Darius the Great Is Not Okay (Darius the Great, #1)

by Adib Khorram

As if all the worry about my weight didn’t make me feel worse than I already did.

love was an opportunity, not a burden.

I didn’t understand what I had done wrong.

I would never fit in. Not anywhere.

I didn’t really want to die, anyway. I just wanted to slip into a black hole and never come out.

Sometimes you’re just wrong about people.

It sucked being a target all the time.

You can know things without them being said out loud.

She was a replacement. An upgrade. I knew that without anyone saying it out loud.

Darius, we are more alike than I thought...

You can learn things without them being said out loud too.

Sometimes Mom said I was her April Fools’ Joke. I knew—without her saying—that she didn’t realize how bad it made me feel.

It is indeed parents' little comments that hurt like hell.

it’s important for you to know where you come from.”

I was used to being a disappointment to Dad, and being a disappointment to Babou didn’t seem that different. But I hated that he was disappointed in Laleh too, for something she couldn’t change.

The silence between us hung heavy with all the things we couldn’t say. All the things we knew without them being said out loud.

“It’s just really, really nice.” It made me feel like I belonged.

“Everyone wants you here. We have a saying in Farsi. It translates ‘your place was empty.’ We say it when we miss somebody.”

“Your place was empty before. But this is your family. You belong here.”

“It’s just . . . everything I do, he’s unhappy with me. How I cut my hair. What I eat. The backpack I take to school. My job. Everything. He’s always disappointed in me. He’s always trying to change me. To make me do things the way he would do them. To make me act how he would act.”

Same.

Mamou and Babou had been married for fifty-one years. I thought about all the fights they must have had, and all the times they had forgiven each other. I thought about the little secrets they knew about each other that no one else knew.

Her personality was too big and mercurial to be contained in a frail human body.

I loved the quiet. Even if it sometimes made me think of sad things. Like whether anyone would miss me if I was dead.

I didn’t storm off. I made a tactical withdrawal.

I felt so helpless. Sohrab was hurting and there was nothing I could do. Nothing except sit there and be his friend. But maybe that was enough. Because Sohrab knew it was okay to cry in front of me. He knew I wouldn’t tell him not to have feelings.

I wished we could go back to that. To a time when we didn’t have to worry about disappointments and arguments and carefully calibrated intermix ratios.

“Sometimes I can’t help crying. Okay? Sometimes bad shit happens. Sometimes people are mean to me and I cry. Sorry for being such a target. Sorry for disappointing you. Again.”

“Suicide isn’t the only way you can lose someone to depression.”

“You’re okay,” he murmured. “No. I’m not.” “I know.” He rubbed my back up and down. “It’s okay not to be okay.”

I didn’t want to lose him. And he didn’t want to lose me. He just didn’t know how to say it out loud.

Maybe I had never needed it.

“I was hurting. And you were there. And I knew how to make you hurt as bad as me.”

“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”

Maybe I did feel different after all. Maybe something had changed. Maybe it had.