Enter Title Here

by Rahul Kanakia

  “Yes.” My mom’s eyes were steady and unblinking. “I know your plan. Your plan was to cheat.”

  I shook my head and then let the air hiss through my teeth.

  “Daddy will call Colson and he’ll make sure they don’t change my ranking until they’re supposed to. That’s not cheating. That’s just the rules.”

  “No,” my mom said. “I cannot support that.”

  I stomped out to the hallway and grabbed the keys off the tray. “Don’t bother your father,” my mom said. “He’s—”

  But I cut her off by slamming the front door.

  A blast of cold air hit me as I went down our walkway. I was in my slippers and my sweatpants. I twisted up my hair, trying to pull it back, but realized I didn’t have a hair tie, so I let it hang lank and greasy around my shoulders. A bird hopped down out of the overhang above me and pecked around in the grass.

  It was ten o’clock and the only person on our street was this one guy standing on the lawn at the edge of our front yard and staring at his phone. When the guy turned, his long hair whipped around in the wind. Oh, it was George. Of course he’d be out there. Just what I needed—another person to judge me.

  “Hey,” I said. “You waiting for someone?”

  His hand shivered a little as he waved at me. “No, I’m about to walk to the Caltrain.”

  “Really? You going into the city?”

  “No. Going home.”

  The bird was getting close to my foot, and I shooed it away. George lived in Fremont. Taking the Caltrain was insane: it’d mean looping up through San Francisco, then switching to the BART and going across the bay and down to Fremont.

  “Isn’t there a bus?”

  “Look, I’m fine.”

  I shrugged. I never said he wasn’t fine. I passed within arm’s reach of him when I went down to my car, because I couldn’t think of a way to go around him without being weird. When I started the car, he glanced up for a moment, and when he lowered his head again, the shadows pooled in his eyes and mouth.

  “Oh, all right.” I rolled down my window. “I’ll at least drive you to the train station.”

  He didn’t move. “Well, only if it’s on your way.”

  “It’s not. But come on, we’re talking twenty minutes’ walk versus like a three-minute drive.”

  After a second, he picked up his bag and opened the door to my black Explorer.

  I pulled out from the curb and heard a little bump when he rested his head on the glass.

  George said, “Why are you using your turn signals? There’s no one here.”

  “I always use them.”

  I tried to catch a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror, but the angles were wrong.

  I took the turn at the stop sign, then pulled out into Alma Street and shifted over into the left lane.

  “You always check your blind spot, too? You drive like a granny.”

  “You know, ninety-nine out of a hundred times, you can get away without doing it, but on the hundredth time, you die.”

  “It’s weird how you’re so cautious about some things, but not about other things.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Like over the summer, with that lawsuit.”

  “That was my parents.”

  He laughed. “Come on. I was right there. I heard you arguing about it. Your mom didn’t think it was a big deal for you to go down to fifth. You argued them into suing.”

  “I had to do it.”

  “I know. You need to win. It’s not good or bad. It’s your nature. I understand wanting to be better than other people.”

  Shocked, I looked over. I hadn’t thought that he understood that about me. Then, as the car accelerated down Alma Street, I found myself telling him about the plagiarism and losing my class rank and the perfects and their stupid dividing-up-colleges game. At some point, we were at the train station, and I pulled over into the parking lot and I kept talking. And that’s when I told him about my mom. About how angry it made me that she didn’t believe in me. Other kids had private college counselors and compliant doctors who gave them study drugs and rich alumni parents who donated tons of money to Princeton. I hadn’t had any of that, so instead I had to be smart: I’d studied the system, and I’d taken the right classes and gotten the best grades and even figured out how to write essays just sappy enough to pick up second or third place in a contest.

  My parents didn’t understand that studying hard wasn’t enough. Studying hard turned you into another generic Indian girl: Someone you could ignore. Someone whose name you didn’t need to know. Someone who’d go to Berkeley and become an engineer at some big company and live and die in complete obscurity. Someone who was maybe twentieth or twenty-first in the class, but didn’t even get credit for being smart, because when people talked about her—which wasn’t often—all they said was “Oh, she’s not brilliant; she just works really hard.”

  And while I spoke, the anger compressed my insides and closed off my peripheral vision and choked off every thought other than: I hate them. I hate them. I hate everyone. I was so all-encompassingly angry that I twitched and gasped and couldn’t even begin to describe who and what I needed to destroy.

  And he was listening. I made him listen. There’s a tone of voice—low and quick and perfectly enunciated—that demands to be taken seriously. I could feel that tone emanating from my belly. You can hate someone who speaks at you that way, but you can’t laugh at her.

  A cop car prowled past—we’d been in the parking lot for half an hour. I shifted into drive and circled the unlit streets, browsing the cul-de-sacs.

  “Hey,” he said. “All that stuff you said? That’s how I feel, too—I’ve spent plenty of time hating you and your parents and your sister and your house and your cars and your vacations and your college funds and your futures and your whole lives.”

  “I know,” I said, even though I hadn’t known. How could I have known? To me, George was an annoyance who periodically emerged from our basement. But I had to say something, because a part of me felt so unsettled by the idea that to George I might be just another Chelsea.

  “What should I do?” I said.

  He looked around for a lever at the bottom of his seat and adjusted it back. “You should probably be in therapy.”

  “I am.”

  “Then hopefully you’ll eventually get over this and become a healthy, functional human being?”

  I broke out of Las Vacas and started driving down El Camino Real. The gas stations and inns were beacons that stood out against the unlit storefronts. I tried to remember where I’d meant to go. To my dad’s offices, I guess. But to tell him what?

  “What would you do?” I said.

  “What would I do? Or what do I wish I would do?”

  “The first one.” Wishes are worthless.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes during a race, you get tripped by another runner, and it sucks, and you complain about it bitterly, but eventually you accept it.”

  I nodded my head. Yeah. That’s what you’re supposed to say.

  “But if getting tripped up one time meant I could never get what I wanted, then you had better believe I’d push back.”

  “Really? So…you think I should sue?”

  “Sure, why not? You don’t have a case. You cheated and you—”

  “It was an accident.”

  “You are so guilty. But that doesn’t matter. You’re rich. That’s what matters.”

  I shook my head. No. I wasn’t like that. I mean, my parents were comfortable, but they weren’t rich. They still had to work. It was blue bloods like Alex who had enough money to just buy their way past—

  He interrupted my train of thought. “Don’t give me that. You’ve got money. You’ve got parents who support you. And you’ve got a kick-ass lawyer who terrifies them because he’s already beaten them once. So if what you really want is to win, then go out and do it.”

  My fingertips went cold. I could argue with myself unt
il the end of time, but I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be valedictorian. I wanted to speak at graduation. I wanted to get into Stanford. And I wanted to make my mom watch every moment of it, until she finally broke down and admitted that I’d been right all along.

  I took a deep breath, pulled a tight turn—we were back in the parking lot of the Caltrain station—and stopped the car.

  “You don’t really hate me, do you?” I said.

  My head was achy, and I felt the world shimmering a bit. I got out my purse and dug around inside it, not knowing exactly what I was looking for. Maybe some water, though I never carry water in there.

  “Totally. I hate this whole fucking place.” He shook his head. “I keep telling my mom that I’m fine going to the school near our apartment. But she won’t shut up about how great this school is and all the amazing things it’s allowed you and your sister to do.”

  “Then why’ve you helped me tonight?”

  “Did I help? If you go ahead with this lawsuit, it kind of sounds like everyone, including your own mom, is going to end up hating you. Well, hating you more than they already do.”

  We laughed together. Mine was nervous and light, but his was slow and deep. When we stopped, I put a hand on the chest of his letterman jacket. My fingers brushed his varsity pins. I was in the driver’s seat, same as Aakash had been with me. I felt slow and tense, the way I never did with Aakash. By now, he already would’ve kissed me. I unclipped my seat belt and leaned close to him, not sure what I was doing.

  “Hey,” he said. His breath streamed out over my face. It had a slight garlicky smell that, at that moment, felt exactly right.

  “Yeah…”

  “What’re those pills you’ve been taking?”

  “What?” I looked down. My hand was empty. I’d pulled a pill out of an inner pocket of my purse and gulped it down without thinking. “They’re a medication.”

  He touched the hand that had held the pill. “You should be careful.”

  My whole face got hot, and I jerked my hand away. How dare he judge me?

  After he popped open his door, I got out of the car and stood there, hovering weirdly, as he grabbed his backpack. When he left I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to hug or what, but he mumbled his good-bye from a few feet away.

  It was better this way. If I’d kissed him, the entire novel would’ve gotten way too complicated.

  When he got to the platform, he turned and he waved, and I had a brief urge to go and wait with him, but instead I got back into my car and made my way to my dad’s offices.

  Arjuna wears a bolo tie and a pair of mud-stained cowboy boots and has thinning white hair that he combs over the top of his head. My dad knew him back when they were graduate students, some twenty years ago. They used to go camping together up in the hills. Arjuna would take along a fishing pole and dangle a lure—with no hook—in the water. He liked to feel the nibbles at the end of his line, but he didn’t want to actually harm a fish, because he’s a strict Brahmin. About ten years ago, he won a huge class-action lawsuit by some Asian kids who, they said, had been discriminated against by the resume screeners at a bunch of investment banks. Apparently, Asians had to have much better stats compared to white kids, in order to pass the screening process. The award was twenty million dollars. The ten thousand kids divided twelve mil among them, and Arjuna got the other eight mil.

  At around noon, he marched into Bell High, trailing a reporter from the Silicon Valley Examiner. He camped out in the office, handing subpoenas to everyone on a long list. After an hour, the district’s general counsel arrived, squawking about how Arjuna was trespassing. Then Arjuna made a short speech about how this school was “trespassing on justice” and how “their racism could not be allowed to pass unexamined.”

  During the intersession period, Arjuna and I went down to Ms. Ratcliffe’s office together. As we passed through the courtyard, people ran out of the lunchroom to follow us. There was shouting and jumping and high excitement. I suppressed my smile. This was serious. I needed to look serious.

  When Arjuna knocked on her door, Ms. Ratcliffe opened it and said, “Wait a minute.” But he shoved the envelope at her.

  After reading it, she twisted the paper in her hands and said, “So you want to talk to me? If you want to talk, we can talk right now. Let’s talk.”

  Arjuna looked around to make sure the reporter was there, then he said, “I want you to right the wrong you’ve done! I want you to examine your privilege! Would you really subject one of your favorites—favorites who are largely white—to this same level of scrutiny and to this same life-altering punishment?”

  I caught Ms. Ratcliffe’s eye and held it for a long moment. She slammed the door. Arjuna pulled at the lapels of his coat, looked at his phone, and sailed away, leaving me behind in the midst of that crowd of strangers.

  When I turned to walk to my next class, the crowd parted to make way for me.

  Aakash is so thin that running my hands over his ribs is like playing a xylophone.

  I know: not a very sexy opening. I guess everything is going all right with him. I’ve gotten serious about the novel again, so I suppose it’s good that I kept this relationship going.

  It’s easy. All I have to do is ask a few questions about his research and he talks for half an hour. Sometimes he asks me about my life, but I know better than to answer honestly.

  And…well…he’s always taking me places. Last week was a hike up through a promontory in Berkeley. And a few days ago, we went out for breakfast, before school, at a very trendy-looking diner in downtown Mountain View that makes a massive omelet that’s meant for two people. That last one didn’t feel quite…natural, so I did some Googling and found the MetaFilter discussion that Aakash was using to get these dates. Everything was on there. The very first item was a movie. Then midnight cosmic bowling. Then the hike. He’d gone down the list in order!

  Before I even looked at his next text message, I knew it’d be asking me to karaoke at an all-ages club in San Jose.

  I guess I should be offended? But I actually get a chilly enjoyment from Aakash’s phoniness. He knows he’s an awkward guy, which is why he doesn’t rely on his instincts. Instead, he searches the Internet for the best advice he can find and then puts it into practice.

  Actually, Aakash is the one who should be offended. Compared to him, I’ve done almost no legwork. And when I tried to look at his Bombr feed to see what he’d been saying about me, I got nothing. After I’d told him that I knew about it, he must’ve set it to protected status, so only his followers could see it.

  To fix that, I created a fake Bombr account (@PrincessPattyKakes) and randomly followed a bunch of people and threw a whole mess of bombs so I’d look like a real person.

  When I came back from my other schoolwork, Aakash had approved my follow request.

  As I thought, he’d kept throwing bombs where he asked for advice. I particularly liked the panicked “She found this account!” of a few weeks ago.

  People constantly sent him links to articles and videos about the mechanics of dating, conversation, kissing, even sex. I’d scheduled four hours for this research, but I way overshot that and spent most of the night following those links.

  That’s why I was prepared when he met me at the door yesterday for our date and boldly kissed me without saying a word. I knew exactly how much to lean into him and how much tongue to allow and how long we should last. When we parted, I was smiling like I’d never smiled before.

  “I enjoy spending time with you,” I said.

  He smiled, too. Then he took my hand and held it between us for a moment, like the man did in the video. We were robots whose programming had come into alignment.

  I let the resulting date play out according to his plan, though I, at times, wanted to hit fast forward. He took me up to the ridgeline, and, as we looked over the fog-choked Valley, I shivered, to allow him an opening to put his arm around me. After we started kissing, I pushed his hand when he tr
ied to go under my shirt. I almost mouthed the words along with him when he pulled back and said, “I don’t want to do anything you’re not ready for.”

  We melted against each other. This time I let his hand do some exploring. After counting off five minutes on the dashboard clock, I pulled off his shirt and then shrugged off mine, and we followed that up with some relatively tame Internet-sanctioned making out.

  Got to the newspaper offices early and sat in one of the back offices so I could avoid Ms. Ratcliffe. But the office shares a wall with hers, so I heard her muffled words:

  “No…I have her dead to rights….You have to see these two poems….Plagiarism is so obvious….I’ll be fine….No, don’t hire anyone….The school is providing counsel….No, I don’t want you to spend the money….”

  Silence.

  I got up, went around, and knocked on the door to Ratcliffe’s office. When she opened the door, her face turned a deep red. She was still holding her cell.

  “Look,” I said. “This isn’t a threat or anything, but you actually do need your own lawyer.”

  Her hand covered her face. The tattoo on her arm was some Chinese character. “I’m so sorry, Reshma. I was only trying to reassure my uncle—”

  “I’ve read all the newspaper columns and heard all the jokes. It’s fine that you think I’m a deluded brat. But Arjuna Rao doesn’t take a case that he doesn’t think he can win. The issue isn’t whether you’ve got me ‘dead to rights.’ Everyone agrees that the borrowing—intentional or not—did occur. What’s at issue here is racism. You know, freshman year, Alex got caught copying someone’s Spanish homework before class. So where’s the C–on her transcript?”