Tweenache in the Time of Hashtags

by Judy Balan

  ‘Nina, would you like to come over here and be the teacher yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Nope, nothing to be sorry about. Come on, come teach us all,’ she said, extending a piece of chalk in my direction. The class began to gasp and murmur. Because I was standing up and walking towards her. I have no idea what came over me, but all I could think was, ‘How difficult can it be?’ I mean, isn’t teaching simply sharing what you know with others? I can do that!

  I could tell Omen was surprised. It was written all over her face, though she graciously let me take her place with a smile. She isn’t evil like last year’s Poo-jar Dig-shit. She seemed genuinely curious despite being a little unsettled. I love doing that – unsettling people, that is. But here’s the problem: I kind of rocked it. I decided I’d teach the class all the biological names we had to learn for the year such as: Periplaneta Americana (cockroach! ugh), Rana Hexadactyla (frog), Rattus Rattus (my favourite! I can keep saying it over and over) and so on. But since the names were difficult, I taught the whole lesson using Pictionary (meaning, I drew on the black board) and Charades. And guess what? They LOVED it! They kept asking to play more, and in no time, the whole class had memorized all the names. I even gave them a biology spoiler for the year and told them all about Hydra, the disgusting underwater creature that only has ONE opening (err, which means it takes its food AND its dumps through the same opening). Anyway, I was pretty impressed with myself. And though my back was turned to the class at the time, I could feel Anna staring at me, seeing me as an equal adversary. It felt good!

  When the bell rang (and this was the bell for lunch break), the class was still sitting tight, demanding we play more Pictionary! I think this upset Omen, though she was trying hard not to wear her feelings on her face. After everyone left, she came up to me and said, ‘Well done, Nina. You’re talented and smart. But you should also remember that that’s not enough.’ She said this with a straight face, so I couldn’t tell what she meant. I just kept staring blankly in her direction as she made a hasty turn and walked away. Was I in trouble? With a teacher? AGAIN?

  When I snapped out of thought, I noticed Anna standing behind me, well within earshot. I hadn’t even started to panic when she looked up at me with a smug smile on her US-returned face and said, ‘Nice class! I wish I were that “talented and smart”.’ GOD. I could HEAR the quotation marks. I wanted to reciprocate with an equal dose of sarcasm, but that’s the problem with me. Nothing intelligent ever pops into my brain when I’m angry and most need it. I just end up standing there, like an idiot and then venting here on the blog. Mom says it’s because I’m non-confrontational. I disagree. I think I’m extremely confrontational. I just think that most people are not worth it.

  The Grand Plan to Find All the Answers

  Posted by Nina on 11 June 2014 at 7.00 p.m.

  So. There are two matters that are pending my expert investigation: 1) Nikki and her new emo boyfriend, Dhruv. 2) Mom and Ashwin Uncle. Let me explain. Last year, we (that’s Ashwin Uncle, Nikki and my grandparents) staged an intervention of sorts for my mom (don’t ask, it was Grandpa’s idea after reading some article online about interventions) because she was acting unlike herself and insisting on marrying that ridiculous rapper guy she was dating. Needless to say, it DID NOT GO WELL. And Mom ended up flying off the handle as usual, channelling her rage in Ashwin Uncle’s direction (poor thing, he had actually argued against the idea) and spilling some secrets. I believe her exact words were, ‘You’re the reason I’m here in the first place.’ Obviously our ears perked up at that and Ashwin Uncle was acting curiously tense and asking us to go to our room. Mom didn’t stop. ‘I am so tired of you being this guy who can do no wrong in their eyes. If you’re such a hero, TELL THEM!’ she said. To cut a long story short, Ashwin Uncle and my mom fought so much that night that we thought he’d never come home again. But then, BLG intervened (oh, the perks of having friends in high places), made some horrible things happen and brought them together. They made up of course, but the flipside was that we never got to hear the story. And I am DYING to know what that was about. But there’s another part of me that doesn’t want to know. What if I find out something that makes me hate Ashwin Uncle? I can’t imagine hating him. But then, my need to know things is greater than my fear of getting hurt. I just HAVE to find the answers.

  Okay. I’m running now. My first project (Dhruv) is here. He’s come home for the very first time on Mom’s insistence. I might have underestimated Mom. Turns out, she did her own snooping on seeing Dhruv’s name flash on Nikki’s phone too many times. I have a feeling this is going to be super #Awkward. Sorry to leave you hanging, but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow to hear what I find out. By the time we’re done with dinner, it will be ‘bedtime’, you see.

  4

  I Hereby Approve of My Sister’s

  ‘Non-boyfriend’

  Posted by Nina on 12 June 2014 at 4.23 p.m.

  I’ve been DYING to get back from school so I can report on last night’s happenings. So let me not start about school, because I don’t know how much time I have on the laptop. Ashwin Uncle (snooping project number two) is coming over later. Okay, so here’s the breaking news: Dhruv the #EmoGuy? He’s not emo at all. He is funny as hell and extremely smart too.

  Anyway, when the doorbell rang, I sprinted from my room to get the door, but Nikki beat me to it. When Dhruv walked in, his height and confidence seemed to fill the room. Mom and I just stood there, gawking. See, Dhruv’s not particularly good-looking, but you can’t stop looking at him because he has this extra-large aura when he’s indoors. However, Mom was more focused on the extra-large tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve. I could tell she was stitching a story together in her head: Tattoo + loner musician dude + rumours of mentally ill mother and of father who went to jail = #CertifiedPsychCase. Also, DANGEROUS. Sigh, Mom’s new overprotective side is nothing short of insufferable. Sometimes I wish she’d go back to being an overgrown kid.

  ‘Mom, meet Dhruv. Dhruv, Mom,’ Nikki said in a completely disinterested fashion.

  ‘Hi, nice to meet you,’ Dhruv said and didn’t try to make more conversation like normal people. Instead, he just stood there, half-smiling, perfectly comfortable with the silence.

  ‘Okay, come on,’ Nikki said gesturing for Dhruv to follow her to our room. I cleared my throat. ‘Uhh, yeah, that’s my sister, Nina,’ Nikki said with even less interest.

  ‘Hi Nina, I’m a big fan of your work,’ Dhruv said.

  Mom’s eyebrows shot up. I wasn’t sure what he meant. For a second, I panicked because I thought he knew about the blog.

  ‘My WORK?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, you’re the kid who blew up the school swimming pool last year, right?’ Dhruv said, and Mom looked like a volcano waiting to erupt. That topic is never broached in our household, because Mom still has nightmares about how that experiment could have blown ME into pieces. I should have just shut up, but I found Dhruv very charming, so I accepted the compliment.

  ‘Well, I had some help,’ I said, blushing.

  Dhruv snorted. ‘Well, you’re famous,’ he said and gave me a fist bump.

  ‘Nina, go set the table for dinner,’ Mom ordered. She clearly didn’t approve of this line of conversation. Nikki started to walk into the room when Mom interrupted in her fake-sweet voice. ‘Why don’t you come sit with us, Nikki? Let us get better acquainted with Dhruv.’ Nikki knew only too well what that voice meant: ‘You listen to me RIGHT now OR ...’

  When we finally sat down to dinner, Mom said, ‘So, Dhruv, tell us about your family …’ and I just wanted to DIE. Gosh, how embarrassing.

  Nikki shot Mom a murderous look, but Dhruv just smiled and said, ‘Let me save you some time and trouble: yes, my mom has a mental illness and my dad went to jail.’ You should have seen Mom’s face! Or mine, for that matter!

  ‘Uhh … umm …’ Mom stuttered.

  ‘Go ahead, ask me about th
e illness and WHY Dad went to jail.’ Dhruv was unfazed.

  ‘Umm.’ Mom shot a hesitant glance at Nikki and me. Nikki, though, was totally maintaining her poise. ‘What illness?’ she finally said.

  ‘Bipolar. To paraphrase, she swings from Best Mom in the World to Potential Axe Murderer,’ Dhruv said with a straight face.

  The silence was thick and tangible. I had to say something. ‘Well, that’s MY mom too. I suppose all moms are bipolar!’ I said, trying to lighten the mood, only to get stared down by Mom, Nikki AND Dhruv.

  ‘And my dad went to jail for the murder of his business partner.’ He said that like ‘It’s Tuesday.’

  I have no words to accurately explain our reactions. I know that I choked on my food and Mom couldn’t eat any more, but Nikki looked suspiciously all right. Did she KNOW about this?

  ‘Nikki,’ Mom finally said. ‘Did you know about this?’

  ‘Of course,’ Nikki shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Dhruv is not his father or mother. Dhruv is Dhruv. What’s the deal?’

  Mom politely excused herself from the table and rushed to the kitchen, and I followed her. I hate to say it, but I was shocked myself. ‘We have the son of a murderer sitting at our dinner table.’ Mom was almost quaking in fear. I wanted to tell her that Nikki was right, Dhruv is not his father, but I was scared too. He didn’t have the best reputation. Some kids even said he was a cutter. That means he slashes his own wrists from time to time. ‘What if he’s Nikki’s boyfriend? What if she wants to MARRY him?’ Mom started to panic and I put my arms around her and squeezed her.

  Before we knew it, there was a loud thwack and we both had all kinds of dessert on our faces. ‘SUCKERS!’ Nikki stood there laughing hard – hands-on-tummy hard. And Dhruv stood there, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘I’m sorry, you guys,’ he said with a smile. ‘But this was too easy.’

  ‘Noooo!’ I said and pounced on Nikki.

  ‘Yes!’ Dhruv nodded. ‘My mom’s a teacher and my dad’s an accountant. No one’s ill and no one’s killed anyone. OR gone to jail. We’re the picture of insufferable sanity!’

  Once the initial shock subsided, and Mom and I washed the dessert off our faces, let the facts sink in and agreed this was hilarious, I asked Dhruv why people said that stuff about him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Probably because I don’t hang out with the kids who live on Wallace Garden Road.’

  That’s it. Now he absolutely HAS to be my sister’s boyfriend. He’s too perfect not to be!

  When Dhruv finally left, it was ten. Yes, way past ‘bedtime’, but Mom and I kept asking her if there was anything going on between them.

  ‘No, you psychos!’ Nikki said. ‘We’re just friends.’

  I think Mom and I had a #ProxyCrush on Dhruv. What’s a proxy crush, you ask? It’s when YOU don’t have a crush on the person, but you want someone you know to be with that person. I have never had a crush on anyone myself, so this is the closest I’ve got to it.

  ‘Oh, come on, Nikki,’ Mom said. ‘Don’t lie. He’s so cute! AND he’s got a sense of humour!’

  ‘Mom?’ Nikki said sweetly.

  ‘Yes?’ Mom had her Sentimental Mom face on. That’s the face she has on when she feels grateful to be our mom and says pointless things like ‘How did you grow up so fast?’ and all that.

  ‘Get a life.’ Nikki said, rolling her eyes and turning on the TV.

  Sigh. I shouldn’t have imagined life with an older brother in the few minutes between realizing it was all one brilliant prank and Nikki denying Dhruv was her boyfriend. If there’s a flipside to my overactive imagination, it’s this: the disappointment of real life not matching the life in my head.

  5

  My Twelfth Year Begins on a Dramatic Note

  Posted by Nina on 15 June 2014 at 7.22 a.m.

  Where. Do. I. Be. Gin? I’m still reeling from the madness that is my life. Remember when school began a few days ago? I had these grand hopes of focusing on crushing Anna, my nemesis, and winning that exchange programme. Now all of that feels like the kind of daydream only kids with normal families must have. Okay, I won’t keep you hanging any more: It was the night of the fourteenth, a.k.a., the eve of my birthday! I was in a fantastic mood. Mom was baking a cake that actually smelt good; Grandpa, Grandma and Scarecrow were home; Nikki had called Dhruv over and he was playing his guitar and singing my favourite songs; and of course, Ashwin Uncle came too. He told me he had a really cool gift for me that my mom wouldn’t approve of. So you can imagine my excitement.

  ‘Is it that fake thumb that oozes fake blood?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Ashwin Uncle said. ‘It’s WAY COOLER.’

  ‘Ooh, it is that mummy kit with removable body parts?’ Dhruv laughed and gave me a fist bump.

  ‘Dear god, Nina.’ Mom walked into the room. ‘How did this kid turn out like this?’ She directed the question at everyone in the room.

  ‘Well, I’d rather she’s into mummies and fake thumbs than Barbies and hair extensions,’ Ashwin Uncle said, playing his turn at chess against Grandpa.

  ‘Hey! There’s nothing wrong with hair extensions!’ Nikki said, defensively touching her #AngryGirl hair with a loud pink streak in it. Dhruv looked at her fondly for a brief second as he was playing the guitar. But only I noticed it and proxy-blushed. Such is the power of the proxy crush. It can magically bring two people together.

  ‘Is it a zombie game? Or stink bombs? Or that half-eaten face mask?’ I continued. Mom and Grandma let out a sound that was equal parts horror and disgust, but Dhruv and Ashwin Uncle were totally enjoying it.

  ‘How come no one thought it was cute when I was into vampires only a year ago?’ Nikki said. She may not have been aware of it, but she didn’t like it when she didn’t get Dhruv’s undivided attention.

  ‘Err, you like vampires because you think they are cute and romantic,’ I said.

  ‘Correction. LIKED!’ Nikki interrupted.

  ‘I think they are scary and gross and THAT is why they are likeable.’

  ‘Soooo, what are you into these days?’ Dhruv asked Nikki.

  They thought the guitar and everyone else’s chatter was drowning out their private conversation, but my ears were perked up and completely tuned in to every word. My mom says, ‘You have canine hearing. You can probably hear the Galton’s whistle, for all I know!’ My mom is so convinced of this superpower of mine, she even asks me every now and then if an earthquake or tsunami is coming. Because, you know, they say dogs always know ahead of time.

  What my mom doesn’t realize is that I’m also a master lip-reader. It comes from years of trying to read my mom’s conversations with my grandparents about my dad. From what I’ve gathered from all that lip-reading so far, my dad is an ‘ace douchebag’ and ‘mental case’ according to my mom, ‘what to do, bad upbringing,’ according to Grandma, and ‘waste fellow’ according to Grandpa.

  But back to Dhruv and Nikki. When Dhruv asked her what she was into these days, I believe Nikki’s answer was ‘humans’ if my lip-reading was right. And she looked soulfully into his eyes after that, the way they do in movies after a song in the cornfields. #OhTheRomance. So I was SURE that something awesome was brewing in my house and it wasn’t Mom’s new cream of chicken topped with basil, mint and double awesome sauce (don’t ask).

  ‘CHECKMATE!’ Grandpa yelled, throwing his hands in the air like he had won against Kasparov. He had, for the thousandth time, beaten Ashwin Uncle at chess. Ashwin Uncle never gives up. He says beating Grandpa at chess is on his bucket list.

  ‘Okay, can I open my present now?’ I said. I couldn’t WAIT to see what the big surprise was.

  ‘Not yet, missy. It’s not midnight,’ Ashwin uncle said and I groaned. The time was 11.47 p.m.

  ‘It had better not be anything involving access to more technology,’ Mom said. ‘Or I’ll have to veto it.’

  ‘No way. You don’t get to veto birthday gifts,’ Ashwin Uncle said.

  ‘Oh my god, i
s it what I think it is?’ I beamed.

  ‘It had better not be cooler than what I’ve got,’ Nikki said.

  ‘Oh my god! Oh my god!’ I couldn’t stop bouncing like a spring doll.

  Ashwin Uncle grinned. And just as the clock was a minute away from striking twelve and I was all ready to pounce on the nicely wrapped gift in his hand, the phone rang. As in, the landline. And we all jumped. Who could it be at this time, I wondered. Everyone who might have wanted to wish me on my birthday at midnight was right here in this room. Was it Akaash? But he wouldn’t be allowed to call me this late.

  Mom reached over and picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’ she said and then god knows what the person at the other end said, but she froze for what seemed like a good five minutes before going, ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ Ashwin Uncle immediately ran to her side and we all gathered around. ‘Wow,’ Mom said at last. ‘You are unbelievable.’ Then she hung up. As Mom sat down in slow motion and exhaled, all of us hung around, waiting for an answer. ‘Well,’ Mom said finally, turning to Nikki and me. ‘That was your father. He wanted to wish you a happy birthday. And he’d like to meet you both.’

  o

  Ashwin Uncle got me a phone, by the way. But Nikki and I are understandably messed up right now. Nikki says she feels numb. She’s not mad or happy. But she says she’s not indifferent either. She’s just confused and taking it out on the people she loves as usual. Poor Dhruv. It can’t be fun being Nikki’s non-boyfriend right now. As for me, I don’t know what I’m feeling. I am the opposite of Nikki. I’m feeling too many things. I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m confused, I’m nervous, I’m excited, and I don’t know what to think. Mom is outraged. But she refuses to talk to us about it. Grandpa and Grandma are anxious. And Ashwin Uncle said he’s giving us some space, but that he’s just a phone call away should we need him. I haven’t even charged my new phone or taken a good look at it since I got it.