NOTE: This is the second part of my current novella, but it's an entirely new storyline. All you need to know if you haven't read "The Parking Lot Sparrows" is that Karim ends up dying.
[I. THE FOREIGNER]
Hello, New Friend!
My name is Karim Malik and I am fourteen years old. I am excited to be in America. I emmirgated (sp?) from my home Tehran of February. It is very nice here. I will hope you think I am nice!
I come to Nebraska in two weeks. I go to school with you. I am nervous. In New York there are many friends, but I do not know anyone in Nebraska. I hope you will become my new friends. American people are very friendly. There are many different kinds of Americans. There is only one kind of Iranian person. They are Muslim people. My naybor (sp?) woman is telling me there are no Muslim people in Nebraska. I will teach you about Muslim people and you will think they are nice.
I am liking the American TV and mall. Mall in Tehran is much different. It is interesting! I will tell about mall of Tehran maybe, if you are thinking it is interesting.
Iranian letter would give blessing of Allah. Do you know Allah? My sister is saying Americans say, “sincerely”, or “your friend”. My naybor man is saying Americans say, “God’s peace”. I do not know what to say so I will say them all.
Sincerely your friend God's peace,
Karim Malik
[II. THE RINGLEADER]
Shit, dude. Of course I remember when Karim Malik first started going here—that was tenth grade or something, right? Yeah. He was really funny-sounding when he first got here, but then he got smart or something.
At first I thought he was pretty cool. He had a hot sister, too, and his hot sister spoke better English than he did. I kind of wanted to ask her out after I dumped Jacqueline, because I was going to do that pretty soon. The same girl gets so boring after awhile. And who wouldn't want a hot terrorist chick? That's just…hot.
So, I had him sit with me at my lunch table. He sat between Jacky and Mark with his lunch from home, which was some weird brown shit in sauce. He caught me looking at it and laughed. "Do you know figs?"
"What?"
"Figs. They're good."
"Oh," I said. "I guess so."
His sister was sitting across the room. I could see her in the space between people's heads—dark hair, dark eyes, big lips. She always wore stuff with long sleeves, but that day she had them pushed up, with a little silver bracelet on her arm that kept hitting against the table as she ate. She sat back a little and I could see her rack in full—it wasn't very big, but then again, neither was she. It was just right. But then, I've never seen boobs that weren't right.
I nudged his shoulder. "What's your sister's name, man?"
"Nadia."
He said it fast, kind of in his nose—nahd-yah.
You've got to admit that that's a hot name. She finished eating and stood up with her tray—she had a salad and a little cup of coffee. I watched her as she dumped her stuff into the trashcan, with her brastraps poking out against the back of her shirt when she bent over. God. I never thought crazy stuff about Jacky, but with this Nahd-yah girl it was like five times a second—Nahd-yah's mouth, Nahd-yah taking off that shirt with the long sleeves once and for all. I didn't know exactly what was so great about her—she was covered, except for the skin around her collarbone and the tops of her feet. I never got how Middle Eastern guys got it up, anyway, with the chicks all covered up and shit. But then again—they're hot. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Karim and Jacky were leaning really close together. "Yes, I like the O.C.," he was saying. "I like the Mischa Barton."
"She's got such good clothes."
"Mmm, the Seth?"
"Hot."
Karim laughed. "I know. You know his jacket, the blue with stripes of the first season? I am asking my mother for this jacket. She does not understand. 'It is so expensive!'—but he is so gorgeous…"
"I know."
"The party of pools episode?"
"Pool party?"
"Yes."
"Oh, where they go skinny dipping or whatever?"
He frowned. "Skinny dipping?"
"You know. Swimming naked?"
"Yes, yes. That one. You think he is nice?"
Jacky slapped his shoulder, giggling. "You are so bad!"
Mark was looking at me kind of funny. I wasn't sure why—but then I realized just how close they were sitting together, and how she kept touching him and laughing and…"You hitting on my girlfriend, Karim?"
He looked confused. "I am not hitting."
Jacky touched my leg under the table. "Relax," she said. "He's gay."
"He's gay?" I'd never met a gay dude before. That's just…gross.
Karim looked at me. His eyes shifted a little. I crossed my legs. He was probably looking at my crotch. "This is okay in America, yes?"
"Dude," I said. "That's not okay anywhere."
He looked at his feet and picked up his little Tupperware dish of figs. "I am sorry for offending," he said, and left.
Jackie looked at me. "You're a dick, you know that?"
All of a sudden, I didn’t have a girlfriend and I had absolutely no chance with the terrorist chick. I could have dealt with the crotch-checking-out if I would have gotten her in the end.
I had nothing.
And it was pretty much Karim's fault.
[III. THE PHYTOPLANKTON]
So I guess I'm no Miss Popularity. Or rather—Miss P-p-p-popularity. I'm a stutterer. Really, I hate that word—it's ugly, like the sounds you make when you actually are one.
I don't like talking to people so much, so I'm usually by myself. I guess I don't mind. People were real jerks to me back in middle school, and most of them still are. Laughing, carrying on—isn't she funny? She can't even say her own name! So it was kind of shocking when I was working on my math homework in the table where I sit in the cafeteria, and someone clears their throat and says, "Can I sit here?"
I looked up. It was Karim Malik, the New Kid of New Kids. New to the school, new to the state, new to the country—in expensive jeans and some kind of trendy sweatshirt. He had straight teeth and only a hint of acne—he was, by appearance alone, too good for me. "Uh…" I said, looking him over carefully. "I guess so."
It wasn't until after he started sitting with me that I found out why he was with me in the first place. People would lean over their desks and whisper things—things about how he was gay and felt some guy up in P.E., about how his parents were involved with the Taliban, or something, and how his dad's job was all about finding quicker ways to kill cows in slaughterhouses and practiced in the backyard. I didn't know how much of it was true, but I reveled in him--how he always asked me how my day was, how he prayed before he ate. I didn't care who he was praying to. All I cared about was the nice guy in mall-clothes who chose to sit by me.
Sometimes I pretended that Karim was my boyfriend. I know that doesn't make much sense, but it made me feel better—it was an explanation beyond 'he has nowhere else to go' for the pretty boy who sat with me everyday at my lunch table, until that Wednesday before he was murdered.
It made me wonder what sort of things people said about me—did they think I didn't talk because I was rude? Because I thought I was better than everyone else? Was my stuttering a symptom of some awful contagious disease I was purposely spreading to the student body so that I wouldn’t be alone when I died?
His friends are gone, too. I saw him with them in the halls—the blonde boy with too many bracelets and the girl with short hair. Of the people he knew, only I am left. The lowest of the low. The bottom of the food chain.
The phytoplankton.
[IV. THE HYPOCHONDRIAC]
We all have our crosses to bear, I suppose. Mine simply happens to be dreadful—I was cursed with a weak immune system and a predisposition to pain and suffering. Woe! Everyday I tread these halls aching and lonesome, waiting for the sweet relief of Nurse Hanway and her ibuprofen. Somedays I am broken and bleeding from every orifice, and she will simply sigh in the way she always does—the way she shows her understanding of my pain.
I had had the most dreadful sinus infection the day I was joined at long last with someone else who shared in my misery. He was wiry and blond with a mass of bracelets on his left arm that I imagined made it terribly difficult to move. He was clutching an icepack to his head. The frame of the metal cot he sank into creaked as he positioned himself against the wall. "Fuck," he groaned. "Fuck, fuck…"
It took me a moment to realize that he was gazing at me. Perhaps he knew that I was feeling more pain than he and felt bad. "I'm sorry. I swear when assholes kick things at me."
"You poor, kind soul," I said in the weak voice I have when life throws another throat infection at me. "What happened?"
"The American educational system."
"I'm terribly sorry."
"I was reading, and then blam! Soccer ball to the face. Well, you know what? If I didn't have to be here, I wouldn’t be. I would rather be in the world where people do things, rather than the one where they roll around in their own secretions and talk of…God. I don't even care." He looked at me. "Why am I talking to you? You have problems. Probably more than me."
I rolled onto my back and sighed. "Life is cruel."
"You're telling me."
He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. "What's up with you, then?"
"Things too numerous to mention," I said. "I am simply frail. Heartbroken. I cannot be with those I love because I do not wish to infect them."
He took the ice pack from his head and held it in his hands. There was a red mark with little hexagon shapes imprinted in his forehead. "If it's any consolation, I'm kind of love with a dude in my art class."
"You're a homosexual? How dreadful that must be!"
He grunted. "I don't know what I am."
"I have had every infection in the book but I have never been in love with a dude in my art class."
"You're lucky." He sighed. "He's really gorgeous, and nice, and smart, and he taught me that it's Ih-rahn, not Ai-ran—" There was a smack as he pressed the ice pack back to his head. "Why am I telling you this?"
"Perhaps I am a kindred spirit."
"Perhaps you are."
Just as he had said this, the fire alarms began to go off. Their shrill noise drilled their way into my already aching ears, and I groaned though no one could hear it. I followed the boy with his ice pack and his bracelets out to the flagpole and we stood there, together, in misery, waiting for whatever load would be added to our already fragile frames next.
[V. THE GOSSIP WHORE]
You know what I heard?
I heard it was Karim Malik. I heard he was going to blow up the school, before they caught him—it was a suicide bombing. Or at least it was going to be. I really can't believe they let people like that into our schools. It's crazy, the stuff you hear. 'This psycho blew up that school and this pyscho blew up this one…'
I hear they're going to put him in therapy for crazies or something. I hope they deport him. Back to Iraq, or whaever. You'd think they'd know about these people, after 9/11.
I would stay home from school, but it's so boring. Guess I'll risk my life. It's totally worth it, for the stuff you hear.
