able to identify.
I rapped on the window when we arrived, and my mom jumped a foot in her seat. She turned and scowled at me, set down the magazine.
“Hi,” I said, beaming at her.
My mom rolled her eyes, smiled. The side door slid open and we all exchanged hellos, settled into our seats. The minivan’s interior smelled vaguely of Cheez-Its, which, for some reason, I found comforting.
My mom tugged off her reading glasses.
“Madreseh khoob bood?”Was school okay?Then, to Zahra: “Zahra joonam, chetori?”Zahra dear, how are you?“How’s your mom?”
Zahra was busy responding to my mother in flawless Farsi when I noticed, with a start, the discarded magazine on the console.
I picked it up.
It was an old issue ofCosmopolitanfeaturing a highly airbrushed photo of Denise Richards—under whose name it read:Be Naughty with Him!And, as if that weren’t alarming enough, there was the headline—in bold, white type—
Our Best Sex Secret
I looked up. Zahra was saying something to my mom about SAT prep courses, and I couldn’t wait. I cut her off.
“Hey,” I said, shaking the magazine at my mom. “Hey, what the hell is this?”
My mom stilled. She spared me a single glance before inserting the key in the ignition. “Man chemidoonam,” she said.How am I supposed to know?“It was at the dentist’s office.”
Zahra laughed. “Um, Nasreen khanoom”—Mrs. Nasreen—“I don’t think you’re supposed to take the magazines.”
“Eh? Vaughan?” My mom turned on the car.Oh? Really?
I was shaking my head. I did not believe for a second that my mom thought the old, grimy magazines at the dentist’s office were free for the taking. “So is the secret any good?” I asked. “Because it says right here”—I scanned the cover again—“that it’sa secret so hot, so breathtaking, experts are raving about it.”
My mom was driving now, but she still managed to glare at me in the rearview mirror. “Ay, beetarbiat.”Oh, you rude child.
I was fighting back a smile. “Don’t lie, Maman. I saw you reading it.”
She said something in Farsi then, an expression difficult to translate. To put it simply: she threatened to kick my ass when we got home.
I couldn’t stop laughing.
Zahra had swiped the magazine, and she was now scanning the article in question. Slowly, she looked up at me.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “I love your mom.”
