Karma Khullar's Mustache

by Kristi Wientge

  Sara laughed and sat down next to me. I threw a pile of clothes at her, but she caught them and tossed them back at my face.

  “Seriously, Karma. You’ve got to lighten up and stop being so paranoid.”

  “I’m not paranoid. I’m cautious.”

  “Well, stop being cautious.”

  Sara said “cautious” as if it was a bad thing.

  When I stayed quiet, Sara sat up and shrugged. She started digging through a stack of skirts next to her. She acted calm, like she’d already forgotten what we’d just talked about, but I saw a few splotches on her neck and knew I’d annoyed her somehow. They were the same splotches Sara got when Ruthie called her Sissy in public.

  I reached for some shorts and pretended to care whether or not they would fit me. Really, though, I tried to figure out what had changed between us. It wasn’t just today. It’d been happening all summer. Little things. She’d pass me a napkin at the pool and tell me to wipe the chocolate off the sides of my mouth before I’d even had a chance to lick it. Or she’d huff when I didn’t know what to say about a song or someone’s outfit.

  “Rachel told me all about her high school orientation. Did Kiran go to his?” Sara asked.

  I nodded.

  “Don’t you wish we were going into high school instead of only middle school?” Sara let out a long sigh.

  Just before she’d left for her vacation two weeks ago, we’d had a long talk about how much we were going to miss elementary school. Neither of us looked forward to going from the oldest in the school to the youngest.

  She continued to talk about how big the middle school was and how she couldn’t wait to have a real locker, and then started using words like “A-line” and “boho” as she sifted through the stacks of Rachel’s things. I let her talk because I didn’t mind letting her fill the space between us in the way feathers filled a pillow, in that light and breezy kind of way that gave my brain a break from overthinking everything.

  Instead of stressing about how I’d deal with everything middle school, I focused on the fruity smell that drifted from the piles of clothes. Probably the smell of Rachel’s bedroom. Probably perfume. I bet everyone in high school wore fruity-smelling stuff. Fake fruit smells gave me a headache.

  I leaned up with my feet under me, reached into the nearly empty garbage bag, and shook out the last few things. Three bras tumbled onto the floor by my knees.

  One had the same shape as a cutoff tank top. The other two were proper bras with wire and the shape of a boob without one even in it.

  I grabbed a bra with a boob shape and stood next to Sara in front of the mirror. Then I mimicked the side-to-side swishing she’d been doing with the skirts, but with my chest stuck out.

  Sara’s neck turned even more splotchy. She snatched the bra out of my hands.

  “Jeesh, Karma. That’s so immature.”

  I shrugged, trying to shake off the word “immature.” I hated that I’d annoyed Sara again and that I didn’t understand why. Sara was the first person I had ever felt comfortable being silly in front of—and I was just being silly—but somehow that one word “immature” shifted this and every other time I had tried to be funny. Like how people say their lives flash before their eyes when they die, my entire summer of conversations with Sara flashed before me. Had she seen all my goofing off as immature and not silly the whole time?

  Somewhere between our last day at elementary school and the middle of summer, an invisible rulebook had been wedged between us. Sara had read the book, and somehow I was supposed to guess what was inside.

  Chapter Three

  Thank Babaji for Ruthie. Just as the weirdness between Sara and me started to charge the air with the same intensity of an electric storm, Ruthie yelled, “Oreos! I’ve got Oreos!”

  She held the blue package over her head as she bumped down the stairs on her butt.

  Sara snatched the package from Ruthie at the bottom of the steps. Ruthie tried to snatch them back, but Sara held them over her head.

  “You’ll break them all,” Sara said, pushing Ruthie away and clearing a space on the floor.

  We sat where the piles of Rachel’s old clothes had been scattered and waited as Sara opened the package of cookies exactly on the red line, so it’d be easy to reseal. It’s how she opened everything.

  “You’re taking forever on purpose, Sissy. I’m telling Mom.” Ruthie made a halfhearted lunge for the cookies.

  Sara finally passed us each two. She twisted the top off hers and licked the middle before sticking it back together. Her cousin had once told her that was a cure for cancer. Obviously she doesn’t really believe that anymore, but she still does the ritual. I smiled and broke off the top black biscuit, chewed it to a mushy pulp, and used my tongue to stick the pulp over one of my front teeth. I knew the whole bra thing had annoyed her, but she’d still laugh at a non-bra joke, right?

  “Hey, do I have anything in my teeth?” I asked.

  Ruthie laughed so hard, she spit flecks of black, gooey mush onto the carpet and the open bag of cookies.

  “Gross.” Sara snatched the cookies away from us. “You’re spitting all over them.” Sara threw a napkin at Ruthie. “Clean your mouth. It’s disgusting.”

  Ruthie stuck out her black-coated tongue before she took a napkin and wiped at her mouth and cheeks.

  “Here,” Ruthie said, handing me a napkin.

  “Thanks, but I don’t need one as much as you,” I said, reaching toward Ruthie to help her wipe her face.

  “Yes, you do. It’s all over your mouth,” she said, laughing.

  “It’s all over your teeth,” I said jokingly back to her.

  “No, really, Karma.” Ruthie stopped giggling. “It’s all in the hair on your mouth.”

  I flinched as she said it and licked the napkin so I could wipe at my upper lip. My face prickled like a million bee stings on top of a sunburn.

  Ruthie had noticed my mustache. I rubbed at my upper lip until the napkin started to shred, but the friction of the napkin on my face was the only thing stopping me from crying. Why the heck did rubbing work for those monks and not for me, when they got to live up in mountains where no one ever saw them? I had to go to school in less than a week. Middle school, where a couple hundred kids, mostly older than me, would definitely notice hair on my face if a five-year-old did.

  It was one thing to know I had a mustache but something completely different for Ruthie to say it out loud. Sure, Kiran made fun of me all the time for any reason whatsoever, but I wasn’t used to someone I liked mentioning my mustache right to my face.

  “Ruthie, take these back upstairs,” Sara said, shoving the package of cookies into Ruthie’s hands.

  “I don’t want to. I want to play with you guys.”

  “We’re eleven. We don’t play. Go upstairs.” Sara stood up and pushed Ruthie toward the steps.

  I was grateful for Sara getting rid of Ruthie, but it frustrated me that I had to be rescued from a five-year-old.

  “Is it really that bad?” I asked. I said it in a whisper because I wanted to know what Sara thought, but I also wanted to pretend that none of it was actually true. Maybe I hadn’t heard Ruthie right and I’d been imagining my mustache this entire time.

  “What?” Sara asked, digging through a pile of clothes.

  All summer Sara had made a huge deal about weird things like the name of the song coming through the speakers at the pool or the color of the nail polish on her toes. Jeesh! Her mom had only just let her wear polish, and she acted like it was such a big deal. I was starting to feel like she didn’t care about anything important to me.

  “What? You know what. My mustache. Even Ruthie noticed it.”

  “Come on, she’s only five. What does she know?” Sara rolled her eyes, but I didn’t know if it was because she was trying to pretend that what Ruthie said didn’t matter or because I’d taken Ruthie so seriously.

  Either way, Sara couldn’t just keep trying to brush off this whole issue. If my
mustache was something I could easily wipe away like dusting off bread crumbs, duh, I would. Unfortunately, it was more like a glob of mustard that just got worse the more I tried to get rid of it.

  “Don’t you notice it? I mean, if Ruthie notices it, everyone will notice it.”

  “Jeesh, Karma. Don’t be so dramatic. It’s no big deal. You only notice it because it’s on you.”

  My teeth clenched together so hard, the inside of my ears tingled. It was a big deal. Having a mustache was a huge deal, not only because I was eleven but because I was a girl. Even boys my age got made fun of for having the beginnings of a mustache. I know because last year Ronny Shaw got teased for the scraggly hair that had started to grow at the sides of his mouth and on his chin.

  Sara might not have been quite herself this summer, but she was still my best friend, and a best friend should think my big deals were her big deals too.

  Sara reached over and touched my shoulder. “Ruthie notices everything. She’s always like that. If my mom moves a picture frame, she says something. It’s her most annoying quality—aside from being five.”

  After a few quiet moments she added, “Listen, we’ll read through all my magazines at the pool tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll find something to help with the hair, okay? Trust me. No one at orientation will notice it. Plus, we can do a makeover on Friday for our sleepover, okay?”

  All my muscles loosened. I even agreed to wear the pink top with puckered sleeves for orientation, and a cotton skirt with tiny swirls of embroidery edged at the bottom seam, for the first day of school.

  A new outfit wasn’t exactly the permanent fix for my mustache that I’d been looking for, but at least Sara had agreed to help me figure out a plan.

  Chapter Four

  I squinted as the sun reflected off the million tiny wavelike ripples in the pool water, giving me time to stare at the girl walking next to Sara, without looking like I was staring.

  Daddy had dropped me off early, and I’d secured our usual spot under the big tree near the fence that ran along the perimeter of the swimming club’s property. I’d never seen this girl before, and Sara hadn’t mentioned anything about inviting anyone. But even from across the pool it was obvious the girl had a walk and way about her that screamed, Hot-water girl.

  Sara and I had come up with our hot-water/cold-water-girl theory in the pool changing rooms last summer. Whoever turned the hot water on in the showers first got the hot shower, and the other shower would be freezing cold. So we both took cold showers, thinking we were letting the other get a hot one. It was only when we both came out with blue lips on an overcast day that we realized we’d both been taking cold showers for weeks. After that, sometimes we’d lie on our towels, peeking over the tops of our books, and divide the girls we saw into the hot-water or cold-water group.

  As Sara and whoever she was got closer to the spot where Sara and I always sat, this hot-water girl pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. Her eyes were ice—a too-light blue. It made the hairs on my arms stand up the way they did when I stepped out of the pool and into a gust of wind. But more than that, her eyes were calm, but not peaceful. Ocean-before-a-hurricane calm. Or at least that’s what I’d read. Daddy wasn’t really one for splurging on a beach vacation.

  “Karma,” Sara said when they reached me. “This is Lacy. She’s from California!”

  California. Big deal. Sara hung on to that word as if the entire world revolved around California. If you ask me, the middle of the Midwest where we stood was closer to the center of the world than a long, skinny state stuck at the edge of the country like an afterthought. Come on. If the world sneezed, the entire state would break off and drift right into the ocean.

  “Lacy, this is Karma.” Sara smiled at us both. I could tell she wanted us to smile at each other too.

  I nodded at Lacy, careful not to blink. I didn’t want to know Lacy with her smooth, blond hair. I didn’t even know why Sara wanted to hang out with her. But I could tell from the way Sara’s eyes took in Lacy’s every hair flick that Lacy would be a part of my life whether I wanted her to or not—at least for today. It wouldn’t take Sara long to figure out that Lacy would scrap us for cooler girls the first chance she got. The quicker I could get Sara’s focus back on track, the better. Orientation and our sleepover were Friday, and we needed to find a solution for my mustache by then. No way would we discuss my mustache in front of this girl. How could a girl like her even begin to understand a problem like mine?

  “She’s the one who moved in across the street from me!” Sara said.

  We’d watched that moving van yesterday afternoon from Sara’s bedroom window after the awkward Oreo incident. All we ended up seeing were boxes and furniture wrapped in plastic. Not enough to figure out who lived there. Now this girl with the icy eyes stood in front of me, hogging all of Sara’s attention.

  “Karma, you won’t believe it, but she’s in our class, too!”

  Yep. The way my summer had been going, why wouldn’t I believe she’d be in our class too?

  “Do you always sit here?” Lacy eyed my towel and book under the shade of the only tree. Her head turned toward the pool, most definitely calculating how far away we were from the other kids our age already splashing in the water.

  “Well, it’s shady,” Sara said.

  I noticed she didn’t say, “It’s our favorite spot” or “It’s where we always sit.” Instead her mouth twisted like she couldn’t figure out the flavor, the way she did in the middle of one of our blind taste tests when her dad would go crazy in the ice cream section of the grocery store and come home with five cartons.

  “Don’t you want to be in the sun?” Lacy asked.

  I wanted to explain about the dangers of ultraviolet rays, but Tom and Derek, two boys we’d gone to school with since kindergarten, showed up with a volleyball and started a game right in front of my towel.

  Derek said hi. Sara nudged me, so I said hi back even though his eyes were on Lacy the whole time. He’d probably only said hi so Lacy would think he was nice. Tom only came up to Derek’s ear, but he bounced around so much, you almost thought they were the same height.

  Tom grabbed the ball from Derek and set it up high for Derek to spike. Tom made it so obvious that they were showing off for Lacy. I shook my head, actually glad Lacy didn’t want to sit here. I was bending down to get my stuff, when Lacy smiled and put her things down on the grass.

  “Now I know why you sit here. Nice view.”

  Lacy took off her cover-up, which happened to be a dress. She had on a pink bikini, and the top didn’t look saggy or stuffed either.

  Sara cough-laughed the way she did when Ruthie asked her to play Barbies in front of anyone other than me. But the fact that Lacy was making herself comfortable made Sara relax and pull off her T-shirt and shorts too.

  She didn’t have on the usual one-piece she’d worn all summer. Her new suit was a two-piece. The top had more shape than I thought Sara really had. I looked down at my black-and-purple Speedo.

  The volleyball hit the ground near our towels.

  “Eye on the ball,” Derek said, laughing.

  Tom threw the ball at Derek, and they started wrestling.

  I shook my head, but Sara and Lacy giggled. It made me wish Lacy had never come to Creekview, Ohio, so Sara would go back to normal-Sara, who wore a Speedo and rolled her eyes along with me before putting her nose right back into a magazine.

  “Who are they?” Lacy asked.

  “The cute one is Derek. The dopey one is Tom,” Sara said.

  “Cute?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Sara shrugged, but her hand reached up to rub her neck.

  “He’s totally cute,” Lacy said, nudging Sara and giving me a slow blink that reminded me of how Ruthie closes her eyes when she doesn’t want to listen. It’s the kind of blink that says, It’s better when I can’t see you. So why don’t you just disappear?

  “Speaking of cute.” Sara pulled a stack of magazines out of her ba
g.

  Lacy grabbed one off the top of the pile. “Oh my gosh! I love him.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Wait till you see the ones I have.” Lacy reached into her bag and pulled out three more magazines. She flipped to the center of one, where the same boy with floppy brown hair and puffy lips took up two whole pages of the magazine. Yuck. Taylor Daniels.

  “He’s even cuter with his shirt off.” Sara giggled.

  “I didn’t know you were so crazy about Taylor Daniels.” I watched Sara, wondering if she was just trying on a new personality like a new bathing suit.

  “Of course!” Sara said.

  “Isn’t everyone? Well, almost everyone,” Lacy said without looking at me, even though her words were totally meant for me. I knew this trick. Lacy probably thought it was so sly, but she wasn’t the first snobby girl I’d come across in my life. She agreed with Sara in a way that made it obvious she totally disagreed with me.

  The volleyball whizzed past my head and landed right on the picture of stupid Taylor Daniels. I bit my lip, secretly hoping Lacy would stand up and freak out at Tom and Derek, but she didn’t. She spiked the ball back and ran over to join them.

  It only took a few more minutes before other kids came around to play ball too. Kate and Emma waved at Sara and me. We smiled and waved back. They were cold-water girls. I know for a fact because Emma and I took swimming lessons together last summer, and she never hogged the hot water.

  “She came over after dinner yesterday,” Sara said, like someone barging over after dinner meant you had to invite them to the pool, too. She twisted a chunk of her ponytail around her finger. “We’re still on for Friday, right?”

  Relieved that Sara was still Sara, I decided to ask her again if we could skim through her magazines for anything that might help with my mustache problem, but she said something just then that ruined everything.

  “I invited Lacy too.” Sara lifted her shoulders and raised her eyebrows, basically telling me I should be really excited she’d just invited hot-water Lacy to the special sleepover we’d been planning all summer—our last sleepover before sixth grade. The sleepover just after orientation where we were going to do makeovers and get rid of my mustache.