Tweenache in the Time of Hashtags

by Judy Balan

  ‘Thanks, Aunty,’ was all I could manage before I hung up. I wanted to slam the phone dramatically but I had called from my mobile. So I did the next most therapeutic thing: shut myself in the room and screamed ‘JERK’ from my diaphragm.

  After I had cooled down, I decided a long talk with BLG was in order, so I decided to do something out of the ordinary – I knelt down, folded my hands and prayed. Well, my version of prayer anyway.

  ‘BLG? You there?’

  ‘Always,’ He said.

  ‘Do you see what’s happening?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Uh, well, DO SOMETHING, then!’

  BLG chuckled. ‘Why do people assume that just because I see everything, it is MY responsibility to fix their problems?’

  ‘Well, because you’re almighty. So stop whining, suck it up and do your almighty thing.’ I meant business. BLG started laughing. Like, full-throated, belly-jiggling laughter. ‘What’s so funny?’ I said.

  ‘Everything! For starters, I was just messing with you. Of course I care about your boy troubles. Secondly, what would you like me to do?’

  ‘I don’t know! Get Akaash to stop talking to that Anna psycho!’

  ‘Mm, see, that I cannot do,’ He said.

  ‘Well, then I’m sorry to say that you should probably step down from your almighty throne because you clearly cannot do a LOT of things!’ #AlmightyFail.

  ‘Nina,’ BLG sounded serious. ‘Real friends always find their way back to each other. So I wouldn’t worry about Akaash.’

  ‘So, he’s coming back?’ I was hoping that was a prophecy or something.

  ‘Now, where’s the fun if I told you everything?’

  ‘Come onnnn, you have to tell meeeee!’ I begged and just like that, BLG was gone. He didn’t even make a whooshing sound as He left. ‘Hello? BLG?’ There was no answer. But I think I got the answer I needed for the time being.

  13

  Recap III: Adam and Ben

  Posted by Nina on 17 September 2014 at 5.55 p.m.

  I was saving the best for the last. Or in this case, the most #Awkward part of the recap for the last. And awkward for everyone involved, as you will soon see. Nikki and I were back to hating each other all over again because we were both fighting for Adam’s attention. Sometimes, right in front of him. Mom tried to take breaks from her insanity party to give us parental advice every now and then.

  ‘Take it from me, a boy should never be more important than your sister. Or even your best friend,’ Mom said, sitting us down after Adam had left the house one evening.

  ‘Tell HER that,’ Nikki and I said in unison.

  ‘Oh, please,’ I said. ‘You hijacked my first crush!’

  ‘Baby, that boy is a little too old for you,’ Mom said.

  ‘Thanks, Mom,’ Nikki said. ‘Find someone your own age and go do what twelve-year-olds do!’

  ‘And Nik, he really doesn’t seem like your type,’ Mom said.

  ‘THANKS, Mom!’ I smiled, pitching in.

  ‘Well, what is my type? What do YOU know about MY type?’ Nikki said.

  ‘A whole lot more than I want to,’ Mom said wryly. See, Mom and Nikki are basically the same person at two different stages in life. Mom always said that Nikki was like her young self, making all the mistakes she had already made, but she couldn’t stop her from making them all over again. I thought about that for a second and felt really bad for all the parents in the world. It must truly suck to know what’s coming and not be able to do anything about it. #Respect.

  ‘Whatever,’ Nikki shrugged. ‘Adam and I have grown very close over the last couple of months and I really think it’s going somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, please. You basically forced your friendship on him and he’s too polite to reject you,’ I shot back. ‘He liked me first!’

  ‘Girls …’ Mom failed at intervening.

  ‘Said the twelve-year-old with a crush on a guy WAY out of her league!’

  ‘GIRLS!’ Mom got louder as she failed to intervene again.

  ‘Boyfriend stealer!’ I yelled at Nikki.

  ‘Delusional IDIOT!’ she called back.

  ‘Back-stabbing, psycho b-b-bitch!’ I finally spat out. Nikki looked shocked that I said that out loud in front of Mom. I was too scared to look in Mom’s direction.

  ‘How dare you, you little twerp!’ she yelled and flung the newspaper at me. It was the only thing lying within reach. ‘I taught you that word!’

  ‘Yeah, you shouldn’t broadcast that, Nik,’ Mom said, but no one was listening. ‘GIRLS!’ Mom stood on top of the beanbag this time to get our attention. Except, by the time she found her balance and her way out of the beanbag, we had launched into a full-blown fling-anything-you-can-get-your-hands-on match.

  ‘Stop throwing things at me!’ I screamed and threw my half-eaten Nutella cake at her. It was perfectly aimed. The cake hit the middle of her face and splattered across both sides evenly. It was art. #TheArtOf War.

  ‘ENOUGH!’ Mom screamed, but again, no one was listening. Nikki pounced on me and tackled me to the floor, where we both wrestled and pulled at each other’s hair. Of course, she had to pause every now and then to lick the cream off her face, so I had the upper hand.

  ‘First of all, how dare you waste Nutella cake?’ she breathed furiously, as she proceeded to remove the pieces stuck on her face and shove them inside my T-shirt. Ugh. I cannot tell you how gross and uncomfortable it is to have creamy cake smeared all over you.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Mom flung herself on us in an attempt to separate us, but only ended up getting her share of chocolate hate. The three of us were so caught up in the all the action we almost didn’t hear the doorbell ring. Finally, Mom gave up and answered the door, chocolate still stuck to her nose and chin. It was Ashwin Uncle.

  ‘Whoa,’ he said, all amused as he walked in, hands on hips, surveying the chaos.

  ‘Well, help?’ Mom said to him in her usual accusatory tone and walked over to the sink to wash her face. But Ashwin Uncle just stood there.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mom said as she made her way out of the kitchen.

  ‘This is great!’ Ashwin Uncle said. ‘They’re having a sibling moment. Go! Go, Nina!’ he cheered, annoying Mom and Nikki even more. And while this embarrassing wrestling match was going on, guess who decides to come back home early? That’s right! The face that launched (or was about to launch) a thousand ships.

  He took his place next to Mom and Ashwin Uncle. ‘What are they fighting about?’

  Mom and Ashwin Uncle exchanged a look and Nikki and I came to an embarrassed truce. For the time being, anyway.

  ‘Girls? You want to tell him?’ Mom said. It was her moment of triumph. Nikki and I glared at her, but she was too busy gloating to notice.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing, it’s the usual stuff,’ Ashwin Uncle said and I smiled, relieved. He always finds a way to rescue us. ‘They’re just fighting over a boy,’ he added, looking every bit as stupidly triumphant as Mom.

  Nikki and I exchanged a look, knowing that, for the time being, we had to be on the same team. We clambered up awkwardly as Adam stood grinning. ‘So, who’s the BOY? The one I met the other day? Thought there was some weird energy in the room that day.’

  ‘Dhruv?’ Mom said. ‘There’s nothing going on with Dhruv!’ Like she knew anything to begin with! ‘As much as we’d all like that,’ she muttered under her breath.

  ‘Uh, of course there’s something going on with Dhruv!’ I said, and within no time, we were wrestling again.

  ‘Stop lying, you psychopath!’ Nikki said, flicking my forehead. I hate anyone flicking my forehead.

  ‘I’M lying? YOU stop lying, you boyfriend-stealing, two-faced, backstabber.’

  ‘What?’ Nikki said, pressing pause on the wrestling match for a second. ‘You think Adam is your boyfriend? You’re delusional!’ She started laughing. I could feel Adam’s eyes on me, and I tell you, I just wished the ceiling would collapse on me and keep me hidden f
rom his view forever. How humiliating. I don’t know what came over me, but I was reminded of the time I had sworn I’d go to war for him. So there was no way I wasn’t standing up to Nikki.

  ‘Well, at least I wasn’t the one who dumped my boyfriend to get Adam’s attention!’ I said.

  ‘What? What boyfriend?’ Mom said. ‘Nikki has a boyfriend? How do I not know this?’

  ‘Shhhh,’ Ashwin Uncle said. ‘You’re ruining it. Let it just play out on its own.’

  ‘THIS IS NOT REALITY TV!’ Mom yelled at him, but no one cared about their drama for the time being.

  ‘You want to play it like that? Fine!’ Nikki said. ‘Adam, my little sister has had a crush on you and she’s just embarrassing all of us. Please excuse her.’

  Adam was grinning by now. ‘Aww, Nina. You can do so much better, you know?’

  I smiled but my heart felt like a shrivelled mass of feelings buried in the lowest part of my ribcage.

  ‘Actually, she can’t,’ Nikki said smugly. ‘But yes, you should find someone your own age, kiddo.’ She turned to Adam and smiled but he didn’t respond. ‘Adam, it’s all right, we can tell them now.’ Adam looked as clueless as a kindergartener on his first day of school. Mom, Ashwin Uncle and I watched on as Nikki proceeded to script her own humiliation for the next ten minutes.

  ‘Tell them what?’ Adam asked in his usual chirpy fashion, though he seemed to be genuinely confused.

  ‘About US!’ Nikki blurted out. ‘You can tell them what’s going on between us now.’

  You know that feeling when you’re watching a horror movie and the little girl is walking into the dark room and is just seconds away from opening the closet where the monster is hiding? Yeah, that’s exactly how we all felt as we watched Nikki in stunned silence.

  ‘Uhh, well,’ Adam said, smiling awkwardly. ‘I’ve had such a fun time staying here with you guys, and Nina and Nikki, thank you so much for generously lending me your room. I’ve enjoyed every minute of getting to know you guys and …’ He looked at Nikki at this point and paused dramatically, ‘I hope that we can continue to be friends.’

  ‘Friends?’ Nikki said.

  ‘Nikki, I thought you knew,’ Adam said.

  ‘Knew what?’ Nikki spat out. Hell hath no fury like a goth girl scorned.

  ‘Adam, I apologize for my daughters. They are out of control!’ Mom said, but Adam didn’t even notice.

  ‘I thought I told you about Ben,’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’

  We could all tell Adam was a little embarrassed by now, but we had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘Guys,’ he said. ‘I’m not into girls. I’m gay. I have a boyfriend.’

  I don’t recall what happened next because my head was too full. Boy liking boy. Hmmm.

  14

  Recap IV: Sister (P)act

  Posted by Nina on 18 September 2014 at 6.44 p.m.

  ‘I feel like such a fool,’ Nikki said later that night, when we were lying in our separate beds, staring at the ceiling in complete darkness. Adam had, understandably, insisted we take the room so he could sleep on the couch and put as much physical distance between himself and the unfolding oestrogen fest.

  ‘You don’t say!’ I said, feeling like twice the fool she was.

  ‘How could I not have seen this coming? I mean, he was good-looking, a sharp dresser and could actually dance like a dream!’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ I said.

  ‘Err … don’t they just strike you as extremely gay qualities?’ Nikki said. I didn’t know how to break it to her that this was the first time I was encountering the concept of gayness, so I kept silent. ‘OH. MY. GOD. Don’t tell me Little Miss Know-it-all did not know what gay was!’ And she burst into a laughing fit. That was it. I was never going to hear the end of it.

  ‘Shut up,’ I said, like the queen of comebacks. ‘So how does it work? Girls like girls too?’

  ‘Yes. You can even like both boys AND girls. It’s called being bisexual. I think those people have it best.’

  This was all very enlightening. Too enlightening, in fact. ‘Great. Now I have to rethink my whole life!’ I said.

  ‘Such a drama queen. You’ve only just had your first crush,’ Nikki said.

  ‘And look how that turned out!’ I said. ‘So, tell me. Are you going to always like boys or will you switch to girls at some point?’

  Nikki laughed. ‘It doesn’t work that way, dummy. You don’t get to pick your sexuality and you certainly don’t get to switch it like you would a pair of socks.’

  ‘Which, by the way, you never change,’ I added thoughtfully. ‘So. At what age would we know for sure?’

  ‘I don’t know, in your teens, I guess. Maybe later,’ Nikki said. ‘It’s not like I’m an expert on homosexuality, okay?’

  ‘That’s what it’s called?’ I thought about it for a while but it didn’t make any sense. ‘Why homo though? I mean, homo is just a Latin word for man. As in homo sapiens. So how can homosexuality include girls liking girls? Why do they always leave the girls out of everything?’

  Nikki started to groan. The way she only does when she’s in excruciating pain. ‘Stop. Stop. Please stop.’

  ‘Alright, alright, you go to sleep,’ I said but continued pondering on this fascinating new concept.

  ‘Hey, psycho …’ Nikki said after a while.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘For hijacking your first crush. I don’t know what got into me. I was such a bitch to Dhruv too.’ These moments of self-awareness and confession were extremely rare for Nikki, so they meant that much more to me.

  ‘You were, actually,’ I said. I meant to be more comforting, but she needed to know.

  ‘Yeah, I have to make it up to him. Something tells me he’s not going to make it easy.’ She sighed.

  ‘Nah, it’s Dhruv. He’ll come around. We’ll make him!’ I said.

  ‘Want to make a pact?’

  ‘Ooh, yes!’ I said. ‘I love pacts! Will we be slashing our wrists and signing with blood?’

  ‘Uh, welcome to the twenty-first century, psycho. We just make verbal pacts.’

  ‘Bah. What pact?’ I said.

  ‘From this day forward, I, Nikita, will never let a boy get in the way of our sisterhood. And if we fall for the same boy, whoever finds him first gets to pursue him.’

  ‘And I, Nina, will make sure to find all the cute boys before you. And make sure they aren’t gay.’

  And we fist-bumped in the dark to seal the pact and continued chatting about Mom, Dad’s wedding, my school woes, even Akaash. This was the first time I was opening up about Akaash to someone else and I was so glad it was with my sister. As rash as Nikki can be sometimes, I felt safest in her company. I don’t know what time we fell asleep that night, but she promised to sort out my school problems like a badass big sister, and I promised her that I would get Dhruv back on the team.

  15

  Pricey Boys, Persistent Girls

  Posted by Nina on 25 September 2014 at 1.11 p.m.

  You know how in the movies it’s always the boys chasing the girls, singing songs with words that make no sense and fake-playing the guitar? Yeah, real life is quite the opposite. I mean, check this out: about two weeks after the embarrassing Adam incident, Adam went back to the US (no, not because of us) and Nikki and I had no choice but to focus on our lives. Meaning, we had to deal with the fact that our best friends weren’t talking to us any more. And while it was easy to tell Nikki that she should simply apologize to Dhruv, I couldn’t bring myself to apologize to Akaash about Anna. Especially since I found out he’s doing better than okay without me around. But after a whole day of debating it in my head and feeling my heart shrink to the size of a lemon every time I saw Akaash in school with Anna, I decided enough was enough.

  ‘We really need to do something about this,’ I said to Nikki as I did my homework.


  ‘About what?’ she said.

  ‘This boy drama!’

  ‘Nah, that will come and go. Boys are a pointless waste of time anyway,’ she said, chewing gum and checking out a website with great interest. Upon peering, I noticed it was some goth community page. My sister needed help and now. I really didn’t want her going back into the dark place.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘They’re our best friends.’

  ‘Yeah, so were Mom and Ashwin Uncle in school,’ she said.

  ‘Uh, but they are still best friends,’ I said. I was confused. What did she mean?

  ‘Yes, silly, but in case you haven’t noticed, there’s clearly something going on or something that WENT on and they’re not telling us. And something tells me that being best friends with a boy doesn’t end well. For anybody.’

  ‘No, no, no! You can’t be like that,’ I shook her shoulders till I had her attention. ‘We can’t live our lives trying not to do what Mom and Dad did.’

  ‘More like what Mom and Ashwin Uncle did,’ Nikki snorted.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ I was getting more anxious by the minute.

  ‘Nothing, stupid. I’m just saying: is this even worth it? Do we need this drama in our lives when we’re Mom’s age? Can’t we just let them go right now?’

  I have to admit, everything she said made perfect sense and I wanted to just take her advice. Except, this awful feeling in my chest that I can’t quite explain or understand insisted on feeling heavy and restless till I decided to confront Akaash. And so I did.

  ‘Hi Aunty, this is Nina,’ I said to Akaash’s mom and restlessly drummed my fingers on Nikki’s desk as I waited for him to get on the line.

  ‘It’s a bad idea,’ Nikki said in a singsong voice. ‘It’s not too late. Haaaaaang uuuuuup.’ I shushed her but my heart beat faster as I heard him pick up the phone.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’ he said, like we had just spoken a few hours ago.

  ‘Uh, this is Nina,’ I wanted to clarify, just in case his mom had heard my name as ‘Anna’.