I looked up at the drowned-out stars trying to shine through the polluted purple Valley sky and felt relieved.
“They still look pretty even when they’re fuzzy,” I said, but what I really wanted to say was “thank you.”
“You’re getting romantic,” Arash teased. He pulled me toward him and smiled. “We’re just lying under a hood of smog, actually.”
He kissed me, pushing my hands into his, and we just kissed and kissed until our lips went blue. We were trying to find out who we were when we weren’t people who hid in abandoned buildings. Who we were at night, as equals.
“You know what? Fuck it. We should just go out and do something,” he said quietly.
“Like where there’s other people?” I laughed.
“You want to go see a movie? Reservoir Dogs is playing at the Woodland Hills Mall,” he asked with a tentative tone.
“Together?” I asked, worried about how quickly we were changing the parameters of our unspoken understanding.
“Why not?” he said to reassure me.
—
The mall was filled with the excited shrieks of adolescents set free. They were everywhere, the people our age. They swarmed out of minivans in packs. That’s where they all went, I realized. That’s why the streets were silent. They hid inside shopping malls, scattering popcorn and teasing each other, chewing gum, burping, exploding with soda.
We gave Azar’s balloon to a ticket-booth salesperson to watch over and crossed the large entrance hall. In the mirrors that lined the hallways I saw the reflection of an ill-matched couple walking in slow motion: the awkward Italian girl in sweatpants and the macho Persian guy with the perfectly starched Yankees cap and clean shirt. Arash reverted to a nighttime version of his school self. He walked in wide oblique strides with a laid-back but vigilant bounce. I didn’t match that stride. My steps were rigid, contained. My body had no messages to share.
The posters for Reservoir Dogs were beautiful and everyone stood around looking at the men in black suits, splattered in blood. Arash bought us butter-infused popcorn and Cokes. The way he sipped his drink—sucking the straw with a tough smirk from the side of his mouth—was a performance, but I told myself I didn’t care because I felt that I was part of a performance also. The one in which we were adults, sharing things. Man and woman, popcorn and soda, ascending escalators side by side.
When we reached the theater entrance Arash went pale. Hovering in front of the entrance, his friends from school with another group of bearded guys, maybe their older brothers, were fighting with an usher to let them sit close to one another. They pushed him around playfully. They all wore sagging khakis, gold chains, and buttoned-up flannel shirts just like Arash’s. They looked like a squadron. We were still at a safe distance, but I caught a glimpse of us again in the mirror as we started to break apart—a little tear. Arash turned to me, tense.
“Your friends?” I said, without expecting an answer or an explanation.
One of the younger ones, Faraj, recognized Arash and walked over. His eyes turned into a question mark the closer he got to us.
“Yo, fool! What are you doing out here? We paged you all night.”
Arash’s body shrunk, his gestures were not grand now.
“Yeah, I know. I couldn’t get to a pay phone to call you back on time.”
He glanced over at me. So it wasn’t true they’d flaked on him, I realized. He wanted to be alone with me. For an instant this made me smile, but when I saw myself in the mirror I looked smaller now. Folded arms protecting my chest, ugly sweatpants. Why did I get in that car?
“What’s up with her?” Faraj asked with a smirk.
Arash looked away and said he’d bumped into me. I was just a girl from his English class. Someone who wrote his essays for him.
His eyes wavered for a moment.
Faraj peered at me again, vaguely interested.
“How much you charge? I gotta get my college application essay done by someone. Been looking into that.”
I told him I was too busy.
In the mirror an older boy questioned a younger boy about the presence of a young Italian girl. The younger boy replied with a nod and a wave of a hand, signaling he had this under control. He’d get rid of her in a second.
And so it went.
Faraj nodded at me and edged away.
I crumpled the ticket stub in my hand and stashed it inside my pocket.
Arash’s eyes had time to recover. They were stronger and tougher when they turned to me again.
In the mirror the older boy joined his friends waiting in line. The younger one took his wallet out of his back pocket, withdrew a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to the Italian girl.
“There’s pay phones downstairs. You can call a cab to take you home.”
His friends at the tail end of the line were almost inside the theater, looking back at him.
“Hurry up, kuni!”
He shrugged his shoulders at me. “I’m sorry. We should have gone somewhere else.”
He picked up his bouncy stride and caught up with his friends, pants sagging below his waistline.
Look at those flannel boxers popping out, I thought. I bet they smell good.
9
Monday morning Arash didn’t show up to English class. This was a relief because I didn’t know how to look at him without rage and embarrassment. On my way to PE I went to retrieve Azar’s balloon from my locker. It had shriveled, but I decided I would give it to her anyway. I found a note inside the locker. It was from Mrs. Perks, the Advanced English teacher Simon had introduced me to. I had given her some literary essays before getting suspended, but I didn’t think I’d hear back from her because of what happened. Her note didn’t mention my bad conduct. She said she’d read my essays and was willing to let me try her class the following semester. She gave me a list of books to read over Christmas break. If I came back with satisfactory reports and committed to more writing and reading tasks than my peers, she’d take me on. “English is not your first language, but I can get it to become your first language’s bright younger sister,” she wrote. I read those exotic book titles and her note, smiling as I walked to my PE class. I felt like I had a foot out of the ditch.
When I got to class Azar was sitting on the track staring at her feet. She looked more depressed than usual. She glanced at me and my shrunken balloon and sighed.