The Whole Story of Half a Girl

by Veera Hiranandani

  “It’s not going to happen to us,” her voice chirped on the other end. “I know I’ve been a jerk. I’m sorry.”

  I coughed a little, blinked my eyes, and wondered if I was dreaming. But I wasn’t.

  “Good,” I said.

  Mom let Sam sleep over that night. Sam brought the spy pen-flashlights. Mom let us put the pop-up tent in my room and we had a pretend campout. We talked and talked and talked until midnight.

  For the rest of the summer, at Sam’s house, we’d bead bracelets or spin on the tire swing that hangs from the big oak tree in her backyard. We didn’t go to Cape Cod, and I’m pretty sure it was because it was too expensive, but Dad said it was because our favorite inn was already filled. Sam’s family decided to visit her aunt in Maine instead. We don’t talk about that, though, and we don’t talk about the fact that we’re going to different schools soon. Instead we ask her Magic 8 Ball stuff like when we’ll have our first kiss from a boy, and if I’ll be a journalist and if Sam will be an actress, and what countries we’ll travel to as a famous journalist and actress, and if Sam will ever get to meet Zac Efron.

  I kept hoping, on those lazy days under the big oak tree, that somehow summer would just keep going and I’d never get here—where I am this morning. About to get up, get dressed, and go to Maplewood Middle School.

  “Sonia,” Dad says. “Up, up, you have a big day ahead of you.”

  I pull the covers tight around my face. “Just a few more minutes.”

  “Come on, you’re starting an adventure.” Dad pats my stomach through the covers. That’s what he calls everything these days, an adventure. I’m tired of adventures. I pull the blanket down so just my eyes show. Even though I’ve spent a lot of time with him lately, I feel like we haven’t really talked.

  “Dad? What will it be like, my new school?” I ask.

  “You’ll make new friends, learn different things. In a week it’ll be like you never went anywhere else.”

  “Are you going to get a new job?” I ask and as I’m saying it, I realize it’s the one question I’ve wanted to ask him all summer.

  He’s quiet for a few seconds and doesn’t look at me, just straightens the covers.

  “I’m enjoying my time off, enjoying spending time with you kids,” he says, still looking down. Then he meets my eyes. “But yes, soon I’ll get a new job. Better get up, though. It’s getting late.” He puts his warm hand on my cheek before standing up and leaving my room.

  I get dressed and go down to breakfast with my stomach doing cartwheels. I have to wait for the bus. Natasha does too, but she goes in later and she’s still young enough that Dad will wait with her. I wish he’d wait with me, but the other kids at the bus stop would probably laugh. I’ve never taken a bus to school before. Mom either drove us or we’d carpool. But this morning she hands me my lunch, gives me a hard hug, and leaves to teach her class. I hear her red Honda pull out of the garage and rumble down the long gravel driveway.

  I’m surprised that all Dad made on such a big morning is oatmeal, but it’s just as well. I can barely get down half a bowl. Dad and Natasha follow me to the door as I set off for the bus stop. Natasha waves frantically. I don’t turn around after that, but I know Dad is there watching. I can still feel his warm hand on my cheek, could draw an outline of it resting there.

  The driveway ends and I head onto Willow Lane. Usually I love that our house is set way back in the woods, so that we can only see trees and grass. But today all those trees are blocking my view of everything that lies before me—and I’m getting nervous.

  After I round the corner, I finally see two girls and a very tall boy standing across the street. I’ve seen them before, blankly waiting for the bus as we zipped by in Mom’s warm car on the way to Community. I suck in my breath and walk slower. The first thing I notice is that they aren’t carrying lunch bags. The banana, carrot juice, and tuna fish sandwich I’m holding suddenly feel pounds heavier as they slosh around in my brown paper bag. Before I cross the street, I roll up the bag and shove it into my knapsack. The two girls are talking all hush-hush with each other. The boy stands a few feet away and has earphones stuck in his ears. He wears a black baseball cap and bops his head to the music. I walk toward a big rock about ten feet away from them and start to sit down.

  “I wouldn’t sit there,” says one of the girls as she gives her honey-blond hair a toss. Her eyes flicker at me for a moment and she twists her white sneaker into the blacktop. The other girl, who has a chubby face and dark hair, looks me up and down.

  “Why?” I ask.

  The chubbier girl says, “Bird poop.”

  “Oh,” I say. I quickly stand up and turn around to look at the rock. It shimmers its clean gray and silver surface back at me.

  The blond girl asks, “Did you just move here?”

  “No. I used to go to another school, The Community School.”

  “Never heard of it,” the chubby girl says.

  “It’s in Weston,” I say, which is the next town over. She just shrugs. The boy looks me over for a second and goes back to his head-bopping.

  “What are your names?” I ask.

  “Cindy,” the chubby girl says, and looks at her friend.

  “Heather,” the other girl answers.

  “I’m Sonia,” I tell them both.

  “What’s your last name?” Cindy asks.

  “Nadhamuni.”

  “Say what?” Heather says.

  Every time I say my last name for the first time, people always ask me to say it again or spell it three times, and they still can never get it right. The funny thing is that it sounds exactly the way it’s spelled: Nad-ha-muni, and I really have no idea why it’s harder to pronounce than any other long last name. At Community everyone knew how to say it. I repeat it for them. They both squint.

  “Where are you from?” Cindy asks.

  “Here,” I say.

  “But your name. Where’s that from?”

  “My father’s from India,” I say.

  “Oh, like does he wear feathers in his hair and stuff?” Cindy still squints. Heather giggles softly behind her.

  “Why would he wear feathers in his hair?” I ask.

  “He’s not that kind of Indian, idiot,” Heather says to Cindy and nudges her in the arm. Cindy shrugs. “He probably wears a turban, right?” Heather crosses her arms, pleased with herself.

  “Uh, no.” I start to explain, but thankfully we hear the gears of the yellow bus lumbering up the hill. Everyone turns to watch. It comes to a cranky, squeaky stop and we all climb on. Cindy and Heather head toward the back with the tall boy. I sit in the first empty seat I see in the front. I can’t believe I’ll have to wait at the bus stop with Cindy and Heather every day.

  chapter six

  When we arrive in front of Maplewood Middle School, I see at least a hundred kids, some still on the buses lined up along the sidewalk, some gathered in clusters on the school stairs, others playing with hacky sacks or skateboards.

  I push my way past the groups and walk in, my heart racing, the saliva gone from my tongue. I’m supposed to go to the main office first, so someone can escort me to my classroom, but I don’t see it. I visited the school a week before with Mom, and I thought it was to my right. But now I only see two closed brown doors, no open area with a woman sitting at the front desk. I clutch the registration slip that lists my schedule.

  A bell rings and tons of kids come barreling through the front glass doors. I stand still, hoping not to be trampled. A girl runs into me, knocks my backpack clean off my shoulder, and doesn’t say she’s sorry. The top isn’t zipped all the way and out tumble my notebook and lunch. Before I can bend down to pick them up, another kid steps on my lunch bag as he runs. In a flash everybody is gone, tucked away in classrooms. I gather up my stuff, walk around the corner, and continue down a long hallway. All I can hear are the echoing voices of people inside classrooms like ghosts in the walls.

  I walk faster and faster and feel a l
ittle dizzy. I make a left, then another right, and walk down a few more hallways, knowing that I’ve lost my starting point. I start to run, though I’m not sure if I’m running toward something or away from it, and just as I round another corner I run smack into a grown-up.

  “And where are you supposed to be?” a tall man in a gray sweat suit asks me. He has a basketball under his arm and sparkly blue eyes.

  I try to speak, but my throat catches on a bump of air. I swallow and start again. “I, where’s the …?” is all I can manage, so I just thrust the registration slip at him.

  He takes the paper, looks at it, and frowns. “Oh, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong school.”

  “But my mom—” Before I can finish, or cry, or do anything else, he puts a heavy, warm hand on my shoulder.

  “I’m just kidding. Your homeroom’s actually right over there, Mrs. Langley’s,” he says, grinning, and points to a yellow door a little ways down the hallway. I’d like to be mad at him, but his smile nearly jumps off his face.

  “Really?”

  “You’re in the right place”—he looks at my paper for a second—“Miss Nadhamuni.” My heart lights up. He says it perfectly. “I’m Mr. Totono, your friendly neighborhood gym teacher.” I follow him to Mrs. Langley’s classroom and he opens the door. If more people are like this guy here, I think, it might not be so bad.

  “Mrs. Langley,” Mr. Totono says, “may I present Miss Sonia Nadhamuni.”

  Mrs. Langley is standing to the side of her desk. She’s only inches taller than I am, with short salt-and-pepper hair and a nose that looks like a pig’s. She clasps her hands in front of her brown dress and grimaces.

  “Welcome, Sonia. Please find a seat,” she says, and gestures toward the rows of desks and checks me off on her attendance sheet. The kids, folded solemnly in their desk chairs, stare at me. All twenty-five of them. No circular tables here. No Sam. No Jack.

  I find one of only two empty desks in the third row near the windows and try to settle in. Someone has written stuff on my desktop in blue pen. It says two things: MF+DG and GB smells.

  Mrs. Langley makes some general announcements and then the next bell rings. Since Mrs. Langley is also my English teacher for next period, I stay. Some kids leave and new ones file in. When the bell rings again, Mrs. Langley starts to talk about words, the importance of words, how they give us power, grace, the ability to connect with other people. It actually sounds kind of exciting, until she tells the class she’s going to give vocabulary quizzes every week. I’ve never taken a quiz. At Community we had some spelling and math tests, but mostly we just wrote essays or stories or created projects.

  I feel relieved when Mrs. Langley says we won’t have our new textbooks until next week. But then she takes out a huge stack of vocabulary lists and holds them in her upright palm like a pizza.

  “Hi,” whispers a girl in the desk next to mine as Mrs. Langley starts making her rounds with the lists. The sun flashes on her shiny blond French braid, making it look like gold. I smile at her and she sends a folded piece of bright pink polka-dotted stationery onto my desk. She gives me a quick nod as Mrs. Langley starts down my aisle. I grab the note and stuff it in my pocket when she’s turned the other way. The starchy feel of the thick paper stays on my fingers. Mrs. Langley moves toward me. She lingers between me and the girl with the braid and gives us our lists. I hold my breath. I’m actually going to get in trouble on the first day of school.

  The girl looks up at Mrs. Langley and flashes her a white, toothy smile. Mrs. Langley finally moves past us with a swish, clomp, swish, clomp of her rough dress and heavy shoes. I can’t tell if she saw the note and has decided to ignore it or didn’t see it at all. When she’s on the other side of the room, I fish it out and open it.

  I think your purple jeans are really cool.

  Want to sit together at lunch?

  Kate

  Kate signs the note with a heart at the end. I corner-eye her blond braid, pink shirt, and designer jeans suspiciously while she reads her vocabulary list. Nobody at Community looks quite like Kate. Take Sam, for instance. Sam has frizzy red hair and green eyes and she loves rainbows. She has rainbow T-shirts, rainbow barrettes, rainbow belts. Everyone at Community has their own style. I like to wear my wavy black hair as long as possible. I love purple too. I have purple jeans, lots of purple shirts, and even purple sneakers. Everyone here seems to dress alike. They all wear some version of a button-down in pink or white or blue with jeans or khakis. Some of the girls wear tank tops underneath. I stick out like a wart in my purple jeans and my lucky yellow T-shirt that has a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. But at least Kate likes my jeans.

  I stuff the note back in my pocket and check out my vocabulary list. The first word is “Nebulous (adj): unclear and lacking form. Synonym: cloudy.” Just the word I’ve been looking for.

  chapter seven

  “How was it?” Mom asks that night at dinner.

  Natasha pops a radish from the salad into her mouth and crunches down. “We sang a lot,” she answers first.

  “Sang?” Mom asks.

  “Yeah, three songs. And there was a kid, Barry, who pinched me on the playground, but then this other girl, Sarah, said he always pinches everyone, and then we went on the swings.”

  “So it was a good day?” Mom asks her. I’m surprised Mom didn’t grill Natasha about the pinching thing. Normally that’s something she’d be all worried about. But Mom’s jumpy tonight. She’s gotten up four times to get more napkins or another pitcher of water or to refill the bowl of broccoli.

  “Pretty good. Mrs. Price is funny.”

  I can tell that in a week it will be like she never went to any other school. If Natasha likes a new thing, she just packs her bags and follows it without looking back. All I can think of is calling Sam after dinner.

  “And Sonia, how’d it go for you?” Mom asks, turning her nervous face to me. Then she glances at Dad, who’s staring at his empty plate, rubbing his chin, a million miles away. He stops rubbing and smiles a sheepish smile.

  “It was okay.”

  “Just okay?” Mom says.

  “Yeah. I kind of got lost in the morning.”

  “How lost?” Dad asks.

  “I couldn’t find my homeroom and then the gym teacher helped me.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad. How are your teachers?” he asks.

  “Okay, I guess. My English teacher said she’s going to give us lots of vocabulary tests.” And her dress was ugly and she sort of looks like a pig, I want to say. And my day wasn’t okay; it made me feel like an alien from Mars.

  I lost sight of Kate as we herded into the cafeteria like sheep. By the time I spotted her again, she was already surrounded by a bunch of girls in my class, all talking and laughing. She looked up and noticed me but didn’t say anything, not a wave, not a smile. I certainly wasn’t going to plop myself down in the middle of all her matching-shirt friends.

  Then I saw a table to the left where a girl was sitting alone, writing in a notebook. She was in my English class too. Something made me want to ask her what she was writing. Suddenly I didn’t care about Kate or anyone else, so I tugged up my jeans and went over to her.

  “Can I sit here?” I asked.

  She looked up from her notebook, gave me the once-over, and nodded.

  “Hey, is that the Eiffel Tower?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting down across from her.

  “Did you go there?”

  “Last spring with my parents.”

  “Wow! Was it the most romantic place in the world?”

  She put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands, and closed her eyes for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure if Paris was romantic, but it had lots of parks and cool old buildings and a river that ran through the entire city. And once, at night after dinner, when we were walking by the river, the Eiffel Tower suddenly lit up and sparkled like a million stars. That was my favorite part of Paris. Come to think of it, though,
Mom and Dad did a lot of hand-holding in Paris, which they never do at home, so maybe it was romantic.

  “It was really pretty,” I said.

  “When I get older, I’m going to live there and be a writer,” she said, and patted her notebook as she closed it. Her name was written in big black letters on the front: Alisha Brooks.

  “I want to be a writer too—a journalist—and travel all over the world,” I told her. My body relaxed. Even my smashed sandwich started tasting better. I was about to ask her what she wrote about, but a group of kids descended on our table. In seconds everything became a swirling blur of orange lunch trays, laughter, and metal chairs scraping the floor.

  Nobody seemed to mind that I was sitting at the table. Actually, nobody seemed to notice me. But I noticed me. I was used to being darker-skinned than everyone at Community except for Marshal, whose parents are from Trinidad, but everyone at this table made me stick out like a ghost. The kids who sat here were black, while all the other tables were filled with white kids. Alisha told some of the other kids that I had been to Paris. They seemed less impressed but asked me some questions, mostly about the Eiffel Tower. I answered, ate my sandwich, and tried not to think of Community. Or why the white kids and black kids didn’t sit together here. Or where you were supposed to sit if you were too dark to be white and too light to be black? And that was how my day went.

  “Well, don’t worry,” Mom says. “These things take time. It’ll get easier.”

  “Dad?” I ask. “Would you call yourself black or white?”

  Dad puts down his fork and coughs a little. Mom freezes in mid-bite. Natasha even looks up from mashing her broccoli to bits.

  “Why? Did something happen at school?” Dad says, and moves around in his chair a little.

  “Nope. Just wondering.”

  “Neither,” he says. “I’m Indian.”

  “But if you had to pick one,” I say.

  “White, I guess.”