As Siddharth worked on his drawing, Sharon seated herself at the desk next to his and stared. He tried to ignore her, but she wouldn’t take the hint. Eventually, she broke the silence: “That’s cool. Is it a palace?”
“A palace? Nah, it’s just a bunch of lines.”
“Well, it’s beautiful,” said Sharon. “Who taught you how to draw like that?”
“I dunno.” Little bullets of blood pounded inside his chest. “I just figured it out.”
“Well, you’re talented,” said Sharon. “You could be an artist—an architect or something—if you wanted.”
Over the days that followed, they began eating lunch and doing group work together. They began wandering the field behind the playground during outdoor recess, sometimes catching and releasing tiny quarter-sized toads, sometimes sitting on the grass to play Uno or rummy. Sharon knew how to shuffle the cards fast, so that they sounded like fleeing pigeons. Sometimes they just talked. She told him about her parents’ divorce and her mother’s new jobs and boyfriends. She explained that her father could lose his temper, but at heart he was a real softie. Sharon’s father now lived in North Carolina and worked as a truck driver. He had recently bought her a new trumpet for a recital she’d be attending in New York City, at some famous music school Siddharth had never heard of.
Initially, his stomach burned when Sharon divulged so much personal information. He worried that if she told him so much, he might have to tell her what was going on in his own screwed-up world. But Sharon seemed okay with his silence, and he started allowing himself to sit back and get lost in the details of her complicated life. He listened carefully as she told him about her big brother, who knew how to program computers. Sharon said her brother would probably get a job at NASA one day, and Siddharth imagined him to be like Matthew Broderick in War Games. Sharon’s eyes lit up when she spoke about her aunt, a paralegal who lived alone in a Manhattan high-rise. Her aunt attended the ballet and the theater, and Sharon had spent four nights with her over the summer, when her parents were finalizing the divorce. She swore she was going to move in with her aunt on her sixteenth birthday.
Sharon also told him fictional stories, and he liked these more than the stories from her actual life. At first, she just related simple things, like the plot of a movie she had seen or a book she’d recently read, but as time went on, she started inventing her own stories. She told him the tale of a teenager who dropped out of high school to become a musician. The girl worked as a waitress in the Plaza Hotel, though she soon got discovered by a big producer. This producer eventually proposed to her, but the girl chose to remain alone. Siddharth objected to this outcome. He asked, “Why can’t this story have a happy ending?” Sharon explained that being alone can be the best thing in the world—especially for a woman.
When he listened to these adventures, he managed to forget about Mohan Lal and his mother and the fact that he didn’t have friends anymore—except for Sharon. She pushed him to invent some stories of his own, but he shrugged her off every time. He always felt too drained and embarrassed to come up with something. Eventually, she decided that she would be the one to tell the stories, and his job would be to sit down and draw them out.
“What do you mean, draw them out?”
“Duh, it’s called illustration,” said Sharon. “I’ll be the writer and you can illustrate.”
He was resistant in the beginning. Something about this game felt too childish—better suited to girls. But Sharon was persistent, and they soon had a smoothly running system. She told him her stories during lunch, and in the afternoon, while their teacher Miss Kleinberg was babbling about multiplication tables or Pilgrims collaborating with Indians, he secretly began his sketches, finishing them off at his boring after-school program. During after-school, most of the other kids played dodgeball or tetherball, and it was a relief to have something fun to occupy his time.
By the end of fifth grade, Sharon’s stories got even better. As usual, her characters were runaways, musicians, and farmers. But these people started falling in love. They started fooling around. Men sucked on women’s necks, and women licked the earlobes of their boyfriends. In one of her stories, a farmer hooked up with a schoolteacher who had come to buy carrots at his farm stand. Siddharth hoped that this man would bring his hand to the teacher’s breast, but he knew better than to say so out loud.
As Sharon narrated her souped-up stories behind the playground, he sometimes found himself developing an erection, and he had to yank his T-shirt toward his knees on the way back into the brick-faced school. But these boners were nice, and he began looking forward to them. He started spending more time on his illustrations, creating characters who could have gone in real comic books. The men he drew wore old-fashioned hats and trench coats, like the actors in his father’s black-and-white movies, and the women had beauty marks, bobbed hair, and tight-fitting tops. His mother had once taught him how to make an object seem more spherical, by smudging pencil marks with his finger, and he found that this technique could make a woman’s chest leap off the page.
* * *
The following year, Sharon Nagorski wasn’t in his sixth grade class, and he was both relieved and disappointed. He was relieved because some of the other kids had dubbed him a loser just for being friends with her. But he also knew Sharon was his only real friend at Deer Run Elementary. Without her sitting next to him, his school days would be long and lonely. At least they would still have lunch together. He had Sharon at lunch, and he had her at recess too.
During recess, the pair normally sat as far away from the other kids as possible. On a crisp and cloudy Monday in late September, however, they opted for a small patch of sun that was a mere fifty feet from the baseball diamond, where Luca Peroti and his notorious posse were playing kickball. The ground was moist after a day of hard rain, so Siddharth tore out a few pages from his sketchpad for them to sit on.
Sharon was telling him a story about two kids who had run away from home and were sleeping in the stalls of the New York Public Library bathroom. These kids climbed atop the toilets to conceal their legs when the guards came by early in the morning. They made friends with strangers, who sometimes bought them donuts from a snack bar, or cups of hot chocolate with little marshmallows.
“So these kids,” asked Siddharth, “are they, like, boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“They’re brother and sister,” said Sharon. “Are you even listening?”
He stopped sketching and stared at his overweight sixth grade teacher, Mr. Latella, who was chatting with the principal. Mr. Latella had a whistle around his neck and a short-sleeve shirt despite the unseasonably cool air. “But do they meet anybody?” he asked Sharon. “I mean, maybe one of them is fooling around with a librarian?”
She glared at him. “Do you want me to stop, Siddharth?”
“Chill,” he said, avoiding her light-blue eyes. “Keep going.”
As she recommenced her tale, he placed his sketchpad on the ground and leaned back, propping himself up with his palms. He stared at the slender oak trees that surrounded the playground; their tall tips were starting to yellow. A group of girls and boys was playing tag, and he was envious of how often they got to touch each other. The kickball boys seemed to be having the most fun. Eddie Benson, the blond-haired pitcher, was laughing hard at Luca, who was at third base and miming some sort of an animal, possibly an orangutan.
He knew that if Eric Connor or Arjun were in his grade, they would be friends with Luca Peroti and Eddie Benson. But he was stuck with Sharon. A couple of weeks earlier, Luca had called her a ho, probably because of the short shorts she was wearing. All the girls had been wearing short shorts, but for some reason Luca only picked on Sharon. Sometimes Siddharth wished he could tell Sharon to leave him alone. But he knew she was only partly to blame for his social situation. The real problem was him. The real problem was his personality. It was his defective personality that made Mohan Lal sad all the time. It was his defective personality
that had made Arjun move so far away from home.
Arjun was now a freshman at the University of Michigan. He claimed he had chosen Michigan because they were offering him a huge scholarship. He said he couldn’t turn down all that money now that the family had only one income to rely on. Siddharth believed this on most days, but sometimes he had the feeling that Arjun was lying. In some moments, he thought Arjun had chosen Michigan because he needed to get away from them. Two days before leaving for college, Arjun had said, “I need to move forward, Siddharth. But Dad—he doesn’t want to. What about you? What do you want? I’m not convinced you’re committed to your own happiness.”
Some withering yellow leaves wafted by his feet. They crackled when he stepped on them. Sharon kept on telling her story, but he wasn’t paying her much attention. He tried thinking more positive thoughts, just as Arjun had instructed. He thought about his father, who had seemed a little happier lately. Mohan Lal was waking up earlier. He had begun cooking decent things once or twice a week—lasagnas and his famous tacos—just as he had promised while Siddharth was sobbing on the endless car ride home from Michigan. A few weeks earlier, Mohan Lal had signed a book contract with Walton Publishers. They had read one of his articles on ethics in marketing and commissioned him to write a textbook. Since then, he was still drinking Scotch every night, but a pale yellow glass, not two amber ones. Since then, he had even resumed calling old friends in California and Oklahoma. He complained to them about the bastards in the Congress Party, about the idiocy of the Gulf War. The only person he wouldn’t speak to was Barry Uncle. Siddharth still couldn’t decide whether this boycott of Barry Uncle was a good thing or a bad one.
Eddie Benson started hollering on the kickball field, which snapped Siddharth out of his trance. “We gotta live one!” Eddie motioned for his fielders to back up. “Dave’s a shrimp, but he can kick like a beast!” Eddie rolled the ruby-red kickball toward home plate, where David Marcus was standing poised. David swung his leg back and made contact, and the ball soared toward third base, where Luca Peroti was standing. It flew over Luca’s head and bounced in the outfield. Then it rolled by Siddharth and Sharon.
“Great,” said Sharon.
Luca charged toward the ball, right in their direction. “Yo, you blind?” he yelled. “Grab that shit!”
Siddharth’s heart was thumping, and his mouth was suddenly parched. He sprang up and jogged toward the ball, then bent down to scoop it up. By the time he got back to Sharon, Luca’s large frame was casting a shadow over their spot.
“What’s up, ladies?” said Luca. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and nylon soccer shorts, his boxers sticking out from underneath them. “Planning the wedding, are we?”
“You’re hilarious, Luca,” said Sharon.
Luca smiled, bouncing a hand off his spiky hair. “A nerd and a loser—it’s a match made in heaven.” He peered at Siddharth. “Kid, you’re giving me that look again. You wanna bang me or something?”
Siddharth tossed him the ball, hoping Mr. Latella would blow the whistle and end recess early.
“Nice throw,” said Luca.
He wasn’t sure if Luca was being sarcastic or actually paying him a compliment.
The kids on the baseball diamond emitted a series of shouts and whoops, but Luca just stood there smiling.
“They’re waiting for you,” said Sharon.
Luca started shaking his head, then reached down and lunged for Siddharth’s sketchpad.
Sharon leaped to her feet. “Put it down, Luca. Give it back.”
Siddharth tried to move, but his legs were frozen. Luca held the sketchpad over his head. Sharon jumped for it but couldn’t reach. She kept on hopping, and Luca dodged her hands.
“I’d stay back if I were you,” said Luca. “You’re gonna wanna stay back.” He started thumbing through the pages, and his smile reappeared. Siddharth caught a glimpse of his multicolored braces.
Luca said, “Damn, shit isn’t bad.”
“That doesn’t belong to you,” said Sharon.
Luca held one of Siddharth’s sketches close to his face. “Nagorski, I always knew you had it in you. I mean, this stuff is kinda kinky. This is kinda hot!”
Siddharth glanced down at his beat-up Nikes, unsure of what to do. Thankfully, Mr. Latella blew his whistle. Luca chucked the sketchpad to the ground and ran toward the baseball diamond, where he was greeted with shrieks and high fives. Siddharth and Sharon lined up by the brick wall in preparation to return to class.
“Jesus Christ, Siddharth,” said Sharon.
“What?” he said defensively.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
He scoffed. “What was I supposed to say?”
“You could’ve stood up for us. You could’ve told him they were yours.”
* * *
As Siddharth rode the bus home, it started pouring again. That’s the way September had been—days of rain with only glimpses of sunshine. The shouting and laughter of the other kids ricocheted against the vehicle’s metal walls, but he was happy to be alone. He hugged his arms and pressed his knees into the veins of the vinyl seat in front of him. He was worried about what would happen if Luca told everybody about the drawings. Being a nobody was one thing; being a freak was an entirely different story. At least it was a Monday, and his father would be home. At least he didn’t have to stay at his stupid after-school program, where he had too much time to think bad thoughts.
Soon he was the last one left on the bus, which was barreling toward the blooming cornfields of Miller Farm, with its dilapidated barns and rickety farmhouses. Sharon had lived in one of these houses before her parents’ divorce. Siddharth’s mother used to say that Miller Farm milk was overpriced, but she’d gone there with an easel and canvas a couple of times. He wondered if Sharon’s mother had ever talked with her while she was painting. The bus driver took a left from Miller Avenue onto New England Lane, and Siddharth looked forward to hugging his father and watching some television.
Now they were back in his own neighborhood, where he had lived ever since he was a baby. He knew almost everyone here—the D’Angelos, who lived in a gray Cape Cod and owned a used-car lot, and Mr. Iverson, who rode a Harley and had fought in Vietnam. Mr. Roderick Connor, Timmy and Eric’s dad, was a Korean War vet. He lived in the neocolonial right behind the Aroras. Arjun had forced Siddharth to hang out with the Connor boys last fall, but they always ended up doing something that made him feel bad. Timmy once said, “I’m hungry. Maybe we could have those pizza bagels that your mom—I mean your parents—used to make.” Siddharth didn’t mind this slip-up; it was the way Timmy acted afterward that bothered him. He got all awkward and sweet, and even let him win at checkers.
The bus squeaked to a stop at the top of his street. He hoped his father would be waiting for him so that he wouldn’t get drenched on the walk home. The bus driver grunted goodbye, and he stepped out onto the road. All he encountered was a soup of mud and leaves by the sewer grate. A drenched squirrel was cowering on the horizontal branch of a dogwood. Siddharth pulled his hooded Michigan sweatshirt over his head. He loved this sweatshirt. Though he loathed sports, he obsessed over anything involving his brother’s Michigan Wolverines. He’d started watching Michigan football games on Sunday, just so that he could discuss Desmond Howard’s performance on the phone with Arjun. He plodded down the hill, weaving through an obstacle course of earthworms. He was relieved to see Mohan Lal’s vehicle parked in front of the house, the new Dodge minivan that they had bought to deliver Arjun to college.
The Aroras had a four-bedroom, single-story ranch with robin-blue shutters and stained wooden shingles on its exterior walls. The house had small, dark rooms, but his mother had tried to spruce the place up over the years. She’d hired a contractor to install a skylight in the family room and brand-new appliances in the kitchen. She had Mohan Lal and Barry Uncle get rid of the acrylic paneling that lined the corridors. Siddharth had been excited about her plans to tear down the wa
ll between the screened-in porch and the family room. He’d gone with her to look at new carpeting and light fixtures, but then the accident happened.
He pushed open the front door and found that the family room was empty. With his backpack still on, he scurried through the kitchen, passing the laundry room and the guest room to get to his father’s office. Ever since Mohan Lal had signed the contract with Walton, he was always in there. Siddharth sometimes woke up in the morning to find his father awake in his office from the night before, typing with two fingers on his new computer, or babbling about Maslow into his microcassette recorder. When Siddharth complained about the situation to his brother, Arjun told him to be more supportive. “You’re gonna have to keep Dad on track. Mohan Lal is a lazy man, so you’re gonna have to help him focus.”
He pushed open the office door, but the room was empty. He scrutinized his father’s messy desk. Piles of books and papers formed a small city beside the computer. He was relieved to see a coffee mug next to the keyboard, not a whiskey glass. He picked up the mug and placed it in the kitchen sink, then ran toward the other end of the house, to his father’s bedroom. Pushing open the door, he saw a mummy-shaped lump on the bed. That lump was Mohan Lal, and he was almost certain that it wasn’t moving—that his father had stopped breathing.
“Dad,” he said. He went up to his father and shook him.
“Son,” said Mohan Lal, his voice scratchy. He coughed, then propped himself up. “Welcome home, son.”
Siddharth was relieved, but irritated. “It’s the middle of the afternoon, Dad.”
“Your father was up late working last night. He needs to catch up on his sleep.”
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