Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel (2 page)

I really can’t stand soccer. Armstead requires that all students participate in some sort of after-school activity, most of which are sports. I’m on the thirds team, which is a tier below junior varsity, basically designed for all the scrawny, fat, or uncoordinated players who don’t have anywhere else to go.

Last season I faked an injury to my ankle that kept me on the sideline for about two weeks. It was pretty amazing. This year I’ve been working on trying to fake ulcers by reading the symptoms online and practicing in the mirror. It’s going to be my ailment of the season. I always have to keep things fresh and believable.

Sometimes our coach will have us run for half an hour, mostly because he doesn’t know what else to do with us. Some girls take it seriously, wanting to make JV next season so they can prove to their parents that they are athletic and to themselves that they are worthy to grace the Armstead fields with their presence. I don’t kid myself.

On these half-hour runs, I usually slip away and hide in the basement of our cafeteria, sometimes alone, sometimes with Tess. When it’s about time to go back to practice, we jog in place for a good two minutes and then head back down the hill to the field.

Today, Coach has insisted that we run for forty-five minutes, giving me and Tess plenty of time to chat.

“Basement?” I whisper to her as we begin to run with the rest of the team.

“I don’t know, Leila. I kind of feel like running today.”

“Are you kidding me? Why do you want to kill yourself for no reason?”

“It’s not for no reason. Running can be an enjoyable experience.”

I look at her in bewilderment. I have never understood that whole notion of getting a “runner’s high” or becoming “addicted” to exercise. My mother is a big believer in both those things. She’s convinced that if I go to the gym with her, I’ll suddenly fall in love with the idea of running on treadmills and sweating all over hip abductor machines while La Bouche’s “Be My Lover” plays over and over. I’m on the curvy side, which has somehow become a crime. I am happy with my appearance, thank you very much. My older sister, Nahal, however, has always been skinny, which gets on my nerves, especially when she and my mom swap clothes and talk about the new sale at Bloomingdale’s.

I finally coax Tess into joining me in the basement, and we sit down on a granite ledge. We’ve been friends since we both started at Armstead in ninth grade, mostly because she’s one of the only people at this school with a sense of humor and because we’re in the same Japanese class. Sometimes she references things I don’t understand because she’s so much smarter than me and everyone else, but she never makes me feel bad about it. I think what makes us work is that neither one of us understands things teenage girls are supposed to be interested in. Tess would rather read about new discoveries in the world of synthetic skin than know everything about pop stars. I make her laugh in assembly and sometimes cheat off her during Japanese quizzes. I would feel bad about it if the quizzes didn’t count for 1 percent of our final grade.

Tess works hard at school and her dad is an English teacher at Armstead as well as the junior class adviser. She is kind of embarrassed about being a “faculty brat,” and I think she feels like she always has to prove that she belongs here on her own merits, though I want to tell her that nobody really
belongs
here unless your name is on a building or you came over on the
Mayflower
.

“Okay, Tess, what’s with this running thing? You really want to? Voluntarily?”

“I want to get in shape for squash season. It’s coming up, and I might actually have a chance at making the team this year.”

“Squash season isn’t for another four months!”

“Maybe I want to try and be good at soccer, too.”

Fair enough. Who am I to begrudge her soccer happiness? If she is a masochist, so be it.

“Leila, if you hate soccer so much, why don’t you do something else?”

“Like what? Outdoors club? Hike a mountain and get eaten by a cougar or choke to death on granola?” Tess pretends to play a tiny violin.

“Maybe you should audition for the play. You are kind of dramatic sometimes.”

“God, and be a theater kid? They all take themselves so seriously.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

That shuts me up. I hate when she’s right. Which is usually always.

“Lisa Katz is having a party this Friday,” I say. “Greg wants to go and is trying to convince me.”

“That’s nice,” Tess says, looking away to trace the veins in the granite wall with her finger. Tess wouldn’t speak to me for a while after I told her Greg and I made out, even though I explained that we had decided to remain friends. She’s had a crush on him for forever but will never do anything about it.

“Do you want to come with us?”

“I don’t want to be a third wheel,” Tess says.

I moan. “It’s not a date!” It astounds me that Tess is as brilliant as she is and still hasn’t figured out I’m gay. I wish there was a manual on how to come out and what a young gay person is supposed to do. Like, is there a secret handshake I don’t know about?

“I have a ton of homework anyway. Besides Ms. Taylor’s coming over for dinner on Thursday and that’s going to use up my whole night.”

“Really? That sounds cool.”

Invite me over!

Invite me over!

“It does? Mom and I are just going to sit there and have to listen to my dad and Ms. Taylor go on and on about Toni Morrison. Should be oodles of fun.”

It
would
be oodles of fun! I love Ms. Taylor’s enthusiasm for literature. And the way she flips her hair when she reads a passage. And that she sometimes has a button undone on her sweater that shouldn’t be. God, I hate hormones.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing her musings on Morrison . . . ,” I suggest with my eyebrows comically raised.

“Seriously? Well, if you have nothing else to do, we’d love to have you over.”
Tess, I think I’m trying to tell you something.
If the idea that I’m gay is so beyond the realm of possibility for someone as smart and sensitive as Tess, what would everyone else at Armstead make of this information?

“Sounds like a plan. Thanks.” I check the clock on the wall. “It’s time.” We stand up and begin to run in place.

“Dad says there’s a new student coming into our grade this week,” Tess says.

“But we’ve been in school for two weeks already.”

“Her family’s just moved here from Indonesia or Dubai or someplace. Dad’s probably going to make me show her around. I hate when he does that, because it eats up all my study halls.”

“I’ll do it. I hate study hall.”

“Cool. Thanks.”

In two minutes I’m panting and heaving, and Tess hasn’t even broken a sweat. She quits running in place and walks over to the water fountain to dab water under her armpits and a little at the collar of her T-shirt. Fake sweat. I’ve taught her well.

Back at practice, Coach has us partner up and work on kicking the ball to one another. The girls’ varsity team is in the middle of practice at the nicer field nearby. Ashley Martin’s long legs look like they could break me in half as she kicks the ball halfway down the field. When she plays soccer, her true nature comes out. She becomes a fierce, wild, and feral beast who will stop at nothing to get her way. Ashley kicks the ball to Lisa, who receives it effortlessly and continues down the field. I was in awe of how easily soccer came to Lisa when we were kids; she hasn’t lost it.

“Leila! Pass the ball!” Tess shouts.

I pass the ball, then look back toward the varsity practice to see Lisa sidestepping her opponent and dribbling farther down the field. It’s so easy for her, it doesn’t look like she’s even trying; she’s just going through the motions. She shoots and scores, wiping her face with her shirt while receiving pats on the back from her teammates.

“Leila, look out!” The ball clocks me in the boobs.

“SHIT, TESS!”

I wrap my arms around my chest and crouch down. My eyes are tearing up a little.

I really can’t stand soccer.

Dad picks me up after school. I have two more months until I get my license, but until then I have to rely on him for rides, which means listening to Bob Edwards and
The
World
on PRI and to Dad’s complaining about the NASDAQ report.

“Your sister is having dinner with us tonight,” he says, smiling. He loves it when Nahal comes over, and especially loves that she’s going to be a doctor just like him. She goes to Harvard, so she’s close by and comes over
all
the time. Nahal’s twenty-one—you’d think she’d be barhopping and cutting loose a little bit on the weekends, or at least having dinner parties or something with her lame pre-med friends. Though any sort of social life would interfere with her rubbing how perfect she is in my face.

“Again? Doesn’t she have things to do at school or something?”

“She’s studying hard. You should learn from her.” The NASDAQ report comes on. Stocks are down again.

“How I miss the late nineties,” Dad says.

Dad has these bouts of nostalgia when he realizes he’s losing money. Tax time, reviewing Mom’s credit card statement, paying tuition bills—he just starts reminiscing with no one in particular and gets this over-the-top dreamy look in his eye. I ask if I can turn the radio station and he concedes. We listen to hip-hop for about four minutes.

“Leila, what is this we’re listening to? All this talk about butts! You listen to this garbage?”

“Yes, I do, Dad.”

He pops in one of his Iranian CDs. Jeez. It’s from the eighties and I’m pretty sure the guy singing is well past dead. He sings about losing his love, which I’m convinced all Iranian songs are about. We’re really into loss, depression, and martyrdom, except at parties where we dance and discuss whose kid is graduating cum laude from Princeton or who just had a baby. Dad rolls his window down and turns up the volume, yelling the song in Farsi on Route 128, trying to make me laugh but really just making me embarrassed. He laughs after a while and rolls the window up.

“Okay, enough torture. You can listen to your butt songs.”

Nahal is making Dad salivate, asking him questions about organic chemistry for her homework while I play video games online. I see the two of them engaged in what Nahal is studying, and it’s not in me to get jealous anymore. I know they get along because they’re practically the same person. They both read biographies, they’re both very traditional, and they love academia and science. I think they look at me like a physics equation they can’t solve.

Mom comes over with a plate of fruit. “Are you doing your homework, Leila?”

I minimize the video game window and pull up an essay I wrote last semester.

“Yup. On page two.”

“I got a call from Mr. Harris. He’s concerned about your last quiz.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll do better on the next one.”

“Do you want me to hire a science tutor for you?” I’ve had math tutors since I was in fourth grade. One was a single mother of two in her forties who taught in public school. She fed me Goldfish crackers. Another was a Harvard graduate student majoring in Japanese. He fed me wasabi peas and Pocky. My favorite was a blind, elderly Iranian guy who smoked while I typed numbers into his robotic talking calculator. He gave me Kit Kats and Coca-Cola. With tutors I basically eat their food, understand what they’re talking about for maybe ten minutes, fork over the check, and forget what they taught me as soon as I get home. I’d rather not have to deal with getting a science tutor.

“No, that’s okay. I’ll just study harder.”

“You can study this weekend.”

“Actually, I was wondering if I could go to a party this weekend? Lisa Katz is having the whole class over, and Greg won’t stop talking about it.”

“I always liked Lisa. Should you take her a gift? I think it’s only right you take her a gift.”

“It’s not that kind of party, Mom.”

“Is Greg going to pick you up?”

“I don’t know.”

Dad decides to chime in. “What boy is picking you up? Why?”

“Greg. You know he’s harmless. We’re just friends and we’re going to a party.”

“No boy is harmless, especially around my daughters. We should have sent you to an all girls school.”

Ha! I would
really
never get any work done.

“Oh, Dad, you’re being silly,” Nahal says. “Leila’s just a baby. She’s not interested in boys.”

As far as I know, Nahal’s had one serious boyfriend, but she never mentioned him to my father or brought him to the house. Mom knew about him, and I’m pretty sure she was planning their wedding in her head until Nahal came home one day, crushed. I’d never seen her upset like that, especially since she’s always ridiculously perfect at anything she does. Things always seem to go her way. Deep down, when that happened, I was pleased to know that she isn’t always able to achieve everything she wants.

“The fewer boys around you, the better,” Dad says. I want to tell him that won’t be a problem.

“Speaking of parties, we’ve all been invited to the Zamanfars’ in two weeks,” Mom says, and the three of us groan.

“We have to go!” Mom says laughing. “We’re going to Farzaneh’s wedding in a few months and the groom’s parents want to meet everyone.”

“I think I’m on call that weekend,” Dad says, winking at me.

“If you are, we’ll take separate cars, and if you get paged, you can leave,” Mom states. Dad struck out.

“Is Sepideh going to be there?” Nahal asks. Sepideh is Farzaneh’s younger sister, Nahal’s age. They have known each other since birth because our parents are close family friends. Nahal and Sepideh
hate
each other. They have this really weird competitive relationship where they try to outdo each other in everything.

“Yes! You two will have so much to catch up on,” Mom says. She doesn’t seem to understand that Nahal doesn’t want to catch up on anything with Sepideh. I just don’t want to go because I end up babysitting whatever little kids happen to be around . . . but the food is always good.

“I’m not going to be forced to dance, right?” I ask. After dinner there is always some Persian dance music straight out of Tehrangeles, and several older ladies start dancing and drag in whatever poor suspecting teenagers are around. It’s beyond embarrassing. There is no way I am dancing.

“It’s rude not to go. We’re going and that’s that,” Mom says. The three of us groan again in defeat.