I let out a strangled cry. “Okay okay I’ll get up I’ll get up oh my God—”
“Maman? Are you up here?”
At the sound of my sister’s voice, my mom got to her feet. She whipped the covers off my bed and said, “In here!” Then, to me, with narrowed eyes: “Pasho.”
“I’m pasho-ing, I’m pasho-ing,” I grumbled.
I got to my feet and glanced, out of habit, at the alarm clock I’d already silenced a half dozen times, and nearly had a stroke when I saw the hour. “I’m going to be late!”
“Man keh behet goftam,” my mom said with a shrug.I told you.
“You told me nothing.” I turned, eyes wide. “You never told me what time it was.”
“I did tell you. Maybe your tuberculosis made you deaf.”
“Wow.” I shook my head as I stalked past her. “Hilarious.”
“I know, I know, I’m heelareeus,” she said with a flourish of her hand. She switched back to Farsi. “By the way, I can’t take you to school today. I have a dentist appointment. Shayda is taking you instead.”
“No I’m not,” my sister called, her voice growing louder as she approached. She popped her head inside my room. “I have to leave right now, and Shadi isn’t even dressed.”
“No— Wait—” I startled scrambling. “I can be dressed in five minutes—”
“No you can’t.”
“Yes I can!” I was already across the hall in our shared bathroom, applying toothpaste to my toothbrush like a crazy person. “Just wait, okay, just—”
“No way. I’m not going to be late because of you.”
“Shayda, what the hell—”
“You can walk.”
“It’ll take me forty-five minutes!”
“Then ask Mehdi.”
“Mehdi is still asleep!”
“Did someone say my name?”
I heard my brother coming up the stairs, his words a little rounder than usual, like maybe he was eating something as he spoke. My heart gave a sudden leap.
I spat toothpaste into the sink, ran into the hall. “I need a ride to school,” I cried, toothbrush still clenched in my fist. “Can you take me?”
“Never mind. I’ve gone suddenly deaf.” He barreled back down the stairs.
“Oh my God. What is wrong with everyone in this family?”
My dad’s voice boomed upward. “Man raftam! Khodafez!”I’m leaving! Bye!
“Khodafez!” the four of us shouted in unison.
I heard the front door slam shut as I flew to the banister, caught sight of Mehdi on the landing below.
“Wait,” I said, “please, please—”
Mehdi looked up at me and smiled his signature, devastating smile, the kind I knew had already ruined a few lives. His hazel eyes glittered in the early-morning light. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got plans.”
