by Sajni Patel
We somehow managed to keep from screaming. Keeping this ginormous secret under wraps was as hard as acing calculus.
And Lily, without a single word uttered from my lips, knew. She saw it in my face. We couldn’t scream, but we squealed like piglets. Bear hugs ensued.
“Oh my god!” Lily drawled. “It’s fenna be on! I’m totally being your personal cheerleader. I don’t care if it looks weird.”
“I don’t even care. We can match.”
“Pink, right?”
I twisted my lips. “Pink is reserved for the best. I don’t deserve it. I haven’t earned the right to wear it.”
“For real?”
“Mhmm.”
“What’s training going to be like now? I hardly see you as it is.”
“I know, sucks on that account. Maybe you wanna come with and ask businesses if they would sponsor me?” I gave her an over-the-top grin in lieu of begging.
“Definitely!”
“For real?”
“Of course. I’m going to support you any way I can.”
I bit my lip and considered my nonexistent pitch. Maybe she could help me with it? Instead, I asked, “You wanna talk for me?”
She gave me some side-eye then shook my shoulders. “The words will be spilling out of your mouth once you see how excited businesses are to sponsor you!”
“I guess.”
“Either way, I’m there to help.”
“Cool. Thanks! Aside from that, for the next five weeks, it’s all training and whatever I can do to squeeze in homework. Really, calculus is the only thing that will require time. I’m acing bio and my grade in computer science will go up because I’m tutoring Amit.” I paused as realization hit me. I’d double-booked myself after school. “Oh, no. I have to take time out to tutor him. I forgot!”
“Can he find someone online?”
“But then my grade won’t go up as much as I need it to. Catch twenty-two.”
“Just study with him for a couple hours a week. Maybe even at lunch?”
“Hey, that’s not a bad idea. I bring my own lunch anyway.” I held up my thermal tote.
“You’re the only senior who does.”
“Judy from English does.”
“Judy from English has a ton of food allergies.”
“Well, I’m training. Do you know how bad cafeteria food is? And y’all race to the nearest fast food place for off-campus lunch, clogging your systems like y’all ready to die and don’t even care.”
“But you can sit in the car with me and eat your boring training food while I scarf some burgers?”
“I would love the chance to watch you eat your weight in fries, but I think it’s a better idea to tutor Amit during lunch instead of wasting time after school.”
“Well, there he is.” She jerked her chin, indicating his presence behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder and sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
five
Even though it was less than five minutes, I soaked up what little time I had with Lily before she left for burgers, which sounded ridiculously delicious. By the time I turned to search for Amit, he had disappeared. I knew where to find him. He was bound to be in one of three places: the library, the courtyard, or the cafeteria. In that order.
Thankfully, he was already chilling out in the library. Mrs. Cartwright, the librarian, was pretty laidback with allowing us to use the library for lunch. She let us eat and read and study and do homework, as long as we were quiet and clean and took our trash to the bin in the hallway.
The guy sitting next to Amit did a double take when he noticed me cruise toward them. He elbowed Amit, who sat hunched over his notebook, his textbooks closed and off to the side. He eventually noticed me, too, and straightened his back as I sat beside him.
“Hi,” I said, not understanding why my mouth wanted to clamp shut. I could talk to just about anyone if I wanted to, except certain girls who hated me at the moment, aka Rayna, and narrow-minded people who turned up their chins because I wasn’t Indian enough, aka Saanvi, who was the epitome of a “temple-going, perfect example” for the rest of us. Amit didn’t fall into either category. Or maybe he’d fall into the latter if he knew the truth about my fighting.
“Ha-hi,” he stammered.
“Do you mind if we study now?”
“Uh, sure.”
I didn’t mind if the boy, Vinni, if I recalled, wanted to hang around or not, but he, without a word, zipped up his backpack, gave Amit a sidelong glance, and left.
“He didn’t have to leave,” I insisted.
“He doesn’t know how to act around girls,” Amit replied.
“Not suave like you, huh?”
A tinge of blush colored his cheeks, and realizing how I sounded, I was certain my cheeks turned a pretty unflattering shade of pink.
I grabbed his textbook and opened it to chapter twelve, our next chapter. “What exactly do you need help with?”
“All of it?”
I smirked, my focus skimming down the page. “You have a habit of answering with what sounds like a question.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re cute.” I froze, and I was pretty sure he froze too. Crap.
“I didn’t mean . . .” I didn’t mean what? That he was cute? That was like implying he was the opposite of cute, which tended to be bad manners. I shook my head and asked again, “Where do you want to start?”
“It’s all a little fuzzy around the edges.”
I stared at him and he stared back. Our thing, remember? “You’re going to be valedictorian. You’re in AP Computer Science II. You wrote the correct answer on my quiz but wrote the wrong one on your paper. What gives?”
“Maybe I second-guess myself.”
I sighed. “All right. I get that. That’s me and calculus.”
“You’re bad in math?”
“Weird, right? Aren’t all Indians math geniuses?”
“Uh, no. What I meant was, how are you bad in math but good with computer science?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. How are you so smart and making little mistakes in class?”
“Touché.”
I couldn’t help but smile a tad bit. “I can’t believe I’m tutoring the valedictorian.”
“You don’t have to keep reminding me of that. Not the tutoring part. I’m not embarrassed.”
“It’s an awesome achievement. Should just call you Sir Valedictorian. That should be a mandate, actually. I’ll bring it up with the principal.”
He chuckled. I’d never heard him laugh before. It was nice.
“Your family must be ecstatic with you being Sir Valedictorian.”
He shrugged.
“Don’t tell me they’re not.”
“It’s . . . expected.”
“I get that high grades are, but top of the class? It’s kinda cutthroat up there. It’s a huge deal.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything else. There was a sort of sadness, or maybe stoicism, in him. Maybe he didn’t care? Maybe he expected it from himself? Maybe he didn’t like the pressure? Or did he want his family to be more excited? Getting the top spot wasn’t easy, especially in this school. There were a lot of big brains and gifted students walking around. He deserved to get some praise.
Amit never gave a clear direction as to where to begin, so I just started at our last lesson in class and went from there: typeof operator and the six possible returns.
The best thing about Mrs. Callihan was that she didn’t believe in giving cumulative final exams. She gave weekly pop quizzes, daily homework, chapter tests, a midterm, a final exam based on the chapters post-midterm, and an extra credit project. Comp-sci was one of those classes where if you couldn’t get one thing, you weren’t going to be able to continue on to the next and she could tell
when that happened, hence this need to tutor Amit, probably. Something must’ve happened between the first month of school and this week.
The nice thing about comp-sci was if Amit had a breakdown in understanding, I could figure out where as we maneuvered through programming.
The problem? He wrote programs beautifully, the way artists paint complex scenes. He wrote them fast and without glitches, and once he started, he just went on and on and on until he finished a perfect, fully functional masterpiece.
I stared at him as he grinned at his handiwork. His smile faded the moment he saw my look.
“Are you sure you need tutoring?” I eyed him skeptically.
“Yeah. I uh, get this stuff, okay? I bombed on my paper.”
“Which one?”
“P versus NP.”
“Oh. Well, lucky for you I’m good at theorems, you know, except in calculus.”
“I think that’s why Mrs. Callihan asked you.”
No, actually she asked me because she’d asked all the smarter people in class and they didn’t have time to help you. But I’d never say such a thing aloud.
He suggested, “Hey, how about if you help me with theorems, I’ll help you in calculus? Free of charge.”
“Free of charge?” I quirked a brow.
He laughed, which had me quietly rolling when Mrs. Cartwright shushed him.
We went over theorems, but he seemed to vaguely grasp the idea. It was very simple, actually, and I was dumbfounded that he couldn’t get it. But who was I to judge? He’d most likely feel the same way when he pulls out his GQ hair trying to teach me basic calculus.
We eventually moved on to polynomial time and when P was unequal to NP and the potential consequences of those examples. We ate as we studied, and I found myself scooting closer and closer to him. Mainly because Mrs. Cartwright kept shushing us. What? Comp-sci could get exciting. Before I realized it, rolling my eyes at the final shush, I closed the last inches of space between us. Our arms squished together, and an electrifying spark went off.
We stilled. Did he feel that too? Or did I actually shock him with the constant moving of my feet on this old, decrepit carpet?
“Did I shock you?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
A literal spark. Whew! I was not, in any way, crushing on Amit. I didn’t have time for that. He was already taking up too much time as it was.
“Is it okay if we study during lunch? I got a lot of stuff going on after school and on the weekends.”
He frowned, looking genuinely disappointed. “Yeah. Sure.”
“I’m not brushing you off,” I said defensively. I was not a flake, but more importantly I didn’t want him to feel that my aversion to time these days had anything against him personally.
“Yeah, no. I figured you would be busy.”
“I have a lot going on,” I said quietly. He didn’t need to know what all I had going on. He didn’t need to know that we were broke and my mom worked two jobs and I had to be home to cook and clean and take care of my sick dad. He didn’t need to know that I was in Muay Thai and . . . maybe think I was too rough, too violent, too . . . not a girl. Too . . . not Indian enough. I didn’t want him to look at me differently, to treat me differently. I didn’t want him to think less of me. And yeah, that sounded stupid, but, well I guessed no one was logical and confident all the time. And if they were, then they for sure had a rare superpower.
He watched me thoughtfully, as if I would elaborate. He waved a hand for me to continue.
“That’s all I can say.” That was all I wanted to say, anyway.
“Why? Is it top secret?” he joked.
“No. I’m not that interesting.”
“I bet you are way more interesting than top secret.”
A smile tried really hard to curl my lips. “I mean, I barely know you.”
“Then you should get to know me.” He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck, looking as flustered as I felt. How was that like not the sexiest thing a guy had ever said to me? And coming from Amit Patel of all boys?
“I mean, you know? I’d like to be friends,” he said. “We’d never really talked and now we have to, and why not get to know each other while we’re studying?”
I smiled and hoped it looked as authentic as it truly was. “We’re supposed to be keeping you on track for top spot. I don’t want to mess that up.”
That sounded much nicer than, “I don’t have time to talk to dudes at the moment. Much more pressing things happening in my life.”
Saved by the obnoxiously loud bell from getting mud-deep into why we couldn’t hang out, I closed my book. “Same time, same place Thursday?”
“Yeah. Hey, are you going to Holi?” he asked.
I stood and turned to look down at him. “Holi? At the mandir?”
“Yeah.” He stood to meet my eye. Actually, he surpassed it. I was five-eight, but the boy was at least six-one. And now I stared at the smoothness of his throat.
“No.” I snickered.
“What’s that for?”
“I haven’t been to mandir in years.”
“You don’t have to do anything, just go for the celebrations.”
“I don’t have time anyway.”
“Oh. Well, if you change your mind, we could, you know, maybe go together.”
I grinned, but only internally. “You can’t go to Holi with a boy like it’s a date.”
“No! Of course not. I mean, as friends. My family is going, and it would be nice to see you and your family there.” He put his hands behind his back and rocked on his feet.
Holi was a yearly thing that drew a butt-load of Indians to celebrate and throw brightly colored powder on each other to the rhythm of vibrant music well into the night. It was not a date thing. It was a family thing. A cultural thing. A community thing.
An Indian thing.
I frowned. “We never go to those.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
“Definitely. Thanks.” As tempting as it was to go to something as energetic as Holi with Amit, feeling inferior in comparison to other Indians was not my idea of a good time. Of course, I’d never admit that to him.
-
It didn’t take long to forget about Holi when the rest of the day zipped by and the next thing I knew, I was in the weight room looking for Kimmy. She wasn’t hard to find, seeing that she was one of four girls on the coed team.
She was a beast. I could barely lift the bar at times and she had it loaded down with weights galore. She had great form, though. In all these years and through all of her competitions, she’d never hurt herself. Which amazed me. Dead lifts? I’d be dead for sure. With a broken back and cracked knees, probably.
She gave the best tips on posture and pose and technique. I’d been sopping up her advice since freshman year.
She spotted me first and asked, “So you gonna tell me more about Muay Thai?”
“Yeah.” I helped her take most of the weights off the bar before I lay on the bench to lift. My arms got sore with each push. “It’s this sport I’m in.”
“I don’t know anyone in Muay Thai, much less a girl. How could you keep that to yourself? I’m always talking about my games and competitions, and you just listen. You never once said, ‘Hey, Kimmy. Wanna come see my match too?’”
“Having my friends there makes me nervous.”
“Key word: friends. How do you not tell your friends about Muay Thai? It’s not like you play something common or boring. Why didn’t you ever mention this before?”
I caught my breath on the last push and we switched places, putting all of her weights back on the bar. “I dunno. I didn’t want people to judge me or act stupid.”
“Judge you? Like thinking y
ou’re a badass because you are one?” She added more weights than before. Like I’d said: Kimmy was a beast.
I rubbed my forearm. “I dunno. I feel self-conscious, I guess. Like boys are intimidated and make dumb jokes. One girl asked if I was really a boy, as if being a fighter makes me less of a girl. Or wonder if that’s why I don’t wear makeup and dresses. Is that supposed to define what a girl is? Some guy actually asked why I don’t do my hair and put on makeup during fights so I don’t look so rough. I’m not there to worry about my looks, you know? It sounds dumb, I know.”
“You’re talking to a girl who turned the all-boys weightlifting team into a coed team.” She grinned. “Are you scared of what people might think?”
“Yeah. Think your mom would like you hanging around a kid who might be out there doing drugs and beating up people because she’s a fighter?”
“What the actual crap, Kareena?”
I shrugged as I studied her form. “Parents have said that to their kids, though.”
“It’s very stupid. Some people are ignorant and just threatened by things they don’t know about, but times are changing. Also, my parents would think you were more of an anti-theft, anti-assault assurance masquerading as a teenager.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“I mean, I’m not exactly doing a quote, unquote, girly thing, but do I care? Does anyone judge me? More importantly . . . why should I care?”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek and mulled over her words. She was right, of course. Then again, I wasn’t Kimmy. I wasn’t that confident unless I was in the ring.
I wish I were though. I wish I could just not care what other people thought.
-
The beautiful thing about Muay Thai? We were in this together. We were a community and this gym was the only place where I felt whole and real and raw, and absolutely, one hundred percent myself. Being at home was a close second, but my parents kept me at a fair distance with their woes. I tried to be optimistic for the sake of our family’s mental health, but I couldn’t even begin to know their pain.
Coach came in at nine after dropping his kids off that Friday. He stayed near me the entire day, making sure my form and technique were at peak performance levels. The gym filled with sounds of punching gloves against bags and pads, of skin hitting skin, of grunts and war cries, of bells, clapping hands, and heaving breaths. Sweat and determination filled the air. There was a whole new level of resolve and purpose percolating through the gym.