by Sheela Chari
Neela nodded, keeping an eye on Lynne, who sat halfway down the bus behind them, looking at a photography book. “Maybe we’re going to Harvard Square,” she said, remembering the bus label. She had been to Harvard Square many times with her family. Sometimes they stopped at the Au Bon Pain for chocolate croissants. But she had never been there by herself. Or alone with a boy.
Which brought up something else in her mind: she had never been alone with a boy anywhere in her whole life. Pavi’s little brother didn’t count. Nor did the boys that came to her prayer class on Sundays and played kick-the-can with her outside when the weather was warm. This was different. This was a situation that her parents would, with every inch of their lives, disapprove of. She glanced at Matt to see if he was registering the fact that they were alone together. Alone together. Could you even say that?
“Oh my God, did you see that?” he exclaimed, his eyes glued to the window. “The bus driver just ran a stop sign. He almost swiped a BMW.”
At that point Neela decided that if Matt wasn’t freaking out about their alone-togetherness, then neither should she. She looked at the road, watching as they sped by different stores—clothing boutiques, haircutting salons, rug stores, a Japanese steakhouse, and several furniture shops. She felt a thrill pass through her. I’m on an adventure, she thought. She was doing something real and exciting that she would remember afterward. The thought made her tingle all over.
Finally she recognized the bricked walkways of Harvard Square, with fresh snow on the rooftops of buildings and along the sidewalks. She smiled without realizing it. She loved Harvard Square. They circled around and entered the bus terminal. Inside, the bus came to a stop and everyone rose from their seats, including Lynne. She headed to the back while Neela and Matt moved to the front.
They hurried off the bus, following Lynne through a set of glass doors. It was important not to lose her in the crowd. The T station was full of people, most of them hurrying through the turnstiles. Inside the terminal, Lynne climbed up an escalator that wasn’t working, taking the steps two at a time. When Neela and Matt got to the top of the same escalator, the cold air and the smell of cigarettes hit their faces. They scanned the area for Lynne. Across the street were the iron gates enclosing Harvard campus.
“You think she went that way?” Matt asked, pointing toward the gates.
Neela shook her head. “Let’s keep looking.” At last she spotted Lynne’s aquamarine coat heading down a street to the left.
She and Matt followed as closely as they could without being noticed.
“Where do you think she’s going?” Matt asked.
“I don’t know,” Neela said, out of breath. “But, man, does she walk fast.”
At last, Lynne came to the end of the street and stepped inside a camera shop called Tristar Media.
“Should we go in?” Neela asked.
“The store’s too small. She’ll see us right away.”
Neela saw a mailbox a few feet from the store, surrounded by a heap of snow. She stepped gingerly into the snow and crouched behind the mailbox. Matt crouched next to her.
“What will people think we’re doing?” she asked. They looked kind of funny, peering around a mailbox.
“Maybe they’ll think we’re really short FBI agents,” Matt said.
“Or really short postal workers.”
“Can you see anything?” He craned his neck. “Move over.”
“Ouch. You’re stepping on my foot.”
After they settled down, they were able to look into the store window. A man stood behind a glass counter, showing cameras to a tall lady with a pink woolen scarf tied around her neck. She took her time, laughing over something the man said. Neela wondered what Lynne was doing. Neela’s hands were getting cold. She had forgotten her mittens and had to bunch up her fingers inside her coat sleeves. Matt’s nose was already red.
“C’mon, lady,” said Neela.
Matt changed his voice to a falsetto. “Excuse me, mister, but I’m looking for something to go with my scarf. Do you have anything in pink?”
Neela pretended to be the man. “Lady, weya all out of pink. Don’t ya know, this is Hahvahd Squayah?”
“That was actually pretty good,” Matt said, surprised.
“That’s what Hal sounded like.”
“Look,” he said.
Neela had almost forgotten what they were supposed to be doing. By now the woman with the scarf was done, and Lynne was at the counter.
“What’s she going to buy?” Matt wondered.
Just then Neela remembered the ad in Lynne’s notebook that had fallen to the floor in the art room. “I think I know,” she said softly.
They watched as Lynne pointed to something inside the glass case. The man pulled out a camera for her. It looked like the one Lynne had circled in the ad. Presently, the man pulled out a lens for the camera as well, the kind that Neela had seen professional photographers use. The man behind the counter didn’t have a lot to say. In fact, he looked as if he thought Lynne was wasting his time while she examined a camera that was clearly very expensive. He took out another camera, but Lynne shook her head. Then she took out a wad of bills and laid it on the counter.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Matt said.
Neela’s eyes widened, seeing so much money. The man also looked surprised. It took him some time to count out all the bills.
“How much does she have there?” Matt asked. “She’s loaded.”
Neela wondered the same. She knew that some of the kids in class got monthly allowances, but usually they spent them on things like a movie or a pair of jeans, never on something as costly as a camera. “I think he counted out at least a couple of hundred dollars,” she said. “Those look like twenties.”
Matt whistled. “I wonder what else she’s getting. Laptop? Flat-screen TV?”
“I think she’s done,” Neela said. They watched as the man packed the camera and lens boxes inside a bag and handed her a receipt. “Quick,” she said. They ducked behind the mailbox as Lynne came out the door. Neela felt an odd twinge of guilt when Lynne walked by, as if she had witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to see. Still, Neela couldn’t help wondering about the money. It had come from somewhere. A job? A gift?
She and Matt watched Lynne’s retreating figure. “Now what?” she asked. She brushed some snow from her coat.
“We follow her.”
They got up, maintaining their distance behind Lynne.
“I see her looking at photography books all the time,” Neela said. “And she’s taking a photography class. Maybe she saved up.”
Matt shook his head. “There’s something weird about it. You know there is.”
Neela had to agree. Such an expensive purchase—shouldn’t she have done it with her mom or dad?
When they reached Harvard Square, they had to wait at the curb for the light to change before crossing the street. Lynne was already on the other side, on her way to the escalator that descended into the T station.
“What time is it?” Neela asked.
“Three thirty.”
“I should have been home by now, even if Ms. Reese let us out at three fifteen, and it takes me about ten minutes to walk home, and…”
“Neela!”
A gray-haired Indian lady in a parka was waving from the other side of the street. Neela’s insides withered. “Oh God,” she groaned. “It can’t be.”
“What? Is that your mom?”
“Are you kidding? Would my mom be that old? It’s worse. That’s my veena teacher.”
The light changed, and Neela and Matt made their way across the street. Behind the figure of Sudha Auntie, Neela saw Lynne disappearing into the T station. Gone. With no chance of following her. Instead of crossing the street, Sudha Auntie stood where she was, waiting until Neela reached the other side.
“Well, lucky surprise to find you here,” Sudha Auntie said. Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at Matt. “I guess you’re here
with a friend?” The way she said friend made Neela wince. It was clear that Sudha Auntie thought Matt was something else.
“This is Matt, a friend from school,” Neela mumbled. All the thrill and happiness she had felt at being on an adventure with Matt dribbled away at the sight of her teacher’s hawky face. Why—why of all people did they have to bump into Sudha Auntie? She didn’t even live near Harvard.
“Is your mother somewhere here?” Sudha Auntie made the pretense of looking around, as if Mrs. Krishnan might suddenly materialize before them.
Neela gritted her teeth, loathing her teacher at that moment. “Actually, she’s expecting us home any minute. I’m sorry; we have to run or we’ll miss our bus. Good-bye!”
With that, she hurried off to the escalator, not even looking to see if Matt was following. When they reached the bottom, Matt practically ran to keep up with her. “What’s the matter? She was kind of creepy, wasn’t she?”
Neela whirled around so suddenly that Matt almost collided into her. “Don’t you see? That’s Sudha Auntie. First of all, she’s not even human. Second of all, she saw me with you, and—” Neela couldn’t finish what she was about to say. The implications were too awful.
Matt looked at her closely. “Are you, like, arranged to marry someone?”
Neela flushed. “What are you talking about?! My parents won’t even let me go to the mall by myself. The last thing they want is me getting married.”
“Just wondering,” Matt said. “I read this really cool quest book set in India, but then there was all this stuff about child brides.”
“I’m not a child bride,” Neela snapped.
“All right. Don’t freak out about it.”
Neela still glowered. “Let’s figure out how to get home,” she said. So I can get into more trouble, she added to herself.
Matt walked over to a bus schedule posted in the main area of the terminal. “We have to find the seventy-seven. That’s what we came on.” Together they looked until they pinpointed the bus arrivals. “We have exactly two minutes,” Matt said, looking at his watch.
No sooner had they walked out the double glass doors than the 77 swung around the corner and pulled up to the curb just a few feet ahead of them. They ran up and climbed aboard.
She and Matt rode silently back along Mass Ave. They didn’t talk about Lynne or the expensive camera. Now that they were seated, Neela had a chance to reflect over what had happened. She hadn’t meant to yell at Matt. But she hadn’t meant for Sudha Auntie to see her alone with a boy. She could only guess what her teacher would say to her mother the next time they met.
In some way, though, she felt like she owed Matt an explanation. Because if it weren’t for him offering to go on the bus with her, she wouldn’t have followed Lynne. And though Neela hadn’t figured out why, she knew seeing Lynne with all that money was somehow important. She turned to him and tried to think of a way to explain.
“My parents want me to be both Indian and American,” she began. “That’s why they started me on the veena. Well, that’s not exactly true. I was the one who wanted to learn the veena. But I think because I picked something completely Indian, my parents went along with it.”
“So if you wanted to play the bongos they’d be like, oh my God, you’re not Indian.”
Neela smiled. “No. My parents actually are cool about most things. But I don’t think they’ve figured out about boys yet.” As soon as she said that, she expected him to say something stupid and embarrassing.
“You’re doing this to find your instrument,” he said instead. “They should be glad.”
Neela looked at him in surprise. She realized then that for most of today, he had actually been okay.
“Parents are always flipping about something,” Matt went on. “Like my hair. It wasn’t supposed to be orange.”
“It’s not that orange,” Neela said, trying to be nice.
“My mom had a hissy fit when she saw me. She wanted to shave my head.”
Neela giggled. “That would be dramatic.”
“Eh. She got used to it. And then when I wanted to play the electric guitar, it was no big deal.”
“I didn’t know you played the guitar,” Neela said.
Matt looked embarrassed. “I just mess around. But someday I want to be in a band.” For the first time, his voice was uncertain, as if he didn’t know if it would really happen.
Neela thought about his rock band sketches at school, and all the musty band T-shirts he wore. He wasn’t so sure of himself as she had thought.
“My lesson’s on Wednesday. Maybe Sudha Auntie will forget about seeing me in Harvard Square and telling my mom. She is kind of old.” But Neela knew this was wishful thinking. Her teacher never forgot anything.
“Yeah, she’s definitely in the senility category.” Matt shook his hair back. In the evening light, it looked less orange and less like a mop. “And who knows,” he added, “maybe Lynne won the lottery.”
Neela grinned. “Maybe.”
The world seemed full of surprises, of strange secrets, hidden talents, and unexpected discoveries. Neela pictured Lynne on her way home with her shiny new package, all paid for and belonging to her, a present that no one knew anything about.
Or so she thought.
Next to her, Matt looked out the bus window into the darkening streets as they rode along the last stretch of Mass Ave into Arlington.
“Why are you whispering?” Pavi asked.
“Because I’m in trouble and not supposed to be on the phone,” Neela whispered. “I was so late from school today, my mother totally flipped.” She told Pavi about Harvard Square and Lynne buying the expensive camera with her big wad of money.
“Sounds like crime money.” Pavi was excited. “Maybe she robbed a convenience store.”
“She didn’t rob a convenience store,” Neela said. Pavi came up with ridiculous ideas sometimes. “I don’t think it was stolen money.” She thought about the photographs in Lynne’s locker and the big photography book Lynne looked at during recess. Maybe she wanted to be a photographer. “I don’t even think it matters where she got the money. Maybe if we had followed her later, that would have helped.”
“We?” Pavi asked. “Who’s we?”
“Oh, this guy in my class, Matt.” Neela tried to be casual. “He came along, too.”
There was a silence on the other end. Then: “Is he friends with Penny?”
“No. The worst part is that Sudha Auntie saw us together in Harvard Square.”
“Uh-oh. If my mom caught me alone with a guy in Harvard Square, she’d freak.”
“So would mine,” Neela said. “I guess.”
“Of course she would. Remember what happened to Shoba?”
Shoba was a friend of theirs that lived in the next town. Her parents had caught her going to the movies alone with a boy from her school, and Shoba had been banned from seeing movies with anyone for the rest of the year.
“That’s different.” Neela remembered her parents talking about it when they thought she wasn’t listening, wondering if Shoba’s parents hadn’t overreacted.
Her mother’s voice floated up the stairs. “I hope you’re not on the phone, Neela.”
“So, did you tell your parents about him?” Pavi asked.
“No. I mean, yes,” Neela said, flustered. “I mean, nothing happened.”
“So he came all the way to Harvard Square on a bus for no reason?”
“He came to help me.”
Pavi snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m warning you,” Neela’s mother called again from downstairs.
“I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of it,” Neela said to Pavi. “I just hope Sudha Auntie doesn’t say something stupid to my mom, that’s all. You know how she is.”
“Maybe she’ll forget about it.”
“You know she won’t.”
“Well, maybe she has more important things to think about than you.” Pavi’s voice was sharp.<
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Neela was taken aback. She waited for Pavi to say “kidding,” but she said nothing.
Until now they had never discussed boys. She knew Pavi’s parents were a lot more strict than hers. That was one of the reasons why Pavi wore a bindi these days. But it went beyond that. Pavi’s family saw themselves differently, as though it were us, the ones who were Indian, and them, the ones who weren’t.
Neela’s parents had never been this way. They had always made great pains to tell her she was Indian and American. “Take the best of both cultures,” they said to her. “Be both.”
By now, Neela’s mother had appeared at the door. “Neela!” she said.
“I have to go,” Neela mumbled, glad to get off the phone. “Talk to you later.”
“First you’re late to school,” Neela’s mother said, “then you get punished for being late, and then you’re late coming home from being punished for being late. Does anyone see the irony here?”
“We already went through this,” Neela said.
“I don’t think so,” Mrs. Krishnan returned. “When you were late, what was I supposed to think? We just had a rock thrown against our house, and a note threatening you.”
“That was a month ago,” Neela said.
“Maybe that man was just waiting for a chance to get you alone,” Mrs. Krishnan said.
Neela rolled her eyes. “If Hal wanted to hurt me, he wouldn’t have thrown a rock. He would have whacked me on the head when I walked to school.”
“Neela!” Mrs. Krishnan said. But she seemed to buy Neela’s logic, because she changed tactics. “Anyway, I still don’t understand why you got on a bus when we’re two blocks from home.”
“My foot was hurting,” Neela mumbled. “I thought it would be faster. How did I know the bus would go downtown first?” Even to her ears, this sounded far-fetched, but she decided a half-truth was better than a complete lie. After all, she did ride the bus downtown. And her feet were kind of tired by the time she got home.