How to Find What You're Not Looking For

by Veera Hiranandani

  You wonder what Daddy even knows about you and school. He never remembers your teachers’ names. He doesn’t ask you about your homework when you get home, like Ma does. He leaves it to her to know those things. If Ma keeps getting her headaches and there is no Leah, who will know this stuff besides you?

  “I’m going to help Gabby,” you say, deciding to leave Daddy alone. “It looks busy out there.”

  “That would be great. Can you take these out front?” he says, handing you a finished tray of Linzers and starting on a new batch. The tray is still hot, but it’s not burning.

  Gabby is ringing up Mrs. Applebaum, a regular customer who comes all the way from Milford once a week to get her challah for as long as you can remember. Ma and Mrs. Applebaum often have long chats. She says the grocery store in the next town started carrying challah on Fridays, but nothing compares to Gertie’s. She always gets a box of assorted cookies with the challah. Seeing her makes you sad.

  “Is Sylvia back there?” she asks Gabby. “I keep missing her.”

  “I think you’ve missed her again. She’s under the weather today,” Gabby replies swiftly as she puts two of the fresh Linzers into a box.

  “Sorry to hear that. Well, hello, Ariel,” Mrs. Applebaum says when she sees you. “Look at you, so grown-up now.”

  You smile. She says that every time she sees you.

  “Wasn’t it yesterday when you and Leah were just little girls running in circles around the display cases?” she says. “How is Leah?”

  “She’s good,” you say quickly and start folding boxes so your hands have something to do.

  “She graduated last spring, right? Off to college now? I hope so, a girl as talented and bright as she is.”

  Gabby hands Mrs. Applebaum her packages. If you say yes, she’ll ask you where. You try to think of college names. Mrs. Applebaum waits in her thick camel overcoat and a bright melon-colored scarf tied over her puffy hair.

  “Yes,” you say slowly, and Gabby side-eyes you. You still have no idea what Gabby knows.

  “That’s wonderful. Where?”

  “New York University,” you say because you remember Raj was going there. Gabby stares at you.

  “Well, that’s good. Does she get to come home often?”

  You say no at the same time Gabby says yes. You stand there as surprised as you’ve ever been. Gabby laughs at you and waves her hand.

  “I guess not that much,” Gabby says, still laughing in a nervous way.

  Mrs. Applebaum looks a little confused. “Well, so nice to talk to you girls,” she says and takes her packages. “Please tell Sylvia I send my regards.”

  Gabby smiles. “Of course. See you next week.”

  You both watch Mrs. Applebaum leave, her brown pumps tapping on the linoleum.

  Gabby goes back to arranging the cookies.

  “So you know?” you ask. Gabby stops and stands up. Then she reaches out and gently tousles your hair.

  “So sorry, Ari. I just wasn’t sure when your parents were going to tell you the news. I couldn’t say anything.”

  “When did they tell you?” you ask. You’ve always trusted Gabby almost like another sister. Almost.

  “Oh, hon, a few weeks ago, but they had to. I have to make work plans.”

  “So do you know where Leah’s living?”

  “No, they just told me about the dance program and how they didn’t really want people knowing until she’s in a performance, but quick thinking on the college thing. Wait, don’t you know where she’s living?”

  You stand there, trying to make sense of what she’s telling you. A dance program? You glance at the rainbow cookies, the pink, green, and yellow layers inside. Layers on top of layers. Lies on top of lies. You’re starting to lose track.

  “Um, yeah, I just forgot,” you say as you add another layer.

  “Well, I hope she’s doing great. Tell her I say hi the next time you talk to her.”

  “Oh, sure,” you say, your head spinning. Then you remember what you wanted to do. Another layer. “I have to go to Jane’s apartment. She’s helping me with my math homework. Will you tell my dad? I’ll be home for dinner.”

  Two customers have just walked in. A man is starting to squeeze the bread, a pet peeve of Gabby’s.

  “It’s fresh, all baked today,” she calls to him in her polite but sharp way. He stops. “Okay, Ari, I will,” she says to you and heads over to the customers.

  How to See a Ghost

  You run all the way to your apartment. Luckily, Jane lives on the fourth floor and you live on the fifth. You climb up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Ma always takes the elevator in her heels. She usually changes to comfortable shoes at the bakery and then puts on her heels to walk home, something you’ve never understood.

  You press your ear to Jane’s door and listen for a minute until you hear voices inside. Then you knock.

  Jane’s mom, Peggy, answers. Being at Jane’s is like being in another world sometimes, even though the layout of their apartment is exactly the same as yours. Peggy couldn’t be more different than Ma. When she’s home, she wears dungarees that are often dotted with clay and glazes. She’s a teacher’s assistant at a nursery school as well as a potter. She turned her bedroom into an art studio, with a mattress on the floor in the corner and the rest of the floor covered in painter’s cloth so wet clay doesn’t get everywhere. She takes her pieces to a friend’s kiln when they’re ready. Then she brings back her shiny bowls and vases, piles them up on shelves in her room, and tries to sell them at art studios and craft fairs. And she makes you call her Peggy instead of Mrs. Cooper.

  “Oh, hi, Ariel, I didn’t know you were coming over. Jane!” she yells before you can say anything. “Come on in. I’m in the middle of some work, but Jane’s in her room,” she says as she walks back to her bedroom.

  You walk in. Their apartment smells a lot different than yours, mainly because Peggy cooks entirely different foods than Ma. She’s always experimenting with new recipes. She made Chinese food for a while but then switched to Greek food and once made you something called moussaka, which is kind of like lasagna but with different stuff in it, like eggplant. Once when Jane had you over for dinner, she made cheese fondue. She also makes extra-healthy things, like brown rice and lentil casseroles, which Jane is always complaining about.

  You go over to Jane’s bedroom and peek in. Her walls are covered with magazine posters of all her favorite Hollywood stars and bands. Jane is sitting on her bed, cutting out pictures from the newspaper.

  “Hi,” you say, still breathless from running up the stairs.

  “Hi!” She jerks her head up. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  You pace a little. You go over to her dresser and look at her little collection of makeup and perfumes. She doesn’t wear makeup to school; she says she’s just practicing for when she’s famous. You pick up a lipstick and open it. Bright red. You twist it and smooth it on without even asking. You press your lips together and turn to face her.

  “Looks nice,” she says, but she doesn’t smile. “Ari, I just don’t know what’s gotten into you these days. One minute you’re crying. Then you’re mad at me. Then you want to be friends again. Now you’re in my room, trying on my lipstick, not saying a word. And you don’t even like lipstick.”

  “Sorry,” you say and put the lipstick down. “I have to tell you something, but it’s a secret.”

  Jane’s eyes light up. There’s nothing she likes more than a secret.

  “I solemnly swear,” she says and salutes.

  You sit cross-legged on the end of her bed, and she backs up, making room for you. You face each other like you’re about to play cards. Her bed feels softer than yours.

  “On your life?” you say.

  “I never swear on my life. What if I was kidnapped and had to tell the truth to
save my own life? Then because I told the truth to save my life, I died because I swore on my life? Just tell me.”

  “That would never happen,” you tell her, but she has a point. It’s a lot to ask. You’ve never really asked Jane for anything. You’ve always been happy to have her around, but now you feel different. You need her.

  “I almost swear on my life,” she says. “Really.”

  “Okay, I guess that’s good enough. Here’s the short version. My sister eloped, moved to the city, and now she’s going to have a baby.” The words fall out of your mouth. Jane doesn’t say anything at first. You see her turning over what you just said. Then her face changes.

  “WHAT?” she yells and jumps up, standing on the bed.

  “Shhhhhhhhh,” you say, putting your finger up to your lipsticked mouth. “Come on. I’m not going to tell you the whole thing if you holler like that.”

  She plops back down. “Okay, okay. Sorry. Go on.”

  “And my parents have decided to pretend she’s dead or doesn’t exist, sort of. Because they didn’t want her to marry him,” you continue.

  “Why?” Jane asks. “Is he some sort of criminal?”

  “Worse, according to them.”

  “Worse, what’s worse?”

  “He’s not Jewish.”

  “Ha,” she says and laughs, but then she sees you’re serious. “Uh, so is that a really big deal for you guys?”

  You stop. You guys. Suddenly you want to put back the words in your mouth. Maybe Jane isn’t the person you should be telling about any of this. Maybe a Jewish friend would understand, but you don’t have any. What you have is Jane.

  “You mean Jewish people? Isn’t it a big deal for everyone?”

  “I guess. I don’t know,” Jane says.

  “I mean, they just made a Supreme Court ruling to say that different races of people are allowed to get married. It was against the law in a lot of states still.”

  “They did? It was?” Jane says.

  “Yeah, I did a school report on it. And what if someday you decided to run off and marry a Jewish guy? Wouldn’t your parents care?” You stop. Jane never talks about her dad.

  Jane looks down. She traces a pink flower on her bedspread with her finger.

  “Sorry, I mean your mom,” you say.

  “It’s all right,” she says and is quiet for another few seconds. “He left my mom when he found out she was pregnant. They weren’t even married. And he never came back. My mom always tells people he’s dead.”

  Now it’s your turn to be quiet.

  “I was always afraid to ask. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” you say after a moment.

  Jane shakes her head. “It’s okay. I don’t think about it that much. I never knew him, but I also don’t think my mom would care if I married someone Jewish. I guess most people aren’t like Peggy, though.”

  Suddenly you feel the shape of your friendship with Jane changing, in a good way, like chocolate chips melting into a cookie as it bakes.

  You would agree with that. “But it’s not just about him not being Jewish,” you say, bringing her back to what you’re trying to tell her.

  “What else is it?” Jane asks.

  “He’s Indian. Hindu.”

  “Hindu?”

  “It’s a religion from India.”

  Jane leans back and nods. “Oh, wow, that’s pretty far-out.”

  You both get quiet again. You lie on your side and prop up your head with your elbow, scanning her shelf of Nancy Drews. You wonder if she’s read them all.

  “Where did Leah meet an Indian?” Jane says after a moment.

  An Indian. It sounds funny when she says it like that, like he’s another kind of person. You think of Raj that night at your house. You remember that he moved his hands a lot when he talked. You remember how he looked at Leah. How he ate all the cucumbers off his plate but left the lettuce. How he kept smoothing his hair back nervously when Ma asked him questions. At one point when Daddy was going on and on and on about the proper way to make a sourdough starter, Raj winked at you. You tried not to blush, but you did.

  “He’s from India. But he lives here now. He’s just a fellow, Jane, a man who Leah’s in love with. But if they would’ve gotten married in another state like Virginia only a few months ago, I think it would have been illegal.”

  “Illegal? Like the-police-can-arrest-you kind of illegal?”

  You tell her about the Loving case.

  “Holy smokes.”

  You nod. “There’s more.”

  “How can there be?” she says, holding her hands to her cheeks.

  You tell her about the bakery, about having to move. You tell her everything you’ve been wanting to tell someone.

  “And I need your help,” you say.

  She looks like you just slapped her. “My help? What could I possibly do?” Jane gets up, starts walking around her room, crosses her arms over her chest. “This is crazy.”

  “I need to find Leah,” you say, running a hand through your curls. Your scalp is warm, and your hair feels slightly damp at the roots. “You read Nancy Drews.” You point to her bookshelf across the room. There they all are, neatly lined up, the yellow spines staring back at you. “You must have learned something about finding people.”

  Jane laughs. “That stuff is mostly about missing treasure and haunted houses.”

  Your body feels limp after explaining everything. You think of your grandparents who died, what they taught your parents, and how their ghosts float around in your parents’ eyes. Leah’s not dead, but you feel her ghost every time you walk into your room, every time you look at her bed, her posters, her clothes.

  “My house feels like it’s haunted right now,” you say. “I have to find her. She needs to know about everything. I know my parents aren’t bad people, but what they’re doing doesn’t seem right. I never thought we were that religious, but Leah marrying Raj changed something in them, especially in Ma. And Daddy seems to go along.”

  Jane walks over to her dresser and stands in front of a glossy picture of Elizabeth Taylor. She pats her nose with a powder puff. You wonder if she’s even listening to you. Then she takes a small red notebook out of her desk.

  “What’s that?” you ask.

  “This is where I write down my clues.”

  “Clues?”

  “Yeah. How else do you think mysteries are solved, silly?”

  You jump up and hug her.

  “Oh gosh, Ari, it’s not that big a deal,” she says, but then she hugs you back. She smells like Johnson’s baby shampoo and peanut butter, and you know that from this point on, those two things will always remind you of her.

  When you get home that night, you don’t say much to Ma and Daddy. They try to talk to you about school and about Jane, about anything else, but you just murmur your way through the evening and close yourself in your room again as soon as you can.

  The desk is piled with books and paper. You sit down and try to face the homework you’ve been ignoring. Leah would have helped you get organized. She would have sat with you until you felt less overwhelmed. You remember her saying that you should do the harder things first, then the easier things. But you preferred to get the easier things over with first. It was like putting your feet into a cold pool to get used to the water.

  You do a division page in your workbook. Then you read a chapter of Heidi, which, so far, you like. Then you look at your heavy history textbook. You’re studying ancient civilizations, and there’s a chart of world religions—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and Buddhism.

  It’s hard to keep the details straight, but they all have gods, and they all have places to pray, and they all have a better place to go if you follow the rules. It seems like the same ideas, just different styles. It’s like coats, you think. All coats do basically the sa
me thing: protect you from the weather, keep you warm. They just look different around the world. You want to tell Ma and Daddy this, but they probably wouldn’t listen.

  The murmur of the TV in the living room stops. You hear the shuffling of Daddy’s slippers, a glass being placed in the sink, more footsteps down the hall toward their bedroom, the door opening and closing, then nothing. Your conversation with Jane and what you said to her about ghosts comes back to you. You open your notebook and write.

  Ghosts

  I was never afraid of ghosts,

  until one night

  I heard the creak

  of a door opening.

  When I found the open door

  I couldn’t shut it,

  as hard as I tried.

  Something was there,

  something that needed me.

  Like I was the only person

  in the world

  who could see it.

  After closing your notebook, you lie awake for a while, listening past the silence. You hear some sounds: the radiator in your room making a whispery noise, the small whistle of wind outside your window. You keep listening, waiting for a certain sound as your lids grow heavy, but it doesn’t come. You don’t know exactly what you’re listening for, but you know you haven’t heard it yet.

  How to Have a Friend

  Today Miss Field sets up an electric typewriter on a desk in the back of the classroom during your vocabulary quiz. She tries to do it quietly, but kids are craning their necks to see what’s going on. You watch her out of the corner of your eye. She takes the smooth blue-gray machine out of the box. She sets the typewriter on the desk, looks for an outlet, and plugs it in.

  You go back to your quiz. You like learning new words and memorize the meanings easily as long as you match them with a picture. If each word becomes a little picture in your mind, it stays there forever. The quizzes are multiple choice, so all you have to do is fill in a little circle to prove what you know.