LOLLY
“Laleh,” Mom called. “We’re going to be late!”
I couldn’t hear Laleh’s reply from my bedroom, where I was getting dressed for school, but I could tell it didn’t make Mom very happy, because she called out “Come on!”
Mom had waited to go into the office so she could take Laleh to school—usually it was Dad who did it—but that meant she’d be fighting rush hour to get to work.
I grabbed my stuff and headed downstairs. Laleh was sitting on the little stool by the garage door tying her right shoe through her sniffles.
“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’s friends since first grade. They knew how to pronounce her name correctly.
“That’s rude.” I frowned. “Why are they doing that?”
“It started ever since we went to Iran.”
“Oh.”
After our trip to Iran, I had to deal with my fair share of ostracism and rumor mongering. (Trent Bolger even tried to start a rumor that I had joined ISIS.) But I hated that it was happening to my sister.
No matter how old you are, it’s never good to remind your classmates that you’re different.
Otherwise you run the risk of becoming a Target.
I got Laleh cleaned up as best I could, gave her a kiss on her head, and helped her into Mom’s car.
Mom came out, her hair in a messy bun—she’d been wearing it in a bun a lot lately, instead of down and styled like she used to—and gave me a quick hug.
“Thank you for calming your sister down,” she said. “I think she’s tired. She’s always up too late, reading her books.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “Her classmates are being racist.”
Mom shook her head. “They’re third graders.”
“Still.”
Mom kissed me on the cheek. “I know you’re just looking out for her. Don’t worry, we’ll talk tonight. Love you.”
I watched Mom and Laleh drive away. Once the car disappeared around the corner, I pulled my bike off the rack and headed to school.
It was drizzling, the sort of fall drizzle that smells like the inside of a freezer, and I pulled my hood over my helmet. About a mile from Chapel Hill High School, I saw Chip pedaling ahead of me, and sped up to catch him. Beneath his helmet, his hair was pasted to his forehead, but he still tossed a grin my way.
I never knew anyone that grinned as much as Cyprian Cusumano.
“Hey, Darius.”
“Hey.”
“Good weekend?”
“Okay. You?”
Chip shrugged.
“Not bad.”
“Cool.”
Chip grinned at me again and then faced forward as we hit The Big Hill.
I downshifted and fell behind him so we could stay closer to the sidewalk, because there were few things in life more terrifying than being on a bike on the road to Chapel Hill High School when a senior was running late for first block.
Chip’s shirt rode up his back as he pedaled. He had these little dimples in his lower back.
I swallowed and kept my eyes on the road.
“See you at practice?” he asked as we locked our bikes up.
“Yeah. See you.”
Coach Winfield must’ve liked torturing Chapel Hill High School’s Student Athletes. That’s the only explanation I could come up with for why he had us doing an hour of wind sprints.
Only Trent Bolger got off light, because apparently he had a “bad case of shin splints.”
The Sportsball-Industrial Complex at work.
By the time Coach Winfield blew his whistle, I thought I was going to throw up. Even Gabe was bent over his knees, gulping for air and looking a little green, and like I said, he was the fastest guy I knew.
“All right, gentlemen,” Coach Winfield shouted. “Get cleaned up and get out of here.”
I limped to the locker room, trailing behind Jaden and Gabe. Both of them had their hands behind their heads in Surrender Cobra, which was unfair, because they both had really nice shoulder muscles.
I wished mine looked that nice.
“Perv alert,” Trent said behind me.
“Shut up, Trent.”
“Make me, Dairy Queen.” He jogged ahead of me, flashing me his middle finger.
Jaden turned around. “Did he—”
“Yeah,” Gabe said, glaring at Trent’s retreating back. “How can you let him get away with stuff like that?”
I shrugged. “It could be worse. Last year he kept calling me a terrorist.”
Jaden frowned. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
The thing about Gabe and Jaden was, they were nice guys, but they never had to deal with being Targets. They never knew what that was like until they met me and saw how Trent treated me.
I think they understood something about me just then.
Jaden slowed until I came alongside him and rested his arm across my shoulder.
“You’re a cool guy, Darius,” he said. “You don’t deserve that.”
And Gabe took my other side and said, “We’ve got your back.”
I wanted to cry.
Just a little bit.
But I couldn’t do that in front of them.
So instead I said, “Thanks. But it’s best not to dwell on such minutiae.”