by Mira Jacob
Akhil’s fingers pressed tenderly at his ear before migrating to his mouth. “Six.”
“And all are National Merit semifinalists?”
“Yeah.” Akhil rubbed his nose, then stopped, sniffing his fingers.
“I tell you, in India we competed in maths all the time, but there was never a real tournament—such a good idea! A sport that tests the mettle of the mind!”
“That’s not really a sport,” Amina said.
“Not true! What do you think chess is?”
“Not a sport either.”
“Shut up, idiot box! You know your grandfather was the champion chess player of Madras Christian College and went on to become the—”
“Semifinalist for the All-India Chess Championships. Yeah. You told me.”
“Well, you’re in a fine mood today, Miss Impressed with Everything. Maybe you should try using your brain for something instead of criticizing everyone. Maybe you should try leading a team of—Akhil, what’s wrong with your ear?” Kamala pointed a serving spoon at him.
“Nothing.”
“You keep fiddling with it. It’s infected? Come, let me look.”
“No.” Akhil leaned back. “No, it’s fine.”
“But it’s swollen, no?”
Akhil shook his head, and the sweatshirt around his neck slipped to reveal a pulpy bruise.
“Oh my God!” Kamala stood up. “Oh my God, you’ve been hit!”
“What?” Akhil looked at Amina, who pointed a finger at her own neck.
Akhil slapped a hand over the bruise. “No. Nothing. It’s nothing, Ma.”
“Who did this to you?” Kamala demanded. “Those boys?”
“No one, Ma, it’s nothing—”
“What nothing? You’ve been beaten! Was it the same boys as last year? Mr. No Good Martinez and his thuggy band of goondas?”
“No, I swear—”
But she was already rising from the table. “Mesa Preparatory code of honor my foot! They said it wouldn’t happen again, and now this! Why didn’t you say anything? When did this happen? I’m calling your father.”
“No! Don’t!”
But Kamala was already walking quickly to the kitchen, hand held in front of her like a weapon.
“Do something!” Akhil whispered, hurrying after her.
“Like what?” Amina followed.
In the kitchen, their mother punched the buttons on the phone with her middle finger, pointing it at them when she finished dialing. “Thugs! I saw it on the Eyewitness News, gangs coming to Albuquerque with their initiations and putting ideas in the heads of teenagers! Yes, operator, can you have Dr. Eapen kindly call home? His son has been beaten to a bloody—”
“It wasn’t a boy!” Amina shouted.
Kamala stopped talking, her mouth puckered over her next word.
“It wasn’t a boy,” Amina repeated.
Her mother put the phone back in the cradle. “A girl?”
Akhil nodded.
“A girl beat you?”
“He wasn’t beaten,” Amina said. “It’s a hickey.”
Kamala’s eyes widened. “Who?”
“The thing. On his neck. It’s like a kiss, but sort of hard. Like a sucking kiss. He was with Mindy Lujan. That’s where he was when you asked. That’s why—”
Kamala waved a frantic hand and Amina stopped talking. Her mother stood dead still, palms flat against the counter like she was holding it in place. She looked at them, her mouth twisting at the corners, and Amina realized she was trying not to cry.
“Oh, Mom …,” Akhil started, but Kamala’s lips just stretched tight and thin and paper-flat, as though they could be torn. She walked around the counter to her purse and picked it up, stuffing it under one arm. Then she went out of the kitchen and down the hall and out the front door, opening her car door and slamming it with a thump. They watched her pull out of the driveway.
“Thanks a fucking lot, Amina.”
“You said to do something.”
“Shut up.”
It took four hours for Kamala to come home. Amina knew because she was awake, wondering if it was possible to lose both parents to the difficulties of living in America. Could their mother really just leave them, too? Was that all it took, one good fight and members of her family would drive off down the driveway forever?
But then came the noise of the car, the keys landing on the countertop. Kamala hushed the dog’s whining with the low hum of Malayalam. Footsteps and paw steps made their way across the house and the bottom stair creaked as Kamala climbed up to the kids’ landing. Amina hurriedly arranged herself into something she thought a mother would feel good about coming back to—back straight, nightie smoothed. A good girl. A Girl Scout. But Kamala didn’t knock on her door. She didn’t knock on Akhil’s either. Amina stared at the brass knob, listening to what sounded like rustling and fleeing, Kamala’s steps softer on the stairs as she hurried slipslapslipslapslip down.
Amina got up. She tiptoed across her room and opened the door as silently as she could, peeking into the hallway. Nothing. No Kamala, no Queen Victoria, no one to look intrepid for. But wait. She squinted. Yes, there was something. A paper bag. It sat outside Akhil’s door, as familiar and mystical as a lawn gnome. Amina slid across the floor in her socks and knelt in front of it, dumping out the contents. A box fell to the floor. Small, neat, not much bigger than her hand. She turned it over, looking at the picture of a couple silhouetted by the sunset. LATEX, bold letters proclaimed, and with the proclamation, Amina understood that she had no business with it whatsoever. She shoved it back into the bag and half ran back to her bedroom, diving under the covers.
The next morning the bag was gone. Akhil did not say anything about it as they ate their toast alone in the kitchen. And Kamala did not come out at all, even as they washed the dishes and packed their bags for school, though Amina thought she caught a glimpse of her mother’s dark head looking through the dining room window as they pulled out of the driveway.
CHAPTER 4
Nobody at Mesa Prep was prepared for the mid-semester arrival of Paige and Jamie Anderson. By late February, any luster of new lives or new possibilities had been dulled into the routine of schedules and cliques. Students clustered in the quad in the morning, bored to death with one another and staring sullenly toward the parking lot, as though daring it to spit out something worth looking at. So there was a pause as the two figures crested the asphalt horizon, a round of glances exchanged. Bodies turned slightly on benches. Words trailed off into the morning. Were they real?
Wearing down coats, hiking boots, and blank faces that gave nothing away, Paige and Jamie arrived like orphans, a hint of tragedy, bravery, and unmentionable events following them with the persistence of a shadow.
“Who’s that, Snow Fucking White and the Disco Dwarf?” Mindy said, watching them cross the lawn that first morning.
“Shut it, Mindy,” Akhil said, proving that while Mindy’s remark was overzealous, her move to ostracize the Andersons was actually highly instinctual, the tactical response of one species whose time has been eclipsed by another. There was a palpable knowingness, along with several other features, on the approaching Andersons that would wipe the likes of Mindy Lujan off the Mesa Preparatory map, including:
1. Paige’s thighs (curvy)
2. Paige’s breasts (hidden by her white jacket, but clearly visible in outline, like croquet balls covered in snow)
3. Paige’s neck (long)
4. Paige’s cheeks (ruddy)
5. Paige’s mouth (large and slightly blurry at the edges, as if the lips hadn’t been told where to end themselves)
6. Paige’s hair (shiny, black, bobbed)
7. Jamie’s Afro (huge)
To be clear, Jamie’s Afro (yes, he was white, but what else to call it?) was not in itself attractive, but somehow the sheer wildness of it, with outer limits reaching a blond radius twice as wide as his actual head, served as a brilliant counterpoint to his sister’s tidy black loc
ks, baby’s breath to her rosebud. It made her, if possible, more perfect. No one said anything else as they walked past, disappearing into the dean’s building.
“What’s their deal?” Akhil said as they were lost to the bright glare of the closing door.
“Only one way to find out.” Dimple slid her books off the concrete bench and followed them.
Unsurprisingly, it was Dimple who broke the first legitimate scoop on the Andersons, some four hours later in biology class. She walked in past the chalkboard, where the words interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase swirled yellow against green, and winked at Amina. When Ms. Pankeridge stepped out of the room five minutes later to find more pipe cleaners for the mitosis models, Dimple announced, “They’re intellectual refugees.”
“What?” Hank Franken asked, working his pinkie finger steadily into a Styrofoam ball.
“The Andersons. They got kicked out of St. Francis’s.”
“Bullshit. Says who?”
“Says them.”
“Hicked hout?” Gina Rodgers asked, her lips clamped over two pipe cleaners.
“That’s why they’re here now. Apparently their grandfather had to bribe the school or something so Paige could graduate on time.”
“Kicked out for what?” Amina asked, and Dimple smiled like she’d won the $25,000 question.
“Atheism.”
A small murmur went up in the room, followed by a few nervous glances. While everyone knew better than to actually believe in God, the outright denial of one seemed dangerous and possibly gauche.
“Can they really kick you out for atheism?” Amina asked.
“They’ll kick you out for anything,” said Hank, his fingers now deeply rooted in five separate balls so that when he raised his hand, it looked like half a solar system. “Those nuns are relentless.”
“What exactly did they tell you?” Amina asked.
“Well,” Dimple began, looking coolly around the room, “when I asked him why they were starting here in the middle of the second semester, he said because legally, the U.S. required schooling until the age of sixteen, and that St. Francis’s had become untenable for him. So then I said, well, thank God they had room for you here so late in the year, and he said God had nothing to do with it, his grandfather’s checkbook did.”
“And that makes him an atheist?” Amina asked.
“Pretty much,” Dimple said.
After dinner, Akhil stood stoned on an aluminum ladder, head, hand, neck, and wrist all craned toward the ceiling. Downstairs, they could hear Kamala cleaning the dinner dishes, bursting with the first bars of “The Sound of Music” every few minutes.
“Dimple says they got kicked out for being atheists or something,” Amina said, lying on Akhil’s bed.
“That’s a load of crap.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Paige is in Mathletes.”
“So you talked to her?”
He looked from the piece of paper in his hand to the ceiling, studying it for long seconds before drawing a single long, skinny line. “Does Che look like a girl?”
“Is he the bald one?”
“Fuck you. The bald one is Gandhi. You can tell because of his glasses.” Akhil climbed back up. “And anyway, of course I didn’t talk to her.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s, you know.” Akhil mashed the paintbrush down in the can. “Pretty.”
“And Mindy will get jealous?”
“No. We broke up yesterday anyway. I mean, we’re still, you know, seeing each other, but we’ve decided not to be exclusive. But anyway, Paige told Mr. Jones that her father didn’t think St. Francis’s was academically rigorous enough. You really don’t think that looks like Gandhi?”
“It looks like a baby.”
“But the eyes are good, right?”
“Kind of, but they’re in the wrong place.”
“Oh, that’s all? Fucking great.”
“Make them lower.” She went to his desk, opened up his history spiral. She drew an egg on the paper and then drew a light line across the middle. “Like this. Everyone always thinks eyes go high on the head but they’re usually more in the middle of it.”
Akhil was quiet, pink eyes scanning the paper. “Hey, Ami, maybe you could—”
“No.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“No. How much?”
“Two bucks a night.”
“Three.”
“Please? I’ll take you to Coronado mall this weekend.”
“Two seventy-five.”
Akhil groaned. “Seriously. Please.”
Amina considered it. This money, combined with what she was making on Akhil’s “flash sleeps,” as she’d begun to think of them, would put her in fine contention for getting at least an extra roll of film a week. “Fine, two. But just the drawing. I’m not painting anything.”
“Deal.” He looked back down at the paper. “Where do the mouths go?”
“Dunno.” Amina took the pencil from him and started up the ladder. “I’m bad with mouths.”
CHAPTER 5
“The river is crucial to understanding every other element in these pages,” Mr. Tipton said the next day, holding up Heart of Darkness. “Who can tell me what it signifies?”
The door opened, sending in cool air and swiveling heads from the board to the doorway. Amina saw the fuzz of the blond Afro, then studied her notebook as the rest of Jamie Anderson materialized. Mr. Tipton crossed the carpet to shake his hand.
“Welcome,” he said with a broad smile. “We were expecting you yesterday. Jamie?”
The Afro bobbed.
“Well, come in. Dean Farber tells me you’ve transferred in from St. Francis’s?”
“Yeah,” Jamie said. His voice was slightly muffled and husky, as though he was getting over a cold.
“And before that you lived in Chicago?”
“My dad was a professor at the University of Chicago.”
“Ah, I see,” Mr. Tipton said, his eyes sparkling with appreciation. “Well, welcome. Take a seat.”
Jamie looked around the room. He looked at the empty seat next to Amina and then chose the one directly across the classroom, sliding into it. His eyes flicked up. They were a deep, unnerving green, protected by ferocious eyebrows.
“So, Mr. Anderson, in the last two weeks, we’ve plunged straight into Heart of Darkness,” Mr. Tipton said. “Everyone else has read the first hundred pages, so you’ll need to catch up over the weekend. Meanwhile, I don’t suppose you brought a copy?”
Jamie lifted the paperback. The cover was different from the one available at the Mesa bookstore.
“Great,” Mr. Tipton said. “So who in the class can fill Jamie in on the broad themes in the book? Amina?”
“It’s okay, I’ve read it,” Jamie said, to her utter relief.
“Really? I was told St. Francis’s doesn’t cover this particular work until senior year.”
“I read it on my own over the summer.”
“Oh! Great! So I expect you’ve got some insight into some of the prevalent themes.”
“Maybe,” Jamie said.
Amina’s stomach clenched with nervousness, as though she were being ratcheted up a ramp on a roller coaster. Maybe?
“So we were talking about the river,” Mr. Tipton said, hands jamming back into his pockets. He rocked on the balls of his feet. “Who can tell me what the river is?”
“Life.”
“Death.”
“A journey.”
“Obsession.”
“Good!” Mr. Tipton said. “These are all good thoughts. Jamie, anything to add?”
Jamie tugged at his left ear. “A river.”
The collective titter gave way to a tingling silence. Mr. Tipton did not smile. “That’s all?”
“In a sense.”
“In what sense, exactly?”
Jamie shrugged his shoulders.
“No, no,” Mr. Tipton said, “go on
, I’m interested. Please tell us in what sense the river is just a river.”
Jamie muttered a little, his ears reddening, and Amina shifted in her seat.
“No? Okay, let’s move on,” Mr. Tipton said, resuming his pacing. “So. A journey. What kind of jour—”
“In the sense that in order to experience this book, really experience it, the best thing anyone can do is to get rid of the need to label every symbol in it.” The flush spread fast over Jamie’s face, covering everything but the white half-moons under his eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, if you’re really plunging—you said plunging, right?—into this book, then tethering yourself to every single guidepost along the way isn’t really going to make that happen.”
Mr. Tipton’s mirth was palpable. “So you think critical reading is a useless activity? That your classmates are just, what, not experiencing the book?”
“I think the best way to experience this book is to let it happen to you and think about what it all means later.”
“Later when?”
“Later when you’re a high school English teacher.”
Amina was sure she wasn’t the only one who gasped audibly, but somehow it was her face that Jamie locked onto. She swallowed.
“Mr. Anderson, let’s take a minute in the hall, shall we?”
Jamie got up and walked out first. Mr. Tipton carefully placed down his chalk and walked out after him.
“Holy shit,” someone laughed, and someone else let out a low whistle, the kind reserved for pretty girls and danger.
The mouths were disastrous. Every single one of them. She hadn’t drawn them well, to be sure, but the mural had taken a turn for the worse when Akhil insisted that all the lips be shades of pink or peach. The Greats had the smiles of country club mothers.
But if the failure registered at all with Akhil, he wasn’t showing it as he led Kamala down the halls to see the progress.
“Let me see, let me see,” Kamala said giddily, as though Akhil wasn’t doing just that. The door to his bedroom swung open, and Amina let her eyes rise to the ceiling, seeing, for the first time, how the mural darkened the ceiling like a gargantuan spider. Kamala circled under it, hands clasped over her heart.