Contents
Cover
Title Page
December 2003
One
Two
Last Year: Part I
December 2003
Three
Four
Five
Last Year: Part II
December 2003
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Last Year: Part III
December 2003
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Last Year: Part IV
December 2003
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
About the Author
Books by Tahereh Mafi
Back Ads
Copyright
About the Publisher
December
2003
One
The sunlight was heavy today, fingers of heat forming sweaty hands that braced my face, dared me to flinch. I was stone, still as I stared up into the eye of an unblinking sun, hoping to be blinded. I loved it, loved the blistering heat, loved the way it seared my lips.
It felt good to be touched.
It was a perfect summer day out of place in the fall, the stagnant heat disturbed only by a brief, fragrant breeze I couldn’t source. A dog barked; I pitied it. Airplanes droned overhead, and I envied them. Cars rushed by and I heard only their engines, filthy metal bodies leaving their excrement behind and yet—
Deep, I took a deep breath and held it, the smell of diesel in my lungs, on my tongue. It tasted like memory, of movement. Of a promise to go somewhere, I released the breath, anywhere.
I, I was going nowhere.
There was nothing to smile about and still I smiled, the tremble in my lips an almost certain indication of oncoming hysteria. I was comfortably blind now, the sun having burned so deeply into my retinas that I saw little more than glowing orbs, shimmering darkness. I laid backward on dusty asphalt, so hot it stuck to my skin.
I pictured my father again.
His gleaming head, two tufts of dark hair perched atop his ears like poorly placed headphones. His reassuring smile that everything would be fine. The dizzying glare of fluorescent lights.
My father was nearly dead again, but all I could think about was how if he died I didn’t know how long I’d have to spend pretending to be sad about it. Or worse, so much worse: how if he died I might not have to pretend to be sad about it. I swallowed back a sudden, unwelcome knot of emotion in my throat. I felt the telltale burn of tears and squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to get up. Stand up.
Walk.
When I opened my eyes again a ten-thousand-foot-tall police officer was looming over me. Babble on his walkie-talkie. Heavy boots, a metallic swish of something as he adjusted his weight.
I blinked and backed up, crab-like, and evolved from legless snake to upright human, startled and confused.
“This yours?” he said, holding up a dingy, pale blue backpack.
“Yes,” I said, reaching for it. “Yeah.”
He dropped the bag as I touched it, and the weight of it nearly toppled me forward. I’d ditched the bloated carcass for a reason. Among other things, it contained four massive textbooks, three binders, three notebooks, and two worn paperbacks I still had to read for English. The after-school pickup was near a patch of grass I too-optimistically frequented, too often hoping someone in my family would remember I existed and spare me the walk home. Today, no such luck. I’d abandoned the bag and the grass for the empty parking lot.
Static on the walkie-talkie. More voices, garbled.
I looked up.
Up, up a cloven chin and thin lips, nose and sparse lashes, flashes of bright blue eyes. The officer wore a hat. I could not see his hair.
“Got a call,” he said, still peering at me. “You go to school here?” A crow swooped low and cawed, minding my business.
“Yeah,” I said. My heart had begun to race. “Yes.”
He tilted his head at me. “What were you doing on the ground?”
“What?”
“Were you praying or something?”
My racing heart began to slow. Sink. I was not devoid of a brain, two eyes, the ability to read the news, a room, this man stripping my face for parts. I knew anger, but fear and I were better acquainted.
“No,” I said quietly. “I was just lying in the sun.”
The officer didn’t seem to buy this. His eyes traveled over my face again, at the scarf I wore around my head. “Aren’t you hot in that thing?”
“Right now, yes.”
He almost smiled. Instead he turned away, scanned the empty parking lot. “Where are your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
A single eyebrow went up.
“They forget about me,” I said.
Both eyebrows. “They forget about you?”
“I always hope someone will show up,” I explained. “If not, I walk home.”
The officer looked at me for a long time. Finally, he sighed.
“All right.” He backhanded the sky. “All right, get going. But don’t do this again,” he said sharply. “This is public property. Do your prayers at home.”
I was shaking my head. “I wasn’t—” I tried to say. I wasn’t, I wanted to scream. I wasn’t.
But he was already walking away.
Two
It took a full three minutes for the fire in my bones to die out.
In the increasing quiet, I looked up. The once-white clouds had grown fat and gray; the gentle breeze was now a chilling gust. The drunk December day had sobered with a suddenness that bordered on extreme and I frowned at the scene, at its burnt edges, at the crow still circling above my head, its caw caw a constant refrain. Thunder roared, suddenly, in the distance.
The officer was mostly memory now.
What was left of him was marching off into the fading light, his boots heavy, his gait uneven; I watched him smile as he murmured into his radio. Lightning tore the sky in two and I shivered, jerkily, as if electrocuted.
I did not have an umbrella.
I reached under my shirt and tugged free the folded newspaper from where I’d stashed it in my waistband, flush against my torso, and tucked it under my arm. The air was heavy with the promise of a storm, the wind shuddering through the trees. I didn’t really think a newspaper would hold up against the rain, but it was all I had.
These days, it was what I always had.
There was a newspaper vending machine around the corner from my house, and a few months ago, on a whim, I’d purchased
