It was only when the bus bell rang, taking Lacy with it, that I managed to take a deep breath.
“You okay?” Ginny asked.
“Oh. Um. Yeah. Just got a lot of homework, that’s all.”
“You do?” She squinted her eyes.
I shrugged, pretty sure I’d just lied. Again.
“Hey, you want to help me make posters tomorrow? Mrs. Clark asked me to make posters for the new recycling club. I get to put them up in the lunchroom on Friday.”
My excitement for Ginny let me forget Lacy for a minute. “That’s great. I’d love to help. How about during lunch or something?”
“Actually, can we do it at your house? It’s just that the art room is used during our lunch period and my baby brother is usually napping when I get home.”
Tomorrow was Thursday. Thursday was secret Study Buddies with Lacy. She was supposed to walk home with me, and I still hadn’t figured out how to explain to Ginny why Lacy was following me home.
“I really want to. It’s just that I have this thing tomorrow that I totally forgot about.” Was it a lie when you knew you said something mostly true but kind of not true?
“Oh. Okay, no big deal.” Ginny shrugged.
But it was a big deal. Karma points aside, I’d just lied for about the tenth time to the only person who had been nice to me all year.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Daddy sang along to the Bollywood music blaring from his computer as he stirred the dal for my lunch on Friday morning before school.
“I’m really looking forward to the talk tonight, beta. You?”
“Mmm-hmm.” I quickly shoved a bite of aloo paratha into my mouth. The spicy potato mixture coated my tongue like glue.
“It’s so wonderful that you’re taking the initiative to understand and learn about Sikhism. Your dadima would be so proud.”
Would Dadima be proud?
I wasn’t even sure why I’d thought the talk was such a good idea in the first place. Trying to clean up my karma had sounded so simple in the beginning, but I had nothing to show for it. Aside from Ginny and David, everything else in my life had gone from bad to worse. And if I kept lying to Ginny, that friendship would end up fizzling too.
“You know, I heard that the speaker, Dr. Singh also wrote a book. He studied at Yale. His father was a farmer from Punjab. You see, beta, anything is possible if you put your mind to it,” Daddy said, handing me the tiffin.
“Hanji.” I nodded, only half listening, and grabbed my bag. As I stood on the porch for a moment to readjust my backpack, a slight breeze brushed across my face, loosening a strand of frizz from my clip, but I didn’t care. I let my hair flap freely. Dadima had once told me that the wind is God whispering to us and we should be still and listen. So I did.
I let the wind take my worries and questions and scatter them like dandelion fluff. I had no idea what God was telling me, but at least he still tried to talk to me. And maybe going to the “Your Karma, Your Life” talk was how I’d be able to figure out what he was saying.
• • •
The bus kids rushed down the hallway behind me. The past few days I’d timed my arrival to be a couple of minutes early so I wouldn’t have to walk past the pillar and wonder if Sara would or wouldn’t be waiting for me. Even though I knew she wouldn’t be waiting, there was a tiny, almost invisible, part of me that hoped she might.
At least Ginny’s locker was next to mine so I didn’t have to stand alone and watch Lacy and Sara be all buddy-buddy every morning. I wanted to ask Ginny how her recycling club posters turned out, but she wasn’t at her locker. She’d left our classroom at the bus bell yesterday to make the posters in the art room.
Lacy’s laugh filled the hallway, and I quickly shoved my books into my locker.
“Hands off, Tom. Everyone will get a piece of cake later. Well, everyone I like anyway.”
I turned to see what they were doing just as Lacy gave Sara an exaggerated prissy face.
Kate and Emma giggled. Sara’s neck turned a deep red. She ran past me toward the bathrooms, holding her books in one arm and tugging at her skirt with the other hand. I really shouldn’t have cared. I should have let her go and deal with this alone like how she’d left me to deal with ’Stache Attack by myself since that day at the pool.
As much as I wanted to pretend I hadn’t seen Sara run toward the bathroom, and as much as I wanted to go into the classroom and talk to Ginny about her recycling posters, I knew what I had to do.
• • •
Sara’s sniffles were muffled behind the first stall door. I didn’t even know if she’d ever actually been in a stall before. She’d always held her pee until she got back home.
I knocked lightly, my heart feeling like a scoop of ice cream right out of the freezer—softening slowly, with just the edges melted, but still hard and stiff in the middle.
“Sara, it’s me,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“No. I mean, yes. I’m fine.”
“Please, Sara. Open up.”
“Why? What do you want? To rub it in my face how everyone loves Lacy and no one likes me? Even you?”
“What? Look, Lacy exaggerates, that’s all. I’m not friends with her.”
The stall door swung open. Sara’s hair fell out of a messy low ponytail, and pink rimmed her eyes. “Really? Because it sounded like you two were having a good time at your house yesterday.”
“It’s not like that.”
“So she wasn’t at your house?” Sara put her hand on her hip.
“She was. It’s just that it was for school, not like I invited her over to hang out.”
“For school? She said it was because you invited her.”
I didn’t want to say anything about Study Buddies, so I skipped over her question. “But why is she mad at you?”
“Because somehow she thinks I told everyone that she was held back.”
“You did,” I said.
“How do you know that?”
“I was in the bathroom that day . . .” The conversation was not going where it was supposed to. “I mean, I heard you, but I didn’t say anything to Lacy.”
“I can’t believe this. Whose side are you on?”
Sara tried to push past me, but I blocked her way. She looked right into my eyes, and I almost moved aside. Instead I took a deep breath.
“I’m not taking sides. I’ve never defended Lacy, but you have. So why’d you tell Kate and Emma?”
“Sometimes I think people only want to be friends with me because I hang around with Lacy. I just thought if I told Kate and Emma, they’d like me better. Maybe I’d seem cooler than Lacy.” A tear rolled down Sara’s cheek, but she quickly sniffed and pulled her hair over her shoulder.
“Yeah, but—”
Sara put her hand up to stop me. “You can stop pretending you’re so perfect. It’s not like you wouldn’t have told if you knew. It’s so obvious you can’t stand her.” With that, she shoved past me.
The thing is, I did know Lacy’s secret and I didn’t tell anyone. It was like Sara had forgotten what kind of person I was—what kind of people we were. Until she remembered, I didn’t want to know her at all either.
• • •
As I put my tiffin in the storage closet, I noticed Lacy’s cake on the shelf below my spot. The rectangular cake had frosting the same icy blue as her eyes. A yellow, flowered surfboard stuck out of the middle. There wasn’t a number on the cake anywhere.
I scooted into my chair behind Ginny. “How’d your posters turn out?”
Ginny didn’t turn around. She didn’t even answer, not even with a shrug.
“Hey, Kar,” Lacy said, walking up to my desk. “Did you see my cake? Isn’t it cool?”
I guess now that Lacy knew it was Sara who’d told everyone about her being held back, she thought a piece of cake would make up for blaming me.
“The surfboard’s exactly the same design as the one I had in California. My friends in surf club had it made fo
r me when I moved, since I couldn’t bring my real one here.”
“Hmm.” I stared at the back of Ginny’s head and wished Lacy would leave already. If Lacy wanted to make things worse between Sara and me, I’d already done a good job of that in the bathroom. I didn’t want her to come between Ginny and me too.
“I’ll save you a piece. See you at lunch,” she said, walking back to her seat.
I leaned forward and tapped Ginny on the back. “Do you need help putting up your posters during lunch?” I asked.
“I thought you just made plans for lunch,” Ginny said without bothering to turn around.
“You don’t really think—”
The bell rang, drowning out my explanation. Ginny ignored me all through two bells of English and our weekly health science class. Somehow she even managed to get out the door first and into math class before I could catch her.
When I settled in my seat in Mr. McKanna’s class, I looked back to try to catch Ginny’s eye, but she stared out the window.
David tripped into the room. When he sat in his seat, his waist pack squished against the desk. Poor Scooter. I glanced over at Ginny, but her eyes hadn’t moved from the window.
Mr. McKanna was absent, so we had a sub. She couldn’t find the quizzes Mr. McKanna had left for us, even after asking Mrs. Clark to come in and help search for them. We sat and did worksheets instead, even though Derek begged for her to let us play math relays.
I finished my worksheets in ten minutes, so I just traced all my numbers again and again, wishing the bell would ring. I wanted to catch Ginny so I could help her with the posters and explain again that I didn’t have any plans with Lacy.
I looked over my shoulder, again. David wiped his forehead and bounced his leg up and down. His eyes darted around the room at the slightest noise or shuffle of paper. Something was definitely up with him today. He was acting so much weirder than usual.
The sub asked for a volunteer to collect all the papers, and Ginny’s hand shot up. I tried to linger, but I got pushed out of the room with the rest of the class. Everyone was eager to get to lunch.
I put my books under my homeroom desk and followed Lacy to the storage closet to get my lunch. I’d wait around for Ginny to get her posters and talk to her then.
Lacy opened the storage closet door and screamed. “Ewww! Ew, ew, eeuuuuwwww.”
Derek and Tom pushed their way past me. The rest of the class ran behind them and shoved each other to get a better look in the storage closet.
“Whoa!” Tom yelled.
“Man, looks like somebody hurled in here!” Derek said with a laugh.
“Karma! What did you do?” Lacy yelled, fighting back a strangled sob.
A strange quiet fell over the room. All eyes landed on me.
My throat throbbed, but I couldn’t swallow.
“Massive ’Stache Attack!” Derek said, raising his hand to give me a high five.
I kept my hands at my side and inched toward the storage closet, afraid to know what I’d see.
“That is totally ’Stache, Karma.” Tom patted my back and pushed me forward until I stood face-to-face with Lacy.
Behind her an infamous yellow-brown mush covered the floor of the storage closet. Speckles of white and blue cake frosting and chunks of vanilla cake floated in the dal.
The food from my tiffin and Lacy’s cake were a messy goo all over the floor. The shelf my lunch had been on looked kind of wobbly. I stepped closer to give it a shake, but stopped.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.
Ginny’s posters.
I moved in front of the door and turned, searching for a sign that Ginny had come into the classroom. The class moved and let her through. Her eyes went first to me and then over my shoulder.
“You did this. I know you did,” Lacy said to me.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Ginny as she took in the mess of what the cake and dal had done to her posters, which were now soaked and ruined.
I shook my head, trying to focus. Ginny’s mouth hung open, and her shoulders fell.
“I didn’t— I wasn’t— I— The shelf is wobbly—” I stuttered.
“Save it, ” Lacy said as she pushed past me. “I’m getting Ms. Hillary.”
Murmurs rippled through the room. Everyone, even Ginny, took two steps back, leaving a circle of space around me. I didn’t know what to do. I searched for a pair of eyes that might be nice and believe me, but the minute mine met anyone’s, the person quickly looked away and started to whisper to the person next to them.
Ms. Hillary rushed into the room, followed by Lacy.
“She ruined it. She ruined my cake, and the surfboard isn’t there.”
Ms. Hillary stood next to me and put one hand on Lacy’s shoulder and the other on mine. “Okay, off to lunch,” she said to the rest of the class. “I just need to have a word with Karma and Lacy. The rest of you, hurry up. Derek, when you pass the office, can you please inform the office that we need a janitor in here?”
Derek nodded seriously, but when Ms. Hillary turned back to Lacy and me, he gave me a ’Stache Attack with a thumbs-up.
Before Ms. Hillary could say anything, Lacy said, “She pushed my cake over and then tried to cover it up by dumping her own lunch. The surfboard was a going-away gift from my friends. My real friends.”
“Girls. Maybe we should go to the office to sort this out.”
My back stiffened at the word “office.” Lacy lifted her chin like it was what she’d wanted the whole time. Well, at this point nothing surprised me. My karma had gone from bad to worse to unbelievably and insanely terrible.
I sat in the office, staring at my hands. A swirl of thoughts and feelings traveled down to my stomach, making me glad I didn’t have my dal to eat for lunch.
The red plastic chair dug into my shoulder blades as I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes.
Ms. Hillary had taken Lacy into the counselor’s office to call her mom and explain what had happened, not that anybody really knew what had happened. The whole class had been together all morning. I couldn’t think of a single person who would have wanted to ruin Lacy’s cake, Ginny’s posters, or my lunch. It didn’t make any sense.
The office door swung open. It was David. A very disheveled David. He wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand and pushed through the nurse’s door.
“Karma,” Ms. Hillary said, walking toward me. “I just got off the phone with Lacy’s mom. I’m still not sure what happened with the cake, but Lacy’s mom wasn’t too worried. I assured her there had been some kind of accident. Lacy has asked to go home. Would you like to do the same?”
Daddy would have a massive heart attack if he had to come pick me up after having to get Kiran on the first day of school. I shook my head.
I’d rather Daddy not know anything about what had happened. Then, after the talk at the gurdwara tonight, I’d be able to fix everything and Daddy would never have to know.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The rest of the school day was basically me avoiding everyone and everyone mostly glaring at me, except for a few ’Stache Attacks thrown my way.
At home, as I got dressed in my Punjabi suit, I tried to imagine I was covering up the me that everyone at school blamed for ruining Lacy’s cake, to make a new and improved version of myself.
It was pretty easy to do in my favorite suit. The bottoms were turquoise, with an embroidered pattern of silver and red beads from my knees to my ankles. The top had similar designs down the front, and the sheer turquoise of my chunni had matching beads at the edges.
Daddy whistled as he came down the stairs, his beard smooth and tucked into his turban. I rested the chunni on my shoulders because I wouldn’t need to cover my head until we arrived at the talk.
In the car, Daddy kept the music quiet. In bigger cities the Sikh gurdwara actually looked like a church-type building, but the one in Creekview was a house that’d been converted into a templ
e. Only the flags out front let you know it wasn’t a regular house. Most people probably didn’t realize it existed, even with the flags. I pulled my chunni up to cover my head as Daddy parked the car.
We took off our shoes and entered the langar, where they served a free meal to anyone who came in, that took up the entire downstairs. Upstairs was divided into the darbar, where we worshiped, and a couple of classrooms.
Dr. Gurwinder Singh’s lecture would be held downstairs in the langar to accommodate the crowd of mostly college-age boys and girls and a couple of older men and women. No one else my age had come.
Daddy helped some other men bring a podium to the front of the room, and Dr. Singh began his talk.
I pulled out my notebook and bit the end of my pen. I was ready. Ready to be told all the answers to end this cycle of bad karma, to finally get rid of my mustache and hopefully get Ginny and maybe even Sara back as friends. I held my breath as Dr. Singh opened his mouth and began to speak.
“There are no answers, my friends. We are all endlessly searching for the truth, and there is no end to our searching. No end to seeking answers. One hand drives everything, as Gurbani says, so our seeking is futile. Your karma is driven by the hand of One.” He held up his pointer finger and paused. “What can we do?”
Another dramatic pause.
I waited, at the edge of my seat, pen poised to scribble the Answer.
“Nothing.”
That is exactly what he said.
Nothing.
It was like someone promised you an apple pie but gave you an old apple instead. I’d been waiting so long for this moment that I could taste it. But instead of the satisfying mouthful of pie, I got a rotten apple with a worm in it.
I dropped my pen onto my lap, too stunned to absorb what else he rattled on and on about for the next hour.
• • •
“Wasn’t that insightful? So profound,” Daddy said as he opened the still groaning car door for me.
I wadded my chunni between my hands and squeezed as we pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main road.
“Beta, I’m so glad you suggested we go.” Daddy drummed the steering wheel.
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