by Marie Lamba
I’m confused for a moment. “Oh. You thought I meant aunt. Like aunt and uncle. I meant bugs.”
“No bugs. It is very clean. We are in the government flats because Papa works for the Ministry.”
“So is it just like Hollywood there?” Dalton asks. “Do you see lots of movie stars?”
“Sometimes we spot them walking around, looking very smart. I remember once as a child, my parents and I were walking around Juhu Beach. That’s where there are so so many expensive flats. Aishwarya Rai walked right past me and waved.” When we don’t react, Raina says, “Don’t tell me you have never heard of her. I thought she was big the world over.”
Dalton and I shake our heads.
“She was in Bride and Prejudice. That was huge in the states, wasn’t it?”
“I saw that,” I say. “I kind of remember her.”
“She is absolutely beautiful, I tell you,” Raina says. “And when she waved at me, I was so impressed I swore to myself then and there I’d become an actress.”
“Really?” I say. “I bet you’d be good.”
“I would be horrible,” Raina says and laughs. “I am too short. Besides, Mummy would faint if I were to go into such a profession.”
“So what else do you want to do?” Dalton asks.
“To study law,” she says.
“Impressive.” Dalton smiles at her, and I feel a pang. Of what, I’m not sure.
Raina excuses herself to use the bathroom. Dalton and I wait for her outside on the sidewalk, which is full of kids licking ice cream cones and adults strolling arm in arm.
“So what do you want to become?” Dalton asks.
“I have no idea,” I say, suddenly too aware of the “Expect Great Things!” pendant weighing around my neck. Megan wants to go into Marine Biology and save the environment. Hari wants to be a teacher. David wants to be Bill Gates, only smarter and richer. Even Doodles talks about running her own business. And Sang Jumnal? Apparently she plans to be useless. “Well, what about you?”
“Architect,” he says, shrugging. “Your cousin seems nice.”
I nod.
“You’re nicer,” he says. He twines his fingers into mine and I find myself smiling. “So, do you know what you’re wearing to Anna’s party yet?” he asks.
“No. I mean, I did know, but I don’t anymore. Why?”
“Because I’m going, and you’re going, and someone might want to buy you a matching corsage.”
For a moment I wonder, what if I’m wrong? What if Dalton is the one? “But that’s not for two and a half weeks.”
“True. So, when is our first real date going to be?” he says. “How about dinner this week?”
“Hey, Sang. Dalton.” Gary Westbrock walks up to us wearing basketball shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. His arm muscles aren’t huge, but they are nice. I’m feeling some sparks. I’m feeling some confusion. Gary says, “So what’s up with you two? Huh?” He waggles his eyebrows at us.
I immediately untwine my fingers from Dalton’s.
“We just saw a movie,” Dalton says, putting his arm around me.
I stand stiff and look for a reaction in Gary. Clenched fists, awkwardness, anything.
Gary just nods at us. Says, “Cool.”
“Cool,” I say, gravel in my throat. Megan’s right about me. I am such a complete idiot.
“Ready to go?” Raina asks, appearing at my side.
I introduce her to Gary and we chitchat for another minute. Gary says he’s got to leave, but first he has to grab a coffee from Coffee & Cream. Like he’s going in for coffee. I almost tell him Michelle is not there, but on a date with my brother. Instead, I say, “Well, take care,” in a casual voice. I wrap my arm around Dalton’s waist. Again, no reaction—unless you count Raina, who raises her eyebrows.
“Well, see ya,” Gary says. “Oh, Raina, you sticking around Doylestown for a while?”
“For a while,” she says and shows her dazzling grin.
“Then I guess I’ll see you when I get back from camp.”
What the hell does that mean?
Chapter 10
“Your boyfriend Dalton is very nice,” Raina says in a low voice.
“Raina, he’s not my boyfriend.” Nobody, really, is my boyfriend. By tomorrow morning Gary will be gone to camp. He’s already gone from my life. My life sucks.
“Oh, but I thought… Sorry.”
I just got back from letting Poopsie out, and now Raina and I are standing in our pj’s in my room. Only I guess it’s now our room. And Raina’s not exactly in pj’s. She’s in what my dad calls a night suit. Sort of a thin cotton version of a salwar kameez. Looks to me like a lot to wear on such a hot night. The floor fan sweeps back and forth, but aside from rustling my picture of Jake Gyllenhaal, it doesn’t seem to do much.
“Another day down the toilet,” I mutter. Brooding, I walk toward my bed and bang my leg on the metal frame of Raina’s cot. “God!” I rub my shin a few times.
“Sorry, Sang,” Raina says.
“No problem,” I say, tripping on a pair of her flip-flops and falling into my own bed. I lie there looking at the devastation around me. It’s like Raina’s suitcase has exploded, shooting jeans onto the floor and shirts onto the knobs of my closet doors. My dresser is clogged with her brushes and make-up bottles and a tangle of necklaces. Earlier today, neat freak Mom peeked in on us and practically fainted. But instead of asking Raina to clean things up, she just held her throat and said, “Well, I see you’re all moved in now. How nice.” It’s the whole ‘she’s a guest’ thing, I guess.
“Good night, then,” Raina says, lying on the cot.
“Good night.” I click off the light and listen to the rustle of the poster and the creak of Raina’s cot as she tries to get comfortable. “Raina?”
“Ha?”
I’m confused for a moment, until I remember that’s Punjabi for ‘yes.’ “When Taoji called, he sounded pretty bad, didn’t he?”
“He had TB. It was hard on the lungs.”
TB. Tubby Butt? “Oh. TB. Like tuberculosis? Isn’t that gone from the world?”
Raina doesn’t answer. The silence between our beds stretches long and wide, and I’m convinced she isn’t going to talk to me anymore tonight. Or possibly ever. Maybe I’ve pissed her off.
Just as I close my eyes, she says, “Lots of Indians have TB and don’t even know it. It’s no big deal.”
“Really?”
“The doctors back in India gave Taoji medicine, which cleared it, and now he just has some cough. They had to cure the TB before anyone would agree to treat his myelofibrosis with a BMT.”
“BMT?”
“Bone marrow transplant.”
“Right.” TB, BMT, EMT, ICU, ER. Who knew a bunch of letters could be so scary? “I think it’s amazing that your dad is helping Taoji and being a donor.”
I hear Raina sigh and wonder if her dad, by giving his own marrow away, is in any danger. And I wonder if she is going to be crying again tonight. I roll onto my side, facing my window. I feel like I’m going to cry, too. This isn’t what summer is supposed to be like. Not at all.
“Okay,” I say. “So he is my boyfriend. But not really.”
“I knew!” she says and flicks on the light. “Tell.”
So we both sit cross-legged while I spill my guts about Dalton. I leave out the whole Gary thing, because now it’s not exactly relevant. We talk like sisters at last. When I’m finished, Raina is biting her lip and smiling.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing. Don’t worry. I won’t tell Uncle and Auntie anything.”
I shrug.
She studies me. “Wouldn’t your parents kill you if they knew about your,” Raina says, then whispers, “boyfriend?”
“Not exactly.”
“And you can hold hands in front of them? Perhaps kiss?” She’s looking at her feet and blushing furiously.
I imagine Dalton and me in the graveyard. I imagine Dad smashin
g a cherub over my non-boyfriend’s head. “Not exactly.”
“So it isn’t like ‘One Tree Hill’, then?”
“‘One Tree Hill’?”
“I always watch it on TV back in India and wondered if in America…”
“Raina, my life is so not ‘One Tree Hill.’”
“Mine either.” Raina shakes her head. “When my parents found—They wouldn’t let me have any sort of boyfriend.”
“Not ever?”
“Not until it is time to get engaged. Like around college.”
“That completely sucks.”
Raina wrings her hands. “They know what’s best. They are trying to protect me.”
“Protect you from—wait. When your parents found what?”
Raina covers her face with her hands.
“Come on, Raina. I just told you my whole life story.” I pull her hands away. “You can trust me. I swear.”
“There is nothing to tell,” she says. She doesn’t look me in the eye.
After our chat, Raina quickly drifts off. But I can’t sleep. My mind is too crammed with stuff to worry about. Even though I tell myself that Taoji will be fine. That Dalton will be fine. That Gary doesn’t matter to me. That I won’t die in my third swim lesson tomorrow. Fourth, if you count the private lesson.
In the moonlight I can see Raina is sound asleep. What would happen if she liked a guy in India? Maybe she had a guy she liked. Maybe her parents wouldn’t even let her talk with him. Will she have to wait till she’s engaged for her first kiss?
Hmm, kissing. Kissing Dalton.
Don’t go there, I think. But I do. And in a hurry. Too bad we’re breaking up, really. From the kissing standpoint, that is.
I smile and close my eyes, thinking of Cameron. Of swim lessons. I picture myself drowning and my eyes spring back open.
Sure, Cameron will be at the pool. But what good will that be to me when I’m a bloated corpse floating in the shallow end? I imagine the funeral. My body bobbing in the water surrounded by a circle of preschoolers holding hands and singing “Ring Around the Rosie.” And when they get to the “all fall down” part, my body is sucked into the deepest depths, where the music becomes eerie and distant and…wait.
I sit up, realizing I hear real music. Guitar music.
Hari.
I scramble out of bed and again crack my shin on Raina’s cot. I wince in pain, but Raina doesn’t stir. I stumble into the hall, and follow the gentle strums downstairs and out to the backyard.
The middle of the yard glows with silvery moonlight, but the edges are buried in black shadow from surrounding trees. Hari is perched on our picnic table, his feet resting on a bench. I let the screen door snap shut behind me and sit beside him.
“What are you doing up?” he asks, as he continues to pick out a sad and lonely tune.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say. “How was your date?”
Hari does a loud strum and laughs. “Wild. Michelle is—”
“Please.” I hold up my hand. “No gory details.”
“Suit yourself.” He lays the guitar on the table behind us and leans over his knees, his hands clasped. “Let’s just say I’m not sure she’s my type.”
“Yes!” I throw my arms in the air.
Hari looks amused. “What? You don’t approve?”
“It’s just nice to know that someone doesn’t like her.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Explain.”
“No.” I slap a mosquito on my shoulder. “So, did you let her down easy?”
“Smooth as glass. Except I don’t know if it worked.”
“Explain,” I say.
“No.”
We’re silent for a while, but all around us the yard is alive with the wind blowing through the trees, sounding like shhhh. Hari picks up his guitar and starts strumming another tune. This time I recognize it. Simon and Garfunkle’s “The Boxer.”
When the song is done, the last note hangs in the humid air until it’s overtaken by the shhhh of the leaves. Hari hits a mosquito on his neck. “So what do you have against Michelle?”
She sort of stole my not-really boyfriend, I think. “Nothing.”
“So how was your date?”
“Hari, it was NOT a date.”
He chuckles. “My little sister dating. I can’t believe it. Tell me about this guy. Is he worthy?”
“There is nothing to tell.” Actually, Dalton is the type of guy maybe even my dad would approve of. Smart, kind, helpful, polite. Not that it matters. “Dalton and I are just friends.”
“Right.”
I smack Hari’s face and he’s stunned. “Mosquito,” I say and grin.
“Thanks.”
I stare at the nearly full moon and sigh. “I wish I could just fast forward to college. I want—well, I’m not sure what I want. But I want to make my own choices, you know?” I touch my necklace and think about Trish and all the freedom she must have. “I want to stay out late if I want. Go where I want with anybody I want. Do whatever I feel like. It must be so great.”
“What are you whining about? You’ve got it good, Sang.”
Right. I have a guy I can’t break up with and another guy who can’t get a clue, an uncle who is sick and a dad who can’t talk about it, and a perfect cousin who makes me look bad without even trying. Plus I get to drown tomorrow.
“Look,” he says, “all I’m saying is enjoy where you are right now.”
“You mean act my age. Hari, you sound just like Dad.”
“I do not.”
“Do too.” I break into my best Indian accent. “Now listen, you. No nonsense. You are just a child. Buckle up. Fly straight. And there will be absolutely no commingling with other people’s body parts.”
Hari whacks the back of my head.
“Hey!”
“Big mosquito,” he says.
I laugh, and then my smile fails. “Hari, I’ve got something to tell you. It’s about Taoji. About all of us.”
I tell Hari everything, swearing him to secrecy. He sits silent for a long while staring out toward the shadows. “I can’t believe this,” he says at last. “What bull. I’m almost twenty years old. Why wouldn’t they tell me?”
“Well it could be the whole superstition thing, like Raina said.”
Hari shakes his head. “Unreal.”
“You said it.” I stare at the surrounding shadows too. “Poor Taoji.”
Hari rubs the stubble on his chin. “I wonder where the money’s coming from.” Hari tells me about the finance class he took last semester. About how Mom and Dad might be getting a loan against the value of our house. Or how maybe they’ll use up their retirement money.
“Well at least there are ways to get the money,” I say. “That’s a relief.”
“But if they put up the house for a loan and miss payments, they could lose the house. If they put up their retirement money, they could both have to work forever to take care of themselves.”
I imagine them old and wrinkled and bagging groceries at Acme. “Well maybe they have a bunch of money in their savings account.”
“No way,” Hari says. “A schoolteacher doesn’t make that kind of money. It’s a stupid career.”
“You want to be a schoolteacher,” I point out.
“Yeah. Well maybe I’ll be a stockbroker instead.”
Chapter 11
It’s Thursday, the fourth day of swim lessons, and I’m still alive. I tell myself the reason I’m still going to lessons is only to protect Raina from evil Trish. Or that I’m going because my parents are forcing me and they spent good money on the lessons. Or that it’s because I really should overcome my fear of water.
Okay. All of those reasons may be true. But who am I kidding? The truest reason of all is Cameron Cerulli. He’s real easy on the eyes, of course. But I also like seeing how he’s so sweet to the little girls in the class. Attentively listening to them tell about what dreams they had the night before. Calling them all Little Mermaids in an adorab
ly lousy Sebastian the Crab voice.
“Kick, kick,” Cameron says to me this morning.
I hang onto the kickboard for dear life and do what he says. I can’t say no to gorgeous, fabulous Cameron. Clouds fill the sky, but still it’s boiling hot. Beads of sweat form on Cameron’s upper lip. On his chest.
“That’s beautiful,” he says.
I smile stupidly and nod. Very beautiful.
“You going under today?” he asks. I shake my head. “Tomorrow? For me?”
I shrug.
“Now you, Jeanette,” he says, turning his glowing smile from me and onto Diaper Genie, or perhaps I should refer to her now as Diaper Jeanette.
I sit on the edge of the pool beside Raina, who is wriggling her dark-red painted toenails in the water. Together we watch Cameron’s back muscles flex while he bends over the kicking, splashing Jeanette. She’s barely hanging onto the blue foam board. “Total amateur,” I whisper. Raina laughs.
An annoying voice cuts through the humid air. “But Daddy, you promised,” Trish is saying. She’s standing on the pool deck talking into her cell. “You said you’d be home for a while. You promised me.” Trish notices I’m looking at her and turns away. “Right,” she says. “Whatever.” She tosses the phone onto a table.
I turn back to Raina. “Maybe we can hang out with Megan tonight if she’s not working.”
“I’ve heard so much about Megan,” Raina says. “I feel like I know her already.”
“She still going out with that David guy?” Trish asks, rudely interrupting.
“Not that it’s any business of yours, but yes,” I say in an icy voice.
Trish laughs. “They’re still together? You’re sure about that?”
“What’s your point?”
“Just that he’s been spending an awful lot of time with my girl Liselle.” She grins. “You know,” she says in a suggestive voice. Then again, almost everything Trish says is suggestive.
I remember what Megan said the other day. How she was worried because David was acting so secretive. How she was afraid he might be seeing someone behind her back. But come on. Liselle? I try to picture nerdy David with this brunette version of Trish, and I just can’t. “Like I’m going to believe you,” I say to Trish.