He half turns. “Aaaah!” he shouts, and now he is waving at her.
“What?” Dini says, clambering up, still holding that banana.
“Look out!” shouts Dad.
Just then something comes barreling across the roof. Dini screams. The something grabs at Dini’s banana with scrabbly little hands. It bares its teeth. Then it sits down and eats the remaining bite of the fruit, skin and all.
“Monkeys,” Dad says in disgust. “They’ve made a big mess in the water-tank.”
“Open the vent, sir!” shouts a voice from down below. “Pull the levers down, sir. No, no, sir, push them up.” Sampy the grumpy watchman has come to help.
Dad mutters something under his breath.
“Better boil all the water from now on, sir,” says Sampy, still being helpful. “The water supply, sir, is very fine, normally—springwater in our hills is world famous—but if there are drowned monkeys . . .” He purses his lips and shrugs his shoulders to explain the hopelessness of it. It seems to please him in a gloomy kind of way.
“You really think . . . ?” Dad pushes a vent open and quickly peers inside. “No, thank goodness,” he says, “only a lot of half-eaten flowers.”
“Something has disturbed those monkeys, is it?” says Sampy, glowering at Dad as if it’s his fault the monkeys are upset.
“It would seem so,” says Dad.
Sampy moves into interview mode. “How is it with American monkeys, sir? They are prone to being high-strung like our Blue Mountain monkeys? Or maybe they are more placid because of the colder climate?”
Dad has to admit there are no monkeys in America, at least not in the wild like this.
“No monkeys?” says Sampy. He gives Dad a pitying look, as if he cannot imagine how people can live in such a place, with no monkeys to liven up their days.
Dini says, shuffling along the sloping red-tiled roof, “I wish we’d had monkeys in Maryland. That would have been fun.” She climbs onto the platform at one end, where the water-tank sits, and peers inside. “How’d they get in?”
“Perhaps we can make some arrangement to send some monkeys to the U.S.,” Sampy says. “To add a little bit of action to the American landscape.”
“The lid,” Dad says sadly. “Someone must have left it open.” He shakes his head at Sampy, but Sampy is too busy with his export plans to notice.
Broken branches are floating on the water in the tank, along with half-eaten stalks of flowers that the monkeys seem to have ripped out of the garden. “Where did they go?” Dini says.
“Vanished,” says Sampy dolefully. “Wreaking havoc, no doubt, on the next mountaintop.”
Monkeys on the roof! This is something to tell Maddie about. Dini does not remember a single Dolly movie in which monkeys mess up a person’s roof. But it would work, she thinks. What a scene it would make. They could even have a dance number with Dolly and the monkeys fighting off a villain or something. She should tell Dolly, when she finds her.
“You are not needing me now, sir?” says Sampy the watchman in a hopeful sort of way.
Dad says that, on the contrary, he will certainly need Sampy’s help to get the branches out of the tank.
“Delighted, sir,” says Sampy in a voice loaded with gloom.
“This is going to take a while,” Dini’s father says, matching Sampy’s frown.
“That’s okay,” Dini says, trying to make things better. “I’m just taking notes.”
Dad seems surprised. “Notes? For what?”
“A movie,” Dini says. She settles herself down on the narrow, flat ledge and leans against the water-tank. She pulls out her notebook. She tests the green pen, and it still glitters as well as it did when Maddie first gave it to her. Was that a week ago? Ten days? Nine? It feels like forever. She writes a few quick notes for possible story lines.
One involves monkeys on a rooftop.
Another involves Dolly getting caught in a rainstorm. Dini comes by and sees her. She has twisted her ankle walking in the rain. Sampy comes by and . . . no, that won’t work because how can you connect things that do not seem to have any way of being connected? This plot-fixing business is tough.
Dad wipes his face on his sleeve. “Nandu, rani . . .” “Yes?”
Dad says, “There really isn’t room for three of us on the roof, so do you think . . . ?”
“Can I go out there, then?” Dini says, waving the green pen at the great wide expanse of Sunny Villa Estates, that strange mix of deeply tracked red dirt roads and green, green tea-gardens.
“Sure,” Dad says. “Just don’t go too far.”
Dini is off the roof in a quick movie minute. Something about this place makes her want to run down the lane and through those tea-gardens, smelling the smoke that trails up the hillsides from cooking fires below, all of it mixed up with slightly rotting leaves and a kind of misty dampness.
People think India is all hot and dusty. But here is Swapnagiri and it is singing out to Dini to come take a look at it. It looks so much like the setting of a Dolly movie that it makes her heart turn over.
“Stay inside the main gate,” Dad calls after her.
“Okaaaaaaay!” Dini calls back, and she is already running.
Chapter Sixteen
Priya
DINI IS THUDDING down the road the way the monkeys thudded over the rooftop. She misses her bike, which she would be riding in Maryland, and Maddie would be riding hers, so really what she misses is Maddie.
If Maddie were here, she would be helping Dini to look for Dolly. But then Dini thinks, Well, this is the thing I am supposed to do here in Swapnagiri—find Dolly Singh. That is my job.
She repeats this thought to herself as she slows down.
This is why I’m here.
This is why I’m . . .
This is why . . .
This is . . .
Why . . .
She walks along the red dirt road and repeats it some more. Why I am . . . in India . . . this is why. . . . The words keep time nicely with her slowing-down feet. They make her feel slightly heroic.
A crowd of women and girls come up the road, with enormous bundles of sticks balanced on their heads. They look at Dini but they don’t stop. Nor does the man with a herd of goats who click-click-clicks at his animals and keeps them running right past Dini’s legs. They leave behind a goaty smell and a little pile of poopy pellets that she just misses stepping into.
She keeps on going for a while. Then she stops to take a breath under a tree with red flowers hanging from it like bottlebrushes.
“Hello,” says the tree.
Dini jumps and almost drops her green stripy notebook in the dirt. She grabs at it just in time. A girl with a perfectly square haircut is peering down at her through the lacy green leaves.
“Sorry,” says the girl. She shapes her mouth into a round O and makes a sound just like one of the little birds that are buzzing around the red bottle-brush flowers. Dini has never heard anyone do such a good imitation of a small, buzzy bird.
The girl jumps down and lands with a thump. She brushes feathery little red petals out of her hair. She looks at Dini’s astonished face and starts to laugh. She laughs so hard she has to hold her side.
“What’s so funny?” Dini says, annoyed. Why is the girl laughing at her?
The girl finally quits laughing and introduces herself. “I’m Priya.”
“I’m Dini. You always make bird noises?” Dini says.
“Not only birds. Listen.” She closes her eyes, and she makes a whole lot of noises one after the other—a car horn; a long, tinny whistle; the moo of a cow; and something that sounds like gushing water. And here is the thing: She does them all equally well.
“Wow,” Dini says.
“From America—I can Tell from your Accent.” Dini notices something else. Some of the things Priya says are meant to be in capital letters. “Where?”
“Takoma Park, Maryland,” Dini tells her.
“My parents are in Washi
ngton, D.C.” Priya says. “Right Now.”
“Really? Washington, D.C.! We’re opposites.” Dini means Priya’s parents going from India to America and hers doing the opposite. She shows Priya her boarding pass that she has stuck into the back page of her notebook. Priya regards it seriously.
“We Are Opposites,” Priya says. She knows exactly what Dini means, which is a thing Dini’s used to with Maddie but really doesn’t expect from total strangers.
“Are you going to stay Here for a while?” Priya wants to know.
“Two years,” Dini says. She will be thirteen before they leave, which seems an impossible-to-reach goal. “You?”
“I think a year,” Priya says. “They’re in Washington now, but Afterwards they’re going to Chile for five months and then to Haiti, so I’m staying Here. With my Uncle.”
“Oh.” And here Dini has been thinking only her parents would do a crazy thing like pick up and move halfway across the world.
“I Miss Bombay,” Priya says.
“Bombay!” Dini yells, forgetting all about parents and jobs and travel.
“Yo.” Priya rubs her ear. “Don’t Shout.”
“Sorry.” But Dini has to tell her. About Maddie and the whole idea of coincidences that are more than random—although she is not sure she completely gets the details of that—and of course Dolly.
“So now I heard she’s here!” Dini says at last, finishing up the story of her parents and the move and Maddie’s idea and the letter to Dolly and oh yes, the reply, the reply! “Do you know where she is? I have to find her.”
Priya narrows her eyes until they’re all slitty. Then she shakes her head. “No,” she says, but she says it as if she had to think first.
“She’s not here? Or you don’t know?”
But Priya seems to be busy looking into the distance and making that crazy bird-cheep noise that Dini wishes she could make, but now she wants Priya to quit it, just quit it and talk instead.
“Talking is good,” she wants to say. “There is nothing wrong with talking.” She wants Priya to tell her whatever it is she’s not telling her about Dolly.
And then when Priya does talk, Dini almost wishes she hadn’t, because this is what Priya says: “Dolly Singh, Dolly Singh, I’m sick as mud of Dolly Singh. Turn on the TV, it’s Dolly. Talk to the neighbor, it’s Dolly. You’d think no one has anything better to talk about than Dolly, Dolly, Dolly.”
“Excuuuuse me,” says Dini, affronted. “You don’t understand. It’s a matter of . . .” She has to stop to think what exactly it is a matter of. “I have to make sure she’s okay,” she ends lamely.
Priya bursts out laughing. “She’s Okay,” she says when she’s finished cracking up. “Oh, I can Assure you that She is Okay.”
Dini wants to ask how she knows and does she know Dolly and a dozen other questions. But just then a bright yellow car drives toward them. It slows down, stops. A man leans out of the driver’s window. Dini thinks, He has the kind of face where you only remember the nose, not to be mean or anything.
The man says, all out of breath, “Priya! There you are. I’ve been looking for you all over.”
Priya says, “I have to Go. See you later.” Was there an uppercase in that seeing Dini later? Dini can’t tell. She waves and says, “See you Later,” trying it out loud in that Priya way, “Later” with a capital L leading the word along.
But Priya’s gone in the car already, and Dini finds that she is instead talking to some tea pickers who have arrived to take a break in the shade of the tree with red flowers. They do not look as if they get what she’s saying, capital letters or not. They are looking as if this is their space and Dini is in the way.
Dini walks slowly along the red dirt road back toward cottage number 6, and she starts to wonder. Does Priya know Dolly Singh or not? And who is the man in the yellow car?
She passes a weedy garden. The woman who is digging in the garden straightens up. A small, yappy sausage dog rolls in the dirt at her feet. The woman looks at her watch.
“Can you tell me what time it is?” Dini says.
“Two,” the woman says in a whispery voice. “Time to give this messy doggy a bath.” And she scoops up the dog and heads inside.
Which makes Dini wonder what time it is in Maryland right now this minute. It’s two in the afternoon here, and the sun is bright and beamy, quite unlike how Dini is feeling. She counts the hours backward the way you have to do, and it’s nine and a half hours’ difference. That means it’s early in the morning. Maddie won’t mind.
When Dini gets back to cottage number 6, Dad and Sampy are deep in conversation about the cost of washers and gaskets and stuff, as some of the faucets (they call them taps here) seem to be drippy.
“Dad,” says Dini, “can I call Maddie?”
“Sure,” Dad says, although Dini doesn’t think he really heard her. She could probably have said, “Can I pack my suitcase and go back to Maryland?” and he would have said “Sure” to that, too.
She goes inside the house and picks up Dad’s cell phone and hits the long, long, long series of numbers you have to hit to call Takoma Park, Maryland, all the way from India.
The phone rings. Maddie’s mom answers it. It is four thirty in the morning. Dini got the time all wrong. Maddie’s mom says, “Can you call back later?” Then she says, “Oh, wait. Maddie’s up. Here she is.”
“Hi, Maddie,” Dini says. “Sorry to wake you up.”
“What time is it?” Maddie sounds half asleep.
“Four thirty. For you. It’s two in the afternoon here. Sorry, Maddie, but I think I found someone who knows something, only she’s not telling.”
“What do you mean?” Maddie sounds confused. “Who? Knows something about what?”
“About Dolly!” Dini says. “She’s here. In Swapnagiri.”
“Wow. No kidding? Really?” Now Maddie sounds wide awake. “Oh, Dini, that is so wowza-yowza-exciting. I just know you’ll find her, you will, you will, you will. Oh, Dini . . .”
Dini starts to tell Maddie it may not be that simple, but then she realizes that it would take way too long to tell Maddie about Priya, and how do you explain a girl who makes bird-cheeps, anyway, and falls out of trees on people? Dini could try the bird-cheeps, but she does not know if that will help. Then there are all the questions. What does Priya know? What is she not telling, and why?
It’s all too complicated for a phone call, especially when Maddie is now going on about how clever Dini is, and then she goes on to something else, something long and convoluted about dreams coming true.
An e-mail. Dini decides she’ll have to tell Maddie about Priya in an e-mail. She’d better tell her it’s not going that smoothly so far, even if Dolly is here. That itself seems such an impossible thing that Dini wonders, Was Veeran even right about that? Did he make a mistake? Or worse. Much worse. Did Dini imagine it all? She was pretty tired and jet-lagged at the time.
Dini tries to herd all these thoughts into words that will make sense, but Maddie is still talking. “Don’t forget to get her autograph for me, okay?”
Dini has heard of hearts sinking. She has always thought it was an odd thing for a heart to do. But now she thinks she knows what that means.
“You promised,” Maddie says.
“Okay,” says Dini. “I mean yes, Maddie. Yes.”
And she hangs up, but only after Maddie has blown kisses to her over the phone and told her to remember that half those kisses were for Dolly, and Dini should be sure to pass them on.
Definitely, at this very moment, Dini’s heart is doing that sinking thing.
Chapter Seventeen
Gloom
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Dolly
Date: Friday, June 18, 2010, 20:09:33 IST
Maddie I tried to tell you but it’s not so easy. I met this girl called Priya. At first I thought she was going to be my friend but now I’m not so sure. I think she kn
ows something about Dolly, but she’s not telling.
Not even half an hour after Dini has sent that e-mail zinging into cyberspace, the phone rings. “For you,” says Dad.
It’s Maddie. She says, “I just got your e-mail. So who’s this friend again?” Under the question is a little wobble in the voice.
“Well, no,” says Dini, and she’s really answering another unspoken question. “She isn’t exactly. I mean, I thought maybe she could be, but she’s not . . . not really.”
“I don’t know, Dini,” says Maddie. “I mean, I’m not telling you about all the new friends I’m making.”
“You are?” says Dini. “You’re making new friends?”
“Well, no,” says Maddie. The word trails off into a little upswing, trails away into the distance between them. Nooooo . . .
Dini is about to set it all straight, as much as she can, even in her own mind. She wants to explain further about Veeran and how he is a fan and an ally, and how Priya knows Dolly all right but she is certainly hiding something, so does that make her an antagonist or what?
But right then she notices that Mom and Dad are just around the corner in the kitchen, talking to each other.
If Dini can hear them talking about where the spoons should go, they can probably also hear what she’s saying to Maddie. Would they listen? Sure they would. Parents are nosy people.
Dini does not know how Mom and Dad will react to her Dolly-finding efforts, but she has a feeling it’s better they not know the details. So she says quickly, “I’ll have to Call back another Time. Talk to you Soon.” Maybe capital letters don’t travel well over telephone lines, because Maddie does not seem to get it.
“Bye,” Maddie says. Gloom, on the other hand, travels just fine over thousands of miles of satellite connections.
Chapter Eighteen
The Clinic
WHAT WOULD DOLLY DO? Gloom or not, she would go forward, so that is what Dini is going to do. The only other person she knows in Swapnagiri who can talk to her about Dolly is Veeran the driver.
The Grand Plan To Fix Everything Page 5