Party (12 page)

“I love the Superman fight,” Beckett says.

Now there is a sentence not many girls in the world would
ever say, and certainly none where I am from. You see why I like Beckett Montgomery? Even though I have no desire to take Beckett on a date, I am still jealous of and happy for the man who will. I am quite sure she has no boyfriend, though. She has never talked about boys. Or family.

“I don’t think Batman can defeat the Hulk,” I tell her.

“I don’t know … he’s pretty smart.”

“The Hulk can lift tons and tons of weight! Batman cannot even punch him.”

“Says you,” Beckett says, and begins to smile again.

“How can you like Batman so much?” I ask her, to tease. “He is just a spoiled rich white man!”

Beckett stops smiling. I feel terrible. I have said something wrong, but not because English is my second language. It’s the content of what I said that’s hurt her.

“I guess I just know where he’s coming from,” she says, looking at the floor again.

“You don’t look like a spoiled rich white man, my friend.”

“It’s not that.”

I’m not sure what this means, but I don’t like that she is hurt. I decide to change the subject.

“Well, I think you should go to this party.” I try to sound firm the way my father does when he is telling me something “for my own good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t know,” Beckett says. “I feel like …”

She hesitates. I wait for her to continue.

Beckett shakes her head. “Like it doesn’t matter. I had my chances to meet people and I didn’t, so why bother?”

I do know what she means. I’ve felt that way before. Indeed, if I did not have Beckett to talk to about comics, I would hardly talk to anyone outside my family or customers.

But I didn’t know she felt this way, too.

“What about your friends?” I ask. “Ashley?”

“Um … yeah, well, the thing is, I haven’t talked to Ashley in a really long time.”

I didn’t know this, either. “Oh,” I say. “But you mentioned her. Several months ago. You said you wish you could call Ashley. You do not talk to her often?”

Beckett shakes her head. “No.”

“Did something happen?”

Beckett looks at me sharply. “What?”

“I mean, between you and Ashley.”

She relaxes, and I am glad. I don’t want to make her angry. I don’t think I would like her when she was angry. Much like the Hulk.

“Oh … no. No, not really. We sort of grew up together? And then … some … stuff happened, and I didn’t talk to her for a while … I was really busy … then Morrigan moved here and they started hanging out? So we just sort of lost touch, I guess.”

It is clear to me there is much more to the story, but I hear my boss coming this way from the kitchen.

“That is too bad,” I say, and grab a pencil. I gesture with my eyes so Beckett will understand that I do not mean to cut her off. She’s a smart girl. She nods quickly and looks up at the menu.

“Okay, so … one slice of cheese pizza,” she says.

“One slice cheese,” I repeat, and ring up her order. “Two thirty-six.”

She pulls a small coin purse out of her bag and sorts through change. She assembles two quarters, four dimes, and several nickels and pennies.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “I don’t think …”

My boss walks past me. “See ya tomorrow, Azize! Good work tonight!” he calls, and heads out the front door.

I say goodbye to him, and wait until I can no longer see him on the sidewalk. Then I reach for the coins and push them back toward Beckett.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Tonight is on me.” I feel cool when I say this, like a TV star.

“No, no. No, I can’t,” Beckett says, and wipes the change back into her bag, skipping the coin purse. “Thanks, but it’s okay.”

“Beckett, no, it’s no problem.”

“No, it’s cool, I should have brought more money,” Beckett says, and begins to leave.

“Beckett!” I say. “Wait!”

She pauses by the door with one hand on the handle.

“What about the party?”

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Please. Come. I will be there. You can talk to
me!”

“Maybe,” Beckett says. “Bye.”

She leaves quickly, walking along the sidewalk, her head down.

I’m certain I’ve done something wrong, but I cannot decide what.

The rest of my shift is uneventful except for two skateboarders. The smaller of them wants to know if I’m permitted to drink alcohol. I am not, and I don’t mind. But I don’t tell him so. The entire time, I am thinking of excellent American
küfür
words to call him, but I am on the clock, and there are two of them, so I take their order and let them leave again without saying any of my excellent words.

So many people do not understand my country. Many do not even know where it is. My family is “Middle Eastern,” that is all they say, which is not really accurate. And because we are “Middle Eastern,” my father, Ata, is looked at with suspicion when he purchases propane for our patio barbecue. I once yelled at a man
much
larger than me for asking my father what he was going to do with the propane. I was so angry! I felt like the X-Man Colossus, wrapped in living steel, wanting to tear this ignorant man apart with my bare hands. But my father pulled me outside and shook my shoulders and told me to control my temper, to not yell at people like that, even if they were ignorant.

I asked him why. He said to me, “They are afraid and angry, Azize. And when people are afraid and angry, they do stupid things. We must forgive them. Do you understand?”

I did, but I also did not. So I nodded my head and promised him I would not yell at people again when they treated him like a criminal.

These two skateboarders … they were not suspicious of
me. They didn’t look afraid or angry. But the smaller one, he was making fun of me, I’m sure of that.

And they are going to the party tonight. I’m not sure I wish to go if they will be there.

I hate many things. Rap music, which makes me wince. Also ricotta cheese, diet soda, war movies, people who don’t tip, and the state of Arizona. But of all things I hate, I hate ignorance most of all.

I’m minutes away from finishing my shift when our telephone rings. I answer it, and take down a delivery order for two large Monster Meat pizzas. When I hear the address, I almost laugh. It’s the same as the address on the flyer in the pocket of my shorts in my locker.

I put in the order, and stare at the address. Should I go to the party? I wonder if Beckett has decided to go. If I knew that she would be there, perhaps I would go. I don’t have a phone number for her, so I cannot ask.

I make up my mind. I’ll go to this party, and I will make one new friend. That will make Ata proud. Maybe I will convince Beckett to do the same. That way when we begin school again, we won’t be so alone anymore.

I go to the back room and change my clothes, telling my coworkers that I will deliver the pizza myself since I’m going to that address. They are surprised, but grateful. This means they will not have to make another trip. Since the order was made with a credit card, the register will cash out correctly. When my coworker asks about the tip, I laugh and tell him he
can have the whole thing if he wants. He accepts this. He knows I am a man of my word.

State Street is still filled with people as I leave work and drive toward the house where the party is, near Shoreline Beach. The drive is quick. Beyond my windshield, down Beachfront Avenue, past the intersection with Shoreline Drive, I see the Pacific, cool and black. Lights from the oil platforms and a yacht shine through the darkness like earthbound stars.

I will have a boat like that one day.
Dr
. Azize Hasan al-Fanari. I’ll buy my father a new home so he can retire, and my mother her own fabric store, and myself a boat. I will pay to have all my relatives move here to where it is safe.

I don’t miss Türkiye very much, and I do not miss Arizona at all. Not one iota, however small
that
is. I never imagined living near a beach. A beach with sand, real sand, not the Sonoran Desert dust that makes up most of Phoenix. No, the beach is home now. I confess I hated my father briefly for moving us here. But it took only one trip to the beach right before I started high school three years ago to change my mind.

You were right, Ata
.

That’s what I said to my father when I returned from my first visit to the beach. My father had smiled and hugged me tightly. I wouldn’t say it to anyone, but I like when he does that. I like making him proud. “You have done the right thing,” he says to me sometimes, like when I joined Academic Decathlon or earned this job. It is my favorite thing he says to me. It means I have honor.

•    •    •

I slow down as I near the house where the party is. Both sides of the street are lined with cars. Some are “parental-rentals,” others are cheap first-timers with band stickers stuck along their rears. My own cheap white hatchback, which has no stickers, is one such first-timer, purchased by my father so I could find work more easily. Work and school are priorities as far as my father is concerned. I don’t mind; I’m smart and I like having the extra money. I don’t get an allowance.

I stop the car and pull the emergency brake, parking behind a red Blazer. I can hear music even before I open my door. The house is thumping with it.

I jog up the front walk, balancing the large red insulated bag in one hand, and approach the front door of the enormous house. Drunken shouts assault me through the walls. Bass music shakes the very ground. It is no trick to imagine the beautiful girls dancing inside.

You need a good girlfriend!
my mother likes to say.
When will you get a good girlfriend, Azize?

Perhaps never, I think as I carefully push the door open. With my father’s insistence on dating only Muslim girls, my options in Santa Barbara are not many. I know my mother knows this, and secretly I think if I dated another girl, a girl who was not Muslim, my mother wouldn’t mind. Ata is another matter.

Maybe instead of NHS and Academic Decathlon, I should have gone out for football. The girls seem to like that. And who wants to date a brain, anyway? A pizza delivery brain, at that.

A brainiac Turk pizza boy.

God bless America!

I walk into the foyer and set the pizza down on a side table. There is no way to know who ordered the pizza, but it will be eaten, I’m sure. I look at the people gathered—so many! It is so dark and so loud. It is almost exactly how I have imagined a party to be. I’ve never been to one like this before, but there were flyers for it all over school, as if the entire school was invited. It looks like most of them have shown up to dance and drink.

Ata knows I am here. I didn’t even try to lie about it. Why should I? Ata trusts me.

I look for Beckett, but no person is distinct from another. I see only acne faces and hormone eyes. All alike in the dark. All except for one person, leaning against a wall near the front door and nodding his head in time to the music. I recognize him as the larger of the two skateboarders who had come in for pizza earlier this evening. He wasn’t a bad guy.

I remember my pledge to make a friend, and I walk right up to him. “Hello,” I say.

He looks at me and his face shows surprise. “Oh. Hey, man.”

“Look,” I say, holding up empty hands, “no alcohol.”

He is confused for a moment, but then grins. “Hey, dude, I’m sorry about that. Brent can be a dick sometimes, he don’t mean nothin’.”

“It’s no problem,” I say, and offer a hand. “My name is Azize.”

“Max,” he says, and we shake hands. I am surprised at how
easy it is to introduce ourselves. Why have I not done it before? Suddenly, I feel next year might be very good for me.

I look around at all the people again. “Max,” I say, “do you know Beckett Montgomery by any chance?”

Max glares at me like I have insulted his mother. “Do
you?”

Suddenly, I feel next year might not be very good for me after all. Why do I never know why I make people upset?

“She is a friend. We talk in the library at school sometimes.”

“Is she here?” Max says, very agitated. He looks all around.

“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s why I asked.”

Max sneers, but not at me, exactly. “Oh, right. Naw. I ain’t seen her. So, you’re just friends?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not like goin’ out or nothin’?”

I laugh. “No! Just friends.”

Max nods, and looks relieved. “Cool,” he says. “Sorry if I snapped at you.”

“It’s no problem. So you have not seen her either, then. Hmm.”

He shakes his head. “Been in the kitchen, mostly.” His eyes seem to lose their focus for a moment. “I don’t think she’s comin’.”

He looks very unhappy.

“She could be in that crowd,” I say, and point to the students who are dancing wildly in the living room. “We would never know it.”

“Yeah … that’s true.”

“I will look around just in case. Should I tell her you are looking for her if I find her here?”

Max looks panicked. He licks his lips and stutters for a moment.

“Well—yeah. I mean, I guess. Sure. Well, wait. Naw. I mean, I guess. I dunno.”

I see now.

Max has a crush on my friend. I can understand this. There have been many girls at school I wish I could talk to, but I never have. Perhaps tonight will be different.

I decide to help Max. It’s a good way to become friends.

“If I find her,” I tell him, “I will try to make sure we come this way. Then you can talk to her if you wish.”

Max nods slowly. “Yeah. Okay. Sure. Thanks.”

“It’s no problem,” I say. “Have fun.”

He nods again, and I move further into the crowd of people. It is impossible to tell if she is in the group dancing in the living room. I push myself through the crowd to the patio door and look out to the backyard, but do not see her there, either.

Disappointed, I decide I might as well check the rest of the house. This is just the type of house I would like to buy someday. Spacious, clean, wealthy. I wonder what it looks like, upstairs and down. How it is decorated. I will look for Beckett and take mental notes for my palace.