The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love (11 page)

I'm about to help myself to a serving of rice and beans when my phone buzzes.
All clear!
the message from Roxana says. I grin and am about to write her back when I see the dot, dot, dot that indicates she's typing another message.

Wanna come over for dinner? Zereshk polo tonight . . .

Sweet! My favorite dish with my favorite girl.

I make hurried excuses to my family, who don't seem too concerned that I won't be around to field insults about Comic Con, and then I practically skip across the backyard.

“IS THAT GRAHAM?” AN ACCENTED
voice calls out as I open Roxy's back door.

“Yes, Mrs. Afsari,” I call back as I walk through the mudroom to the kitchen.

A small woman with jet-black hair, still dressed in her smart business attire, is standing over a steaming pot of white and yellow rice. It smells heavenly.

I go over and give her one kiss on each cheek, the way I learned to do long ago. “I could smell the
zereshk
from my house,” I say, pointing to the plump, crimson dried berries dotting her rice.

She smiles. “Of course you could,
shekamoo
,” she teases. Another
word I learned a long time ago, which roughly translates to “someone with a healthy appetite.” It's hard for me to understand how someone could eat Mrs. Afsari's cooking and
not
have a healthy appetite.

I grin back. “Plates?” I nod to the cabinet where I know they keep their dishes.

She nods. “Please. Samira was supposed to set the table, but you know . . .” She rolls her eyes and I laugh.

Roxana's eleven-year-old sister is nowhere to be found when I take the plates out to the dining room. More likely than not, she's working on her fan fiction. And even though I indulged Mrs. Afsari in chastising her for shirking her household duties, I'm much more naturally aligned with Samira's compulsion to write. After all, I know what it's like to be lured by the siren song of the muse, whether that comes in the form of a superhero or a member of a boy band.

I've just finished setting the last place when Roxana comes bounding down the stairs, her hair wet from a shower. “Hey,” she says to me brightly before heading to the kitchen to grab the silverware.

In a few minutes, Mr. and Mrs. Afsari and Mrs. Tehrani—Mrs. Afsari's mother—have all assembled in the dining room. I give Roxana's grandmother two kisses too and quickly glance into her eyes—they're lucid and twinkling, nothing like they were the night she gave us all a scare this summer. Satisfied, I move over to firmly shake Mr. Afsari's hand. His head is almost completely bald, but he compensates for it by sporting a luxuriant black mustache.

“So how was school?” He asks his obligatory question as we all take our seats.

“Good,” I say, and immediately catch a look of panic flicking across Roxana's eyes. “Junior year is always a little tough,” I go on, to give Roxana time to compose herself. “But I think we'll be okay as long as we keep up with the work.”

Mr. Afsari nods solemnly. “It's very important that you both study hard.” The Afsaris uprooted everything and moved from Iran when Roxana was one so that their daughter would have “more opportunities for a better life.” It's a specific type of pressure that I know Roxana often feels acutely.

“Samira!” Mrs. Afsari is standing at the foot of the stairs, calling for her younger daughter. There's no answer, and then Mrs. Afsari calls again, adding a phrase in Farsi. I don't know what she's saying, but I can hear the exasperation in her voice.

“Coming!” Sam calls down.

Mrs. Afsari waits until she can hear footsteps on the stairs before giving a curt nod and heading back to her seat.

A rail-thin girl with long brown hair, almost as tall as her older sister, comes down the stairs, muttering to herself. She smiles when she looks up and sees me. “Oh, good!” she says as she comes to the table.

I share a conspiratorial grin with her. “How's the writing going?”

“I'm having third act problems!” she replies.

I nod solemnly. “Want to powwow later?”

“Oh my God. Please!” She grabs a seat as her mother spoons a heaping pile of rice onto her plate, followed by a golden piece of chicken and—the best part of any Persian meal—a slab of crispy rice called
tahdeeg.

I'm salivating as Mrs. Afsari serves me up a portion.

“So, Graham, how did you do with your ranking? Was it a good number?” Mrs. Afsari asks, and it takes me a second to realize that—of course—we're still on the subject of school. “We're very proud of Roxana.” She says Roxy's name the Persian way—the correct way, as it were, since they named her and all—with a long
o
and the emphasis on the first syllable. I've been secretly practicing saying it this way myself, but something about it feels so intimate that I've yet to break it out in front of Roxy. Maybe I can do one big reveal when I finally profess my real feelings. Sort of an
I love you and by the way I've figured out how to pronounce your name properly
one-two punch.

“I'm number eleven,” I reply, and both the elder Afsaris beam at me.

“That's very good,” Mrs. Afsari says as she rewards me with an extra piece of
tahdeeg
.

Samira barely conceals the roll of her eyes. I wink at her and she shakes her head. “Nerd,” she mutters under her breath good-naturedly.

“Did I tell you Felicia is number one?” Roxana says, clearly happy to divert the conversation from what happened at school
today
.

I blink at her. Whoa. I'm going to have to let Casey know that. Although, really, we both should have guessed. Still, that's a tough
break for him; it's going to be pretty near impossible to take Felicia Obayashi down.

“That's wonderful,” Mrs. Afsari says. “Her parents must be so happy.”

I'm sure Felicia's parents have nothing to complain about—ever—and I wonder if they constantly marvel at having such a perfect daughter or if they just take it for granted.

“I can't wait for Sunday.” Samira changes the subject as she pushes some rice and
zereshk
into her spoon and takes a big mouthful. “They just added another fan fiction panel.”

Sam is coming to NYCC with us on Sunday, which is the official kids' day, though I know most of the things she's interested in are the same things we are. Beside the writing panel, Aaron Dunning, who is one of her favorite celebrities and is also in one of my favorite movies, will be there, and we're both planning to get our photos taken with him.

“I wish I could go tomorrow, too,” Samira says, shooting her mom a pointed glare. Samira has Persian school on Saturdays, something Roxy finally managed to convince her parents she could quit this year. But her little sister hasn't been so lucky yet.

“What will you be doing tomorrow?” Mrs. Afsari asks Roxana and me, ignoring her younger daughter's loud sigh.

“Just some writing and drawing panels. Getting some autographs. That sort of stuff.” I don't want to elaborate and make Sam any more jealous than she already is.

Roxy's grandmother says something in Farsi. She's a small woman with laughing hazel eyes and short, perfectly coiffed, brassy blond hair. I've never heard her speak English but I know for a fact that she understands every word. (I have definitely caught her watching
Law & Order: SVU
marathons.) Roxy once told me her grandmother is embarrassed about getting words wrong so she prefers not to even try.

Memories flood my mind of how, a few months ago, I picked up the phone and heard Roxana's shaky, tear-filled voice. “My grandmother. Something's wrong. I called the hospital and the ambulance is coming. But my parents won't be home for a while.”

“Be right over.”

When I got there, Mrs. Tehrani was sitting in the same dining room chair she's sitting in now, but she was staring off into space, her eyes glassy and unfocused. She was muttering something. I assumed it was something in Farsi, but Roxana corrected me.

“I don't know what she's saying,” she sobbed. “She keeps calling me Elham. That's the name of her daughter who died before my mom was born. But then she's speaking in Turkish, too. And I don't understand.”

I pulled her in for a hug and then calmly—though I don't know where that calm came from—told her to go hold her grandmother's hand and just keep talking to her, letting her know she was there. Roxy did as I said, and then I sat in the chair next to her and held Roxy's other hand. Mrs. Tehrani continued to mutter to herself, Roxana kept murmuring close to her ear, and I just held on and let her squeeze my
hand. When the ambulance came, the paramedics let us both ride with her. Our hands remained clasped together for the whole trip.

We weren't allowed to go farther than the waiting room while the doctors and nurses took over. It was another forty-five minutes before the rest of Roxana's family arrived. Her mom came first, then her dad, who had picked up Samira from summer camp. Roxana and I only let go of each other's hands about ten thirty that night, when we parted ways in her backyard.

The next day, her grandmother was released from the hospital. The doctors had tested for a stroke, a heart attack, and a myriad of other things. It might just be an isolated incident, they finally concluded. Otherwise, they had no answers. But somehow, when I woke up the next day, a different sort of answer had settled into my heart—one to a question I didn't know I was asking. I couldn't stop thinking about Roxana's tearstained cheek on my chest or the feel of her hand pressed into mine, which felt like clay that had hardened into permanence. I couldn't stop feeling a sense of pride and awe that I was the first person she'd called, that I got to be a strong and calming presence through something that was so terrifying for her—just like she was there for me after my mom died. Within days, my feelings had fermented and fortified until I finally had to acknowledge them for what they really were: I was head over heels in love.

“
Merci
, Mamanbazorg,” Roxy says now, taking me out of my reverie and putting her hand lightly on her grandmother's. Then she turns to
me to translate what Mrs. Tehrani just told her in Farsi. “She said that soon people will be lining up for our autographs at the convention.”

I grin at Mrs. Tehrani, and she winks back at me. “
Merci, Khanoom Tehrani
,” I say, and her grin gets bigger. Roxana's family never seems to stop delighting at the five words of Farsi I've picked up over the years. And I can't say I tire of getting their stamp of approval, either.

“Show-off,” Samira mutters, giving me a playful nudge, and then, louder so that her family can hear, “You sure you don't want to go to Farsi school instead of me tomorrow, Graham? You can learn
lots
of wonderful words there.” I stick my tongue out at her when her family isn't looking.

After my third helping, I finally throw in the towel on trying to fit any more food into my stomach. We're clearing up the dinner plates when my phone buzzes.

It's a notification that someone has sent me a direct message through the Z-men message boards. It's a video message, and I realize after a second of staring at the sender's username who it must be from. Amelia.

“Oh my God,” I say to Roxy. “It looks like she sent me a video.”

“Who?”

“The girl I met at . . .” I almost say
speed dating
, but I catch myself just in time as her dad goes to take the salad dressing from where it's tucked under my arm. “That thing Felicia signed us up for,” I finish, hoping that sounds vague enough to be misconstrued as school-related. “Can we go watch it on your computer?”

“Sure,” Roxy says, and the two of us work double-time to finish loading the dishwasher before we race up to her room.

“This girl I met at speed dating had a Zinc wristband,” I tell Roxy as we're firing up her computer. “I found out she's a Z-man, and she just sent me a video. I wonder if it's from the panel. . . .” I know that earlier I decided I didn't want to see or hear anything to do with this panel ever again, but things seem different now that it's just Roxy and me in her room, sharing in the anticipation of whatever this could be.

Being in Roxy's room gives me a pang lately. Of course I've been here hundreds of times before, but it only recently occurred to me that her parents probably wouldn't let her have any other boy up here. Maybe that should make me feel special, but instead, I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly because I think even her family doesn't consider me a real boy . . . not the kind who might have anything other than friendly designs on their daughter, that is.

We use my log-in on z-men.net and read the message together. Earhart5921 writes:

They were very strict about camera phones. I tried to sneak in a longer video but was almost immediately spotted by security and had to quickly hide my phone before I got kicked out. So I only have four seconds of video to share . . . I thought you might want to see it anyhow. Oh, and please don't share
this online or anything! I don't want it to somehow get traced back to me. ~Amelia.

With trembling fingers, I click on the Play button of the attached video. “Hi, I'm Bob,” a man with tidy gray hair and an unassuming blue polo shirt says before the image goes all lopsided and cuts to black.

Roxana and I stare at the computer screen and then at each other. Before I can think to do it, Roxana has rehit the Play button. Bob says hello from behind his table again. And again and again and again.

After we've watched it nearly twenty times, Roxana finally turns to me. “That was really him . . . ,” she says.