I shrugged. “I think so. That’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like that. Figures that I suck at it.”
“Hey. You don’t suck at it. You were awesome,” Sahil said, grinning.
I looked up at him. “Even though Hannah wasn’t swayed at all?”
“Pssh. Maybe she gets off on making people feel small. I don’t know. But you’re not small, Twinkle.” His eyes got serious, and my breath caught in my throat as I studied his face.
“Thanks,” I whispered. I knew there had to be people milling all around us, but I didn’t see any of them.
After a pause, Sahil nodded, still smiling. “I’ll meet you by your locker after school.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out—apparently my voice had pulled an Amelia Earhart. So instead, I just watched him walk away, my head all muddled and swimming.
Love,
Twinkle
Tuesday, June 9, post-hike at Red Fox Trail
My room
Dear Ava DuVernay,
Um. Whoa.
More soon. A lot more. But for now—whoa.
Love,
Twinkle
June 9
The Reel Deal Blog
Posted by: Rolls ROYce
I knew it. I just knew it. It wasn’t my imagination. Sparkle likes me. SHE LIKES ME.
Still Tuesday, June 9
Later, still my room
Dear Ava DuVernay,
Okay. I think I can talk about it now. I’m still not even close to being done processing it, but … maybe writing to you will help.
So Sahil and I went off to Red Fox Trail like we’d talked about. He met me at my locker (he was there even before I was—yay!), and we didn’t speak while we drove. The silence was easy; he mainly just played some new music he’d downloaded.
When we got there, Sahil texted Skid and Aaron, but they didn’t respond. So we just began walking, figuring they must be out on the trail, which didn’t have the best reception from all the giant pine trees and stuff. I asked Sahil if he knew what musk thistle looked like so we could keep an eye out for Skid, but he just laughed and said no, he did not.
It was nice. The air was cool and I was perfectly comfortable in my T-shirt and shorts. Then something rumbled.
“Is that thunder?” I asked, frowning up at the sky. Sure enough, these giant black clouds were rolling in, and lightning was glittering in the distance. “We’re pretty far into the trail. I don’t think we can make it back to your car in time.”
“It’s all good,” Sahil said. “We can take cover under the trees.”
I was beginning to panic. Colorado thunderstorms are freakishly fast. There are many things that don’t scare me, but being outside in a lightning storm is not one of them. I have seen way too many charred and splintered husks of trees to be blasé about something like that, let me tell you. “I don’t think so, Sahil.”
“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” Sahil smiled his gentle, calm smile.
“No, you don’t understand,” I said, finding it not a bit calming. “I think standing under a tree is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do in a lightning storm.” The first drops splattered on my skin.
“Serious?” Sahil’s smile faded. “Crap.” The drops turned into streaks of rain. The ssshhhh sound of them hitting the trees intensified.
Another bright flash of lightning split the sky, and right on cue, we both grabbed the other’s hand and began to run just as a huge clap of thunder rumbled the ground under us.
“Um, where are we going, exactly? The car’s too far away, right?” I huffed after a while. I wasn’t even well-endowed, but my boobs hurt from running without a sports bra.
“It is! Let’s just find some other shelter!” Sahil said, shouting over the thunder and deafening rain. “I know that’s at least the right thing to do!”
“Stupid Colorado summer storms!” I yelled back.
“You’re joking.” Sahil glanced at me as we ran. He was barely breathing fast at all, but I felt like I was dying. Well, if you looked at our legs, mine were about half the size of his stilt-like numbers. It was no wonder. “That’s one of my favorite things about this place!”
“Let’s take it down a notch, please,” I panted, holding my side, and Sahil immediately slowed to what for him was a leisurely pace and for me was still a brisk walk. “I like storms when I’m inside and drinking chai and reading a book or watching a movie. Not when I’m apt to be the latest lightning victim. Although I did read once that this guy got zapped by lightning and when he woke up, he could suddenly paint and speak five different languages he couldn’t speak before. That’s the only way this will be okay.”
Sahil laughed and pointed with his free hand. “Hey, a cabin! Perfect!”
I looked at it through the needles of rain and then at Sahil. “Um. Doesn’t that remind you of the cabin in any number of horror movies?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Sahil countered. “Especially wet beggars.”
He had a point there.
The cabin was old and the floor was full of pine needles and the walls were full of spiders’ webs and it smelled like green, sludgy stuff, but at least if we stayed in the center, away from the holes in the roof, we would be dry. And I was fairly sure we were safer in it than out.
Sahil closed the crooked door behind us and blinked in the dim light. I could barely see him. I looked down at myself—and almost died. No. No. I was wearing a white T-shirt … which was now soaked through. My tattered old bra, the one I’d had since eighth grade, was on display. Immediately, I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to act casual.
Sahil was poking around. “Just looking for a lantern or something,” he explained. “It would be nice if we could see.”
“What? Nah,” I said with a flick of my wrist while still keeping my arms locked firmly around my torso. “This is fine. It’s a nice rest for my eyeballs anyway. I mean, they’re always on, you know?”
I thought Sahil was giving me a weird look, but I couldn’t be sure. “Um, okay,” he said, coming to stand with me in the center.
A sudden wind gusted through the single open window (the glass was completely missing), and I shivered.
It didn’t even seem like Sahil thought about it; he just put his arms around me. I froze again, but this time it was a totally different kind of freeze. “Are you cold?” he asked, rubbing his big, warm hands up and down my arms. Goose bumps sprouted immediately.
I tried to think about Neil in that moment. I did. The slight problem was, all I knew about Neil was that he had nice abs and calves. And all I knew about N was that he had questionable poetry skills (though of course I’d never tell him that) and favored an air of mystery. But Sahil? He made me laugh. I looked at things differently because of him. He supported me as an artist. How was Neil supposed to compete with that?
Oops, Sahil had asked me a question. “Um, yep,” I said, my voice all high and squeaky as I tried to remember to breathe. I don’t think he noticed, though, because he didn’t say anything. “I just hope this cabin doesn’t flood. That would be bad.”
“Very bad,” he said softly. “I can’t swim.”
I laughed a little. “You can’t? But Neil’s a swimming superstar.”
Sahil’s hands stilled and then dropped; his body tensed. “Yeah,” he said, his voice hard. “He is, not me.”
I looked up at Sahil. His eyes were glowing in the dim light, a drop of water on his thick eyelashes. The same thick eyelashes I’d always admired on Neil. “What’s that about?”
His face was closed off now. “What?”
I studied him carefully. “You don’t … you don’t like talking about your brother?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped as he looked somewhere over my head. He looked down at me a moment later. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry, though. I didn’t mean to bring that here.”
I shook my head and wrapped my arms around myself, shivering a little. “Don’t be sorry.”
&
nbsp; “It’s just …” He sighed. “I’ve always been compared to him. It probably happens with all siblings, but it’s worse when you’re a twin, I think. And it really sucks when your twin is a rock star and you’re just an average nothing.”
“You’re not an average nothing,” I said vehemently.
He shrugged.
“No, look. Neil’s the kind of person who maybe ends up on the Fortune 500 list by the time he’s thirty. But you’re the kind of person I’d want holding my hand in the hospital if my grandmother was sick. And you tell me, which one’s more meaningful?” As I said the words, I understood how true they were. I’d trust Sahil with anything.
He met my eye and gazed at me for a long moment, his eyes softening bit by bit. “Thanks, T,” he whispered.
Outside, the thunder rumbled and lightning cracked into something. A tree, I think. I reveled in our cleverness at having come in here. Well, I sorta reveled. My brain was pretty tied up with other matters, to be honest. Like how I’d just gotten Sahil’s eyes to soften. How I seemed to be able to get to him just like he got to me. How he was still standing extremely close, and I didn’t know whether that was for warmth or … other reasons.
Smiling, I said in a slightly trembling voice, “I think I just heard a tree get smoked. Aren’t you glad we’re not out there?”
He didn’t return my smile. His eyes were intense, and he was studying my face. “I’m glad I’m here with you,” he said, coming closer.
His body heat was making it hard to think. I was beginning to lose sight of why, exactly, this was a bad idea. I should’ve thought of all the reasons kissing Sahil would be a bad thing, not the least of which is one of Dadi’s maxims: Desire has brought great women to their doom as surely as the Germanic leader Odoacer brought Rome to its knees. (It’s not very pithy—I mean, you couldn’t embroider it on a pillow or anything—but she swears it’s true.)
All I thought about, though, was Sahil’s eyes. How kind and funny and talented he is. How he lets me sit with him at lunch now. And so I leaned in when I should’ve leaned away. And I kissed him.
My first-ever kiss, and it takes place in the middle of a freaking thunderstorm, in a deserted cabin. And not an ax murderer in sight. How romantic is that? Nora Ephron couldn’t have planned it better. And all those things they say in romance novels about how your heart beats faster and your knees get wobbly and the boy’s stubble against your chin is the most delicious sensation ever? All of that is 100 percent true.
I sank into that kiss. It was perfect.
And it can never happen again.
Because in case you missed it, shiny, future Twinkle dates Neil. Neil, not Sahil. Maybe my heart didn’t care about that, but my brain did. My brain remembered just how long I’d been ignored and belittled. It remembered how badly I wanted to break free. And it knew my time to shine, to do what I was meant to do in this world, was just around the corner.
For some reason, though, when it came to Sahil, it was getting really hard for me to hold on to what my brain was saying. Something was happening between us, something very real, and it was getting more difficult to ignore. But maybe until I figured it out—whatever “it” might be—I should be more careful.
So as soon as we pulled apart for breath, I put a hand up to my mouth and stepped back, my eyes wide. “Whoa.”
“Are you okay?” Sahil asked, frowning slightly. I looked at his reddened mouth and felt my cheeks grow warm. I did that. Me, Miss Wallflower. “Was that … okay?”
Oh God. Now he thought I was reacting like that because he was a bad kisser. Which was so not the case it was almost funny. “N-no! I mean, yes!” I corrected when I saw his face fall. “Sahil, you’re … you’re a good kisser.”
“You mean that?” His face lit up so much, the cabin almost brightened. He took a step closer to me. “Then … why …?”
I opened my mouth to say, But … there’s something you should know. I have a secret admirer, and it’s probably your brother. By the way, I want to date him. Only how could I say that to Sahil now that my heart and my brain were warring? And after he’d told me about Neil and their sibling rivalry?
So I chose another, smaller truth. “We work together. And if we … do this … it might complicate things.”
“I can keep things professional.”
I took a deep breath as I looked into his clear brown eyes. It would be so easy to say yes. It would be so easy to be with Sahil. “I’m sorry,” I said instead, the words physically hurting me like they had sharp edges.
He studied my face for a long second and then nodded. “So … are you saying we can go out after Midsummer Night?” He grinned mischievously.
I laughed and pushed his chest, avoiding an answer.
Sahil’s phone beeped in his pocket. “Huh. I must have reception again.” He fished it out and looked at the screen. “It’s Skid and Aaron. ‘Did you see the news? Apparently big storm on the way.’ They want to postpone so no one gets drenched.”
We looked at each other, our cold, wet clothes clinging to us, our hair dripping, and then burst out laughing.
Sahil typed back a response and slipped the phone back in his pocket. “It would’ve helped if they’d sent that text about an hour ago.”
“Ah, well. Next time we’ll know to check the weather before we come.”
Sahil smiled a half smile that made my heart stutter. “I enjoyed being stuck here with you, though. I’d do it again.”
I bit my lip. “So would I.”
That’s when I realized the truth: I’d get stuck with Sahil in a cabin any day of the week, anytime. I’d even get stuck with Sahil in an econ class because I like being with him so much. I’d choose spending time with him over peanut butter chocolate ice cream. And over the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mountain Majesty cupcake.
So where the heck does that leave me with Neil?
At least I’ve managed to put Sahil off for now. I think what I need to do is meet up with N. See how I feel. Maybe?
Love,
Twinkle
Ten
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Sorry to bug you
I know I just wrote to you, N, but I think we need to meet up. Certain life situations have made things all jumbled up in my head (and my heart). I just need to see who you are.
—Twinkle
Wednesday, June 10
17 days until Midsummer Night!
Homeroom
Dear Mira Nair,
I know my life is a mess right now with Maddie, Sahil, N, etc., etc. But I cannot even worry about that because …
TODAY IS THE DAY I HOLD MY FIRST AUDITIONS!
I hadn’t expected this day to come for many, many years. But today I get to sit in a room and watch people perform. And based on my decisions, a film will evolve—one that has the power to start conversations and get people talking about things like feminism and art.
Have I mentioned I’m a sixteen-year-old girl from Colorado Springs? A junior at PPC?
I keep wondering if I’m qualified to do something like this. This is a huge, huge responsibility. It just keeps hitting me that this isn’t a two-minute video I’m going to upload to my YouTube channel. This is big. Hundreds of people are going to see this at the end of the month. This is going to influence how people think. What if I ruin it? What if I have nothing to say?
What if, what if, what if?
Arrrgh. It’s too late to back out now, even if I wanted to, which I don’t—not 100 percent. And like Dadi says, I have a feeling that if I don’t take this opportunity, I’ll look back and kick myself.
So here I go, onward and (hopefully) upward! Wish me luck.
Love,
Twinkle
Wednesday, June 10
AP US History
Dear Ava DuVernay,
I need to reread the story about how you got your start making films. In the meantime, let me tell you a little story about mine. Yo
u know how I was hoping at least ten people would show up to auditions?
Well.
So Sahil and I were sitting in Ms. Rogers’s classroom at lunch, waiting until 12:20, which is the time we put on the flyers that people should show up and wait outside the door. We kept looking at each other, smiling, and then looking away, both too nervous to talk about the cabin and all that stuff (even though every time I looked at Sahil my gaze automatically fell to his lips—traitorous boy-oglers.)
Sahil sat there, too tall for the desks (his legs and arms jutted out and he kept jittering because he was so nervous), and I just closed my eyes and tried to visualize success because I read that all the big athletes do it and it’s not hokey like I used to believe. I visualized the door bursting open and this horde of people swarming in and begging to audition. I could hear some noise, but I knew what it was: people going about their business in the hallway. Would anyone come to our audition?
Then Sahil said, “It’s time!” He leaped up, bumped the desk with his thighs, and sent it sliding off toward the corner. His face flushed, he dragged it back into place.
I stood and took a deep breath. Forget ten, I said to the universe as we walked to the door. Just give me six people. Just so I don’t look like a total failure.
We opened the door. And stared.
It was like a tsunami of noise. I’m not even lying. And it wasn’t because people were loitering in the hallway at lunch either. They were all there for us. For my film, mine and Sahil’s. I just stared at them. Sahil’s paralysis broke first. He turned to me, grinning widely.
“A little more than ten,” he said, giggling. He giggles!
I shook my head slowly. “How are we even going to manage this?” I said faintly, and Sahil leaned forward because he legit could not hear me because it was so loud.
But then Skid and Aaron, who I had not seen come up, began shepherding people into a semblance of a line and Sahil hopped into the fray going, “Okay, people, let’s have some order. No, don’t break the producer, please!”
From Twinkle, With Love Page 10