“What are you talking about?” my dad said.

I went, “I’m talking about why Amir ran away.”

They looked at each other this time, like they had missed something. My mom straightened her back and said, “Do you know why he ran away, Soraya?” And my dad went, “If you know something, you need to tell us.”

I was stuck. I realized my parents might not actually know. Or if they did know, they were testing me.

Word was going to get back to them eventually, through one of mom’s nosy students or someone else at Amir’s school. If this Jake person had found out about Amir and Jackson, then other people probably knew, too. It was only a matter of time. It was either going to be a stranger or me. Amir was never going to tell them.

So I did.

Interrogation Room 37

Amir

SORAYA TEXTED ME right after she told my parents. I was with Jahan and some others, watching old Nina Simone performances on YouTube. I nearly lost it. I had to run into the bathroom to calm down. Soraya’s explanation, her logic that my parents were getting suspicious, that people were talking—it all slipped through my head like grains of sand.

They knew.

They finally knew.

Interrogation Room 38

Soraya

I KNOW I shouldn’t have done that.

That was so stupid of me to come out for Amir. It was like I wasn’t even thinking. But my parents were looking at me so desperately, like they wanted to know more, like nothing I could say would stop them on their quest to find Amir.

They didn’t believe me at first. They thought I had made it up. “No, no, no,” they said. “That can’t be true.” So I doubled down and told them I had already talked to Amir about it and that I loved him, and I just got super mushy and defensive. I think my mom started to believe it first, because her lips became a straight line, kind of like they are now. They asked me to leave the kitchen.

I went up to my room and just sat there on my bed, feeling really, really bad. I texted Amir to tell him. He didn’t text me back until much later. He just asked that if Maman and Baba were going to call him, that I be on the call.

The call didn’t really go very well.

Interrogation Room 37

Amir

I’M NOT GOING to talk about that phone call.

Interrogation Room 39

Afshin Azadi

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH Amir? My relationship with my son is fine. He has always been a very smart, responsible boy, a practical boy, so this running away episode is out of the ordinary. The episode on the plane is out of the ordinary. This is not the Amir I know.

The Amir I know . . . I know my son is strong. But I worry for him in the other room, if you are questioning him right now. He is sensitive. He is—I don’t want to say “broken” right now, but he is going through a lot, so you must take everything he says with a grain of salt.