Darius the Great Deserves Better - Adib Khorram Page 0,63
and he pulled me so close to him I thought he was going to crush me.
I wrapped my arm around him too, and we held each other for a long time.
“Dad?” I asked, once it seemed like he had calmed down enough to talk.
“Sorry.” Dad wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. “That just really got to me.”
“It’s okay. Really.”
I wanted Dad to know it was okay for him to cry in front of me.
When the episode was over, and the ending credits played, I handed him a couple Kleenex and used one to blow my nose.
Dad leaned back and sighed.
“One more?” he asked.
“Um.”
It was already past midnight.
“Please?”
Dad had this thing in his voice.
It broke my heart to hear it.
“Sure.”
So we watched another episode (“Hippocratic Oath,” which is kind of a forgettable one, to be honest), and I leaned my head against Dad’s shoulder when I started getting sleepy. Dad rested his hand on my head and played with my hair.
I couldn’t remember Dad ever doing that.
Mom did it all the time. But Dad never did.
He kept combing it back and playing with the three little whorls in the crown of my head.
“Hey,” he said, not much louder than a whisper. “Does it ever make you feel worse, being around me when I’m depressed?”
“No,” I said. “Not really.”
Dad’s fingers paused on my head.
“You sure? It doesn’t make you more depressed?”
“I’m sure. Why?”
Dad’s fingers started up again. He was quiet for a long time.
I stifled a yawn.
“Sometimes being around your grandparents . . . I don’t know. It makes me feel like I’m thirteen again, lying in bed and thinking depressed thoughts. And feeling their depression too, like a cloud over the house.”
“I didn’t know Grandma and Oma had it too.”
“Well, they don’t like to talk about it. And they’ve never been to see anyone for it, so they’ve never been officially diagnosed. I always thought they might be bipolar.”
“Oh.” I stifled another yawn. “Did they make it hard for you to get help?”
Dad rested his chin on my head. “Sometimes. They wanted me to manage it on my own.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
My eyelids got heavy. I kept blinking, but I knew I had to stay awake.
“Is that why we never see them?”
“No. Maybe.” Dad sighed. His breath tickled my hair. “I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“Them being here, I thought . . . well, I want you and your sister to have a better relationship with them than I did.”
To be honest, I wasn’t sure Dad’s plan was working.
But I couldn’t say that to him.
I yawned.
Dad chuckled.
“Okay.” He kissed my head again. “You need to get to bed.”
“I’m awake,” I said, though my eyes were closed.
“All right.”
I let Dad hold me. And I held on to him too.
“Don’t worry about me,” he whispered. “I’m going to be okay.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
“Darius, can you take the trash out?” Polli asked.
“Yeah.”
Most of our trash actually went into the compost—we gave it to a farm-to-table restaurant down the street to use in their garden—but I had to sort it first, because sometimes people threw outside trash in our cans: plastic wrappers, empty glass bottles, used Red Bull cans.
I didn’t understand the point and purpose of Red Bull.
Once I’d gotten everything sorted and dumped into the big compost bin, I ran to the bathroom to wash my hands and make sure I hadn’t spilled anything on myself.
“Excuse me?” a twenty-something in a beanie with huge gauges in their ears said as soon as I stepped out front.
“Hey. Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a gift for my partner.”
“Oh. Do you know what they like to drink?”
“She doesn’t like caffeine,” they said.
So I led them over to our herbal selection. I talked about rooibos and fruit-based and butterfly-pea flower, letting them smell sample tins as we went.
From the counter, Kerry hollered at me. “Darius, we need more nitro!”
The back of my neck burned.
“Um. Sorry. Will you be okay? I have to . . .”
“Sure,” Beanie Person said.
“You can ask up front if you need more help.”
“Thanks.”
“We’re about to do a tasting,” Mr. Edwards said when I got back with the nitro tanks. “Just got a new batch of Darjeelings in.”
“Awesome.”
I started to follow him, but I heard a shout and a clang and the sloshing of liquid. A table had just spilled a full carafe of iced hibiscus, which was dark purple and sticky from agave nectar and hard to get off the floor if it set too long.