One Man Guy (22 page)

“Alek, I know this is hard, but it’s for your own good,” his father insisted.

“You guys are total hypocrites!”

Alek’s father looked at him, the anger flaring in his eyes. “Don’t insult us, you disrespectful liar,” he snapped. “Alek, do you know what it feels like when your child lies to you? And I’m not even talking about anything big. Even a little lie hurts when it comes from someone you love so much. And then to have a parade of lies pour out of your mouth. I hope you do have children, so that one day you can know what it means to be hurt by them in this way. This is not the kind of man we’ve brought you up to be. You should feel ashamed of yourself. I know that I feel ashamed of you.”

“Alek, that’s all we have to say,” his mom concluded. “Until further notice, consider yourself grounded. You will come home directly after school. Your phone privileges, including your cell phone, are suspended until further notice. We’re putting a password on your computer so that you won’t be able to access the Internet. You have two more weeks of school left in session. I suggest you pull yourself together and try to salvage this summer.”

“Can I say something now?” Alek asked his parents quietly.

“No. Until you start acting like an adult, there’s no reason for us to treat you like one.”

Alek’s parents rose and left the dining room. Alek looked down and saw the damp spots that his tears had made on the place mat.

19

If the last week of Alek’s life had been pure bliss, this one was pure hell. He wasn’t even entrusted to walk to school—his father insisted on dropping him off and picking him up. Alek sat in the passenger’s seat each morning in silence, daring his father to say something about Alek’s Housing Works clothes. But he didn’t. The routine of home, school, home, chores, and homework became so entrenched that any other kind of existence felt like a distant memory. The near-perfect tennis weather just made it worse, teasing him from his dad’s car. His racket lay in the front closet neglected, like a forgotten friend. He couldn’t even see or call Becky.

And the worst thing was that he still hadn’t talked to Ethan since their fight. Although Alek wished he could’ve gone to New York with Ethan that Sunday, the more he’d thought about it, the angrier he’d gotten. Ethan knew that it wasn’t his choice. It’s not like he
wanted
to get grounded.

By the time Alek slinked to the cafeteria the Monday after his parents had punished him, he had decided that Ethan had been the immature one, and Alek wasn’t sure if he was going to sit next to him. Today, Alek thought to himself, Ethan’s backpack could be his lunchtime companion.

Alek’s plan was preempted when he saw Ethan wasn’t sitting at his table. Alek stood in the middle of the cafeteria, getting angrier.
He
was the one who had been humiliated in front of his parents.
He
was the one who had had a door slammed in his face.
He
was the one who was grounded for the rest of his life.
He
was the one who had been stuck in the suburbs while Ethan got to go to New York. And was he supposed to think that it was just a coincidence that Ethan was late today and didn’t save him a seat? Did Ethan think he was going to sit at the Dropouts’ table by himself? Alek stomped to his old empty table, plopped down on one of the seats, took out his spinach buregs, and propped open his algebra book.

A few minutes later, Alek spied Ethan entering the cafeteria with Josh, Jack, and Pedro. When Ethan saw Alek, he stopped and whispered to his friends, who beelined to their table, leaving Ethan alone. He stood, looking at Alek from across the room, a blank expression covering his face. Alek looked back past the open pages of his textbook.

Their eyes and stances remained locked, like cowboys in a Western, neither willing to make the first move or back down. After a few of these infinite moments, Alek broke the standstill by turning back to his book.
If he isn’t man enough to come over and apologize, I’d rather prepare for Algebra,
Alek thought to himself. A few minutes later, Alek cheated a glance at Ethan. Instead of being in his usual seat, Ethan was sitting on the other side of the table, his back turned to Alek.

After he finished his lunch, Alek walked into his Algebra classroom and went directly to Mr. Weedin’s desk. Mr. Weedin put down the newspaper he’d been reading and looked down his glasses at Alek. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Mr. Weedin, I’m having trouble seeing the chalkboard from the back of the room,” Alek lied, “and I was wondering if I could move up for the remaining two weeks of class.”

“That seems reasonable enough. You can take that seat,” Mr. Weedin said, pointing to the desk in the front row farthest from the door.

The easy part’s done,
Alek thought to himself.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Khederian?”

“I know that you have a policy to fail anyone who cuts a class unexcused, and I wanted to see if there was any extra credit that I could do to try to make up for my absence last Friday. I really don’t want to fail.”

“Does that mean that your absence last Friday, unlike your earlier absences this semester, was
un
excused?” Mr. Weedin asked.

“It does,” Alek admitted.

“Mr. Khederian, you clearly have a strong grip on this material, and if you hadn’t cut, I would’ve considered recommending you for the Honor Track next year. But I’m afraid that I can’t go around making exceptions for students, regardless of how bright they appear.” Mr. Weedin picked up his paper and continued reading.

His teacher’s resolution almost made Alek give up. But he knew how important this was for his parents. And, he had to admit, for himself as well.

“Mr. Weedin, don’t you think failing me in a class when you think I’m capable of delivering Honor Track material is counterproductive?” Alek cleared his throat. “‘Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves, / Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.’”

“Is that Shakespeare?” Mr. Weedin asked, intrigued.

“Yeah, it’s from
Love’s Labour’s Lost
. I just wrote an essay comparing and contrasting that play to
Romeo and Juliet
in English, and that quote really stuck in my head.”

“Why?” Mr. Weedin leaned back and slid his glasses down so he could peer at Alek unobstructed.

“I guess I feel like we spend so much time trying to keep the promises we make, or the rules we set up, but it’s also important to look at those promises and rules and make sure they’re actually doing what we want them to do, and not the other way around.”

“Well, Mr. Khederian, you make a persuasive case.” Mr. Weedin tapped his pencil against his desk three times. “I’m not going to make it easy for you. For the remainder of the class, I’m going to double your homework load. If you complete it all satisfactorily, then I will reduce the penalty from failing to dropping your grade one full letter. So the highest grade you could receive would be a B.”

Alek had to stop himself from hugging Mr. Weedin. “Thank you, Mr. Weedin, thank you so, so much. I promise that I’ll do my best.”

“What is your best, I wonder?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Weedin, but I’m looking forward to finding out.”

“Me too, Alek.”

Alek scurried to his new seat, took out his homework and textbook, and made sure to be inspecting them intently when Ethan entered the class. Alek hoped Ethan would be surprised to see Alek sitting on the other side of the classroom.

*   *   *

Confined to his home, Alek actually welcomed the increase in his homework load. He just wished that his parents could dock his grade, the way Ms. Imbrie had told him she’d do when he handed in the Shakespeare paper that morning, and then move on, instead of looking at him with hurt and disappointment every time they were forced to interact with him.

The next Saturday morning, Alek got up just before nine a.m. and tiptoed downstairs to get to the
New York Times
before anyone else in the family woke up.

As he was putting down the
Magazine
an hour later, Nik walked in.

“Mind if I read with you?” he asked. They were the first words Nik had spoken to him since the family had arrived from their vacation a week ago.

Alek shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

Nik sat next to Alek, picking up the discarded
Magazine
as Alek made his way through Arts, Sports, and the front page. They sat reading for another hour in silence. When Alek finished International News, he put down his folded section and got up to go back to his room.

“Alek, you have a sec?” Nik asked.

“Nik, if you’re going to give me crap for something I did or didn’t do, save it. I don’t have the energy.”

“You don’t have to be hostile.”

“Really? Don’t I? This whole week has been hell, Nik. You’ve never been grounded, even for a day, so you wouldn’t understand. Isn’t the older sibling supposed to be the one who screws up so it’s easier for the younger one?”

“What?”

“Do you realize how hard it is to be your brother? You do everything right. You get perfect grades, you work as a camp counselor during the summers, you’re never late for breakfast or dinner, and you’re in the church youth group, for God’s sake. I wish you did one thing—
any
thing—that Mom and Dad didn’t approve of.”

“Are you kidding me?” Nik asked.

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”

“Alek, you’ve got it all wrong. Being the oldest one sucks. Do you think I like the burden of feeling like I have to do the right thing all the time? Do you know how many times Mom or Dad tells me that they’re counting on me, Andranik, firstborn, and that I can’t let them down?”

“Then why do you always do what they say? And what they expect? You’re even dating an Armenian, for God’s sake!”

“Not anymore.”

“What?”

Nik looked around to make sure they were alone. “Did Mom and Dad tell you why we came back early from our trip?”

“Honestly, with everything that happened, I didn’t feel like changing vacation plans was on the very short list of things I’m allowed to talk to them about.”

“I’m sure that wasn’t the reception you would’ve planned if you had been expecting us,” Nik said pointedly.

“Not in the least,” Alek agreed.

“Well, it turns out Nanar isn’t really Armenian. Or at least, not
just
Armenian,” Nik confided. “The day before the vacation was supposed to end, she told me that she’d learned something that she thought I should know.”

“What could it possibly be?”

“Well, her dad is Armenian, but her mom isn’t. She’s Turkish!”

Alek’s jaw dropped. “So that means…”

“Nanar is half-Armenian, half-Turkish. When her mom and dad fell in love, they knew his parents would never accept her. So they lied about it and have been lying about it ever since.”

“How did Nanar find out?”

“It started with the heritage project we were doing for Armenian Youth. She started digging into her mom’s family history, and the more she dug, the shadier things got. Even before we left on the trip, she told me she felt like her mom was hiding something from her. Then we were doing research at the library in Burlington, and she found a census from the town where her parents were born. Her father’s family was listed on the Armenian side, but her mom was listed with the Turks! She confronted her parents and they confessed, and she came running to tell me.”

“What did you do, Nik?”

Nik looked away.

“Oh, no,” Alek said.

“I told her I couldn’t date someone Turkish,” Nik admitted, looking away in shame. “And then I ran and told Mom and Dad, who told the rest of the families, and one by one, everyone decided to go home from the vacation early. The Kalfayans didn’t even wait for Nanar and her parents. They just packed up and left. I don’t even know how they got home.”

“Nik, you have done some stupid things in your life, but I have to say, this one really takes the baklava. Your girlfriend, the only person you’re actually bearable around, outs herself to you, and you reject her? She didn’t have to tell you. She could’ve just kept her secret to herself, but she decided to be honest with you. Do you know how much courage that takes? Is there something about being straight that makes you insensitive, or is it just a cosmic coincidence?”

“Don’t you think I know that I acted like a jerk?” Nik asked, anguished. “Even when I was doing it, I felt it wasn’t right.”

“Then why did you?”

“I knew it was what Mom and Dad would’ve wanted,” Nik confessed. “But now, I don’t care. Being without Nanar, I feel like a dolma without its stuffing. Like a baklava without its pistachios. Like a—”

“Okay, I get it,” Alek cut him off.

“I need to figure out a way to get her back.”

“Even if it means pissing off Mom and Dad?”

“Even then,” Nik swore. “Is that what being apart from Ethan is like for you?”

“It’s not the same thing, because Nanar didn’t do anything wrong, unlike Ethan. He hasn’t talked to me since that day.”

“And have you tried to talk to him?” Nik asked.

Alek looked away rather than responding.

“At least I know when I’m being an idiot,” Nik said. “Can you imagine what it must’ve been like for him? Meeting Mom and Dad would be traumatic under normal circumstances.
You
have to reach out to
him
, Alek.”

Alek felt that sinking feeling inside that he got when he was wrong and someone else was right. And that feeling started morphing into something else, something wild and dangerous and crazy. “I think I know what we need to do,” Alek said.

“You do?”

“Yes. Something that will win Nanar back for you, fix things with Ethan for me, and get Mom and Dad off our backs. But that’s only if it works, of course.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then Nanar and Ethan will never speak to you and me again, and Mom and Dad will ground us both until the Turks finally admit to the Armenian Genocide.”

“Where do I sign up?”

“You really up for this?”

“I trust you, Alek. Think about how long we’ve been working against each other. If we actually started working together, what can’t we do?”