Darius the Great Deserves Better - Adib Khorram Page 0,10

the hot water didn’t last nearly long enough, which meant by the time I was clean I was also cold and slightly miserable.

I dried off and wrapped myself in my towel, sucked in my stomach, and went to get dressed.

Most of the guys were gone, but I passed Chip pulling his shirt on as I padded to my locker.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, and turned into my row. Gabe was already gone, which was good, because I hated getting dressed next to him.

Between playing soccer every day and my new medication, I had lost a little weight, but it wasn’t like I was suddenly skinny. I still had way more stomach than I wanted, and now the stretch marks had gotten way more noticeable, despite the scar cream I put on at night.

I kind of hated the way I looked.

That’s normal.

Right?

I pulled on my shirt first, even before my underwear, because the risk of someone seeing my cold penis still seemed less alarming than having them see my stomach.

From the other side of the lockers, Chip said, “You headed home after this? You wanna grab a bite or something?”

“My family’s waiting for me.”

“Oh. Cool. Maybe some other time?”

“Maybe.”

Chip got quiet again as I packed my dirty kit into its mesh bag.

And then he said, “What you said in Circle?”

“Yeah?”

“Was that about Trent?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I slung my messenger bag over one shoulder and my soccer bag over the other and stepped around the partition.

“Well. Sorry about that.”

“You don’t need to be,” I said.

And I meant it.

Really.

I didn’t expect Chip to apologize for the things Trent did.

I just wished I knew why the two of them were friends in the first place.

I didn’t know quite what to make of Cyprian Cusumano.

* * *

I tossed my bags into the trunk of Dad’s car and then opened the passenger-side door.

“Sorry for the wait.”

Dad shook his head. “No worries.”

But as soon as I closed the door, I felt trapped.

No one said anything, but I could feel it: an invisible particle field of frustration or anger, I wasn’t sure which. It pressed against my ears and thrummed in my chest.

I rolled down my window a bit. “Is this okay?”

“Laleh’s got an earache,” Mom said from the back, where she sat with Laleh to give me more leg room up front.

“Oh.” I rolled the window back up and turned the air on low instead. “This better?”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

As Dad pulled out of the parking lot, I saw Chip emerge from the locker room, headed toward his bike. I waved, but I don’t think he saw me, because he didn’t wave back or anything.

With no music playing, and no one talking, the vibration in my chest started getting worse.

I didn’t know what was going on with my family, but I didn’t like it.

So I said, “Thanks for coming. It means a lot.”

“Of course we came,” Mom said.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Dad glanced a smile my way and then looked back to the road. Behind me, Mom ran her fingers through Laleh’s hair while she slept against the window. Quiet crept back over the car. I pulled out my phone to text Landon about the game and tried to ignore the prickly feeling in my stomach.

What was going on?

* * *

When we got home, Mom got Laleh ready for an early bedtime, while I warmed up some of the leftovers from Landon’s soup. Once the adrenaline of the game had drained out of me, I was starving.

While I stirred my little pot of soup, Dad stood at the sink, doing the dishes.

“I can do those,” I said. “I’m making more anyway.”

“No, it’s okay. I should have done them during the day. Just didn’t get around to it.”

Dad huffed and reached into the sudsy water to pull out a mug.

Stephen Kellner always liked to fill one side of the sink with sudsy water and soak the dishes in it. I wasn’t a fan of that method, because I hated reaching into dirty, soapy water and not knowing what I was going to find.

But Grandma and Oma did dishes the same way, so it must have been genetic.

Grandma and Oma also used one of those wand things, the kind that you filled with soap that had a sponge on the end, but Mom was adamant that those didn’t get the corners clean, so she bought us regular washcloths instead.

Shirin Kellner had strong opinions about dish-washing, opinions I had apparently inherited from her, since I did the dishes a lot