The Chaos Curse

by Sayantani DasGupta

  “I’m Ned Hogar,” I thought the boy said. “I imagined you’d be getting ready for the wedding.” And then, as if this was any time or place for amateur magic tricks, he did something funny with his hands—making an old-looking coin appear in one gloved palm, then the other.

  The wedding? What wedding? I was about to ask him what the heck he was talking about, but just then, my front door opened and I heard Ma’s voice calling to me.

  “Kiran!” she must have said, but my ears were so frozen, and I was so muddled, it sounded like she was saying “Karen!”

  “I’ve got to go,” I told the sculpture boy, who was looking at me with his ridiculous blue-blue eyes. I felt a tingling across my skin, and I wasn’t sure if it was the force of his cuteness or if I was just about to die of frostbite. “You haven’t seen a boy named Lal, have you? In this tree, I mean? About my height, posh accent, probably wearing red clothes?”

  “All I can see in this tree is you, darlin’!” said Ned with a wink that made my stomach do a loop-da-loop. “Be sure now to save me a dance at the wedding reception!”

  “What wedding reception?” I asked even as I scooched back on the branch away from him. I snuck a look down, trying to calculate the distance to the ground.

  “Well, certainly not ours, you cheeky monkey!” Ned drawled. “Man, you move fast! Let a guy get to know you a little! We just met and already you’re talking marriage!”

  “That’s not what I meant!” I was embarrassed, so my words were all uptight. Again, I heard my mother calling out my name. “Look, I better go.”

  “And just when we were starting to have fun,” said Ned with a mocking laugh. “We are, you know, already sitting in a tree, all we need to start doing is … How does the rhyme go? Oh, yeah, K-I-S-S-I …”

  “Um, no thanks!” I muttered, feeling more and more alarmed by the second.

  “It was just a joke!” Ned laughed. “Oh, how sweet, you’re embarrassed!”

  This conversation was getting way intense way fast. Before the boy could say anything else, I turned to make a graceful exit by jumping off the branch. Like, you know, a prancing gazelle or something.

  As it turned out, my leap was less prancing gazelle and more dancing water buffalo. I crashed to the ground in an inelegant heap. I got painfully to my frozen feet, remembering the few other times I’d had to jump down from somewhere like this. Each time, Neel had been there to break my fall. The memory made my heart ache a little.

  Ned landed next to me on two feet like some kind of ballet-star-slash-elegant-creature-of-the-forest. “You all right, there, Princess?”

  The boy’s words made the hair stand up on my neck. “What did you just say?” Why had he called me Princess? How could this guy I’d never seen before know the truth about my life?

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” Ned grinned, then pointed to my open front door, and my mother’s silhouetted figure in the doorway. “You better get going or your mom’ll get worried.”

  I know this is a really vain thing to think, but I got a little bit dizzy at this gorgeous stranger calling me pretty. Then I shook my head. Wait a minute, don’t worry your pretty little head about it meant that he thought I was pretty but also stupid. That wasn’t a compliment at all, or, was it? Ack, what was wrong with me? The frostbite must be getting to my brain!

  Without another word to Ned, I ran toward my open front door.

  “Bye, Princess!” I heard Ned call mockingly. “You and me-e sitting in a tree-e.”

  I ran up my front steps to where Ma was waiting for me, just inside the threshold. It was so long since I’d been home, so long since I’d seen her, that I couldn’t help but cry out a little as I ran into her arms.

  I’d been separated from two sets of friends, almost not made it through a bizarre wormhole, and now survived an encounter with a mysterious boy who thought I was pretty. And also stupid. Even though on different scales, all three of those things were traumatic.

  But none of it mattered anymore because I was home. And as the saying went, there was no place like home.

  I stood in the front hallway of our house, hugging Ma. Everything was so confusing, and I was so darned cold. But her body was solid and warm and safe. I hugged her even tighter, feeling myself start to warm up. It wasn’t until a few seconds had passed that I realized she wasn’t hugging me back.

  “Who was that boy?” Ma asked, and I wondered if she was upset I’d been talking to a boy we didn’t know.

  “I’m not sure. A relative of Jovi’s maybe?” I wiped my runny nose on my sleeve. “Listen, Ma, I have so much I need to tell you …”

  “Well, he’s very handsome. That blond hair! Those blue eyes! Just the kind of boy you should make sure you catch!” said Ma in a tone so unlike her usual self that I wondered again if the frost was somehow affecting my hearing. No way was my prim and proper immigrant mother telling me I should “catch” a boy! And just because he was blond and blue-eyed!

  But I didn’t manage to say anything because, just then, Baba’s voice made me look up.

  “Karen?” he said, coming down the short set of stairs. “Why were you outside without a coat? What will the neighbors think?” And this time, there was no mistaking it. He’d said “Karen,” not “Kiran.”

  I squinted at him and then back at Ma. My parents had always been weird, but something was way off. This was so not like them at all. They’d never cared what the neighbors thought, and they had definitely never messed up my name before. “Ma, Baba, listen, I need your help. Lalkamal is in trouble …”

  “Who?” said Ma vaguely.

  I squinted harder at her. So weird. What was going on here? My eyes fell on the hall calendar, where Ma always crossed off the days as they passed. It was the same day in early February that I’d last been home. The wormhole must have brought me back to the exact Monday morning I’d gone off to school and then found myself in the Kingdom Beyond. No wonder they were acting all blasé. They probably hadn’t even noticed I was gone.

  “So much has happened! I can’t believe I’m finally home!” My eyes filled with tears as I took in the familiar split-level. Huh, that mini chandelier was new. And why did the house not smell the same? Usually it was either my mother’s cooking or her sandalwood incense. Now the house smelled like vanilla air freshener.

  “Shake it off! Shake it off, young lady!” Ma said, patting my back with stiff fingers. I took in with a start that her usually short and unpainted nails were long, fake, and bright red.

  That’s when I realized just how different my parents looked. Ma’s long hair was all cut and curled like some kind of American sitcom mom’s, and she was wearing an ugly polyester business suit with shiny brass buttons that matched the ones on Baba’s equally ugly blazer. I blinked hard, feeling like I must be having a nightmare. I’d never seen either of them in clothes like this. Usually, Ma wore comfortable cotton saris and Baba old kurta-pajamas. And certainly I had never seen either of them wearing their shoes inside the house!

  “Karen!” Baba shouted again, stomping a booted foot. He was holding his mouth so tight as he spoke, his lips were unnaturally thin. “What is the matter with you, my girl? So much inappropriate emotion.”

  “Wha-at?” I stuttered. Usually, they would be suffocating me with hugs and kisses. Ma and Baba didn’t just look different; they were acting ridiculously different too. In fact, their coldness was so opposite to anything I knew, I felt even more tears rising to my eyes.

  “You won’t believe what happened!” I tried again. “In the Kingdom Beyond!”

  “Kingdom Beyawnd?” Ma wrinkled her nose as she typed furiously into her cell phone. “I don’t want to hear about that old place! We live here now, in New Joi-sey!”

  “I had to save Neel,” I tried to explain. “From an underwater detention center. And there was a game show … a fight. Wait, but you saw some of that on the satellite. Lal’s been captured and is somewhere here in New Jersey. And now it looks like Sesha’s up to
some new plan. I don’t exactly understand, but it has to do with something called an Anti-Chaos Committee.”

  “Oh, you’re right on that score! The Kingdom Beyond’s one place that’s always chaotic! Such a dirty, old, backward dimension!” Baba said in a fake-hearty way. “Aren’t you a lucky girl to be growing up here and not there?”

  “What do you mean?” In a million millennia, I would never have expected to hear such negative stuff about the Kingdom Beyond from my parents. They loved their homeland. Their main wish had always been for me to embrace all the different parts of my identity and be proud of my heritage. “You don’t believe that!”

  “We’re Am-ree-kans now.” Ma clucked her tongue, fluffing her stiffly coiffed and hair-sprayed hair. “It’s the land of opportunity, doncha know!”

  “I’m not saying we’re not, o-or it’s not,” I stammered. “But there’s nothing that says we can’t be proud of all the different parts of who we are!”

  “Oh, that hyphenated identity stuff? So old-school! There’s only room for one winner! And that goes for countries and identities double time!” said Baba, now occupied with his cell phone too. “If there is an Anti-Chaos Whatchamacallit, then it’s exactly what the Kingdom Beyond needs! About time somebody got rid of the chaos and whipped that place into order!”

  “We’re talking about Sesha here!” I tried to say, but my voice was seriously shaky. I’d faced down monsters and fought demons, but seeing my parents act like this, and hearing them say this awful, self-hating stuff about our home dimension, was more frightening than anything I’d ever encountered.

  “Time for school now!” said Ma, snapping the wad of gum in her mouth. “Hop to it!”

  “No lollygagging!” added Baba. “And don’t worry your pretty little head about the politics over there! Leave that to the grown-ups! There’s a girl!”

  “Stiff upper lip! Chin up! Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, Karen, darling!” Ma said.

  Hearing that name come out of my mother’s mouth made me see red. “Stop that! My name’s Kiran. Kiranmala! You of all people should know my name!” I shook my aching head, looking from one polyester-blazered parent to the other.

  “Oh, that’s so foreign-sounding! So hard to pronounce! Can’t you understand that, Karen?” Baba said super slow and loud, like the way ignorant people sometimes talk to people they assume are from another country.

  “If people can learn to pronounce Tchaikovsky or Lothlórien or Parsippany, they can learn to pronounce Kiranmala! And even if they can’t, it’s still my name!” I rubbed my aching temples. Oh, what in the world had happened to my parents while I was gone? They were downright colonized beyond repair!

  “Oh, pishposh. I mean, tomato, tomahto,” said Baba. “I don’t have time for this. And look at the time—geez Louise, you’ve already missed the bus, young lady.”

  “So chop chop, go dress in some decent clothes, will you?” Ma said, sneering at my kurta. She waved, shooing me up the stairs. “I’m not driving you if you’re wearing that foreign other-dimensional stuff!”

  I wanted to argue with her, tell her how beautiful clothes from the Kingdom Beyond were, how good they made me feel about myself, but then I remembered how cold I’d just been out in Jovi’s tree. Okay, maybe there was something to be said for seasonally appropriate clothing. Still, I was furious as I threw on jeans under my light kurta and a fuzzy hoodie over it. But just to show Ma I wasn’t doing it to look less “foreign,” I put on a pair of giant jhumko earrings I’d gotten from the Kingdom Beyond. My parents may have lost all sense of identity and turned into self-hating robots, but I wasn’t going to pretend I was anything other than what I was.

  As I headed back downstairs to find both my parents still tapping on their phones, I started to put two and two together. If their clothes and accents weren’t a giveaway that something was up, Ma’s and Baba’s attitudes should have been. Plus their shoes! Those weird, chipper tones! The fact that they’d forgotten how dangerous Sesha was! These weren’t my real parents, or even if they were, they must’ve gotten mixed up in the wrong narrative thread or something. That must be it.

  Even as the realization made me feel a little better, I knew that if that was really what was going on, I needed backup. I had to find Bunty and Tuntuni, but more importantly, I had to find Tiktiki One. I needed to send Mati a message and get some help. If I wasn’t in the right narrative, maybe this wasn’t even the right tree in which Lal was imprisoned! Plus, how was I going to get back to the story line I should be in?

  Gah. What a mess. The kicker, though, came when I asked my parents if they needed to head to work at the store.

  “The store?” Baba wrinkled his nose. “Oh, that nasty old place!”

  “Don’t you remember we sold it?” Ma added. “Why, we’re tax accountants now!”

  Things only got weirder when I got to school. I wouldn’t have thought anything could be stranger than my parents wearing their shoes in the house and telling me they sold their beloved store to become accountants, but I was wrong. School was a whole new level of weirditude.

  My first class of the day was science with Dr. Dixon. Usually, I walked from the bus with my best friend, Zuzu, straight to our lockers, then to class. But because I missed the bus, and my newly uptight parents had dropped me at school, I didn’t see her until I was in the science room. There, she met my wave with a stony stare.

  I sat down, feeling off-balance. I’d never seen Zuzu look at me like that in my life. Had I done something to make her mad?

  I must have looked upset, because the next thing I knew someone was asking me if I was okay. I turned my head, and was shocked to see it was my next-door neighbor and lifelong enemy, Jovi. Even more shockingly, Jovi was looking at me with a big old friendly grin.

  “You okay, girl?” Jovi said again, touching my arm.

  “Is there a problem, ladies?” asked Dr. Dixon from the front of the room.

  “No, no problem!” I said, turning back around. I heard a little snicker from my right. When I looked, I realized it was Zuzu, looking at me with a snide, superior expression. Exactly the kind of expression I would have expected to see on Jovi’s face.

  I slunk down in my seat, trying not to let my upset show as Dr. Dixon went on with his lesson. Ever since I’d come back to New Jersey through that wormhole, everything had been upside down. First, I’d lost my traveling companions. Then there was that weird boy in the tree and my self-hating parents. I’d made zero progress on finding Lal, had no idea what Sesha was up to, and had no one to talk to about it all. And now my best friend and enemy had somehow traded personalities. Enough already! I just needed to catch a break!

  That’s when Zuzu unexpectedly solved at least one of my problems. She looked down at my partially open backpack with a sneer. “Is it bring-your-ugly-pet-to-school day or something?” she half whispered.

  I looked down to see Tiktiki One winking up at me from my backpack.

  “Where have you been, you dumb lizard?” I hissed. “And where are the others?”

  I don’t know why I tried. It’s not like the gecko was a huge conversationalist. Sure enough, instead of answering me, the lizard flicked out its tongue, hitting itself in the eye on the recoil.

  With Zuzu looking straight at me, I couldn’t exactly take the lizard out of my bag, whisper a message, and pull off its tail. Calling Mati would have to wait. Instead, I tugged the zipper on my backpack most of the way closed, muttering, “Stay in there!”

  “You might want to leave it a little open—so your gecko can breathe,” someone murmured from behind me. I thought for a second it might be Naya, who’d been sitting in that seat last time I was in this classroom. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was that perfect-faced boy from the tree—Ned Hogar!

  “What’re you doing here?” I blurted, feeling a little weirded out by the force of his cuteness. I mean, Lal was handsome, and Neel had some serious swagger, but Ned was so good-looking it was almost creepy.

  “Ungratefu
l much? I did save your life—or at least save you from breaking a bone in that tree, darlin’.” The blond sculpture boy raised his perfect eyebrows over his perfect eyes. Then he reached out toward me, as if he was going to tuck a stray piece of my hair behind my ear. Instead, he pulled his hand back, revealing a shiny coin he’d apparently just “pulled” from my ear. “You and me, sitting in a tree,” he started up again.

  I felt my face heat up and snuck a look at Jovi. She was kind of batting her eyelashes at Ned and giving a super-fake gooby smile. Well, I guess there went the theory that they were related. But then, what the heck had Ned been doing in Jovi’s tree?

  And there was another problem. If that rip in the time-space continuum I’d traveled through had somehow gotten me back to the same day I’d left New Jersey, then Naya should be here in the classroom with me. Where was she?

  “Where’s Naya?” I wanted to ask Zuzu but forced myself to whisper to Jovi instead.

  “Who?” Jovi seemed totally confused.

  I looked desperately around. Oh, jeez. No sign of that multi-ponytailed rakkhoshi selfie addict anywhere. What in the time warp was happening here?

  “Cool it with the talking, class!” said Dr. Dixon. “Unless you’re gossiping about how oxygen and magnesium got together? I mean, OMG!”

  A few kids gave little sympathy chuckles at our teacher’s dumb chemistry joke (which was supposed to be funny because O was the symbol for oxygen on the periodic table of elements, and Mg the symbol for magnesium). I was relieved that Dr. Dixon was at least acting like his normal enthusiastic-about-science-jokes self. Weirdly, though, he wasn’t wearing the same vest as he had the last time I’d seen him. The last time I’d experienced this day, he’d had on his vest with the farting T. rexes on it. It was one of my favorite nerdy vests of his (the farts were these green clouds coming out from under the dinosaurs’ tails and it always made me laugh when I saw it). Today he was wearing one I’d never seen before, covered with, oddly enough, multicolor butterflies. But Dr. D. seemed otherwise the same. I had to assume he didn’t remember the last time I went through this day. Back then, he’d chased me as I drove off across the frozen soccer fields in a magical auto rikshaw toward Bangoma and Bangomee’s wormhole.