How It All Blew Up
VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
First published in the United States of America by Viking,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Arvin Ahmadi
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Ebook ISBN 9780593202883
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For my family
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Ten Months Ago
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Thirty-One Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Thirty Days Ago
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Twenty-Nine Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Twenty-Eight Days Ago
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Twenty-Eight Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Twenty-Seven Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Twenty-Four Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Fifteen Days Ago
Fourteen Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Eleven Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Ten Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Nine Days Ago
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Eight Days Ago
Six Days Ago
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Six Days Ago
Four Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Three Days Ago
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Two Days Ago
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
One Day Ago
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Later That Day
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 39: Afshin Azadi
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Today
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Interrogation Room 38: Soraya
Interrogation Room 38: Roya Azadi
Interrogation Room 37: Amir
Soraya
Afshin Azadi
Amir
Jahan: 12:37 P.M.
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Down and Across
About the Author
This is a story based on true events
Interrogation Room 37
Amir
FIRST, LET ME get one thing straight: I’m not a terrorist. I’m gay. I can see from the look on your face that you’re skeptical, and I get it. People like me aren’t supposed to exist, let alone make an admission like that in a situation like this. But I assure you, I’m real. I’m here. I’m Iranian. And I’m gay. I just needed to get that off my chest before we started, since you asked why my family and I were fighting on that plane. It had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with me.
Okay, I’ll assume from the way you’re clearing your throat that I should probably stick to the questions. Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.
My name is Amir Azadi. I’m eighteen years old.
I was in Rome for about a month. Yes, like Italy. I don’t know exactly how many days I was there.
I lived in multiple apartments in Rome. I can get you the addresses if you’d like. My family found me in the Italian countryside yesterday. I willingly went back with them. I can’t really say why—it happened so fast—and then we fought on the plane, which is, I guess, why I’m in here.
It was such a huge whirlwind of emotions that I didn’t even notice when the flight attendants started pulling the four of us apart. They put us in separate parts of the plane. One of them was actually really kind to me. “Family can take a while,” he said as he buckled me into a pull-down seat in the aircraft kitchen. He had an earring in his nose. Slick blond hair. “Trust me, kid, we’ve all been there.” He even let me have one of those snack packs with the hummus and pita chips, which was nice, considering I was being detained.
As soon as we landed, Customs and Border Protection took our passports and escorted us from the plane to a holding room in the airport. Soraya—my little sister—kept asking what was going on, and my mom kept telling her to be quiet.
They told us to sit and wait until our names were called. We were glued to those chairs. Soraya took out her phone and one of the officers barked at her to turn it off. My mom snatched it from her hand. After what felt like forever, one of the male officers entered the room and looked sternly at my dad. “Mr. Azadi. Please come with me.” My dad didn’t ask any questions. He just went. Then a minute later, I got pulled into this room.
Was I in touch with any “organizations” while I was in Rome? Oh God. You must think I ran away to join ISIS, don’t you? You probably think they recruited me to their Italian satellite office. Sir, I don’t mean to belittle the evils of the world, but those guys would never take a fruit like me.
I’m sorry we scared all those people on that plane, I really am. I wish I hadn’t exploded at my parents like that, all spit and tears and hysteria, on an airplane. Especially being, you know. Of a certain complexion. But at the end of the day, I’d much rather be in this airport interrogation room than back in the closet.
You asked me why we were fighting, sir, and to answer that question, I’ll have to start at the very beginning.
Ten Months Ago
IT WAS THE first day of school, and I was already sweating in my seat. As if it wasn’t torture enough to sit through transfer orientation, the classroom was as hot as an oven. Figures I move farther south of the Mason-Dixon line and the air conditioner decides to crap out.
The senior class president was fanning himself with a manila folder in the front of the classroom. He was about to introduce us to our “buddies”—student government leaders and athletes, clearly, who would be showing us around the school.
I scanned the lineup.
Not the cute one. Anyone but the cute one.
The one all the way at the end of the row. The one with the messy blond hair and nice arms and golden skin. The one I was too scared to call “cute,” even in my head, even though I just did. Right, it should have been: anyone but the one on the far right, who will make me feel even more sweaty and uncomfortable than I already am.
The other three senior transfers were all girls, and judging from how they were ogling this dude, they definitely wanted him as their buddy.
I just don’t get all the hype around pretty people. I get why they exist—for meet-cute purposes, for magazine spreads—but they’re just so stressful to be around. Who needs that kind of stress in their life? Not me.
Not him. Anyone but him.
I imagined the Sorting Hat whispering in my ear: Not him, eh? Are you sure? Yes, you pretentious hat, I’m sure. If you can save Harry from Slytherin, you can save me from having to spend the next hour with this annoyingly handsome jock.
Not him, not him, not him . . .
The Sorting Hat did not have my back.
His name was Jackson Preacher. He looked right through me when the president said our names together. When we met, his “hello” was like walking straight into a brick wall. While everyone else’s “buddies” enthusiastically asked them questions, Jackson and I just stood there with our hands in our pockets.
He was just as stoic as he took me to my locker, walked me through the main hall and past all the classrooms.
“This is the library,” Jackson mumbled when we passed the library, which was marked in big bold letters: LIBRARY. He didn’t really have much to say, and I didn’t really have much to ask.
What did it matter, anyway? One year at this new high school and I’d be out. That was half the reason why I didn’t hate the idea of moving; my dad’s new job came with a higher salary, which meant we could afford out-of-state tuition for college. In a year, I’d be somewhere far away. In a year, I could start being myself. That had always been my dream. It was the only reason I didn’t fight as hard as my sister about the move.
At the end of the tour, when I assumed Jackson would resume his God-given right as a jock to ignore me for the rest of the school year, he said, “Well, that’s it. Let me know if you ever need a hand with anything around here.”
I cocked my head back. “Seriously?” He didn’t strike me as the hand-offering type. “Is that a real offer?”
Jackson looked off to the side. He shrugged.
“They make you say that, don’t they?” I said.
He nodded. “It’s part of the script.”
“Gotta follow the script,” I said, and out of nowhere, Jackson let out one of those snort-laughs. Then we kind of widened our eyes and looked away, because this conversation wasn’t part of our script.
Jackson combed a hand through his wavy mop of hair. Some days his hair was dirty blond, some days it was brown. I remember that day it was blond.
I asked if he thought I would fit in at this new school. Jackson didn’t really answer; he was staring at the parking lot behind me. I had my eyes glued to the school entrance behind him. Later, we would joke that that first day we met, we were actually competing in a very serious un-staring contest.
“It’s fine,” I said after a long silence. “I don’t really fit in anywhere.”
Jackson smiled—and I cheated at our contest. I snuck a glance at him. Something in him knew. He had found himself another outsider. We fit like gloves, Jackson Preacher and me. We fit like pasta and wine, football and Bud Light.
I was the pasta and wine. He was the football and Bud Light.
That first semester, Jackson and I existed in completely different worlds. As much as we crossed paths, we never really talked. He flew in the stratosphere of athletes and popular kids; I flew under the radar. I just didn’t see the point in going through the social acrobatics of making friends when I was only going to be at that school for eight months.
Still, we kept playing our un-staring contest in the halls whenever we passed each other. There was something lingering from that tour, and it was going to take a seismic shift to get it out.
That seismic shift happened right before Thanksgiving, when our football team lost the last game of the season. I was driving home after the game and stopped by 7-Eleven to pick up some salt-and-vinegar chips when I found Jackson sulking in the parking lot. I thought about just walking inside like I didn’t see him. But he had dirt marks all over his face. A dried-up river of tears running down his cheeks. He was vulnerable. So I said, “Need a hand?”
He looked up and saw it was me, and he laughed. “I’m supposed to be giving you a hand,” Jackson said, wiping a tear from his face.
“Screw the script,” I said.
He looked at me differently after those words slid out of my mouth. I don’t know what invisible hand gave me the push I needed that night to respond so smoothly, but it will forever go down as the best and worst decision I made in high school.
I comforted Jackson that night, in the grassy corner of the parking lot. I remember his hair was dark and sweaty. I don’t know how long we were talking, only that I got to see Jackson in all his multitudes. I saw him, blond and brown-haired, stoic and sensitive, a guy who plays football but who maybe, just maybe, plays for the other team, too.
When I walked him over to his car, he put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed tight. “Remember that thing you were telling me when we met,” he said softly, “about not really fitting in anywhere?” My eyes grew wide. I stared right at him, his green eyes, and he was staring back at me. “I feel that way, too.”
And right there, the world shifted.
I wish I could just slip back into that little crack in the universe, that guilt-free space where I wanted Jackson Preacher’s touch and nothing else. A week later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, fumbling with my sweaty fingers. I was quiet. Jackson was quiet. The radio was humming softly, something poppy. He later told me he kept expecting me to make a move, since, in a way, I had made the first one, but I didn’t have any more moves left in me. When he finally put a hand on my shaking leg and leaned in to kiss me, I pulled back. That really scared the shit out of Jackson. He looked like he wanted to die right there. But I needed that second, that frozen moment in time, to say goodbye to my old life. The way you might take one last look at your house after the moving boxes are all packed up. That’s all I needed. A second. When I finally pressed my lips against his, I swear, I could feel us both exhaling. Jackson taught me how to breathe. A special method of breathing that involved drowning, because, boy, was he a slobbery kisser.
I was so happy between Thanksgiving and the middle of March, when I had Jackson and not much else. I should have known Ben and Jake would smell my happiness like a shark smells blood.
Ben and Jake had singled me out from day one at my new school. Much like those “random” security checks at the airport, they picked on me without any probable cause. I was brown, and I was there.
One morning, they deviated from their routine cafeteria traffic stop and caught up with me at my locker. Ben flashed a phone in front of my face.