Disappear. Just for a little while.

I knew the idea was ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that the fantasy of skipping graduation and going somewhere else was actually comforting for about five seconds. It was the calmest I had felt in months.

Then I kept thinking. And the more I thought about it, just completely removing myself from this entire mess until things calmed down, the less ridiculous it seemed. You don’t just stand aside when a bomb is about to detonate. You run.

The morning of graduation, I was hyperventilating in my car in the driveway, a packed duffel bag on the passenger seat next to me. This is it, I kept thinking. I couldn’t believe I was following through on this insane idea. But in a few hours, Jake was going to spill my secret to my parents in the middle of graduation. He’d already told me as much the day before at school.

I, however, would be on a plane thousands of feet in the air. I would be safe. I would have space. And when I landed, I would have the most important answer of my life: I would know if my family still loved me or not. If they did, then I would come home. And if they didn’t—well, I would be far away, just as I’d always planned.

When I finally started driving, I felt the clash of my two identities stronger than ever. Iranian. Gay. There had always been a wall separating those two sides of me, so they would never touch. On one side, there was Jackson. On the other, my family. Soon, that wall would come crashing down.

I let out a deep sigh. And then I watched through the rearview mirror as my house shrank smaller and smaller, until it disappeared.

Interrogation Room 37

Amir

THAT WAS THE original plan. I just wanted to go to New York. NYU and Columbia were two of my dream schools, and I thought I would get away while Jake hijacked my coming out. You have to understand that I was imagining the worst, and if my parents didn’t want me back home, then I would create a new life for myself in New York.

Rome was never part of the original plan.

Have I been in touch with Jackson since I left America? Yes and no. It’s complicated. I can’t believe I’m about to say this to you in here, but I keep wondering if I loved Jackson. I don’t know. We tiptoed around that word a lot. We tiptoed around a lot of things. All I know is that neither of us ever believed we would end up together. We didn’t believe in a future for “us” as much as we believed in a future where, someday, I could be Amir . . . and he could be himself, too.

You’re looking at me like none of this is relevant to the outburst on the plane, but it is. It’s the baggage. I thought you people were all about inspecting baggage.