Excerpt from Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I took my pills and gulped down the whole glass of water. Dad stood next to me, watching, like he was worried I was going to choke. He had this look on his face, the same disappointed look he had when I told him about how Fatty Bolger had replaced my bicycle's seat with blue truck nuts.

He was ashamed of me. He was ashamed of us.

Übermensches aren't supposed to need medication.

Dad swallowed his pills dry; his prominent Teutonic Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he did it. And then he turned to me and said, "So, you heard that Babou went to the doctor today?"

He looked down. A Level Three Awkward Silence began to coalesce around us, like interstellar hydrogen pulled together by gravity to form a new nebula.

"Yeah. Um." I swallowed. "For his tumor?" I still felt weird saying the word out loud. Tumor.

Babou had a brain tumor.

Dad glanced at the turbolift door, which was still closed, and then back to me. "His latest tests didn't look good."

"Oh." I had never met Babou in person, only over a computer screen. And he never really talked to me. He spoke English well enough, and what few words I could extract from him were accented but articulate.

He just didn't have much to say to me.

I guess I didn't have much to say to him either. "He's not going to get better, Darius. I'm sorry." I twisted my glass between my hands.

I was sorry too. But not as sorry as I should have been. And I felt kind of terrible for it.

The thing is, my grandfather's presence in my life had been purely photonic up to that point. I didn't know how to be sad about him dying.

Like I said, the well inside me was blocked. "What happens now?"

"Your mom and I talked it over," Dad said. "We're going to Iran."

Excerpted from Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram. Copyright © 2018 by Adib Khorram. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.