That very day I went home, declared my independence, and announced that I wanted to sleep alone that night. My parents welcomed the decision with such enthusiasm that I later wondered whether they had somehow asked the teacher to say those things.

I remember how frightened I was that night, but I refused to accept the disgrace of being a coward. In the darkness, the faint moonlight cast strange, unfamiliar shadows that frightened me and made me regret my decision. But I summoned my courage and stuck to it. From then on, I never slept in my parents’ room again—except when they were away and I wanted to enjoy the luxury of their double bed, which still smelled like them.

The first night I slept alone in my own home, the same thing happened: I was afraid, and once again I overcame the fear.

At first, I would go to my parents’ house for lunch, and for dinner they would bring over whatever my mother had cooked so we could eat together. Then I realized that nothing had really changed except that I was constantly on the road. My mother still complained about the mess in my apartment, but she didn’t say it directly because, after all, this was my home now. After a while, once they had relaxed a little, they settled for sharing one meal with me each day.

They had not the slightest doubt that I would never start bringing questionable people into my life behind their backs. Even when I lived with them, I never accepted invitations from any of my classmates. I really had no friends except Reyhaneh.

I lived mostly in my imagination and among my books. In one sense, the books had made me grow up. They had also made it difficult for me to connect with people my own age and with their entertainments, which seemed empty to me. And, on the other hand, they had cultivated such perfectionism in me that I could not bring myself to finish even a simple task.

So the people around me often hinted that I was more talk than action. And every time I failed at something, I went looking for an even more special pursuit—something extraordinary enough to make up for all my previous failures at once.

My father had always believed I was very intelligent, and that belief had become a burden around my neck. I felt I had to find a profession in which I could stand out. Doing the same thing everyone else did felt beneath me.

That made ordinary office work especially unbearable for someone like me. Even at work, I became so desperate from sitting still that sometimes I would close the office door and pace rapidly for a while. I would climb up onto my desk and chair and climb back down, just to keep myself from going crazy.

So when I told Reyhaneh that day about my decision to become a world traveler and she said, “Everyone hates office jobs,” I sighed at the way she was comparing me to everyone else. I was different from everyone.

I said, “Just promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut and won’t tell my parents anything.”

Even if she had wanted to tell them, she couldn’t. Reyhaneh had been in the United States for about a year, getting her specialty training.