by HollyBodger
empty stomach, I run my hands under the freezing water and then press them against the skin at the back of my neck. The temperature difference is almost shocking. Why am I so hot lately? It’s the middle of September and it’s barely ten in the morning. It will surely rise another twenty degrees before the end of the day. What will I do then?
When I exit the bathroom, I find Banevi waiting patiently by the door as if I'd specifically ordered him to stay. Another point for him. He reaches for my arm, and while every single part of me wants to move away, I know I cannot. There are eyes on me here—people who expect me to be living the Koyanagar dream I’ve claimed to have achieved. These people expect to see the Poster Girl and her prince and that’s what I must give them.
Holding my elbow tight, Banevi leads me to the box they’ve assigned to Sudasa. It’s the closest one to the left of the stage and has a chandelier much like the ones in the reception area. Sudasa is already seated in the front middle chair with Nani on her left and Mummy on her right. Papa is behind Mummy, which means I have no choice but to sit directly behind Sudasa.
I’m lowering myself into the armchair when I feel a stab in my stomach. I cannot help but wince. The pin I used to fasten the front pleats of my sari has come undone. I remove it from my skin and slip it into my purse. I’ll have to return to the bathroom so I can re-fasten it after the first Test. I cannot have people seeing me in a sari without folds. Worse, in a sari that does not hide the bulge in my stomach. Not before I know for sure.
Glancing over her shoulder, Sudasa rolls her eyes at me as if she thinks I’m annoyed about my view. I’m not at all. I’m actually quite happy to be hidden behind her for once. It’s exhausting always being the center of attention, not that Sudasa would understand. No one put her face on a poster when she was seven years old. No one told an entire country of despondent people to believe in her face, her smile, her future. No one ever made her feel like failing to be perfect would mean failing an entire country.
When Nani hisses at Sudasa to turn around, she slumps into her gold chair like she’s already bored. She doesn’t even perk up when the President takes the stage. I’m tempted to slap her on the side of the head. She has no respect for these Tests. She sees this entire process as something she’s being forced to do, like when Nani tells her to eat more so people don’t think we’re poor. Sudasa may hear the President’s words, but she doesn’t truly believe in Koyanagar and its Tests, which is ridiculous. I didn’t end up with the husband I wanted, but even I still believe. It was my fault—what happened—after all. If I’d played by the rules from the beginning, Shahid may have tried harder on the final day. His second to last Test was a proper table setting and he was raised in a penthouse with four sisters. He should have been able to do that in his sleep. He probably would have had I not told him his win was guaranteed.
Had I not given him a reason not to try.
If anyone is to blame for Sudasa’s attitude toward Koyanagar, it’s Papa, not me. He has probably filled her head with stories of places where girls are not commodities ready to be sold or stolen. He has probably told her stories of his time in England—a land with real princes. I don’t know what the big deal is. I’ve read about some of these princes and they all seem like pompous jerks who want to make all the decisions for everyone. Why would any girl want a boy like that?
The President finishes her speech and then leaves the stage for the Director of today’s Tests. I feel a different kind of illness when she stops in the spotlight. It’s her—the same woman with the half-moon glasses who was in charge on my first day. I laugh. Although I should be shocked, nothing shocks me anymore. When she’d appeared on the stage for my first Test, I’d believed she was randomly selected. They’re supposed to cycle through all the older women in Koyanagar so no one suspects a bias. How wrong I was about that and about everything else. I’d believed the five boys competing for me were randomly selected from the Registry just like the eight governing laws said they would be. I’d thought I was the luckiest girl on Earth when Shahid appeared in the middle of the stage in a dark green kurta that made his eyes glow. It never occurred to me that Nani had put him there. We’d tried so hard to hide our feelings for each other. Our penthouses used to share the same floor so we saw each other all the time. I greeted his sisters and mother, but never said a word to him, not even if we ended up alone in the lift for the entire ride to the fifty-fifth floor. People would have wondered if I’d talked to or even smiled at him. Girls were never to speak to strange boys. Girls like me were never to speak to any boys. I was the role model, the girl all others aspired to be. In appearance, at least.
In my heart, I was flawed. So flawed.
From almost the moment we first met, I could think of nothing but him. I knew I was bound to marry the boy who won my Tests and there was nothing either of us could do about it, but still, I convinced myself there would be no harm in us secretly communicating. I came up with a system which I outlined in the first note I snuck into his schoolbag. He’d hide his message at the far end of the fence that separated our schools. These were to appear on Monday mornings, which gave me an excuse to stroll by the fence at lunch hour. I saw him watching me occasionally. His break was at a different time, but the boys sometimes went outside for physical training. Test training was more like it.
I couldn’t risk returning to the fence more than once a week so I left my notes inside a plant next to the lift on our floor. Mine always appeared on Fridays at the end of the school day. Nani was at State Council then.
Our messages started off as small notes that said things like, “How was your day? Check Good or Bad.” They grew to long letters eventually and stayed that way for nine and a half years. We wrote about school, and our families, and our friends. He’d always wanted to be an artist so he often decorated the margins of his letters like the borders of a sari. They were beautiful—his letters, his words.
Him.
On the Friday before my Tests, I did the hardest thing I’d ever had to do at the time—I wrote him a goodbye letter. I knew I’d be engaged by the following week, and I could not allow myself to betray my fiancé. I was the Poster Girl for Koyanagar. I had to act like I wanted to marry the boy chosen for me even if my heart had already chosen who it wanted.
When I went to my Tests the next Monday and saw Shahid on the stage, I wanted to jump on my chair and yell and scream. I thought my greatest dreams had come true. There were three thousand boys eligible to compete for me. What luck that he would be one of the five chosen! But then I saw the way the Director with the half-moon glasses nodded at Nani. I knew something wasn’t right. Unfortunately, Mummy did too. She glared at Nani and said, “What did you do?”
I pretended I didn’t know what she was talking about. Partially because I didn’t want to admit Nani must have known about my feelings for Shahid, and partially because I didn’t want to admit what it meant if she had truly interfered. Instead, I stared at the stage with the same forced smile I’d perfected over the past decade. I promised myself that I would not share the burden of Nani’s actions. I had not asked her to put Shahid there after all. I had not even told her I knew him, let alone that I loved him. Whether she’d cheated or not was irrelevant. I’d done my duty for my country. I deserved some happiness. I deserved love. I deserved Shahid.
Oh, how wrong I was.
Three
The first seven hours feel like they take seven days. Nani nods off for most of them. Even I miss the two girls after the lunch break. I jolt awake when our box is illuminated, signaling the start of Sudasa's Tests. The contestants make their way onto the stage and I almost burst into laughter. Even a blind person could see that Sudasa’s first contestant is our cousin, Jaldhar. He may be wearing a mask and a cheap, navy kurta, but he still stands out like a rose in a field of weeds. How many boys in Koyanagar can afford a black diamond for their ear? Not many I’d guess.
This is not the only thing that makes him conspicuous, of course. He has a habit of continuou
sly cracking his knuckles like he’s preparing himself for a fight. He also possesses an arrogance unseen in Koyanagar’s boys. His shoulders are always wide, and his chin is always high enough to show that he believes everyone else is below him. We have Nani and Mota Masi to blame for this attitude. He was only five years old when Koyanagar was created, barely old enough to understand what they meant when they told him that, no matter what the new laws said, his future was guaranteed. They said he would never end up at the Wall, never end up as the servant to a girl. They didn’t say why, but it was obvious they’d meant him to marry Sudasa. Nani was constantly pushing them together, trying to create love where like didn’t exist. She had to. Nani’s husband had died when Mummy was barely ten years old and they had been forced to live in a slum. After a few hellish months, Mota Masi had sent them money for a bus, and then she’d given them a room in her apartment in Koyanagar and helped Nani find work. She’d introduced them to the right people—rich and famous people like Papa. She’d changed their lives. Nani owed her a great debt for that. What better repayment than Sudasa?
When Nani points at Jaldhar and says,