* * *
The morning sun drills holes into my eyes, while the leftover effects of the alcohol drum through my head.
“Amma?” I say groggily. And then foolishly: “Malcolm?”
“The boy is not here. I sent him home last night.”
A large glass of water appears before me with a Tylenol. “Drink this.”
I wrinkle my nose at the first sip—the water has been mixed with bubble-gum flavored electrolytes. But I swallow the pill and drink the brew without complaint. It is the least—maybe the only thing—I can do right now to appease my mother who is standing over me, still wearing her flowered cotton nightgown and knitted blue sweater from last night. I take a deep breath, pick out traces of lemon Pledge, steamed rice, sugar, and coconut.
“You will need breakfast, too, I suppose.”
“I can’t eat.” The thought of eating anything makes me feel ill.
“Oh, but you will,” she says firmly. “You will start with a banana first. If you can keep it down, then I will give you some of the sweet puttu I made this morning.”
Trust Amma to pour on the guilt and simultaneously offer the incentive of my favorite breakfast item.
“I’m sorry, Amma.”
“Sorry? Sorry! Do you even know what you put me through? How worried I was for you?”
I rub my temple with a pair of fingers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t … I wasn’t thinking.”
She sits down next to me on the couch. “Did someone do anything to you?”
“What?”
“Did someone touch you at that party? Did you do something with a boy?”
“Are you asking if I had sex?” My voice fills with anger, even though I know I have no right to be angry. “I … God, Amma, I haven’t even kissed a boy!”
I try not to think of that boy VJ and his creeping hands. Or my tormentor-turned-savoir, Afrin Irani, who unexpectedly kept him at bay.
“What about that one? The one who brought you home?” my mother accuses. “Who is he?”
“Amma, please. Malcolm is a friend.”
Malcolm, the boy who does not answer my texts when he’s mad, but still comes to my rescue when I get drunk at a party and brings me home. I don’t know what to make of him either.
“Those clothes he was wearing.” Amma’s mouth thins. “And that horrible hair. Who does he think he is, some kind of gangster?”
I curse in my head, the only way I can do so in my mother’s presence. “Amma, he’s not a gangster! Many boys dress like that. It’s fashion.”
But the words I do speak fall on deaf ears. When Amma saw Malcolm, she did not simply see his clothes and his hair. She also saw the way I looked at him and the way he looked at me.
“I don’t want you mixing with these people, Susan. They are not your true friends. No real friend would treat you the way these people did.”
I know she is right. And it makes me furious.
“Well, maybe I went to them because I don’t have friends. I never did. Even in Jeddah.”
“You had Alisha.”
“Yeah, I had Alisha. Only Alisha. No one else could stand me. And you know why? It’s because of you! Because you kept saying that my studies should be my number one priority. Because I was terrified of disappointing you even when I was topping my class. Well, I hope you’re satisfied now. Now I have no one over here either!”
I stalk to my room, ignoring her shouts, the cloying taste of bubble-gum still on my tongue.
* * *
To my surprise, Amma does not punish me the way she would have in Jeddah—with extra housework or taking away my phone, computer, and television privileges. Neither does she tell my father about what happened. She remains silent and sullen for the whole weekend, hardly saying anything during mealtimes, even though I can feel her watching me at moments, tracking my every move.
The video of me vomiting in the bushes behind Justin Singh’s house is now on YouTube. VJ and his friends make puking sounds when I pass them by in the school hallways on Monday. At the end of second period, I find a piece of paper at the bottom of my locker: a drawing of a stick-figure boy peeing on a vomiting stick-figure girl.
I crumple the paper into a ball and then uncrumple it before ripping it to shreds. Even though I’m pretty sure they slid the paper in through one of the locker’s vents, I change my lock’s combination. I don’t see much point in vents, though Heather tells me that they exist to air out the odor left behind by gym clothes or smelly food. Most times, however, Heather says they’re used as mail slots for love notes.
I think of the note Malcolm wrote me in the library right before midterms—one that, instead of throwing away, I triple folded and zipped carefully into one of my binder’s many pockets. Malcolm hasn’t spoken to me since he dropped me off at my house. I haven’t spoken to him either, my tongue self-gluing to the roof of my mouth whenever he pauses next to his locker to take out his books, barely acknowledging me with a nod. In English class, it’s even worse because he ignores me completely, not even looking at me when I pass him a handout. Whenever this happens, I inevitably find Afrin watching us both and smirking in a way that makes me want to rip out her hair.
It’s good that Malcolm’s ignoring me, I tell myself. His disinterest can only lead to Afrin’s disinterest and, after that video, a low profile is something I should be actively seeking. It certainly shouldn’t feel like someone kicked me in the gut every time he talks and flirts with another girl. It shouldn’t feel like I lost a friend.
* * *
On Tuesday, Amma finally enters my room.
“Your appa is coming here in ten days! And he’ll be spending Christmas break with us.” Shadows circle her eyes: a side effect of the insomnia that has affected both of us.
I feel something inside me unclench. In spite of myself, I begin to smile. “Really? He’s coming? For the whole of Christmas break?”
Amma smiles back. “Yes, he is. Maybe even longer. He hasn’t booked his return ticket yet. It’s not as good as a permanent move, but … look here: He sent me the ticket confirmation.”
I read the itinerary on my mother’s phone. Appa’s flight arrives next Friday at 1:00 p.m. Right in time for the midterm report cards. I suppress a groan. I’ll also be in school at the time and won’t have the chance to meet him at the airport. But then—
“He will be here,” I say out loud. “Finally!” My father will finally be with us. What else is more important?
Amma widens her eyes like a Bharatanatyam dancer. “I know, eh!” she declares in such a perfect imitation of our building’s property manager that I begin giggling. Which, of course, makes Amma giggle as well. Before I know it, we are no longer mother and daughter, but a pair of girls, who have, in some odd way, made up for the fight we had last week.
“Sorry, Amma,” I say, when I catch my breath. “Sorry for yelling.”
“You terrified me, Susan. I did not know what happened to you. I had so many terrible thoughts.”
I wince, feeling horrible again.
“I’m sorry, too.” Amma sits down next to me on the bed. “It’s difficult. Letting go of you. Not having your appa around to help me.”
“I know.”
For as long as I’ve known, Appa has always helped smooth out the rough patches in my relationship with Amma, always been the bond that held us together when things got tough. Unlike Amma, I’ve never liked talking about the empty space he’s created by leaving us here by ourselves. Or about how terribly I missed him.
“I’m so glad he’s coming back.” I rest my head on her shoulder. “I hope he comes here to live with us for good.”
It isn’t until I’m getting ready for school, minutes later, that I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever expressed a wish to stay here instead of moving back to Saudi Arabia.
* * *
Alisha and I became what she likes to call BFBA or Best Friends by Accident. “If we’d not been seated together that first day in kindergarten, I’m pretty sure I
would’ve never talked to you,” she always says.
I, on the other hand, feel we became friends because of AP. Alisha’s Persistence. Always including me in the games the kids played during recess. Offering to trip Emerald Verghese for laughing at me when I fell down the stairs in Class II. I never knew what Alisha saw in me back then.
“You are LTAF,” she said once when I asked. Loyal to a Fault.
I’m not sure how true this is, but Alisha says it is exactly why I have such a hard time making new friends. “You’re afraid of growing close to people. You wall up so that you don’t get hurt.”
Or hurt people in return, I think. Alisha still hasn’t responded to my old texts. Or the new ones I sent on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. This morning, before my first class, I lock myself in a bathroom cubicle and leave her a long—and admittedly sappy—voicemail.
“I miss you,” I say. I never wanted to lose my best friend over something as trivial as a new makeover or a new friendship.
Malcolm’s still ignoring me, of course. I wish others would do the same. When I walk in the halls, girls burst into giggles behind me, boys pretend to gag and throw up—or worse, ask me for my number so that they can get me drunk.
It happens again in physics, when a boy in the front row murmurs something about how he’d like to douse me—all of me—in beer so that he can see me better. Mr. Franklin still isn’t here so I allow my hand to slide up his desk, rip out the first four pages from his open binder, and—thud—knock his textbook to the ground.
A moment of dead silence in which I ask him, my voice feather soft: “What did you say?”
He makes his body smaller in a way I imagine boys do after being kneed in the groin. “N-nothing. I didn’t say anything.” Whispers break out again, along with scattered laughter.
“Nice work,” a voice says from behind me.
I turn around to face the source, and recognize the Indian girl Heather Dupuis hangs out with. Long black hair, dusky skin, a cranberry-tinted pout, and a tight sweater that hugs the well-defined muscles of her arms. I have a feeling that if this girl was in my place, it would have been the catcaller on the floor, not his textbook.
“Some boys have big mouths, don’t they?” She grins, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m Preeti, by the way. Preeti Sharma.”
“Hi,” I say, when I get over the surprise of her addressing me. “I’m Susan Thomas.”
“I know,” she tells me. “Heather has told me about you and your super memory.”
I feel my heartbeat slow to its normal pace. I smile back. “Nice to meet you, Preeti.”
Her grin widens. “Wow! Finally someone who pronounces my name right on the first try. Everyone over here calls me ‘Pretty.’ Which isn’t the worst way to say a name, I guess, but…” She shrugs her shoulders.
I laugh. Preeti’s comment reminds me of something Alisha once said—If you want to make friends, learn to laugh at yourself.
I clear my throat. “Wanna hear what my old physics teacher used to call me?”
* * *
I head to my usual spot by the stairs for lunch, even though it’s beginning to feel like the inside of a fridge whenever I step outdoors.
“I have some homework,” I tell Preeti and Heather when they invite me to join them in the cafeteria. It’s not a lie, really. It’s quieter on the steps than in the lunchroom. It’s not like I’m hoping to see someone else here.
“No distractions,” I whisper.
I’m trying to read Alias Grace, the novel we’ve been assigned after midterms, but after staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes, I decide to put it away. I pull out my calculus problem set instead … and end up doodling a pair of giant eyes weeping heart-shaped tears in the margins of my binder, right over a skinny, big-eyed cat that looks far too depressed to be cute.
“Ugh.”
I flip over my pencil and have begun erasing the drawing when my phone vibrates in my coat pocket. A Skype-to-Skype audio call. I stare at the caller’s name on-screen, fumble for a few seconds before answering, praying she doesn’t hang up.
“Hel—”
“Are you trying to make me cry, you idiot?” Alisha does sound like she’s sniffing a bit. Though that could be a cold. “I heard your voice message. Suzy, I’m sorry I said those things to you—”
“I’m sorry, too,” I cut in. “I don’t want us to be mad at each other anymore.”
Which is true. But there’s more.
“If I get mad at you for making a few changes, I’m only being a hypocrite.” I tell her about the fight I had with Malcolm, Afrin’s invitation, the party—and what happened after.
“Holy fudgy falooda.” There’s a long silence from Alisha’s end. “I … have no words for this.”
“I know. It was stupid.”
“Maybe. But then, what’s the point of being human if you can’t do stupid things every once in a while?”
The knot in my stomach loosens. “Did your guy, Isaac Cherian, tell you that?”
“He’s not my guy, yet. I mean, we barely even talked that day. He asked for my number though and we’ve been chatting through texts.”
“Ooooooooh.”
“Stop that, goof.” But I can hear the grin in her voice. “We’re meeting again on Friday at Emerald’s house. Her mom’s hosting a potluck.”
After the terrible weekend I had, the annoyance I feel on hearing Emerald’s name barely registers. “Will you tell me what happens after?”
“Of course! Though don’t expect anything major with the chaperones lurking around. Anyway, forget about that, you need to tell me what’s happening with Malcolm now. Did you two kiss and make up already?”
“We’re only friends, Alisha! Or were friends. He isn’t talking to me. I think he’s still mad about the stuff I said before.”
“Well, have you talked to him the way you’re talking to me now? Texts don’t count.”
I say nothing for a long moment. The idea of apologizing to Malcolm the way I did to Alisha makes me feel uncomfortable. Exposed in ways I’m not used to.
“What if he rejects me?” What if he decides he doesn’t want to be my friend anymore?
“Then it’s his loss, isn’t it—to lose the most LTAF person I know?”
I feel a smile break through. “Are we still using those cheesy acronyms?”
“Well, duh. They’re too weird to use with anyone else.”
“Even Emerald?”
“Especially Emerald.”
Now I’m grinning fully and, even though I can’t see her, I know Alisha is as well. “Oh, Alisha?”
“Yeah?”
“Try shaving your arms for the second date. It’s way more painless than waxing.”
* * *
Now or never. Now or never.
After my talk with Alisha, I chant the words over and over, pepping myself up to go talk to Malcolm. I write the apology on a piece of paper. Memorize it, so that I won’t forget exactly what I’m supposed to be saying. I can do things differently. I can text Malcolm again. Friend him on Facebook. After weeks of not seeing a trace of him on social media, Malcolm has suddenly begun to appear on my list of People You May Know. Deep down, though, I know a typed apology isn’t going to cut it.
Overhead, clouds gather, their undersides tinged gray. Lightning flashes in the distance, and I wonder if the sky is mocking me already as I slip out of the art classroom’s alternate exit and make my way to what Arthur Eldridge calls a track—even though it isn’t really a track at all, but a large patch of grass surrounded by a ring of mud imprinted with cigarette butts and footprints.
My heartbeat quickens when I see him, standing in the center of the field with a couple of guys I don’t know, wearing his trademark jeans and a loose Blue Jays jersey under a puffy black jacket. His hair isn’t in spikes today and flops over his forehead, a dark mess of waves. My fingers curl in reflexively and I almost convince myself to turn, leaving things as they are, to push back apologizing to a day when I
’m better prepa—
His gaze locks with mine.
—too late.
As tempted as I am to run off, now that he’s watching me, his features growing stiff with surprise, I know this is it.
Now or never.
I paste what feels like a smile onto my face and walk across the yellowing grass. My sneakers sink into the softened ground, make a squelching sound at one point. I grimace, hoping I haven’t stepped into something gross. By the time I reach Malcolm, the other boys are watching the two of us with ill-concealed curiosity.
“Hi.” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Can I talk to you?”
He frowns slightly, and for a moment I think he’s going to say no and call me Vomit Girl like everyone else. But then he nods and looks at the other guys. “Later.”
“Later,” the boys say. One of them smiles at me before leaving.
If I thought it would get easier without two other sets of eyes gawking at us, I was wrong. Especially when a lock of hair falls over his eyes and he doesn’t push it away, giving me the insane urge to do it myself. Malcolm’s gaze flicks to my mouth and back up.
“You want to talk?” The sarcasm in his voice is enough to bring me out of my haze.
“I … I want to say I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said the things I told you last week. It was completely wrong and out of line.” After the Vomiting Video Debacle, a B-minus on a test feels like a blessing. “I also wanted to thank you for … you know.”
He gives me a cool look. “No. I don’t, actually.”
Blood rushes to my cheeks. I know he’s torturing me. I also know that I probably deserve it.
“For taking me home. I don’t know what I was thinking, accepting the invitation to that party. I thought she wanted to be friends.” I try to laugh if off even though I want to sink into the ground for making the assumption.
Malcolm is no longer smirking. “Did someone mix something into your drink?” he asks, a hard edge creeping into his quiet voice.
“No. No, that was me. I mean, the beer tasted bad so I didn’t drink much. But the vodka … We were playing a drinking game,” I admit.
The Beauty of the Moment Page 15
