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It didn’t lish was It didn’t ain, that I was born here, in Ae, thatmediocre Farsi with an American accent—it didn’t matter Everyone assun land

Mr Webber’s smile faltered “Oh,” he said “Okay”

The kids aroundhot I looked down and openedthe action would inspire an end to the conversation

Instead, Mr Webber held up his hands and said, “Listen—me, personally? I want you to stay, okay? But this is a really advanced class, and even though I’ood, it’s still—”

“My English,” I said, “isn’t really good My English is fucking perfect”

I spent the rest of the hour in the principal’s office

I was given a stern talking-to about the kind of behavior expected of students at this school and warned that, if I was going to be deliberately hostile and uncooperative, iven detention for using vulgar language in class The lunch bell rang while the principal was yelling at s and bolted

I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere; I was only looking forward to being away froh after lunch but I wasn’t sure my head could take it; I’d already surpassed my threshold for stupidity for the day

I was balancing my lunch tray on rip between my hands, when my phone buzzed It was my brother

what are you doing?

eating lunch

bullshit where are you hiding?

in the bathroom

what? why?

what else am i supposed to do for 37 minutes? stare at people?

And then he told et the hell out of the bathroom and come have lunch with hion full of brand-new friends in celebration of his pretty face, and I should join hi

no thanks, I typed

And then I threw my lunch in the trash and hid in the library until the bell rang

My brother is two years older than me; we’d almost always been in the sa like I did; he didn’t always suffer e got to a new city There were two big differences between me and my brother: first, that he was extre aCAUTION, TERRORIST APPROACHING

I shit you not, girls lined up to show uy The interesting boy with an interesting past and an interesting nairls would inevitably use to satisfy their need to experiainst their parents I’d learned the hard way that I couldn’t eat lunch with his and my pride in the trash, it took all of five seconds for me to realize that the only reason his new lady friends were being nice to et to my brother

I’d rather eat in the toilet

I told myself I didn’t care, but obviously I did I had to The news cycle never let me breathe anymore 9/11 happened last fall, teeks into my freshman year, and a couple of weeks later two dudes attackedhome from school and the worst part—the worst part—was that it took me days to shake off the denial; it tookthe explanation would turn out to be more complex, that there’d turn out to be more than pure, blind hatred to motivate their actions I wanted there to be soers would follow me home, some other reason why they’d yank my scarf off my head and try to choke me with it I didn’t understand how anyone could be so violently angry withI hadn’t done, soht as I walked down the street

I didn’t want to understand it