A Very Large Expanse of Sea Read online

  The event was even more exciting than I hoped it’d be. I’d seen battles before, of course—we’d been watching old breakdancing competitions on VHS for years—but it was something else entirely to witness these things in person. The space was relatively small—it looked like a converted art gallery—and people were assembled like cigarettes in a pack, pressed up against the walls and doors, squeezing together to leave enough empty space in the center of the room. The energy was palpable. Music was reverberating against the walls and ceilings, the bass pulsing in my eardrums. In here, people didn’t seem to care at all about me; no one looked at me, eyes merely glanced off my face and body as they scanned the room. I didn’t know why it suddenly didn’t matter what I looked like, why my appearance garnered no reactions. Maybe it was because the self-selecting demographic in here was different. I was surrounded by diverse bodies and faces; I was hearing Spanish in one ear and Chinese in the other. We were white and black and brown brought together by a single interest.

  I loved it.

  Somehow I knew, in that moment, that all that mattered in this particular world was talent. If I were a decent breakdancer, these people would respect me. Here, I could be more than the settings applied to my life by society.

  It was all I’d ever wanted.

  I came home that night feeling more exhilarated than I’d felt—maybe, ever. I talked my mom’s ear off about the whole thing and she smiled, unimpressed, and told me to go do my homework. School would be waiting for me, bright and early the following day, but tonight, I was still aglow. Echoes of the music were dancing around in my head. I got ready for bed and couldn’t focus on the schoolwork I’d left unfinished. Instead, I cleared a space in the center of my room and practiced the crab pose for so long the carpet began to burn my palms. I kept falling forward—kissing the floor, as my brother liked to say—and couldn’t get it quite right. I still had a long way to go before I’d become even a decent breakdancer, but then, I’d never been afraid of hard work.

  9

  Nine

  My second class of the day was called Global Perspectives. My teacher was one of those wild, creative thinkers, one of those guys determined to make breakthroughs with teenagers. He was cooler than most teachers, but it was obvious, most days, that he was trying a little too hard to convince us of this fact. Still, I didn’t hate his class. The only thing he ever required of us was class participation.

  There were no exams; no homework assignments.

  Instead, he forced us to discuss current events. Politics. Controversial topics. He wanted us to ask each other hard questions—to question ourselves and our ideas about the world—and he wanted us to engage directly with each other in ways we otherwise never would. Those of us who refused to participate—refused to voice aloud our opinions—would fail.

  I was into it.

  Thus far, the class had been pretty drama-free. He’d started out with softballs. We’d walked in on the second day of class to discover he’d divided all the desks into groups of four. We were supposed to start there, in a smaller group, before he’d change things up.

  After thirty minutes of intense discussions, he came by our little cluster and asked us to recap what we’d talked about.

  And then, he’d said—

  “Great, great. So what are the names of everyone in your group?”

  That was the thing that got me to take him seriously. Because wow, we’d been talking for a while and we’d never once asked to know each other’s names. I thought maybe this guy was smart. I thought maybe he would be different. I thought, hey, Mr. Jordan might actually know something.

  But today was a new Monday. Time for a change.

  I’d barely gotten to my seat when he shouted at me.

  “Shirin and Travis,” he called, “come over here, please.”

  I looked at him, confused, but he only waved me over. I dropped my backpack on the floor next to my chair and went, reluctantly, to the front of the class. I stared at my feet, at the wall. I was feeling nervous.

  I hadn’t met Travis yet—he wasn’t one of the four people in my group—but Travis was everything television taught you a jock was supposed to look like. He was big, blond, and burly, and he was wearing a letterman jacket. He, too, I noticed, was looking around awkwardly.

  Mr. Jordan was smiling.

  “A new experiment,” he said to the class, clapping his hands together before he turned back to us. “All right, you two,” he said, turning our shoulders so that Travis and I were facing each other. “No squirming. I want you to look at each other’s faces.”

  Someone kill me.

  I looked at Travis only because I didn’t want to fail this class. Travis didn’t seem thrilled about staring at my face, either, and I felt bad for him. Neither one of us wanted to be doing whatever the hell my teacher was about to make us do.

  “Keep looking,” Mr. Jordan said. “I want you two to see each other. Really, really see each other. Are you looking?”

  I shot a hard glare at Mr. Jordan. I said nothing.

  “Okay,” he said. He was smiling like a maniac. “Now, Travis,” he said, “I want you to tell me exactly what you think when you look at Shirin.”

  And I lost feeling in my legs.

  I felt suddenly faint and somehow still rooted to the ground. I felt panic and outrage—I felt betrayed—and I had no idea what to do. How could I justify turning to my teacher and telling him he was insane? How could I do that without getting into trouble?

  Travis had gone bright red. He started sputtering.

  “Be honest,” Mr. Jordan was saying. “Remember, honesty is everything. Without it, we can never move forward. We can never have productive discussions. So be honest. Tell me exactly what you think when you look at her face. First impressions. Off the cuff. Now, now.”

  I’d gone numb. I was paralyzed by an impotence and embarrassment I didn’t know how to explain. I stood there, hating myself, while Travis fumbled for the words.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He could barely look at me.

  “Bullshit,” Mr. Jordan said, his eyes flashing. “That’s bullshit, Travis, and you know it. Now be honest.”

  I was breathing too fast. I was staring at Travis, begging him with my eyes to just walk away, to leave me alone, but Travis was lost in his own panic. He couldn’t see mine.

  “I—I don’t know,” he said again. “When I look at her I don’t see anything.”

  “What?” Mr. Jordan again. He’d walked up to Travis, was studying him, hard. “What do you mean you don’t see anything?”

  “I mean, I mean—” Travis sighed. His face had gone blotchy with redness. “I mean she doesn’t, like—I just don’t see her. It’s like she doesn’t exist for me. When I look at her I see nothing.”

  Anger fled my body. I felt suddenly limp. Hollow. Tears pricked my eyes; I fought them back.

  I heard Mr. Jordan’s vague, distorted sounds of victory. I heard him clap his hands together, excited. I saw him move in my direction, ostensibly to make me take a turn performing his stupid experiment and instead I just stared at him, my face numb.

  And I walked away.

  I grabbed my backpack from where I’d left it and moved, in what felt like slow motion, straight out the door. I felt blind and deaf at the same time, like I was moving through fog, and I realized then—as I realized every time something like this happened—that I was never as strong as I hoped to be.

  I still cared too much. I was still so easily, pathetically, punctured.

  I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I had to go. Had to leave, had to get out of there before I cried in front of the class, cussed out Mr. Jordan, and got myself expelled.

  I’d charged blindly out the door and down the hall and halfway across the school before I realized I wanted to go home. I wanted to clear my head; I wanted to get away from everything for a little while. So I cut across the quad and through the parking lot and was just about to step off campus when I felt someone grab
my arm.

  “Holy shit you walk fast—”

  I spun around, stunned.

  Ocean’s hand was on my arm, his eyes full of something like fear or concern and he said, “I’ve been calling your name this whole time. Didn’t you hear me?”

  I looked around like I was losing my mind. How did this keep happening to me? What the hell was Ocean doing here?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I faltered. I realized he was still touching me and I took a sudden, nervous step backward. “I, um, I was kind of lost in my head.”

  “Yeah, I figured,” he said, and sighed. “Mr. Jordan is a dick. What a complete asshole.”

  My eyes went wide. I was now, somehow, even more confused. “How did you know about Mr. Jordan?”

  Ocean stared at me. He looked like he wasn’t sure whether or not I was joking. “I’m in your class,” he said finally.

  I blinked.

  “Are you serious?” he said. “You didn’t know I was in your class?” He laughed, but it sounded sad. He shook his head. “Wow.”

  I still couldn’t process this. It was too much—too much was happening all at once. “Did you just transfer in or something?” I asked. “Or have you always been in my class?”

  Ocean looked stunned.

  “Oh, wow, I’m really sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t, like, ignoring you. I just—I don’t really look at people most of the time.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and laughed again. “I know.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  And he sighed. “Hey, really, though—are you okay? I can’t believe he did that to you.”

  “Yeah.” I looked away. “I feel kind of bad for Travis.”

  Ocean made a sound of disbelief. “Travis will be fine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you’re okay? You don’t need me to go back in there and kick his ass?”

  And I looked up, unable to contain my surprise. When had Ocean become the kind of guy willing to defend my honor? When had I leveled up to become the kind of person for whom he’d even offer? I barely talked to the guy, and even then, we’d never discussed much. Last week he’d hardly spoken to me in bio. I realized then that I didn’t know Ocean at all.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  I mean, I wasn’t, but I didn’t know what else to say. I just really wanted to leave. And it only occurred to me that I’d said that last part out loud when he said—

  “Good idea. Let’s get out of here.”

  “What?” I accidentally laughed at him. “Are you serious?”

  “You were about to cut class,” he said. “Weren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Well,” he said, and shrugged. “I’ll come with you.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I know I don’t need to do that,” he said. “I just want to. Is that okay?”

  I stared at him.

  I stared at him and his simple, uncomplicated brown hair. His soft blue sweater and dark jeans. He was wearing very white sneakers. He was also squinting at me in the cold sunlight, waiting for my response, and he finally tugged a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on. They were nice sunglasses. They looked good on him.

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “That’s okay.”

  10

  Ten

  We walked to IHOP.

  It wasn’t far from campus, and it seemed like an innocuous enough destination for cheap food and a little change of scenery. But then we were sitting in a booth, sitting across from each other, and I suddenly had no idea what I was doing. What we were doing.

  I was trying to think of what to say, how to say it, when Ocean seemed to suddenly remember he was still wearing sunglasses.

  He said, “Oh, right—”

  And took them off.

  It was such a simple thing. It was a quiet, completely unmomentous moment. The world didn’t stop turning; birds didn’t suddenly start singing. Obviously I’d seen his eyes before. But somehow, suddenly, it was like I was seeing them for the first time. And somehow, suddenly, I couldn’t stop staring at his face. Something fluttered against my heart. I felt my armor begin to break.

  He had really beautiful eyes.

  They were an unusual mix of blue and brown, and together they made a kind of gray. I’d never caught the subtleties before. Maybe because he’d never looked at me like this before. Straight on. Smiling. Really, smiling at me. I only then realized that I’d never gotten a full smile from Ocean before. Most of the time his smiles were confused or scared or a combination of any number of other things. But for some reason, right now, in this extremely ugly booth at IHOP, he was smiling at me like there was something to celebrate.

  “What?” he finally said.

  I blinked fast, startled. Embarrassed. I looked down at my menu and said, “Nothing,” very quietly.

  “Why were you staring at me?”

  “I wasn’t staring at you.” I held the menu closer to my face.

  No one said anything for a few seconds.

  “You never came back online over the weekend,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why not?” He reached forward and gently pushed the menu away from my face.

  Oh my God.

  I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t unsee it, oh my God, someone save me from myself, I couldn’t unsee his face. What had happened to me? Why was I suddenly so attracted to him?

  Why?

  I reached around blindly in my mind for walls, old armor, anything to keep me safe from this—from the danger of all the stupid things that happened to my head around cute boys—but nothing was working because he wouldn’t stop looking at me.

  “I was busy,” I said, but the words came out a little weird.

  “Oh,” he said, and sat back. His face was inscrutable. He picked up his menu, his eyes scanning its many options.

  And then, I just, I don’t know. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Why are you hanging out with me?” I said.

  The words just kind of happened. They just came out, breathless and a little angry. I didn’t understand him, didn’t like what was happening to my heart around him, didn’t like that I had no idea what he was thinking. I was confused as hell and it made me feel so off-kilter, off my game, and I just needed to break this thing open and be done with it.

  I couldn’t help it.

  Ocean sat up, put down his menu. He looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean”—I looked at the ceiling, bit my lip—“I mean I don’t understand what’s happening here. Why are you being so nice to me? Why are you following me out of class? Why are you asking to have dinner at my house—”

  “Oh, hey, yeah, did you ask your parents about tha—”

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” I said, cutting him off. I could feel my face getting hot. “What do you want from me?”

  His eyes widened. “I don’t want anything from you.”

  I swallowed, hard. Looked away. “This isn’t normal, Ocean.”

  “What isn’t normal?”

  “This,” I said, gesturing between us. “This. This isn’t normal. Guys like you don’t talk to girls like me.”

  “Girls like you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Girls like me.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Please don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, okay? I’m not an idiot.”

  He stared at me.

  “I just want to know what’s going on,” I said. “I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard to be my friend. I don’t understand why you keep showing up in my life. Do you, like, feel sorry for me or something?”

  “Oh.” He raised his eyebrows. “Wow.”

  “Because if you’re just being nice to me because you feel sorry for me, please don’t.”

  He smiled, a little, and only to himself. “You don’t understand,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “No, I don’t understand. I’m trying to understand and I don’t understand
and it’s freaking me out.”

  He laughed, just once. “Why is it freaking you out?”

  “It just is.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know what?” I shook my head. “Never mind. I think I should go.”

  “Don’t—” He sighed, hard, cutting himself off. “Don’t go.” He mussed his hair, muttered, “Jesus Christ,” under his breath, and finally said, “I just think you seem cool, okay?” He looked at me. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Kind of.”

  “I also think you’re really goddamn beautiful but you just won’t give me a chance to be cool about this, will you?”

  I thought, for certain, that my heart had stopped. I knew, rationally, that such a thing was impossible, but for some reason it felt true.

  The only time anyone had ever called me anything close to beautiful was when I was in eighth grade. I’d overheard someone say it. She was explaining to another kid that she didn’t like me because she thought I was one of those girls who was really pretty and really mean. She’d said it in an unkind, flippant way that made me think she really meant it.

  At the time, it had been the nicest thing anyone had ever said about me. I’d often wondered, since that day, if I really was pretty, but no one but my mother had ever bothered to corroborate her statement.

  And now, here—

  I was stunned.

  “Oh,” was all I managed to say. My face felt like it had been set on fire.

  “Yeah,” he said. I wasn’t looking at him anymore, but I could tell he was smiling. “Do you understand now?”

  “Kind of,” I said.

  And then we ordered pancakes.

  11

  Eleven

  We spent the rest of our IHOP experience talking about nothing in particular. In fact, we changed gears so quickly from serious to superficial that I actually walked out the door wondering if I’d imagined the part where he told me I was beautiful.