Evie rested her head against the crook of my elbow as she drank her juice and I fought with imaginary numbers.
I didn’t really get the point and purpose of imaginary numbers.
“Okay. Better.” Chip looked over everything and nodded. “I think you’ve got it.”
I sighed. “Now I’ve got to do it on the test.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll do great.”
“Maybe.”
The thing about Chip was, he just got things. And he didn’t know what it was like to not get things.
To try and try and still not succeed.
Evie squirmed in my lap.
“You want down?” I asked.
She nodded. I held her as I scooted away from the table, then set her down. She tossed her juice onto the floor and ran off again.
Chip shook his head and scooped the sippy cup off the floor. He looked at me and did this kind of half smile.
I blinked and then looked down at my hands.
“I guess I better get home.”
“No rush.” He patted my knee. “Hey. What’re you doing for homecoming?”
“I. Uh.” My cheeks started to warm. “I asked Landon to go with me.”
“Cool.”
“How about you?”
“I think I missed my window.” He shrugged. “Should’ve spoken up sooner.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Yeah. Kind of sucks when you like someone but they don’t like you back.”
“As a gay guy I definitely have no idea what that feels like. Definitely never crushed on any straight guys ever.”
Chip snorted.
“Trent doesn’t have a date either, so we’re just getting a big group together. Why don’t you and Landon join us?”
“Oh,” I said. “I think we’re good.”
Chip’s eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
“What what?”
“You made a face.”
“No I didn’t.”
“You did!”
To be fair, the statistical likelihood of me making a face at the mention of Trent Bolger was definitely non-zero.
“You’re doing it again!”
“Doing what?”
“That face!” Chip poked me in the little crease between my eyebrows.
I leaned back.
“Don’t.”
“Sorry. But what is it?”
I sighed.
And then I said, “Why do you keep trying to get me to hang out with him? You know he hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“Well, he’s never been nice. Why are you friends with a guy like that anyway?”
As soon as I said it I wished I could take it back.
You couldn’t just say things like that to someone. Try to control who someone was friends with.
But then I said, “I get you have to deal with him because of Evie and stuff, but . . .”
Chip shook his head. “It’s not like that. I mean, we’ve been friends ever since preschool. You remember?”
“I remember you and Trent calling me Doofius.”
Chip lowered his eyes.
“Sorry.”
“Whatever. We were kids. But now, you’re . . .”
“What?”
“You’re nice.” I swallowed. “I mean, the last couple months, you’ve been nice to me. Ever since I got back from Iran. And Trent is still . . . kind of mean.”
“You just don’t know him very well. That’s all. It’s his sense of humor. He’s just teasing.”
“It doesn’t feel like teasing,” I said. “It never has.”
Chip blinked at me.
I looked down at my hands again. My cuticles were looking rough, probably because I’d taken to chewing them every time I thought about the square root of negative one.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Chip said. His voice was quiet and small. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
“Thanks.”
“I did hurt you, didn’t I?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Chip let out a slow breath.
“Well.”
“Yeah.”
We sat like that, in a Level Twelve Painful Silence.
I’d made it weird between us.
But then Evie ran back into the room with a pair of safety scissors she’d found somewhere.
Chip sprang out of his seat. “Evie! That’s not a toy.” He chased after her.
And the moment had passed.
VERTICALLY GIFTED PEOPLE
Wednesday morning I popped a pair of cherry Toaster Strudels into the toaster oven to surprise Laleh for her first day at the district’s Innovation Center.
(We didn’t have a regular toaster at home, just the toaster oven. Persians tend to toast big pieces of flatbread, so regular toasters are insufficient.)
Grandma was at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and doing her latest sudoku.
“That’s what you’re having for breakfast?”
“It’s for Laleh,” I said. “For her first day.”
Grandma chuckled. “That’s hardly a treat. Here.”
Before I knew what was happening, Grandma had grabbed the flour out of the pantry, a bowl from beneath the counter, and a couple eggs.
“Pancakes are a real treat,” she said.
The toaster oven dinged.
I would have left the strudels in there—the sight of Melanie Kellner making pancakes had me transfixed, like a meteor shower—but when I started smelling burned pastry, I had to turn away and get the strudels out.
We heard Laleh stomping down the stairs before she emerged into the kitchen, still in her pajamas.
“Hey, Laleh,” I said.
“Morning,” Grandma said. “There’s pancakes.”
Laleh perked up at that. Grandma set her plate on the table, along with a bottle of maple syrup.
I watched Laleh eat her pancakes, and Grandma work on her sudoku with a little smile on her face.
What just happened?
It was like, for a brief moment, the moon had shifted in its orbit, and this happy Melanie Kellner had eclipsed the Melanie Kellner I thought I knew.
But then, just like an eclipse, it was over.
I didn’t understand.
I got my stuff together and kissed Laleh and Grandma goodbye.
“Have a good day, Laleh.”
She looked up from her plate and gave me a toothy smile.
“Thanks.”
* * *
I ran into Chip at the bike rack.
“Hey,” he said, but he didn’t grin his usual grin.
Things had been weird between us ever since Sunday.
I wished I could take back what I said.
Well. Not really. I was telling the truth.
But I never realized the truth would be so dangerous.
“Hey,” I said.
“Did Ms. Albertson post your grade yet?”
“Last night.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
“I got a B!”
That got a grin out of Chip.
“That’s great.”
“Thanks again. For helping me.”
“Sure.” Chip kept grinning at me, but after a minute it slipped away.
And then things were weird again.
“See you at practice?”
I swallowed.
“Yeah.”
* * *
When I got home from practice, I felt like I had stepped onto a holodeck.
The scene before me was too surreal for normal existence.
Laleh, Grandma, and Oma were sitting around the kitchen table with bowls of warm water in front of them. A pile of towels lay between them with nail files and clippers on top, and next to that, a little basket of fingernail polish.
“We’re doing manicures!” Laleh announced when I came in. She held her pruny hands up to show me.
“That’s great.”
I leaned down to kiss her head, then Grandma and Oma on the cheeks.
“How was school?”
“Good. Miss Shah is so cool. You know her family is from India?”
“That’s great.”
“She said my name right and everything.”
My sister was practically effervescent.
“Are you hungry?” Oma asked. “We can clear out.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Laleh looked up at me. “Want to do manicures too?”
“Um,” I said.
Grandma and Oma looked at me.
I looked down at my hands, and my shredded cuticles. I’d never had a manicure before.
“That sounds really nice.”
Oma pulled out a chair for me. “Have a seat. I’ll get you a bowl.” She added a few drops of tea tree oil, the most deceptively named oil I’d ever heard of, since it didn’t actually come from camelia sinensis.
I soaked my hands while Laleh told us all about her day: the reading they did, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, and “doing algebras.”
I smiled at that.
I hoped algebras would be easier for Laleh than they were for me.
Oma took my right hand and started pushing my cuticles up.
“You’ve got to stop chewing on them,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“You get nervous. Like Stephen.”
I nodded.
“You like this?”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“When I was your age, guys could never do this.”
“Some guys still won’t.”
Grandma snorted and said, “The patriarchy at work.” And then she went back to painting Laleh’s middle finger a violent and excellent shade of pink.