How to Find What You're Not Looking For

by Veera Hiranandani

  Kokila

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Veera Hiranandani

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Kokila & colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Ebook ISBN 9780525555049

  Cover art © 2021 by Eleni Kalortoki

  Cover design by Kelley Brady

  Design by Jasmin Rubero, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  For my parents,

  who taught me how to be brave.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  How to Be the Lazy One

  How to Keep a Secret

  How to Eat Dinner

  How to Spy on Your Sister

  How to Write a Poem

  How to Follow the Rules

  How to Mind Your Own Business

  How to Try Harder

  How to Have a Learning Disability

  How to Keep Your Head Down

  How to Try Even Harder

  How to Miss Her

  How to Mail a Letter

  How to Tell a Story

  How to Burn a Loaf of Bread

  How to Be Alone

  How to See a Ghost

  How to Have a Friend

  How to Have a Nightmare

  How to Have Fun Anyway

  How to Make Soup

  How to Make Stuff Up

  How to Lie and Tell the Truth at the Same Time

  How to Not Wear Lipstick

  How to Be Forgettable

  How to Break the World Open

  How to Be in Between

  How to Know When This Part’s Over

  How to Take Responsibility

  How to Swallow a Bag of Rocks

  How to Have No Choice

  How to Read a Poem

  How to Be a Mensch

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  How to Be the Lazy One

  It’s harder than you think.

  First, lie on your messy bed wearing your Wonder Woman pajamas that are too small because you’ve had them since you were nine. Then, watch your older sister, Leah, pin up her hair for dance class. She sits in her black leotard at the small white vanity, her back straight as a board, a magazine cutout of Paul Newman taped to the corner of her mirror. She uses at least fifteen bobby pins for her bun. Count in your head while she sticks the pins in.

  One, two, three. She’s rushing because she has to be on the #4 bus by 9:00 a.m. for pointe class at Madame Duchon’s Dance Academy. She dances there every day except Sunday. You’re not even sure how she spends so much time at dance and still does well in school.

  Leah seems to do well at everything.

  Not you. You’re the lazy one. You’re just trying to keep up, but along with all the other things Leah does, she helps you keep up.

  Four, five, six.

  Ma wishes Leah didn’t take dance on Saturdays because of Shabbos, but Leah says it makes no sense for her not to dance if Ma and Daddy work all day at Gertie’s, their bakery. Then Ma says Leah’s right and that maybe they should be more observant and not work on Saturdays.Daddy says the bakery wouldn’t survive if they closed on Saturday in this town and that’s more important. They argue about the rules like that sometimes, how Jewish you’re all supposed to be.

  Seven, eight, nine.

  On pin ten, Leah suddenly stops and puts her hands over her face. Her shoulders start to shake. You lean forward in your bed, confused, to get a closer look.

  Leah hardly ever cries. You’re the crier. It’s the only way anyone pays attention to you. You cry when you’re sad, or mad, or when you watch Lassie. Sometimes you even cry when you’re extra happy. You get it from Daddy. He’s a crier, too.

  Leah manages to keep a smile on her face most of the time. If she’s upset, she gets serious and walks away, her shoulders straight, her head held high.

  But today, on a warm Saturday in early June, as the sun tumbles through the window and the birds chirp and the smell of Ma’s Sanka floats in through the bottom of the bedroom door, Leah sobs into her hands, and it terrifies you.

  “Leah,” you say, jumping out of bed and over to her side. “Don’t cry. What’s the trouble?”

  She turns to you. She picks up a tissue off the vanity, presses it to her eyes, then blows her nose. “If I tell you a secret, will you promise to keep it forever?” she says.

  “Forever?”

  “Yes, forever,” she says. “It’s the biggest secret I’ve ever had, and if you don’t think you can promise, I won’t say it.”

  Keeping a secret is not your favorite thing to do. Secrets make your stomach hurt. You can count on one hand the secrets you’ve kept. You once took a report card out of the mailbox and hid it in your schoolbag for a week. But you got caught. Sometimes when you hang out with your friend Jane, you make it seem like you have other friends. But you don’t. Occasionally you steal cookies from Gertie’s and keep them in a coffee can in your room. You’ve never had to keep a really big secret before, and certainly not forever.

  Leah’s cheeks get blotchy, and her eyes start to fill again with tears. “Oh please,” she says. “I have to tell someone, and I need it to be you.”

  Leah saying she needs you—is there anything more special than that? Maybe if you know her secret, some of her specialness will spill over onto you. She bites her lip and grabs your hand.

  “Okay,” you say, taking a deep breath. “I promise.”

  She holds up her pinkie and wraps it around yours. “Oh, Ari, something crazy has happened.”

  “What? What’s happened?” A flush of sweat starts collecting on your top lip.

  “I’ve fallen in love,” she says, your pinkies still linked together, her eyes still locked on yours. You let go of her pinkie and take your hand away.

  “You’ve fallen in love? How? With who?” you say.

  She gets up and starts to pace a little, so you sit down on your bed. You want to give her room.

  “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. It’s like I can see my future,” she says.

  She looks scared when she tells you this, and it makes you feel a little scared. You haven’t known anyone in love before. You’ve watched the soap opera Days of Our Lives with Ma, and it doesn’t look like much fun. It seems that people
start having lots of problems when they fall in love.

  If you think about it, you’ve been noticing some odd things about Leah, like the way she hums a tune everywhere she goes, even when Ma makes her clean the bathroom on Sundays. She wears her best clothes every day. She leaves a trail of Chanel No. 5 behind her, and she never used to wear perfume. She always seems to be thinking of something else.

  “Who is he? Do I know him?” you ask her.

  As she walks back and forth, she tells you that the boy she’s in love with is not a boy at all. He’s a young man about to graduate from college. He already enrolled in graduate school this fall because he wants to keep studying and doesn’t want to get drafted into the Vietnam War. She met him six months ago at Rocky’s Records in town. He’s from India, but he lives here now and works at Rocky’s after his classes because he loves music.

  And he wants to marry Leah.

  “Married? Now? You can’t be serious,” you say as your heart pounds in your ears. You don’t know what any of this means, and you don’t want anyone to take Leah away from you. How would she have any time to be your sister if she got married? It makes you want to give her secret back.

  “I’m eighteen. Ma got married at eighteen,” she says, her eyebrows turning angry. “Lots of girls get married at eighteen.” She presses her hands to her cheeks as if she’s trying to hold herself in.

  “I suppose so,” you say, still thinking she’s lost her mind. But it’s true. You think of Betty Campbell and Donna Marino, two girls who got married right after high school. They had their pictures in the local paper, and they looked like the plastic dolls Daddy keeps at the bakery to put on top of wedding cakes.

  You remember feeling a little sorry for them, just going straight to the boring grown-up world with no in-between. You thought Leah wanted an in-between.

  “When are you going to tell Ma? And Daddy?” you ask her.

  Leah shakes her head. “Honestly, I can’t even imagine it. I need more time. Remember, you can’t utter a word. But this isn’t just some silly crush on a boy. This is serious.”

  “You’ll have to tell them eventually,” you say. Leah doesn’t reply. “Are you really going to get married? To a boy from India? Is he Jewish?”

  “He’s not a boy,” Leah says loudly, and anger washes over her face. She takes a deep breath. “And of course he’s not Jewish.”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “He’s Hindu,” she continues in a smaller voice. “I’m worried about what people will think if we get married.”

  You nod slowly. Leah is the one who’s supposed to follow the rules. It’s no secret Ma and Daddy want her to go to college and marry someone Jewish. She already enrolled at Southern Connecticut State for the fall, though if it’s anything like your town, there won’t be many Jewish boys there.

  Leah sits back down at the vanity.

  “But I’m also worried about what will happen if we don’t. I really love him,” she says and starts to dab her face with her pink powder puff, erasing the streaks her tears left on her cheeks. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be a drag.”

  “It’s okay,” you say and go over to her. You put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll figure it out.” But what you really mean is that she’ll figure out that she’s not in love or thinking about marrying anyone.

  How to Keep a Secret

  About a week later, neither of you is worried anymore, because it’s almost summer vacation and it feels like you’re in a movie—Leah’s movie—and your beautiful, smart, talented older sister trusts you with her secret love story.

  You’ve never been close to being in love, and that’s just fine. Yes, you’re only eleven, and all the boys you know are kind of mean or smelly or both. You can’t imagine ever feeling that way about any one of them. Who would ever love you like that? You aren’t that pretty. You aren’t that smart. You certainly don’t feel smart at school, especially when you write.

  Writing is to you what dancing is to the clumsiest person in the world. Daddy says your hands need to get stronger, not your brain. But you think he’s wrong. You think it’s your brain. You heard your tutor last year telling Ma that she thought you had something called a learning disability. Ma sent that tutor away.

  Still, Ma makes you knead bread dough to make your hands stronger. You like helping at Gertie’s. There, your hands work the way they’re supposed to. It hasn’t made your writing any better, though. Ma calls it chicken scratch. It’s not just hard to write, it’s hard to think of what to write. Sometimes you can’t even read your own writing. It’s like a secret code.

  As you walk into the bakery, you feel the afternoon heat surround you like a heavy cloud. It’s hot outside and even hotter in the bakery. You don’t know how your parents do it.

  In the afternoons, you usually help Ma with cookie dough, and then Ma walks home with you at five to get dinner going, but Daddy’s in the bakery from four in the morning until seven at night, except on Mondays, when the bakery is closed. Daddy has the strongest hands of anyone you’ve ever known, and his handwriting is beautiful. He writes the daily special on the chalkboard every day in perfect curly cursive.

  Daddy stands across the room, forming bread dough into loaves. You can tell from the brown caraway seeds that look like ants in the mass of sticky white that it’s rye. Daddy’s hair is plastered on his forehead, and he moves slowly in the heat. He looks up.

  “Have any homework, Muffin?” he says.

  “Already did it,” you reply, which is almost true, except for the questions you had to answer about your reading. You did your math, though.

  Ma and Daddy always let you have a little break before they put you to work, so you grab a cold cola from the fridge and collapse on the stool near the pastry table. Just touching the cold glass of the cola bottle makes you feel better.

  After a few minutes, Ma comes over. “Why are you always reading those ridiculous comic books?” she says to you as you flip through the latest Wonder Woman while sipping your soda.

  You want to say to her that you don’t read ridiculous comics. You read Wonder Woman. You’ve tried Superman, The Flash, even Aquaman, but nothing is as good. Something about the pictures helping the words go together in small chunks feels like the puzzle piece your mind is missing. If only all schoolbooks could be like comic books.

  Before you figure out your answer, Leah comes bounding through the swinging doors. She often stops by after dance on her way home. Ma doesn’t make her help as much as you. She says it’s because Leah’s older and busier, but you think it’s because Ma doesn’t want Leah to get used to working at the bakery. She wants her to do other things.

  Usually, Leah’s still in her dance clothes, but today she’s in a red-and-white miniskirt, and her hair is down. She must have gone home first and changed.

  “Ma, how can you stand it in here? Let’s turn on the fan. We’ll all melt,” she says, waving her hand in front of her face. She goes over and turns on the big fan in the back and opens the door a few inches.

  “Well, look at you,” Ma says and runs her eyes carefully over Leah. “A secret date?”

  Leah doesn’t miss a beat. “A secret date, I wish,” she laughs, then changes the subject. “Ari, want to walk with me to the Sweet Scoop?”

  You nod and quickly close your comic book. The last place you want to be on this sweltering afternoon is the bakery.

  “Can I?” you say, turning to Ma.

  She eyes you carefully and then looks at Leah again. Does Ma know what Leah’s up to? She’s always telling you she has eyes in the back of her head. When you were little, you used to move her hair aside, looking for those eyes. Also, your sister is a great liar, which makes you wonder if she’s ever lied to you.

  “But I need you to help me with an order of oatmeal raisin,” she finally says.

  “Ma, give Ari a break,” says Leah. “It’s so
hot.”

  You don’t like making oatmeal raisin cookies. The batter is lumpy. You also hate raisins. You prefer making chocolate chip or black and whites.

  “Let her go, Sylvia,” Daddy calls. “She’s here almost every day.” He’s the softy.

  “Fine, go,” she says, waving her hand without looking up. You and Leah don’t wait for her to change her mind, and rush out the door.

  Leah has been bringing you with her to meet Raj at Rocky’s and go on his break with him. That way it will look less suspicious. This is the third time you’ve gone with her.

  The three of you have a routine. You get Raj at Rocky’s and then go to the Sweet Scoop. After you order your ice creams, you all walk through Stallings Park, the smaller park on the edge of town that is loud and filled with young people sitting on blankets, playing music on their transistor radios, and sometimes smoking cigarettes. Ma told you and Leah if she ever catches you smoking, she’ll never let you go anywhere without her again, even though Ma sometimes smokes a cigarette after dinner.

  At first you were nervous and decided that you wouldn’t like him at all. But Raj was so nice to you, you couldn’t help liking him. He kind of looks like Elvis, but with darker skin, and always buys you a double fudge ripple cone. It doesn’t feel like anyone is taking Leah away from you. In fact, you get to be more a part of her life than ever.

  Today, as the three of you walk through the park, Leah says, “Can you believe Ma used to bring me here when I was little? Now the families go to East Meadow.” East Meadow Park on the other side of town is bigger and quieter, with more flowers and no teenagers. Occasionally, a grown-up, usually a man in a suit carrying a briefcase, cuts through Stallings to get to the train station and squints his disapproval at a blaring radio.

  “I always went to East Meadow when I was a kid,” you say.

  Leah looks at you and laughs. She rumples your curls. “You’re still a kid.”

  You frown at her and duck away from her hand. You want to stick your tongue out at her, but then she’d be right.

  “I’m almost twelve, which is practically thirteen. I’m basically a teenager, just like you.”