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—but champagne, 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 a champagne car, 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 found a 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 of Cosmopolitan featuring 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’s a 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.”
My mother muttered something like What am I supposed to do with you kids? in Farsi, and then turned on the radio.
My mom loved pop radio.
Currently, she was a loyal fan of Enrique Iglesias, because she grew up listening to his dad—Julio Iglesias—and when Enrique was first introduced on the radio she clasped her heart and sighed. These days she championed Enrique Iglesias as if it were her civic duty, as if Julio were watching and she hoped to make him proud. Right now, Escape was blasting through the speakers at a ridiculous volume, in what was no doubt an effort to drown out our voices.
“Hey,” I shouted, “you’re not getting off that easily.”
“Chi?” she shouted back. What?
I tried for a higher decibel. “I said, you’re not getting off that easily.”
“What?” She cupped a hand to her ear, pretended to be deaf.
I fought back another laugh and shook my head at her. She smiled, put on her sunglasses, adjusted her scarf, and gently bobbed her head to the music.
“Hey.” Zahra tapped my knee. “Shadi?”
I turned, raised my eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“We’re, like, five minutes away from my house,” she said, glancing out the window. “And I just—before I go, I wanted to say sorry. Again. About today.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. I shouldn’t have just attacked you like that.” She sat back in her seat, stared into her hands. “Ali just— He always gets everything, you know? Things are so easy for him. Relationships. Friendships. He doesn’t know what it’s like for me, what it’s like to wear hijab or how horrible people can be or how hard it is to make friends.”
“I know,” I said softly. “I know.”
“I know you do.” She smiled then, her eyes shining with feeling. “You’re like the only one who gets it. And everything is just”—she shook her head, looked out the window—“school is so fucking brutal right now. Do you remember that guy who pulled off my scarf?”
I stiffened. “Of course.”
“He keeps following me around,” she said, swallowing. “And it’s really freaking me out.”
I felt my chest constrict with panic and I fought it back, kept my face placid for her sake. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe I was imagining things.”
“We’ll report him,” I said sharply. “We’ll tell someone.”
Zahra laughed. “As if that’ll make any difference.”
“Hey”—I took her hands, squeezed—“look, I’ll stay with you. I’ll walk you to class. I’ll make sure you’re not alone.”
She took a deep breath, her chest shuddering as she exhaled. “This is stupid, Shadi. This whole situation is so stupid. Why do we even have to have these conversations? Why do I have to be scared
