Ishita scrunches up her face as if she’s in pain. “Yeah,” she grunts. “I know.”
I want to ask her more, but I doubt Ishita will answer. She looks like she barely wants to be having this conversation with me now.
“Should I … come over after school? We can figure out all the logistics, and—”
“No.” Ishita cuts me off. “I mean … maybe I should come over to yours? You said you’re out to your parents, right?”
“You know we’re just going to talk, right? Figure this out? Not—”
“Just give me your address.” Ishita is already taking her phone out of the pocket of her shirt. She looks up at me expectantly.
I sigh, wondering for a moment if this is worth it. Ishita Dey is not exactly a ball of sunshine. We’re so far from friends that I’m not sure how we’d go about doing this thing together.
I rattle off my address anyway.
This may be the only way to convince everyone that I know who I am, and what I want.
“Ishita Dey is coming over today,” I tell Amma as soon as I dash into the house.” Is that … okay?”
Amma is in the sitting room, tapping away on her phone. She blinks at me slowly with her eyebrows furrowed together. Like she needs a few moments to process the information.
“Ishita … like, Aparna and Dinesh’s daughter?” There’s so much confusion in her voice. I don’t blame her. Ishita has never come to our house without her parents before, and even when she has come here we haven’t exactly chatted it up.
“Yeah, that Ishita,” I say.
“Is this something to do with you avoiding your friends?” Amma asks.
I shake my head—maybe a little too quickly—and say, “We’re just … hanging out.” I shrug nonchalantly, even though I know that Amma can see right through me. She knows I’m lying.
She doesn’t press me though. Just shrugs and asks, “She’ll be having dinner?”
“I’m not sure …”
“She’ll have dinner.” Amma’s voice is firm. “I’ll call Aparna and tell her.”
“Okay, okay.” The thing about Bengalis is that they don’t let you leave their house without having some kind of food. Visiting someone and not eating is basically one of the biggest insults to Bengalis.
When I get upstairs, my room is a mess. I haven’t cleaned it in a whole week, and in that time the floor has accumulated enough dirty laundry to fill up the washing machine twice over. My desk has a pile of unreturned and unread library books that is half as tall as me. And my dressing table has so many bottles and vials and brushes that I could probably start my own beauty line.
I pile all the clothes into my wardrobe and shove the books and makeup into whatever drawers have remaining space. The room smells a little funky—probably from all the dirty clothes—so I throw open the window before changing out of my uniform.
The doorbell rings just as I pull on my trousers. I rush downstairs, hoping to beat Amma to greeting Ishita. No luck; Ishita is already inside when I get to the door. She’s smiling at Amma, and her smile is so awkward that it looks as if she’s in pain.
“Hey, you made it!” I try not to let on that I’m panting a little from running down the stairs so fast.
Ishita raises an eyebrow. “I did.” I can tell from the pained expression on her face that she’s trying to be nice—even if she’s failing pretty badly at it.
“Well, um. We should get upstairs?” My eyes flicker between Ishita and Amma—because Amma is looking at me with a bemused expression.
“Do you two share any classes?” she asks.
“No!” I say, at the same time that Ishita says, “Yes.”
“I mean …” I shoot Ishita a small glare. “We both do the core subjects … obviously. So … um.”
Amma nods, like what I said actually makes any kind of sense. She turns to Ishita and says, “I called your Ammu and said you’ll be staying over for dinner.”
“Great, thank you, Aunty.” Ishita shoots her another polite smile before following me to the stairs.
“What the hell was that?” she whispers as soon as we’re out of Amma’s earshot.
“What the hell were you doing?” I ask. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed quiet and let me handle it?”
“Um, maybe because you looked like a deer in the fucking headlights. We do have a class together. Biology, remember?”
I stop at the top of the stairs, fixing her with a glare. “No cursing at my house, Ishita.”
She rolls her eyes. “You can’t be serious.”
“If I wasn’t serious I wouldn’t say it, would I?”
For a moment I think she’s going to fight me on it. Instead, she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and says, “Fine. No cursing in your house.”
I smile. I really hadn’t expected to her to give in that easily. This is Ishita Dey after all.
I lead her into my room and she takes it in with narrowed eyes. Even with everything hidden away from her eyes, I can almost see her bite back a comment.
“Your room is … nice.” She says it like it’s a struggle to say the word nice.
“Thanks… . you can sit.”
While she perches on the bed like she really doesn’t want to touch anything, I take the comfy chair by my desk, facing her.
“So.”
“So.” She holds my gaze for a long moment, before turning away and saying, “First of all, you have to tell your mom that we’re together.”
“What?” Lying to Amma is the last thing I want to do, and I’ve already done it way too much these past few days.
“Otherwise you’re going to give everything away,” Ishita says. “You were a disaster down there. Your mom definitely suspects something is up. Just easier to say that we’re dating, right?”
Would Amma even believe that? She knows me better than anyone else in the world and … Ishita is not exactly my type. Though I guess Amma doesn’t know that. There have never been any girls before.
“You weren’t much better, you know.” I shoot back at Ishita. “You shouldn’t have even rung the bell. You could have just texted me so I could open the door—”
“You didn’t even give me your number,” she points out. And I know it’s true but the fact that I’m even partially at fault for the disaster downstairs makes me even more annoyed at her.
“Well, you didn’t ask for it.” My voice comes out more like a snarl than anything else. It even takes me aback. I haven’t heard that kind of anger in my voice—or even felt this constant itch of irritation—since before Polash left for London.
Ishita raises her palms up in front of her, like she’s surrendering. “This is not how couples act, just so you know.”
“Because you know a lot about what couples act like?” The words are out of my mouth before I can take them back.
She observes me with narrowed eyes for a moment before shaking her head and standing up. “Okay, this is obviously a waste of time. I should just go home and find someone else to fake date. I didn’t commit myself to anyone yet.”
There’s a sinking feeling in my chest and it grows wider and wider with every step she takes. And she’s taking mighty slow steps like she doesn’t really want to leave.
I imagine Aisling’s smug face at lunch today, and Dee’s words from Friday echo in my head. That helps me swallow down my anger.
“I’m sorry.” Ishita halts in her tracks. I bite my lip, wishing that I didn’t have to do this. “I … need you. More than you need me, I guess.”
Ishita turns to face me. There’s a flash of something in her eyes that I can’t quite make out. “I’m sorry too.” The words take me aback. Ishita Dey apologizing instead of gloating in her win? “We both need each other to make this work. So … we should both try to make this work. Right?”
I hold her gaze for a moment before taking a deep breath and nodding. “Right. Sorry. I should have given you my number.”
“You should have.” There’s a hint of smugness in Ish
ita’s voice as she sits down. There’s the Ishita I know.
“So … I guess I can lie to Amma,” I say. It’ll be hard but Amma will definitely figure out something is up if I don’t. “But … then you’ll be outed to my parents. And to the school. Are you okay with that?”
Ishita shrugs. “It’s not being outed if I out myself, you know. As long as it doesn’t get back to my parents—and it won’t—I’m good.”
“Okay … so … you should probably call me Maira from now on. It’s what my friends call me. Nobody calls me Humaira.”
“I’m not calling you that,” Ishita scoffs. “That’s a bastardization of your name. Why do you let them call you that?”
“It’s difficult to say Humaira.”
“It’s literally one extra syllable. Plus, they say Maira wrong. They say it like Máire, which is a different name!”
I can’t help the smile that bubbles up inside me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get worked up over a name before.
“Look … you can’t keep calling me Humaira. It’s … weird.”
I insist. “Nobody calls me that. Maybe you should call me Hani.”
“Fine,” Ishita says like that’s the last thing she wants to call me. “Then, I guess … you should call me Ishu.”
“Cute.” My smile widens. Ishita is definitely not an Ishu.
“Shut the fuck up.” Ishita rolls her eyes, but I can see the corners of her lips twitching with her attempts to bite back a smile. “It’s what my family calls me, okay?”
“I said no cursing.”
“Sorry.” Again, the apology. Those words out of Ishita’s—Ishu’s—mouth sound blasphemous. I stifle my surprise for it as fast as I can. If I say anything, she’ll probably take it back. So I just change the subject.
“If you want to be Head Girl, you’ll have to do stuff you probably won’t want to do, you know. School events, parties, talking to people, being … a pleasant human being.”
She frowns but nods. “Yeah. I can do it. I was pleasant to your mom downstairs.”
“You looked like you were constipated,” I say. “I don’t think anybody wants a constipated Head Girl.”
“My constipation wouldn’t stop me from doing a good job so that’s just fucking—shit—fuck.” She clamps her hand over her mouth, her eyes widening as she looks at me. She looks so adorably terrified—in the most un-Ishita way I’ve ever seen in my whole life—that I can’t help but burst into a fit of laughter.
A moment later, Ishita joins me until our laughter melds together into one large guffaw.
If someone had told me Ishita Dey and I would be laughing our asses off in my bedroom today, I would have never believed them in a billion years.
chapter nine
hani
AFTER OUR LAUGHTER DIES DOWN, ISHITA—ISHU—and I settle down into a strange silence. It’s not exactly awkward, but it’s not comfortable either.
I grab hold of the laptop on the top shelf of my desk and open it up. If we’re going to do this, we need to do it properly.
I sign into my Google Docs and create a brand new document. Untitled Document glares up at me brightly from the screen.
I turn to find Ishu looking at me with a question mark on her face.
“If we write down our lies, then we won’t get caught,” I explain. I’ve never really lied to Amma or Abba, and I don’t really want to start lying to them now, but I guess I don’t really have a choice. So if I’m going to lie, I might as well make sure I’m doing it well.
I type Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating into the title space, stifling a grin of satisfaction at having come up with that all by myself.
“So … how did it start?” I ask.
“What?”
“You know …” I turn to her slowly. “How did we start … dating?”
Ishu shrugs. “Is it anyone’s business?”
I heave a sigh. I should have known Ishu would be like this. “You can answer people like that,” I say. “I can’t. That’ll just come off as defensive.” Not everyone is as abrasive as you, Ishu, I want to say, but I keep that little thought to myself.
“Make something up. I’ll go along with it.”
A prickle of annoyance crawls up my skin at her nonchalance. I narrow my eyes. “You said we both need to make this work, Is hi—Ishu.”
I can almost see her stifle a sigh of her own. She shifts, the bed creaking under her weight. “Maybe … we started hanging out during one of the Bengali dawats? They’ll be so confused at the concept of a dawat that they probably won’t even ask any more questions.”
I smile, thinking back to Aisling and Dee’s confusion about Bengali parties just the other day. If I had mentioned the word dawat to them, I’m not sure how they would have reacted—with even more confusion, I’m pretty sure.
I turn back to my laptop and the blank white page in front of me.
Started dating: after hanging out together at Bengali dawats.
I frown at the sentence for a moment, before turning back to Ishu. “How long have we been together?”
Ishu scrunches up her face a little, like this is the last question she wants to answer. I have to bite back a smile. At school, Ishu always seems so controlled. Completely put together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her … let go. Ever seen her at ease. I’ve definitely never seen her scrunch up her face like this before.
“It can’t be for very long …” she finally says slowly. “Because … I mean, that would be suspicious, right?”
“Right …”
Started dating 2 weeks ago: after hanging out together at Bengali dawats.
“We should have some rules,” I say. I type RULES in big bold letters.
“What kind of rules, exactly?”
“Like … we can’t tell anyone the truth,” I say, meeting her gaze with my own. “Not our parents, not our best friends. Nobody.”
Ishu shrugs. “It’s not like I have anyone to tell anyway.”
RULES:
1. Hani and Ishu can’t tell anyone the truth about their plans.
2.
Almost as soon as I stop typing, Ishu clears her throat and says, “We need boundaries.”
“What kind of boundaries?”
“Well … how long is our relationship going to last? When will we break up? Who breaks up with who?”
I shake my head because it should be obvious, right? “We break up when our goal is complete. When you become Head Girl and … Aisling and Dee understand that I am who I am.”
Ishu is watching me, almost unblinking. There’s something uncomfortable in her scrutiny. I can almost feel the judgment through her gaze. I shift around in my chair, avoiding her stare. I expect her to say something condescending or mean about what I’ve just said.
But she finally just says, “Okay. That makes sense, I guess. I should break up with you, though.”
I scoff, turning to her with narrowed eyes. “What? Why?”
“Because if I break up with you then people will think I’m cool. Plus, then your friends will feel sorry for you.”
I can only blink at Ishu for a moment. “Oh. I guess … that makes sense too.”
RULES:
1. Hani and Ishu can’t tell anyone the truth about their plans.
2. Hani and Ishu will break up when Ishu is Head Girl and …
I pause, not sure how to phrase the last part of the sentence.
2. Hani and Ishu will break up when Ishu is Head Girl and Hani’s friends accept her for who she is.
An inexplicable lump is forming in my throat, but I gulp it down and keep typing.
3. Ishu will break up with Hani when their goals are completed.
“Okay.” I spin my chair around all the way this time to look at Ishu. “Anything else?”
Ishu seems to consider the question for a moment. She looks down at the baby blue duvet on the bed, picking lint off of it with her fingers. “You know, I’ve never dated anyone before.”
If I didn’t k
now any better, I would think Ishu actually sounded … insecure? She suddenly seems smaller—like admitting that little thing about her has somehow diluted the … intensity of her. Even though I assumed she had never dated anyone before, and I know she knows I assumed that.
“It’s not a big deal,” I say. “Dating is like …” I lean back in my chair and stare up at my ceiling as if I have spent an eternity studying the intricacies of dating. Really I’ve been in one relationship with a boy who was kind of horrible. And I went on a few dates after which that amounted to absolutely nothing. “It’s … not a big deal. When you’re dating someone for real, I mean. It’s just about having fun, right? About being with someone who makes you happy.”
“What if I do something wrong?” From the little ridge that appears on Ishu’s forehead, I know that she’s not joking. She’s actually worried about getting dating wrong. I’m not sure if that’s possible.
“You won’t get it wrong,” I reassure her. “That’s why we have this to help us.” I point to the document open on my laptop. “To help us get everything right.”
I lean toward the laptop and click a few buttons until I can type in Ishu’s e-mail address.
I can hear the tinny beep of Ishu’s phone. She slips it out of her pocket and snorts. “Cute title. Not obvious at all.”
I roll my eyes and open my mouth to retort, but Amma’s voice floating up the stairs interrupts my thoughts completely.
“Hani! Bring Ishita down to eat dinner!”
“Okay, coming!” I call back, hoping she can hear me through the closed door.
I turn back to Ishu. “You don’t speak Sylheti, do you?”
Ishu shakes her head. “I understood a little, though. Food, right?”
I smile, nodding, a strangely pleasant feeling bubbling up in my stomach that I don’t quite understand.
“You’re going to tell your mom, right?” Ishu says, as she stands from where she was sitting on my bed.
“Tell her …”
“That we’re dating,” Ishu says, like that should be obvious.
“Now?” My voice sounds a little more shrill than I had anticipated.
“When else?”
“I’ll tell her … later. After you’re gone.”
Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating Page 5