COVER

DEDICATION

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FALL

PARISA

I’ve never been drunk or high in my life, but at this very moment, I am regrettably both. And I hate the way it feels. And I hate that I hate the way it feels. So much for hoping I’d be the type who was bold enough to dabble and experiment. The kind of girl who brought the “good shit” to the party instead of the girl who was on the verge of a panic attack because she should have eaten half a gummy instead of a whole one. But this is me, in a nutshell. Always desperate to be twenty degrees cooler than I actually am. I’m an isosceles triangle and my sine, cosine, and tangent are anxiety, insecurity, and irrational fear—all hidden away in uneven angles.

“Are you feeling it?” Gabriela asks me, the slightest trace of a smirk on her face.

My best friend, Gabriela, and I are fully clothed, in our pajamas, sitting in the empty Jacuzzi tub in my bathroom. Even though it’s big enough to fit us comfortably, I told Gabs she wasn’t allowed to fill it with water. I was too scared the mixture of edibles and vodka would lull us to sleep and we’d drown. Dead in a tub with my best friend is not the manner in which I’d like to leave the world. In fact, I don’t want to leave the world at all. But these are the thoughts that spurn the current internal debate I’m having in my head: Should I play it cool or should I tell Gabs that she needs to get my parents, because I’m almost one hundred percent certain that my heart is going to stop and I’m going to take my last breath in a bathroom? I do my best to accomplish the former because I’m so scared she’ll be disappointed in me. Gabs looks so happy. I don’t want to spoil the mood by informing her that I’m about to die on her watch. I knew she would handle our alcohol-and-drug binge better than me, because that effortlessly cool girl I want to be? She’s sitting right in front of me.

“I’m not sure,” I manage to say. “Are you feeling it?”

I think I got the words out, but my intense case of cotton mouth makes speaking a challenge. Why didn’t we think to grab a pitcher of water from the kitchen when we pilfered my parents’ bottle of Tito’s from the bar cart? I guess we didn’t know that thirst would be a side effect of edibles. Or maybe thirst is not a normal side effect but merely a sign that my organs are shutting down. There’s no point in scaring Gabs because she won’t have the answers anyway. She may be more confident than me, but when push comes to shove, she’s just as inexperienced.

There’s a reason we’re doing drugs alone, in my bathroom, and not at the party across the street at Lizzy Pearson’s house. We are flying solo in a bathtub while virtually every other senior we know (including Andrew Nanaka—our former best guy friend) is probably taking shots of Fireball in Lizzy’s kitchen and finding a dark corner of her house to make out in. But I try not to dwell on those facts. After all, we’re probably safer cooped up in my bathroom.

According to every news outlet in America, the world is on the brink of a global pandemic, one that disproportionately impacts people our age, and if that actually turns out to be true, then I don’t think it’s safe to be trapped in a house with a hundred teenagers. I’d rather be irrelevant than get invited to a death trap. And as much as I’d love to be kissing anyone right now, it’s a hard pass if it means contracting a fatal disease. At my high school, no one’s mouth or tongue or penis is worth dying for. On that topic, I think Gabriela and I can agree.

“Oh, I’m definitely feeling it.” Gabs giggles in that adorable way she always does when something makes her inexplicably happy. “I wish Wes hadn’t bailed on hanging out tonight.”

“Me too,” I manage to say. Wes Bowen is our other best guy friend. Unlike Andrew, he still graces us with his presence at lunch. Mostly because he’s madly in love with Gabs, and because he knows that if he ever tried to ditch us for greener pastures, I would find ways to make him regret it for the rest of his life.

“If I knew I’d have this much fun, I would have done this freshman year. We’ve really been wasting the last three years. What a shame,” Gabs adds wistfully.

She’s right. This is fun. Don’t ruin it. I should be grateful that I’m spending my last few minutes on earth with my best friend. The girl who’s always made life not just bearable but better. Gabriela gets me more than anyone—even my own family. Especially my own family. She doesn’t poke fun at my anxiety or the fact that I’m neurotic about everything. She has this way of reminding me what’s important with a simple, profound observation. I always try to look for the best in the worst people, but Gabs refuses to let me. Case in point: A week ago, in English class, Cornelia Martin told me that she thought my hair looked good when I wore it curly, then offered to let me borrow her Frizz Ease.

“Cornelia’s nice,” I told Gabs.

“Bullshit. Anyone can be nice,” she responded.

And she was right. Why was I always rewarding people for doing the bare minimum? After all, I can afford to buy my own Frizz Ease.

I reach for a bag of chips that’s on the bathroom floor and tear it open. I am desperate to eat. Maybe food will slow down the heartbeat that has taken up residence in my forehead. Maybe Cool Ranch Doritos will make me feel like my brain is still connected to the rest of my body. As last meals go, processed, cancer-inducing junk food wouldn’t be my first choice—but right now, it’s all I’ve got. I think about the tahchin my parents order from the Rose Market. The saffron-infused rice. The sweet and sour notes of the barberries. The chicken that is cooked so slowly in turmeric and onion that it falls apart in my mouth. It’s so sad to think I’ll never get to eat it again. I think my last TikTok post was a video of the perfectly golden-brown tahdig. It didn’t get a lot of views, but I’m pretty sure that’s only because the algorithm favors videos with people in them. I wonder if I should take a selfie, so my last contribution to social media will be a little more meaningful.

Maybe the caption could be something nice about my mom and dad, so they’ll know I was thinking of them during the end of my life. I know that most parents wouldn’t be able to handle losing their child to a drug overdose, but my Iranian parents will never recover. The shame alone will kill them. My older sister will become an orphan and write a bestselling memoir about how one pineapple-flavored gummy destroyed her entire family. I will die, and she will go on to accomplish my dream of becoming a published author. Life is so unfair.

“Are you okay?” Gabs asks. She leans in and squints at me.

“I’m totally fine,” I lie.

“Then why are you crying?”

I touch my face, and she’s right. There are tears rolling down my cheeks. And now my whole body is convulsing—deep, guttural sounds escape my mouth. It sort of feels like I’m having an out-of-body experience. There’s a girl in a tub sobbing and another disillusioned girl watching the whole thing go down, wishing the first girl would just get it together.

“I’m scared I’m gonna die.”

Gabriela quickly pulls me into a hug.

“Shhhh,” she says. “You’re just too high. Don’t fight it. I’ve heard the more you panic, the worse you’ll feel.”

I want to believe her, but how would she know whether or not my heart is about to give out? She’s not in her right mind either, and she probably won’t take me seriously after “the shrimp taco incident” of yore. It really sucks to feel your life slipping away. I want to stick around for so much. I don’t want to bid adieu to this world when I’m still a super virgin. (Yes, that means I’ve never even been kissed before. Spin the bottle with Andrew in sixth grade does not count. He missed my mouth entirely.) We keep hearing words like “novel ademavirus” and “quarantine” in the news, and I want to be by my best friend’s side if it gets as bad as everyone is saying it will. I want to live long enough to publish my first book. I want to be in my thirties, drinking wine with my fellow career-driven girlfriends, lamenting the fact that there are no good men left in the world. I want to help reverse climate change and travel to Tehran and upload a video of myself screaming like a maniac when I get into Harvard. I stop crying. I grab Gabriela by the shoulders and look into her eyes.

“Get my parents,” I say. “I’m really about to die.”

GABRIELA

Real talk? Even in my current state of mind, I know that Parisa isn’t going to die. How can I be so sure she’s fine when my brain is currently lubricated with top-shelf vodka and, as it turns out, a far-too-high edible dose? Well, because Parisa always thinks she’s going to die. It’s kind of her thing. There was the time she came over for dinner with Wes and Andrew for my sixteenth birthday, and she swore her throat was itchy and was going to close up after she ate my mom’s shrimp tacos. We gave her some Benadryl, but she kept scratching her neck and taking short breaths till she finally asked us to take her to the ER. After a three-hour stint in the waiting room, the doctor confirmed she was not having an allergic reaction and asked her if she regularly had panic attacks.

“For sure,” I answered for her.

“Never,” she said.

There was also the time she called me (and woke me up) in the middle of the night because her ankle hurt, and she thought it might be a blood clot. It takes her twenty minutes longer than it should to drive to my house because merging gives her heart palpitations, so she avoids freeways whenever possible. She also hates underground parking garages because we live in the Bay Area and if the “big one” finally happens, then she doesn’t want to be trapped in her car beneath slabs of concrete when it hits. This means Wes and I are often left waiting at restaurants, making awkward small talk, while she circles the block, trying to find aboveground parking.

She is a bundle of nerves and anxieties and worst-case-scenario what-ifs. I am pretty sure this is an unfortunate side effect of living a blessed life and being born with the active imagination of a writer, but let’s examine the former for now. Parisa is the product of successful parents whose wealth is a result of the tech boom. She lives in a gorgeous house in Los Gatos, a five-minute walk from Great Bear Coffee and restaurants that I will never, ever be able to afford to step foot in, like Le Papillon and Manresa.

I think her life of privilege has her convinced that something horrible will happen someday and she’ll lose everything. To use a football analogy (go, Niners!), my sweet, beautiful best friend lives her life on defense. She is so convinced she’s going to get hit, she spends all her time preparing herself for the inevitable blows, so they’ll hurt a little less if and when they happen. The rest of us are innocent bystanders to her catastrophic tendencies. I’m not gonna lie—it can be really inconvenient sometimes.

I give her a hug like I always do when she’s freaking out, but this just makes her body go rigid. She asks me to get her parents, and when I don’t, she pulls away from me and starts screaming for them. Fuck shit fuck. I clasp my hand over her mouth, but it’s too late. Before I can convince her to calm down, her mom and dad are frantically knocking on the bathroom door. Who could blame them? Based on the way she’s yelling, they probably think we’re being murdered by a pair of escaped convicts from San Quentin who’ve broken into the house. I want to be mad at her, but it’s impossible. I can tell she’s terrified, and plus, what if this is the one time she’s right? What if she’s the girl who cried death, but this time she really kicks the bucket? What if this is the blow she’s been bracing for her whole life? Now my heart starts to race. I hop out of the tub and open the door.

“She’s fine. She’s fine,” I tell her parents. “We just… um…” And then I start giggling. I can’t stop. It all seems so absurd—seeing Parisa, high as a kite, crying in a bathtub. I have to sit on the ground and pull my knees against my chest so that I won’t pee myself in front of Fereshteh and Reza.

“I did drugs and I think I took too much and I’m going to die!” she says.

“What did you guys take?” Reza asks me.

We got the edibles from her parents’ closet and the vodka from their living room, but I decide to keep those details to myself.

“Just some pot gummies and vodka,” I manage to say.

Her parents simultaneously breathe a sigh of relief. They tell Parisa she’s not going to die. I can tell they’re a little mad, but mostly they’re just trying not to laugh. Fereshteh takes Parisa’s hand and gently leads her to bed. She tucks her in and says she’ll get her some milk and cookies to help sober her up. Reza is tasked with driving me home. As a punishment for both of us, I am no longer invited to spend the night. Parisa yells at her mom and says that she’s being unfair for making me leave, but I wish she would stop defending me. There’s nothing more uncomfortable than witnessing a fight between a friend and their parents. There’s nothing more uncomfortable than witnessing a fight between a friend and her parents—when they’re all being the versions of themselves I never want to see.

I quickly grab my bag and wish someone would give me freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and organic milk as punishment for getting too high. Before I leave, Parisa takes a break from arguing with her mom and mouths, I’m sorry. I smile back reassuringly. Sometimes I wish her neurotic personality didn’t get in the way of our fun, but then I remind myself that this is not just a quirk or character flaw. She has an anxiety disorder, and that’s probably harder on her than it is on anyone else. I give her a quick hug, and she whispers, “Thanks for saving my life,” in my ear.

“Anytime,” I tell her. And I mean it. She doesn’t know it, but she’s saved mine too many times to count.

Reza doesn’t talk much on the drive to my house. I’m still feeling the effects of the edible, and I try to take quiet breaths to keep the buzz at bay. I need to be in my right mind when I face my parents. We don’t have a lot of rules in our home, but the most important one is that I’m not allowed to drink or do drugs.

“Mr. Naficy? Can you please not tell my moms about this? Maybe you could just say that I got in a fight with Parisa and asked if you could drive me home?”

He’s not upset or mean about it. I can tell he feels bad as he glances at me as he drives. I can tell that, if it were up to him, he would have let me spend the night—but Fereshteh considered it a liability.

“I’m sorry, Gabriela,” he says. “I can’t lie to them for you.”

We stop at a red light, and I notice the small bottles of hand sanitizer, placed in the side of my door. Parisa is so convinced that she’s going to get the ademavirus, her hands are already cracked and dry from how much she’s been washing them. There are only a handful of positive cases where we live—but sanitizer is still hard to come by these days. I wait for Reza to glance at his phone and then toss two of the bottles into my jacket pocket.

I close my eyes, and when I open them, the car turns into a visitor parking spot. Reza turns off the ignition and walks around the front of the car to open the door for me. I plead with him one more time.

“They’re going to be so mad at me.”

“Or maybe they’ll give you a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he says.

“No, they definitely won’t.”

Elena, hair in a messy ponytail, opens the door and tightens her bathrobe. A groggy Julia stands behind her, confused to see me home at this hour. Reza apologizes and explains what he and Fereshteh walked in on in the bathroom: a half-empty bottle of vodka and a tin tray of gummies. He tries to give me an assist and says that it was just “teenagers being teenagers,” but my moms aren’t buying what he’s selling. I don’t detect any judgment in his voice, but I can tell from the expressions on Julia and Elena’s faces that they’re still irked by his tone. They are offended not just that he’s brought me home. They are offended by his easygoing charm, his Lululemon sweatshirt, his Adidas sneakers, his Tesla idling in the parking lot. Everything about him screams model minority.

“Thank you for bringing her home, Reza,” Elena says. “We’ll take it from here.”

With that, the door shuts and I’m alone with my moms. I wouldn’t exactly say I’m surprised that they’re angry, but I’m a bit caught off guard that they don’t cut me any slack. After all, I’m a first-time offender. That should count for something. My whole life I’ve tried to be perfect because I know they already have enough on their plate. The last thing they need is a rebellious teenage daughter.

“We raised you better than this,” Elena says. “I’ve never been more disappointed in you.”

This is not milk and cookies. This is tough love and brutal honesty, and it’s far more sobering. Without saying another word, my moms walk into their bedroom and leave me to wallow in my own shame. I remove the cushions from the sofa and pull out my bed. I lay there, wide awake. I hear Julia tell Elena that she should call her sponsor and that she may be triggered by all this. Great, I think. If my mom falls off the wagon, then I’ll be the one to blame for it. At least I won’t be tossing and turning, worried about what fresh punishment the morning might bring. Thanks to the pot gummy still working its way through my system, I can feel myself falling right to sleep.

Parisa

I have the worst headache of my life.

Gabriela

I puked this morning. Like, three times.

Parisa

Me too! I sort of felt better after though.

Gabriela

My moms said I deserved it. Ugh. I hate when they’re right.

Parisa

My parents told me to eat bacon and a lot of bread.

Gabriela

I can’t eat anything. I’m not sure any of that was worth it.

Parisa

It wasn’t. How do people do this all the time?

WAIT. What if this isn’t from what we did last night, but we have Adema?! Should we go to the hospital?

Gabriela

No! We don’t have Adema. We’re just hungover.

Parisa

How do you know the difference?

Gabriela

Does your stomach look okay?

Parisa

I mean, it’s a little bloated but otherwise yeah.

Gabriela

Then you’re probably fine. I heard people break out in a rash on their belly. It’s the first sign.

Parisa

Weird. Okay, well. No rash. Phew. Anyway, were your moms so pissed? I’m so sorry. I feel like such a loser. I ruin everything.

Gabriela

No, you don’t. It’s fine!

I should have known you might have a bad reaction. It’s my fault for not being more prepared. The sucky part is I’m not allowed to go to homecoming or Halloween at your place. I’m basically on house arrest for the next two weeks aside from work and school.

Parisa

Nooooooo! We have the BTS concert next weekend!

Gabriela

I know I’ll pay you back for the ticket.

Parisa

No way. I’ll just sell them. I bet Andrew will buy them off me so he can take Lizzy. Gross.

Gabriela

No! You should just go and take Wes or your mom or something.

Parisa

LOL. Can you picture Wes at BTS?

Gabriela

LOLLL. Dying.

Parisa

There’s no way I’d ever go without you. Ugh. This sucks. Not hanging out for two weekends will literally feel like an eternity.

Gabriela

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