Page 5 of Afterglow
Wade shakes his head with a frown.
“She’s moving again?”
Again?
My ears perk.
Indi growls. “Take me off speaker, Landon.”
After a series ofuh-huhsandmmhmsend with a cartoony salute, Landon ends the call.
“Well?” I pry.
“You’re nosy.” Landon sends me a side-eye. “But lucky for you, I like sharing tea.”
The man loves to gossip.
He lowers his head. Wade closes our small circle.
“Apparently, she can’t afford her place anymore. She keeps taking on subleases and downsizing every few months. We offer to help out, but she refuses to borrow money from anyone, including her parents.”
“Well, fuck.” Wade nods. “Thatsucks.”
My heart nearly breaks.
I would’ve never guessed she had any sort of trouble with…anything, really. Everything seems so easy, breezy, and relaxed for her.
Landon sighs. “Alright, I gotta get washed up.”
My shower is anything but relaxing, as I think about Behraz struggling financially. The world is tough enough. I’d get rid of her troubles in a heartbeat if I could. But like I said, she doesn’t know I exist. And I don’t even really know her, right? It’s a crush.
Yeah, a silly crush.
When I get back to my apartment, the loneliness subsides a bit, though I’m completely alone.
My bed is all too inviting. A book on my nightstand tempts me, and I retreat, losing myself in a world where the meek side character musters the courage to fight for the love of his life, ultimately saving himself.
Maybe one day I’ll be able to do the same. Until then, I’ll dream about Behraz Irani.
Chapter 2
The Deepest of Shit
Behraz
May
The inner machinationsof my brain are an enigma.
However, unlike Patrick Star, there are simultaneously multiple things going on and absolutely nothing. No movement forward.
One part visualizes a milk carton toppling over and spilling its contents out, an image from a SpongeBob SquarePants episode that has been etched into my brain forever. Another grapples with a specific article that is currently giving me heartburn.
Professor Doherty’s instructions are always so ambiguous. I think I follow them, right? But she originally stated that cases should be in-text citations. Then later, in person, she said, “No, you do them in footnotes, too.” And I don’t want to rewriggle my footnotes for the cases I put together, because I already put them in text citations. Like, I put them in-text. Everything elseis footnotes. I was supposed to do one statute and at least three cases. I did two—two—statutes andat leastfive cases. On top of the background information and facts, and all of that.
And in the end, I wrote a fucking article, didn’t I? I wrote a publishable article that explored the nuances of journalism, immigration, and cross-border conflict, and I did it pretty neatly. If I were to rate myself, I would say I gave a beautiful performance. And not only that, but this lady also says it has to be fifteen pagesexactly. No more, no less. She says she’ll grade me down if my analysis isn’t perfect. I crashed out about this paper for three days in a row. Isn’t that enough?
This is publishable material, but I’m not going to do shit with it. I’m never going to let this document see the light of day after I hand it over. I don’t know how to feel. I should feel proud or whatever, but,ugh, I feel bad. I’m in this weird, limbo, middle zone because I worked really hard on it. It’s well done. It’s fifteen pages, with almost sixty citations and a really nuanced take on immigration law, but also the ways in which the government tries to delegitimize it by using terrorism. I thought she would like it, but the feedback on my last article was lackluster.
