Page 3 of Heavensent & Hellbent

I scanned the room; Ehsan wasn’t here. Dad leaned againstthe counter, cup of coffee in hand. His face was flush, and that was when I realized, with absolute disgust, that he was blushing. Gross.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, my words slow and forced, sensing my dad’s eyes on me.

“Oh, wow, your accent!” she exclaimed.

I sighed inwardly. An American girl who’d joined my school in Hull couldn’t understand any of us. She was surprised we didn’t speak in Queen’s English, and it took her a good month to not look at us like we were Martians, just as Penny was staring at me now.

“Yeah, Roxana’s is the strongest in the family,” Dad said, smiling smugly. I wanted to shoot back that Dad had a strong, fresh from the boat, Iranian accent, but that would be pushing his good humor too far.

“Well,” Penny continued. “I came by to say hello and introduce myself. I’m sort of the unofficial community leader around here. I also brought you these.” She reached back for the tray, lifting the cellophane off the top and thrusting the cookies toward me. The scent of sweet caramel filled the space between us.

I reached across for a cookie; they were still warm and soft. I was very much starving at this point. I took my first bite, and it melted in my mouth.

“Penny’s son—Dylan?—is the same age as Ehsan,” Dad said to me. “They’re playing in the living room.”

“Nice,” I said, glad to know where my brother was. I finished the cookie and stepped back, away from Penny, but moreimportantly the cookies. “I’m thinking of heading out soon, to see more of the area.”

Dad raised a bushy eyebrow. “Alone?”

Despite being eighteen years old, he acted like I was eight. No one else’s dad was like this. I could never tell if he was afraid something would happen to me, or if he thought I lacked the ability to navigate myself using Google Maps.

This was one of many reasons I could not wait until autumn. I didn’t know where I’d be going to school yet, but I would find out later in the month. It was either King’s College in London, which I had put down as my first choice, or Brighton University, my backup, if I didn’t make the grades needed for King’s.

Dad’s tight grip was also why I was eighteen years old and had never been on a date, let alone kissed someone. No, that was somewhat unfair; my dad’s strictness was onlypartof the reason I had painfully limited romantic experiences. Nic said I had the tendency to scare the boys in our school, so none of them ever approached me. My natural facial expression was a scowl and black was my favorite color to wear. Still, it was easier—and less embarrassing—to blame my dad for my romantic shortcomings.

“I just want to go around the block to a coffee shop. And I have my phone. I’ll be fine,” I said.

He sighed. “Don’t go far. I need to ring the shipment company about getting our stuff sent. I got an email this morning saying it’ll be delayed for two weeks.”

“Two?”I repeated. I hadn’t quite realized how hot Denver would be, and all the clothes I’d packed with me were wrong. Ihad an affinity for cute clothes, and a good outfit could change the way I felt. And I needed to make myself feel good, but sadly what I had packed with me wouldn’t cut it. All my tops were tight fitting, no doubt encouraging sweat patches, with bottoms that were too heavy for the heat. My online research told me that Denver was mild in summer, but that hadn’t been my experience thus far.

Penny cleared her throat. “Let me know if you need help with anything,” she said. “Moving can be pretty stressful.”

Even though this woman was being objectively kind, something about her overeagerness made me side-eye her. Like…didn’t she have anything better to do than be excessively friendly to a single dad?

“What coffee shop are you going to?” she asked.

“Bloom,” I said.

“That place is all right, but the best coffee is at Cory’s. I think you’ll like it there.”

“Right, okay, well, nice to meet you,” I said to Penny, leaving as they started discussing nearby stores to get household essentials. Penny harped on about how Walmart was dangerous for her, that whenever she went there she left hundreds of dollars lighter. As I went back up the stairs, Penny’s singsong laugh echoed around the hollow walls of a place that I was forced to call home.

—

Our new house was situated down a residential street with homes akin to those I had seen on TV but never in real life. The street was wide, pavement clean. We had the lease for a year, which Dad said would be enough time to find a “forever” home. I didn’t really engage in those conversations, though, because my future was elsewhere.

As I walked by my neighbors’ houses, I had to admit that the novelty of being in the US for the first time was real. I saw garden gnomes, wind chimes, different-colored fences, and well-kept front lawns with blossoming flowers. Many of the houses proudly hung American flags. This level of patriotism made me feel uncomfortable when displayed in England. I saw these kinds of flags as a sign that the person flying it didn’t like people like me and my family. Anyoneforeignor different. Anyone, in short, who wasn’t white and straight.

But on this street, I also noted Puerto Rican and LGBTQ pride flags alongside them, and signs proclaiming that they welcomed everyone, of every ethnicity. I realized that over here, some people saw their houses as being symbolic of who they were.

Back home, we lived on a main road in a large Victorian house, which I had a love-hate relationship with. At times, it was too big, too echoey, especially without Mum there. None of us—except Mum—went up to the attic in our old place. At night, I swore I heard footsteps up there, creaking wood and doors shutting. Mum said houses sometimes made those noises, that her home in Iran was the same.

For all its faults, it was the home we grew up in. It was the home Mum once lived in with us. On the dining table, there were colorful paint splatters from when she worked on her art while having breakfast. In the bathroom, there were stains on the door from when she dyed her gray roots back to black, always making a mess that Dad scolded her about. She measured our heights on the doorframe in the kitchen, awarding us stickers each time we grew an inch. The evidence of our growth spurts, and my mother’s clumsiness, had all since been painted over. The dining table donated to a charity shelter. The evidence that my mother was there, in that house, gone. I couldn’t focus on any of that, though, swallowing the lump in my throat.

My thick dark hair was a sun magnet at the best of times, but especially now. It didn’t necessarily help that my dad was strict about what I wore, too. While he didn’t insist that I wear a hijab, he did impress upon me the importance of dressing “modestly.” This meant the tops of my arms and legs weren’t to be shown, which in turn meant I couldn’t wear short skirts, shorts, or tank tops. So today, I wore a tiered maxi skirt with a T-shirt, both black because black suited me best. Which was fine in Hull, where it was always cold, but here…well, I was to blame for my own suffering during the walk.

I wandered through the residential area until I found a main road. When researching coffee shops, Bloom looked like the one with the coolest aesthetic that also had Wi-Fi. I wanted to call Nic, and I had limited data in this country. I wasn’t sure if it was worth changing my data plan for only six weeks. I could have called her at home, but the thought of staying there wasa hard pass. I needed to be out for as long as possible to keep my sanity. And I definitely wouldn’t be taking Penny’s advice about where to go.