I stopped, unfurled the paper, smoothed its corners.

Afghan Villagers Torn by Grief After US Raid Kills 9 Children

My phone rang.

I retrieved it from my pocket, going still as I scanned the flashing number on the screen. A blade of feeling impaled me—and then, just as suddenly, withdrew. Different number. Heady relief nearly prompted me to laugh, the sensation held at bay only by the dull ache in my chest. It felt as if actual steel had been buried between my lungs.

I flipped open the phone.

“Hello?”

Silence.

A voice finally broke through, a mere half word emerging from a mess of static. I glanced at the screen, at my dying battery, my single bar of reception. When I flipped the phone shut, a prickle of fear moved down my spine.

I thought of my mother.

My mother, my optimistic mother who thought that if she locked herself in her closet I wouldn’t hear her sobs.

A single, fat drop of water landed on my head.

I looked up.

I thought of my father, six feet of dying man swaddled in a hospital bed, staring into the middle distance. I thought of my sister.

A second drop of rain fell in my eye.

The sky ruptured with a sudden crack and in the intervening second—in the heartbeat before the deluge—I contemplated stillness. I considered lying down in the middle of the road, lying there forever.

But then, rain.

It arrived in a hurry, battering my face, blackening my clothes, pooling in the folds of my backpack. The newspaper I lifted over my head endured all of four seconds before succumbing to the wet, and I hastily tucked it away, this time in my bag. I squinted into the downpour, readjusted the demon on my back, and pulled my thin jacket more tightly around my body.

Walked.

Last Year

Part I

Two sharp knocks at my door and I groaned, pulled the blanket over my head. I’d been up late last night memorizing equations for my physics class, and I’d gotten maybe four hours of sleep as a result. The very idea of getting out of bed made me want to weep.

Another hard knock.

“It’s too early,” I said, my voice muffled by the blanket. “Go away.”

“Pasho,” I heard my mother say. Get up.

“Nemikham,” I called back. I don’t want to.

“Pasho.”

“Actually, I don’t think I can go to school today. I think I have tuberculosis.”

I heard the soft shh of the door pushing open against carpet, and I curled away instinctively, a nautilus in its shell. I made a pitiful sound as I waited for what seemed inevitable—for my mother to drag me, bodily, out of bed, or, at the very least, to rip off the covers.

Instead, she sat on me.

I nearly screamed at the unexpected weight. It was excruciating to be sat upon while curled in the fetal position; somehow my stacked bones made me more vulnerable to damage. I thrashed around, shouted at her to get off me, and she just laughed, pinched my leg.

I cried out.

“Goftam pasho.” I said get up.

“How am I supposed to get up now?” I asked, batting away the sheets from my face. “You’ve broken all my bones.”

“Eh?” She raised her eyebrows. “You say that to me? Your mother”—she said all this in Farsi—“is so heavy she could break all your bones? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

She gasped, her eyes wide. “Ay, bacheyeh bad.” Oh, you bad child. And with a slight bounce, she sat more heavily on my thighs.

I let out a strangled cry. “Okay okay I’ll get up I’ll get up oh my God—”

“Maman? Are you up here?”

At the sound of my sister’s voice, my mom got to her feet. She whipped the covers off my bed and said, “In here!” Then, to me, with narrowed eyes: “Pasho.”

“I’m pasho-ing, I’m pasho-ing,” I grumbled.

I got to my feet and glanced, out of habit, at the alarm clock I’d already silenced a half dozen times, and nearly had a stroke when I saw the hour. “I’m going to be late!”

“Man keh behet goftam,” my mom said with a shrug. I told you.

“You told me nothing.” I turned, eyes wide. “You never told me what time it was.”

“I did tell you. Maybe your tuberculosis made you deaf.”

“Wow.” I shook my head as I stalked past her. “Hilarious.”

“I know, I know, I’m heelareeus,” she said with a flourish of her hand. She switched back to Farsi. “By the way, I can’t take you to school today. I have a dentist appointment. Shayda is taking you instead.”

“No I’m not,” my sister called, her voice growing louder as she approached. She popped her head inside my room. “I have to leave right now, and Shadi isn’t even dressed.”

“No— Wait—” I startled scrambling. “I can be dressed in five minutes—”

“No you can’t.”

“Yes I can!” I was already across the hall in our shared bathroom, applying toothpaste to my toothbrush like a crazy person. “Just wait, okay, just—”

“No way. I’m not going to be late because of you.”

“Shayda, what the hell—”

“You can walk.”

“It’ll take me forty-five minutes!”

“Then ask Mehdi.”

“Mehdi is still asleep!”

“Did someone say my name?”

I heard my brother coming up the stairs, his words a little rounder than usual, like maybe he was eating something as he spoke. My heart gave a sudden leap.

I spat toothpaste into the sink, ran into the hall. “I need a ride to school,” I cried, toothbrush still clenched in my fist. “Can you take me?”

“Never mind. I’ve gone suddenly deaf.” He barreled back down the stairs.

“Oh my God. What is wrong with everyone in this family?”

My dad’s voice boomed upward. “Man raftam! Khodafez!” I’m leaving! Bye!

“Khodafez!” the four of us shouted in unison.

I heard the front door slam shut as I flew to the banister, caught sight of Mehdi on the landing below.

“Wait,” I said, “please, please—”

Mehdi looked up at me and smiled his signature, devastating smile, the kind I knew had already ruined a few lives. His hazel eyes glittered in the early-morning light. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got plans.”

“How do you have plans at seven thirty in the morning?”

“Sorry,” he said again, his lean form disappearing from view. “Busy day.”

My mom patted me on the shoulder. “Mikhasti zoodtar pashi.” You could’ve woken up earlier.

“An excellent point,” Shayda said, swinging her backpack over one shoulder. “Bye.”

“No!” I ran back into the bathroom, rinsed my mouth, splashed water on my face. “I’m almost ready! Two more minutes!”

“Shadi, you’re not even wearing pants.”

“What?” I looked down. I was wearing an oversize T-shirt. No pants. “Wait— Shayda—”

But she was already moving down the stairs.