My Share of Sand (A Calabasas Fable)...Slightly Revised Edition

5-Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon...revised

Sunday, August 28

Darius often wondered what happened to him. Why did it seem he was wired so differently from everyone else. It always felt like everyone else his age was obsessed with getting attention, while some days his fondest desire was just to become invisible. In that case, he should've been happy, because, as the lone boy among the five people carpooling to the Zoroastrian Center in Canoga Park, he was certainly being ignored.

The two Canteenwala sisters sat in front. Anita was seventeen but could pass for twenty-seven. Atria, a year younger, was skinnier and younger-looking, but was the quieter of the pair. In the back row, Shahnaz Engineer occupied the driver's side window seat. The oldest at eighteen, she was also the group's glam girl, sporting a cream-colored faux silk blouse, and its most talkative, and loudest member. Those three were involved in a very animated discussion of some TV reality show. In the middle seat was Lily Cabinetmaker, fifteen like Darius, and quiet like him as well. Tiny (four feet, eleven inches) with long, completely straight hair and glasses, and a very basic t-shirt/jean outfit, she appeared every bit the studious teen, and was busy browsing something on her phone.

This left Darius looking out the passenger-side window. Bored. He turned to look at Lily. She didn't notice. Then he stared off into the distance.

In his imagination, Lily slowly morphed into Templynn. Wearing her cheer outfit, because it's his imagination and why not?

"You don't have church on Sunday, just Sunday School?" he pictured her asking.

"No, we don't need church. We're not Ahura Mazda's servants, we're his assistants. We worship him by doing good things everyday. We just have Sunday School so we don't feel left out on Sundays."

"Cool!" Then Templynn pushed her leg up against his...

Actually, that wasn't Templynn, that was Lily.

It snapped him out of the daydream, and he looked down to see if what he had felt against his skin was what he thought it might be. Indeed, a blue-denimed leg had rested by his knee. But Lily didn't budge. Her thumbs kept flying around the touchscreen as though nothing had happened.

###

Before class could begin, the group of fifteen high school-aged kids had a little ritual to complete. They stood in line inside the California Zoroastrian Center's great hall holding some sweetly-scented sticks of sandalwood, while a painting of Zoroaster and a faravahar (the religion's most common symbol, depicting a bearded man standing amid some birdlike wings) stared down at them from the wall. One at a time, they walked up to a giant metal chalice sitting atop a pedestal, with a fire burning inside. Once they reached the fire, they added the sticks to the fire in a traditional offering. When it was his turn, Darius lightly laid the sticks into the fire piece by piece and watched them smolder a little. Something that was his, even for just a few moments, was now gone forever.

###

Back in the classroom, the chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around Ms. Malabari, their teacher. Malabari was around fifty, but the kids all liked and related well to her. A lot of it was because of her eyes. She had the most charismatic eyes. Round, wide and intense, she could talk about toothpaste and make it seem like she was eagerly imparting some vital secret of the universe. "Turn to page seven."

With that command, the class all flipped the stapled sheets of paper they held in their hands over a few pages. "Lily, could you read that section at the top of the page for us?"

Darius was thrilled that he hadn't been called on, but he wasn't sure how he felt about Lily reading it. Her voice was high-pitched and almost childlike, with a surprising trace of a Southern drawl (she'd been born in Atlanta and her family had only moved to California four years ago), which seemed a bit of a mismatch for the florid literary tones of the reading's source, the Shahnameh, the 10th-century Persian "Book of Kings" that's an important part of Zoroastrian lore.