School is an hour away, but I'm awake too early to care.

“Oh,” my aunt says when I dart through the door at half past six. Her hair is undone and messy, her eyes are bleary. “I was going to tell you to wake up, but it looks like you beat me.” She laughs a little, tiredly. “The high schoolers carpool out to the city.”

“What about the younger kids?” I'd seen them running around. I slip off my running shoes, leaving them by the door, and shed my sweatshirt.

My aunt yawns. “They're home schooled,” she replies. “We all have something to teach our children. The neighbour in the green house? Imogen? She used to be an astrophysicist. And Zen's mother was a chemistry teacher at a prestigious university in Iran, so she teaches them that and Farsi.”

“Iran?” We could go to war with Iran at any moment. “And she lives here?”

My aunt nods, stumbling through the kitchen. “Yeah. She moved here four summers ago. No. Maybe five. It might have been more. It's hard for me to remember now.”

“You're not that old.”

“I mean at six in the morning. I can't remember the last time I got up at six in the morning.” She shakes her head. “I've got terrible insomnia. Don't get to sleep until three, four in the morning. Put some water on for me, will you boy?” She drags a sack of oats out of one of the cupboards. Her hands shake. She looks small.

“So will I be carpooling with the others?”

She nods. “Yeah...Zen and Lily almost always drive together, you'll probably go with them since I think there's another seat in that car.” Aunt Rhiannon smiles sleepily. I put water on the stove. “You're the seventh person that goes out to the high school from here. I don't know why you didn't want to meet any of the others.”

“I'll meet them soon enough,” I reply. Hippies and terrorists, the whole lot of them. I shiver. The water is boiling on the stove. “So Zen's from Iran too?”

Aunt Rhiannon screws up her face in thought, making the lines on her sun-worn face stand out. “Um...I think so? I know he spent a lot of his childhood there, but he might have been born in the states.” Her hands work through her hair, pulling it around her face. “Oh. Water's boiling. Make oatmeal. Why do you ask?”

I have no idea how to make oatmeal. “Just wondering. Iran and the United States have a long history of tumultuous relations.”

Aunt Rhiannon raises an eyebrow at me. “But Zen's not the government of Iran,” she points out. “And you're not a representative of the United States. What a weird thing to say, Noah.” She shakes her head and points at the pot. “You do know how to make oatmeal, don't you?”

Mutely, I shake my head.

“Boy, I don't know what goes on in that head of yours, but you have clearly been deprived of something.”

Lily is a pretty girl with bright red hair and sharp blue eyes.

“So you're Noah!” she exclaims when Aunt Rhiannon shuffles me out of the house and into the yard. “Oh, we've heard so much about you, but you're so elusive we thought maybe Zen made you up. Which I wouldn't put past him, except that Rhiannon mentioned you. Rhiannon doesn't make things up quite like that.”

I wouldn't put it past my aunt to make up something like that.

Zen, arms crossed, is shaking his head. “Come on you guys, I don't want to be late. Who knows how bad traffic on the highway might be.” He slides into his car: a beat-up Sedan from the eighties, paint keyed on the doors and chipped with age. He has bumper stickers with cute little hippies slogans.

Rolling her eyes, Lily motions for me to follow her. “Zen can be moody,” she informs me. “He's just sour about school.”

“Am not,” he protests weakly. “Get in, be quiet. I have a headache.”

“Of course you do.” Lily rubs his arm and pats his wrist. “Just drive, Shirazi.”

The drive out of the commune is largely silent. In the morning, the trees are alight with shades of gold and copper. The leaves twitch and fall when the noisy car barrels by them. The road is unpaved, and Lily squeals each time we run over a bump.

“Can you stop that?” Zen asks with terse politeness. Maybe he really does have a headache.

Lily sticks out her tongue, leaning into the front seat. “Kill joy,” she accuses. I can feel her thin, white hand resting on my shoulder. Her palm is warm. “I'll be quiet once we get out of that dead zone and you can score us some radio.”

It's a lie. Once Zen gets the radio, Lily sings along to each and every song on the 80s station. I like her voice: it's clear, on-key, and smooth. I like it more than Zen does, because he is scowling. “Are you done?” he asks during a commercial break.

“Buy Dove Soap,” Lily replies before sticking out her tongue again. “You're lucky it's a commercial.”

I wonder if they're dating, because she leans forward and kisses his cheek. He swats her away, eyes still on the road. “You're so sweet, Lily, stay in the back seat.” He checks twice before merging onto the highway. “So do you have your schedule, Noah?”

I've almost forgotten I'm in the car too. “Oh. Yeah.” I fish it out of my pocket and check it. “I have English first.”

Lily giggles. “Oh, so you'll have it with Zen. The teacher has such a crush on him, she'll let you two sit next to each other.”

“No, it's okay...” I try to say, but Lily isn't fixed on me. Instead she's staring at Zen, both eyes fixed on the profile of his face. She's leaned between us, and I catch sight of her face in the reflection of the driver's window. Her eyes are narrowed, only slightly concerned.

“What else do you have?” she asks a moment later. Her mirror image meets my eyes.

I look away. “English, I said already. Then AP World History, some art class labelled 'religions' which makes no sense because that's not art, pre-calc, chemistry, and...Japanese? I don't speak Japanese. I have a free period and PE.”

Lily grins. “Oh? What period is Japanese?”

“Fourth,” I say. “On...my omega day?” I stare at the schedule.

“Oh!” Lily grins. “Days alternate. You have four periods a day. It's to confuse you. Anyway, I am a teacher's assistant in fourth period Japanese I, so we'll be seeing lots of each other.”
I look over at Zen.

“I got credit for proficiency in Farsi,” he says. “Don't even look at me like that. Be jealous I'm from the Middle East.”

Lily is in my World History class. The entire time she keeps leaning over to talk to me, giggling about something the teacher has said and passing me notes on little purple post its written in gold glitter pen. She dots her Is with tiny stars. When the bell rings she grabs me by the hand and drags me down the hallways towards the back field.

“What about lunch?” I demand when she comes to a halt.

“You don't expect us to eat lunch here,” she drawls, raising an eyebrow. “Oh. You did. Wow. That's really funny. Nothing at school is good. We're going out with Zen and some of the others. I can introduce you to all of them.” She grabs me by the hand and, still jumping up and down, waves at a purple car I recognize from the commune lot.

The van is not really meant to hold eight.

“Hey!” cries the driver. I recognize her from the tomato fields. She looks an awful lot like Lily, the same red hair and the same blue eyes. She looks a little more low key though. “You're Noah. Anti-social much?”

I shrug. “Oh. Sometimes.”

“All the time,” Lily says. “He doesn't even come out. We stopped by over the weekend and he wouldn't come out.”

“I know,” says the driver, squeezing out of the parking lot. “You complained through all of dinner.” She gets onto the road and glances over her shoulder at me. She'll probably get us killed. “Anyway, this is the carpool gang. Introductions.”

“You know us!” Lily bubbles, gesturing at herself and Zen. “So we don't need any.”

The driver rolls her eyes. “Orchid. Lily is my twin sister.”

“Roman,” says the boy in the passenger seat. He's got blonde hair. He looks like he might be normal.

“Sparkle!” cries the girl squished in the back seat. “That's my name.” Her parents were probably on acid, and I wouldn't be surprised if she is too. I will ignore her.

The Asian girl squished against Sparkle rolls her eyes. “Name's Kiki,” she offers, thrusting out her hand. I shake it.

“And I'm Sativa,” finishes the last girl in the back row. “Like Cannabis sativa. Marijuana.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me. She looks like a stoner. I don't really want to talk to her.

“Or Cucumis sativus,” Kiki points out dryly. “Cucumber.”

Sativa sticks out her tongue.

“So where are we going?” I ask, when the car is mostly quiet. Roman and Orchid are still talking.

“Natural food store,” says Orchid.

Typical.

“She's shitting,” Roman pipes up, shaking his head. “We're headed to Taco Bell. We eat there a lot. It's cheap.” He grins at me and then rolls his eyes. “Loosen up, Soldier Boy.”

“I have that song on CD!” Lily cries. “We should play it.” She begins rifling through the glove compartment, looking for her CD. Her red hair falls in her face, her back curves. I stare at the kinks in her spine. “Here it is!”

“Vetoed,” Orchid says.

Lily doesn't argue.

“Soldier Boy,” Zen echoes after a moment. “I kind of like the nickname.”

I don't say anything else the rest of the drive.

I sit outside on Aunt Rhiannon's porch when the sun is dangerously close to setting. It lingers on the edge of the horizon, making everything glow a reddish colour.

“Hey.”

My head snaps around to see Zen crossing the gravel to sit next to me on the porch. “Don't you have your own porch?” I ask, eyeing him suspiciously. I wonder what he wants from me.

“Yeah, but you're not on it,” he points out. He dangles his legs off the edge and peers down. “So how was your first day of school?”

“It was fine.”

“Do you like it more or less than your last school?” In profile, his face glows. I tell myself to stop staring. I don't stop. “That's a silly question, but we didn't talk much in the car. All those other people around.”

“I like other people,” I lie. I want to inch away from him. He makes me uncomfortable.

I'm not a racist, I tell myself. I'm just being wary.

“That's cool.” He eyes his shoes. “Is everything okay? You look a little—”

“Are you a Muslim?” I demand. I didn't mean to say it so loudly.

Zen blinks. “Yeah,” he says. He raises an eyebrow, examining me. I squirm. “Is there some problem with that?”

I look down.

“Whatever. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

Glowering, he jumps off my porch and walks away into the reddish haze.

Edit: Now with less Noah-is-a-racist-twat.

For the record: 'I and the Village' is a painting by Marc Chagall; 'The Nostalgia of the Infinite' was painted by Giorgio de Chirico. Surrealist paintings for you.

So I wanted to thank my reviewers from last time. Now that Noumenon (my last story, for those who didn't wander over from there) is finished, updates will be super fast. Well. Sort of. I'm a college student with a job.

Whatever. Teenage vitality.

Feedback is love.