There's Something About Sweetie

by Sandhya Menon

  Elijah hopped into his seat through the Jeep’s open side. “Can we just go?” he said, staring straight ahead.

  “Yep.” Ashish got in and started the engine. He glanced at Elijah again, but his friend refused to look at him. Ashish might not be an expert at relationships, but he knew a broken heart when he saw one.

  “Samir is in the garden,” Ma said as soon as Ashish walked through the door. “Everything is okay, na?”

  Guess he wouldn’t be eating dinner first after all. “Yeah. Everything’s just fabulous.” Sighing, Ashish set his backpack down on the floor in the den and crossed to the back door. He saw Samir through the panes of glass, sitting on a bench under a sycamore tree, his head bent, hands clasped loosely between his knees. He looked … beaten. There was no hint of defensiveness or annoying arrogance about him now at all.

  It caught Ashish off guard. He walked down the path to the bench and sat next to Samir. The evening breeze was cool and stiff, riffling his hair and shaking the bushes around them. “Hey.”

  Samir glanced at him for only a second. “Hey. Thanks for letting me come over tonight, man.”

  “Sure. What’s going on?”

  “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

  Ashish ran a hand through his damp hair and tried not to let his annoyance show. Samir sounded just as beaten as he looked. “After the stunt you pulled at Roast Me, you can’t really blame me.”

  There was a pause as they listened to the wind sing in the trees. “No, I guess not.” Samir turned to Ashish and held his eye. “I’m sorry. That was really insensitive of me.”

  If he thought it would be that easy, he had to be kidding himself. “Yeah. It was.”

  Samir’s gaze dropped down to his hands. “Is it true, what Pinky said? None of you like me?”

  The landscape lights were on a timer, and they came on, casting a soft glow on all the trees and bushes around them. Ashish drew a breath, smelling roses and green stuff he didn’t even have a name for. “Bro, can you blame us? You’re constantly ragging us about stuff we’re sensitive about. Me with Celia, Pinky with that whole green-hair phase she went through, Oliver and Elijah about their PDA. You don’t make it easy for us to like you, you know?”

  Samir actually looked surprised. “But … but that’s what friends do. We tease each other. It’s all in fun. I think Oliver and Elijah are the most solid couple I’ve ever known.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re not so solid anymore,” Ashish blurted out before he could stop himself.

  “What?”

  “They broke up. Damn it, I shouldn’t have said anything. Just forget you heard it, okay?”

  Samir shrugged. “And Pinky … I mean, I actually like her. I think she’s really cool. No one else I know has the guts to try and pull off that shade of green.”

  Ashish threw his hands up in the air. “Well, you don’t say any of those things! You just berate us and laugh at us and poke and prod at the thing we don’t want to think about. It doesn’t feel good natured, Samir. You just come across as a jackass.”

  Samir was quiet for a long moment. Then he laughed. “You know what’s funny? Until the thing at Roast Me, I would’ve said you were my best friend. I mean, I knew Oliver, Elijah, and Pinky were probably top three for you, but I definitely thought I came in fourth. We’ve known each other a long time.”

  “Yeah. And you’ve tormented me that whole time.” Ashish scoffed. He couldn’t believe Samir had actually deluded himself into thinking they were best friends.

  Samir glanced at him, his near-black eyes glowing softly in the light from the garden. “Right.” He sighed. “I hope you know I am sorry about that. Really sorry.” He got up and smiled a little, but it was a muted thing, not at all his usual annoying grin. “I’m gonna go.”

  Ashish held up a hand and listened to Samir’s footfalls grow fainter as he wound back through the garden and went around the side of the house to the driveway out front. That was definitely weird. Samir was never humble or open or vulnerable or any of that stuff. Ashish felt momentarily bad, like maybe he should’ve gone easier on him. But man, the dude had definitely had it coming. And after the day Ashish had had, with basketball being awful and Elijah going off on him? Samir was lucky he hadn’t just tossed him into the pond.

  Ashish’s phone beeped, and he fished it out of his pocket.

  Sweetie: Unicorns or narwhals?

  What? Grinning, he typed back, Definitely narwhals. You?

  UNICORNS 5EVER

  He laughed and then stopped, amazed at the sound of it tangling with the breeze in the quiet garden. Wow, he typed.

  ??

  You just totally made me forget about the shot day I just had

  Lol the shot day huh

  Stupid autocorrect

  I’m sorry you had a shot day. But I’m glad I made you forget

  Five more days

  Ready to get your Holi on?

  Yeah sweaty and covered in multicolored powders is just a regular Saturday to me

  Give it a chance, Ashish!

  I will, Sweetie. But only because you’ll be there with me

  Incorrigible flirt

  Incorrigible beauty

  I’m going now

  K but smile

  Why? You can’t see me

  But I’ll feel you. It’s like that Titanic song

  GOING NOW

  Ashish put his phone away, still smiling, and shook his head. Ridiculous. There was no way that text exchange could’ve traded his foul mood for this sparkling, happy one. Just no way. He must be light-headed from lack of food or something. Yeah, that was it. He needed food. He got up and made his way inside, purposely not taking notice of how he was skipping a little.

  CHAPTER 19

  Sweetie sat cross-legged on her bed, looking up in the lamplight at Jason Momoa. Okay, it was his poster, but still. “Jason,” she said. “You’ve never steered me wrong. Should I do this?

  “Mm-hmm.” Then she turned to Hrithik Roshan, her Bollywood heartthrob. “What about you? What do you think?”

  She waited a moment and then sighed. “It’s two a.m. and I’m talking to paper.” Lying on her side, she tucked a pillow between her knees and looked out the window at the moon. She’d made a million pro/con lists, and she was no closer to making a decision.

  “The problem is,” she said, her voice too loud in her silent room. “The problem is, I know how badly this might go. But I also know how much this would help me prove a point about what fat girls can and can’t do. So is the payoff worth the cost? How can I make that decision without being able to see the future?”

  Suddenly Sweetie sat up and scrabbled in her nightstand drawer. She pulled out what she was looking for, and there in the darkness she shook that Magic 8 Ball like her life depended on it. “Should I sing at Band Night?” she asked, and then, hands trembling, looked at the answer bobbing slowly in front of her.

  So that was that, then.

  Sweetie took a deep breath and turned to her friends at the lunch table. “Signs point to yes.”

  Izzy didn’t look up from her cell phone, Suki grunted as she read her book, and Kayla raised one eyebrow. “Eh?”

  Really? Talk about anticlimactic. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and huffed. “Okay, I’ll do it. The stupid Band Night thingy.”

  That got their attention. All of them sat up straighter and stared at her. “Really?” Kayla asked, her voice gleeful.

  Sweetie nodded. “Yeah, I thought about it a lot, got some, um, psychic intervention, and decided that … I can’t leave you guys hanging.”

  “No, you can’t!” Suki reached over the table and grabbed Sweetie in a hug, her bony arms pushing into Sweetie’s back. “I knew you wouldn’t!”

  “I could seriously kiss you right now,” Kayla said, getting out her cell and furiously texting. “This changes everything. We’re going to win the grand prize, no question.”

  “Yes!” Izzy said, clapping her hands. “Those duffel bags are our
s!”

  The grand prize that the owner of Roast Me had agreed to throw in after hearing about the huge amount of attention and interest Band Night had gotten from the high schools in the area—they were up to seventeen bands now—was $2,000 cash to the winning band. Izzy, Kayla, and Suki had decided that embroidered duffel bags would be a sweet gift for the track team, to go with their new jerseys.

  “I don’t know,” Sweetie said, nibbling on her apple. “I still think we should give it to charity. Or, like, half of it to charity and half of it to funding uniforms for kids who can’t afford them.”

  “Which is also charity,” Suki said. Her parents were both doctors, so she didn’t have too much face time with poverty.

  “It’s helping someone out. That’s not necessarily charity,” Izzy said loyally. “But I still feel like those duffel bags would be awesome. Have you seen the gold thread?”

  “Yes, I have,” Sweetie said. “You’ve showed me three times this week already.”

  Izzy giggled. “Oh, right.”

  “Antwan is pumped,” Kayla said, putting her phone away. “Okay, and you’ve got the songs down?”

  “Yeah. Since you’ve forced me to come to practice every single time you guys have gotten together, I don’t think I’ll have any problems,” Sweetie said, rolling her eyes. “I’m just so nervous, guys. Like, bathed-in-sweat nervous.”

  “So what made you decide to do it?” Kayla asked, not unkindly.

  Saying that the Magic 8 Ball or Jason or Hrithik had decided things for her would be easy. But there was a deeper reason, the reason she’d begun to seriously consider singing in the first place: the Sassy Sweetie Project. As Sweetie had lain in bed last night, thinking about how she’d single-handedly connived to get Ashish Patel’s attention and then begun to date him, she’d gotten a surge of confidence.

  When they’d kissed, she’d realized just how wrong it was that she’d never even tried to date a boy before because of those dirtbags who’d said fat girls were easy. And that made her wonder how many other things she’d subconsciously told herself she couldn’t or shouldn’t do because she was fat. Resisting fatphobic messages was one thing—but what about the insidious, internalized fatphobia she carried around?

  She was a kick-ass athlete, a really good student, and extremely creative. But she had talents she never let shine because she had somehow internalized the message that no one really wanted to hear from a fat girl. Singing was one of those talents. So there might be jerks who laughed at her. But she knew that once she started to sing, they’d shut up. And if they didn’t, so what? She wanted to sing for her, not for them. She would do this because her talent and her need to shine were bigger than her dress size, bigger even than Amma’s prejudice.

  “It was like what you said, Kayla. I just realized I need to stop being so afraid of what people are going to think. I mean, I’m still afraid, but …” She paused, feeling out her words. “But my need to prove something to myself is bigger than my desire to make people happy. If that makes sense.”

  Kayla grinned. “It makes total sense. I’m proud of you, sis.”

  “Me too,” Suki said.

  “And me.” Izzy laid her head against Sweetie’s.

  She basked in their friendship, like warm ocean water. She could do this. She could kill this.

  Thursday and Friday dragged by. Even with practice—which she totally dominated—it felt like time had begun to ooze, each second like thick oil working its way through a clock’s every gear and knob. She kept seeing and hearing Ashish everywhere she looked—a tall boy with black hair, the way some senior laughed at some dumb joke, the boyish grin of some dude on a TV commercial. Careful, Sweetie. You’re not trying to fall in love with the boy. He was an unstoppable flirt, but Sweetie knew not to read too much into it. He’d basically told her he couldn’t fully give himself to her because of Celia. Besides, Ashish was one of those naturally flirty people. It was, like, his resting state. He had resting flirty face. Besides which, he was hurting, and she needed to respect that. She did respect that. This must just be temporary madness.

  On Saturday morning Sweetie showed up at Ashish’s house wearing an old white cotton T-shirt (the better to show off the Holi powders with) and a pair of old sweats. She felt a tug of self-consciousness as she stood at his front door, wondering if she had dressed down too much. Sure, they were just going to get their clothes ruined at Holi, the festival of colors where people actually had permission to throw colored powders at you and rub them into your face, but still. This was a date.

  Then Ashish opened the door, a big, cocky smile on his face, and she relaxed. He was wearing a ratty tan T-shirt and old sweats just like hers. He hadn’t even bothered to comb his hair. “Let’s do this!” he said, shutting the door behind him and following her back down the stairs.

  “Wait, aren’t your parents coming?”

  “Nah. They do the puja at the temple, but they haven’t done the whole color thing in years. They say they’re too old, but really I think it’s that their clothes aren’t old enough.”

  Sweetie laughed. “I can see that.”

  They walked to Ashish’s Jeep. “I thought I’d drive this today, if you don’t mind. Don’t want to get the Porsche all messed up.”

  “Well, actually, I thought I would drive today,” Sweetie said, raising her eyebrows.

  Ashish hesitated for a moment. “Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.” He walked over to her car and she laughed. Frowning, he said, “What?”

  “You’re not used to this, are you? Being driven on a date?”

  He opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again. “No, I’m not,” he said, and then he laughed as he got in the passenger side. “But I’m totally open to it.”

  “Good.” Sweetie smiled, got in, and started the engine. “Because I am an excellent driver.”

  Ten minutes into the drive, Ashish turned to Sweetie. “So when you said ‘excellent,’ did you actually mean ‘slowest ever in the history of humankind’?”

  Sweetie frowned and glanced over at him. “I meant the safest. Ever.”

  Groaning, Ashish leaned over to look at the speedometer. “Thirty-two miles per hour! The speed limit’s forty-five.”

  Sweetie slapped him away. “Get back on your side! And yes, I know. That’s why I’m in the right lane. That’s the speed limit, you know, not the speed minimum.”

  Chuckling, Ashish said, “Just another way we’re opposites, then.”

  Sweetie cleared her throat and surreptitiously wiped her damp palms, one at a time, on her shirt and returned her hands to the appropriate ten o’clock and two o’clock positions. Time to get to the big issue: Band Night. “So, I had a question for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  But before she could say anything, Ashish’s phone beeped. And beeped again. And again.

  “Whoa, do you need to take that?”

  “Yeah, let me just …” He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. She heard him mutter under his breath, something that sounded like, “Oh, for …”

  “Everything okay?”

  He sighed. “Fine.” She glanced at him, and his jaw was set. He was staring rigidly out the windshield.

  “So obviously that’s not true,” Sweetie said softly. “You don’t have to talk about it, but I’m a good listener. Just saying.”

  She saw his shoulders relax in her peripheral vision. “Sorry.” Rubbing a hand over his jaw, he continued. “I’m just, uh, having issues with a friend. Pseudo friend. And my other friends. It’s a messy time right now.”

  “I’m sorry.” After a pause Sweetie asked, “Your pseudo friend … Do you mean Samir?”

  “That obvious, huh?” Ashish’s voice was low, tired. “He’s not much of a friend, really. He’s always saying the wrong thing, annoying us. I feel bad for him—I’ve known him forever—but man, that guy drives me up the wall. He’s homeschooled and totally sheltered, but he thinks he’s, like, the authority on everything and everyone.”

  “
Maybe that’s a defensive wall he’s set up for himself,” Sweetie said, nibbling on her lower lip. “Sometimes when people feel vulnerable, they lash out. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to relate to you.” She’d gone through a phase like that in middle school. Since kids were always making fun of her, she’d decided she’d turn the tables and become a little jerk. But being snarky and aggressive all day long was exhausting. Sweetie had decided it just wasn’t her, much like being Amma’s doormat wasn’t her either. The answer lay somewhere in the middle, maybe.

  “Complaining to his mom is definitely not the way to do it,” Ashish replied. Then, seeing her confused face, he held up his cell phone. “That was my mom texting me. Apparently, his mom’s been on the phone with her, telling her that I upset Samir Monday night. We had a talk that didn’t go the way he wanted it to go.”

  Sweetie shook her head. “Friendships can be so tricky. I’m lucky enough to have three best friends and minimal drama, but even we go through our rough patches.”

  “Yeah …” He paused, and she felt the weight of unspoken words in the air. She waited. “And on top of that, Oliver and Elijah broke up. I was on the phone with Oliver until three in the morning, mostly just listening to him cry. And Oliver never gets on the phone, so that should show you how bad things are.”

  “Oh no.” Sweetie felt genuinely bad; she’d really liked them. Especially Oliver, who’d been so soft and open and welcoming. “What happened?”

  “I’m not even sure they know. They’ve been together since freshman year. Everything seemed to be going well and then it all just exploded.” Ashish laughed. “Wow, listen to me just unloading on you. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Sweetie looked at him for a moment to show him she was serious. “I like hearing about your friends.”

  He smiled. “Thanks. But weren’t you going to ask me something when my phone went off?”

  “Oh. Right.” Sweetie swallowed. It was ridiculous to feel this nervous, really. “Um, so my friends and I are doing this Band Night thing at Roast Me. It’s a week from Thursday at eight thirty. I was wondering, if you were free, if you wanted to come.” When he didn’t answer right away, she hurried on. “Um, not as a date, obviously. Since we’re only allowed to do the four dates on your parents’ list. But as … friends. Just to support us. The money we make’s going to new team jerseys.” Stop talking and give him a second to answer, Sweetie, jeez. She closed her mouth with a dry little click and waited.