Kiran slumped out of his room as I made my way down the stairs. He didn’t even bother to grunt at me or pull my hair. Daddy stood in front of the stove and banged a spoon against the side of a pot and muttered to himself. He reached for a towel and knocked over his tea. His cup only had a few sips left, but he still grumbled.
This wouldn’t be a good time to tell him I’d rather make my own sandwich today instead of bringing the tiffin. Plus, Pride was a vice. I couldn’t let what everyone else said bother me.
The onions Daddy had started to chop stung my eyes as I reached over him for a bowl and cereal.
“Do you need some help?” I asked. Score! One karma point for being helpful. Only a billion more to go. At least I had a chance to practice all of this on Daddy, because the real test would be once I got to school and had to pretend I had no Anger when I was face-to-face with Lacy.
Daddy looked up. The lines on his face smoothed slightly, so that there were more pillow imprints than the hard creases the lines had been the second before.
“Thanks, beta. Just about finished. Making sardine masala.”
“Daddy, there’s a talk at the temple on the twenty-third. Do you think we can go?”
Daddy turned down the heat on the stove and looked at me. “A talk at the gurdwara?”
I nodded and poured milk into my cereal.
“I don’t see why not. That’d be nice. It’s a date.” Daddy pushed my hair behind my ear. “Your dadima wouldn’t want you to go to school with your hair loose.”
Dadima only left her hair down after she’d washed it. Once it dried, she’d tie it back into a low bun. I’d left mine down today, hoping I could use it like a curtain to shield my face if I needed to.
Mom came into the kitchen dressed for work, her hair still wet from her shower.
“Morning,” she said, grabbing a cup of coffee. “You’re up early, darling. Meeting Sara?”
I shoved a huge spoonful of cereal into my mouth, making milk dribble down my chin. Satnam Waheguru. Satnam Waheguru. Don’t think bad thoughts, don’t think bad thoughts. Minus karma points for Anger at Mom’s cluelessness, and probably Pride because it stung, and maybe even Attachment to Things of This World, even though Sara wasn’t a “thing.” I was really attached to the idea of our friendship, and I still couldn’t let it go. Who knew all of this stuff could be so mixed together? At this rate I’d be sporting a mustache the rest of my life and probably grow a beard on top of it all.
“How about chicken pesto bake tonight?” Mom asked.
I shrugged.
“I’ll be home at five and ready to cook,” she said, and kissed Daddy on the way out the door.
Daddy handed me my tiffin. It was too hot to put into my backpack, so I had to carry it in a reusable grocery bag. Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself that it was Pride to be worried about what other people thought.
As I walked into school, several girls stood around Lacy’s locker, including Sara. She almost blended in with them, but the way she pulled at the sides of her skirt and kept checking the straps of her top made her stand out, and not in a good way. Lacy stood out in the good way that teachers, parents, and boys noticed.
David stood in front of his locker, struggling with his waist pack. Lacy stuck her front teeth out over her bottom lip and mimicked a mouse. The other girls laughed at her impression of David. I couldn’t believe Sara, Kate, and Emma would actually laugh at Lacy’s stupid idea of a joke and not tell her David was off-limits.
Lacy looked up at me.
“Brought Curry Hut for lunch again, Kar?” she said.
I turned and stared hard at my lock. I had to squint my eyes in concentration. The numbers blurred together, so I had to blink a few times. That must have been a couple of extra karma points for ignoring Lacy.
Lacy turned back to the group of girls. “That’s why I don’t dare eat at the Indian Garden. It’ll put hair on your chest—or your face!”
Only the idea that Lacy would get her own slice of karma kept me from crying. I stood in front of my locker until their giggles mixed with the chatter and sounds coming from other classrooms and were nothing more than noise.
The rest of the morning I tried to melt into my desk. It was easy in Ms. Hillary’s class, because all we did was a bunch of worksheets. But Mrs. Davis put us into groups in science to complete a chart about plant cells. Then in Mr. McKanna’s class we did math relay races.
I’m good at math, so my row was actually excited to have me, despite my being ’Stache Attack. Lacy got all her problems wrong. Kate looked annoyed but laughed anyway.
It felt good to win and be better than Lacy at something, until I realized that Pride had crept in. Whatever karma points I’d earned this morning were getting deleted faster than I could earn more.
“Next time I want to be on your team, ’Stache,” Derek said, putting his finger over his lip as he walked past my desk.
The whole ’Stache Attack thing confused me. It was almost like he said “ ’Stache” in a good way, but why did it still make my breath catch in my chest like it was caught in a bubble? Insults should come with a usage guide like the grammar guide Ms. Hillary had in English class.
“If I ever want to know how to look like an idiot, I’ll be sure to ask Derek,” Ginny said, stopping at my desk.
I shrugged, not sure if I could open my mouth to laugh or say anything.
“Seriously, just ignore him. Come on.” She pulled jokingly on my arm.
I fell in step beside Ginny, surprised and also relieved at how easy it was to be next to her.
“Did you come up with an idea for the suggestion box?” Ginny asked.
“Yeah. I did. I hope—” I stopped myself from saying I hoped it’d help clean up my karma. Ginny was really nice, but we were still only school friends. I didn’t know if I could tell her more just yet. “I hope I can do something, you know, to help others.”
“I love your idea about bringing a bag lunch, but I really want to start a recycling club. You should see the playground on Sundays. It’s gross.”
“You come to school on Sundays?”
Ginny blushed. “Not to school, but . . .” She glanced over her shoulder. No one noticed us. They were busy talking and laughing with each other. “Are you free after school?”
“Um. Yeah. I guess.”
“Okay. After school I’ll show you.”
“Okay.” I could tell by how she’d looked over her shoulder that she probably hadn’t told anyone else about whatever it was.
“So what’s your idea for the suggestion box?” Ginny asked.
“I was thinking a study group would be a good idea.”
“Really? Like peer tutoring?” Ginny asked.
“Yeah. Exactly.” I loved that Ginny actually listened to what I said and asked questions about it. Sara had always been good with listening and advice—before.
We filed into Mrs. Clark’s class for social studies.
“How did your brainstorming go yesterday? Did all of you come up with a big idea?” Mrs. Clark asked once most of the class had settled down.
“Today?” Tom asked. “I thought you said Friday.”
“I said today, and each of you should consider putting your ideas in the suggestion box before you head off to lunch.”
After class I put my study group idea in the suggestion box. Ginny had her recycling club idea ready too. She pushed it in and smiled at me. Maybe my karma was already getting better.
Ginny even waited as I got my tiffin out of the storage closet, and we walked to the lunchroom together. David smiled as we sat across from him at the table. The white bread from his sandwich clung to his teeth, forming little balls. It was really gross, but I smiled back anyway.
David had small containers with candy inside, and the bigger containers had egg salad in one and green Jell-O in another. White bread and candy were the last things I thought anyone with David’s orthodontic problems should be eating.
It looked like Ruthi
e had packed his lunch for him.
David noticed me staring and started to say something, but more white bread stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had to stick his finger in and take out his retainer and scrape the bread off.
I rested my hands on top of the tiffin, considering whether or not I should open it. I looked down the table to make sure Lacy wasn’t watching. I caught Sara’s eye for half a breath. She turned her attention back to her school lunch and poked at the peas with her fork. Sara hated peas. That’s something a best friend knows. I didn’t know if Lacy knew that, or if she even cared.
“You can have half my sandwich if you want.” Ginny held half of her sandwich out to me.
“Really?”
Ginny shrugged. “Sure.”
“Hey,” David said, and coughed. Some of his spit landed on the sandwich in Ginny’s hand. “You always give it to Scoo—I mean . . . me.”
David glared at me, the fluorescent lights reflecting off his glasses in an eerie way.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I should actually eat this, or my dad will get really annoyed. He just made it this morning.”
“All right,” Ginny said, and tossed the sandwich half to David.
I didn’t know why David wanted the sandwich so badly when he had his own lunch. Then I watched him shove it into his pee pack. I sat up straighter, not sure what had just happened.
Ginny started to laugh, but not one of those giggles where she covered her mouth, like most girls. It was a deep, choppy helicopter of a laugh. It made me smile and want to be her friend even more.
“Did he just—? I mean . . . isn’t that—?”
“It’s not what you think,” Ginny said, still laughing.
Ginny’s laugh filled up my arms and legs with a carefree lightness that I hadn’t felt in several days. I reached for my tiffin and pulled off the lid, too full of that breezy I’ve-just-made-a-new-friend feeling to care if anyone noticed the smell of my lunch.
I had about three bites of sardine masala with about half a chapati before Tom said anything.
“Man, what is that, ’Stache Attack? Cat-food curry?”
Derek laughed, and they gave each other a high five.
“Can’t you pack anything normal?” Lacy said, butting in.
“Something less ’Stache,” Tom added while he chewed a huge bite of hot dog.
I wanted to say that in some countries roasted cockroaches on a stick would be considered normal and a hot dog would be strange, but I didn’t have Ginny’s ability to make words come out of my mouth with the same strength they had in my head.
“I know what my suggestion is going to be for the box,” Lacy said, talking to the boys but loud enough to be heard at my table. “A smell-free lunch.” She spread her hands apart as she said it like she could see the words written in the air.
I slipped the chapati bowl back on top of the sardine masala and ate the flat bread plain. The edges were hard without the sardine masala to moisten them, but the chewing gave me something to do. Ginny and David were silent, following the unspoken rule that after an onslaught of insults you had to remain quiet for a minimum of two or three minutes, out of respect.
Finally Ginny cleared her throat. “What’s ‘’Stache’?”
“It’s because Karma has hair on her face. Right above her lip. Like a mustache,” David said, opening up his sandwich and picking out the olives.
I felt the chapati stick in my chest. I drank from my water bottle, but the feeling didn’t go away.
“So what?” Ginny said. “Big deal.”
Even though I’d waited all summer to hear those words from Sara, they didn’t wash over me in the way I’d thought they would. It was nice of Ginny to say it, but someone else thinking my mustache wasn’t a big deal didn’t suddenly change the way I felt.
“Do you like your food?” Ginny asked, turning toward me.
I did, but I didn’t know if I should admit it. Probably if things with Sara hadn’t been so weird this summer, I’d have just said yes. But look where being myself had gotten me with her. Then again, Ginny didn’t give me that nervous choose-the-right-door—one is a million dollars, the other is eternal doom—feeling I got with Sara.
“Yeah. Most of the time.”
“I know someone who will eat it if you’re not going to,” David said, gathering up all his little plastic containers and shoving them back into his lunch box.
I had a mental image of David with sardine stuck between his teeth and little curry spittle sprayed across the table. “It’s okay. I’ll just eat it later at home.”
“If you like it, you should eat it now,” Ginny said.
“I guess.” I couldn’t help but look over at Sara and imagine what she’d tell me to do—if we were still friends, that is. But she had her back to me.
Ginny had a point, but each time I heard someone laugh or sniff, I wanted to find a closet to hide in because I was positive it had to do with ’Stache Attack or my tiffin.
Earning karma points and trying to pretend the teasing didn’t bother me wasn’t going to be sprinkle-of-fairy-dust easy.
Chapter Eighteen
Ginny waited for me at my desk after school, and we just kind of fell into step with each other. A purposeful wait and walk.
“Follow me,” she said. We walked out the gate toward our houses, but Ginny grabbed my arm and we turned left.
“Are we going to the elementary school?” I asked, keeping my voice low so the crossing guard wouldn’t hear.
“Yeah,” Ginny whispered. “Don’t worry. No one will be there, and we’re going to the playground by the kindergarten anyway. It’s always the first to be empty.”
My heart flip-flopped like a fish on dry ground. I was pretty sure we were breaking a couple of rules, maybe even trespassing, which couldn’t be good for my karma point count.
“This way,” Ginny said when we got to the tree line at the side of the kindergarten buildings. “We have to go behind the tool shed, then up onto the climbing frame.”
My breath caught in my throat. I had an image of the principal’s scowling face hovering over us.
“Don’t worry. No one will be able to see us,” Ginny said, reading my thoughts.
I followed her onto the climbing frame and up to a platform about the size of my bed.
“Well?” Ginny asked.
I looked around. Three sides of the platform were solid and decorated to be like a ship. The fourth side opened to three steps leading up to the rest of the climbing frame. A large solid wall for rock climbing blocked us from being seen by anyone in the school buildings—the perfect place to be alone or with a good friend. The idea that we might actually be more than school friends surprised me. I did consider Ginny my real friend.
“It’s great,” I said.
“Right?” Ginny leaned back against a side of the climbing frame, with a steering wheel above her head. “I love coming here to read and draw or just think.”
I nodded, picturing myself doing all those things in exactly this spot.
“The only thing is, a bunch of older kids come here on Saturday nights and trash it. So on Sunday morning I usually pick the garbage up. I just can’t concentrate until it’s all clean. That’s why I want to put more trash cans and recycling bins around the school.”
“Your mom lets you come here alone on the weekend?” I asked.
“I don’t really tell her. My baby brother is only a couple of months old. She usually falls asleep when he’s napping. Then I come out here to enjoy being free.”
“You could always come over to my house,” I said. I hadn’t really thought first before saying it, and my cheeks flushed after I did.
“That’d be cool. Thanks.”
I pulled out my tiffin. “Want to help me eat my sardine masala?”
“Sure.” Ginny took the bread I handed her, and I showed her how to tear and roll it before dipping it into the masala. “It’s actually pretty good. It doesn’t taste at all like I thought it would.�
�
We finished the rest of the masala before Ginny asked, “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“When did they start with the ’Stache Attack thing?”
Even though Ginny didn’t say “ ’Stache Attack” in a teasing way, it stung just the same.
“It started at the pool.” I swallowed a bite and felt it slide down my throat. Then I explained about Lacy and the snack bar that day. Ginny nodded as I described how Sara didn’t do or say anything as everyone laughed. My throat squeezed together when I said Sara’s name, but the words kept coming. The more I talked about it, the closer I felt to Ginny, which was funny, because talking about my mustache had been what had made me feel even further away from Sara.
“That sucks,” Ginny said. She chewed the last bite of chapati. “Do you remember in first grade when Derek called me ‘Guinea Pig’ for the first time?”
I scratched the tips of my ears where they burned. Talking about ’Stache Attack embarrassed me enough, but for some reason it embarrassed me more to listen to Ginny talk about her nickname.
“Well, do you know that the entire summer before that, Derek and I played together? Every day?” Ginny stared up at the sky as she talked. “His grandma lives next door to me, and she used to watch him while his mom went to work.”
She took a deep breath. I sat quietly, not wanting to break the spell that spread between us, solidifying our friendship, making Ginny want to spill her secrets.
“We even took baths together.”
“Baths?”
Our eyes met, and we cracked up, not in a spell-breaking way. In fact, it made the spell swell and engulf all our fears and hesitations, and pop them like bubbles.
“I know. My mom took our picture once and gave a copy to his grandma,” Ginny said, shaking her head. “But then in first grade, when he accidentally pronounced my name as ‘guinea,’ well, he was too embarrassed to admit that it was an accident. He liked that everyone thought he was funny, and he pretended he’d done it on purpose. It was better to be funny than be best friends with Guinea Pig.”
“Didn’t you care that he made it such a big joke?”
Karma Khullar's Mustache Page 9