Chloe in India (12 page)

Her eyes had narrowed to little slits. She combed her fingers through her hair. “I have to say, I was surprised to see you up there with that girl,” she said. “I didn't realize you two were such good friends.”

“Um,” I said. “Well…” I checked the towel dispenser: no paper towels. I wiped my face with my sleeve instead.

“Well, what?” Anvi said. Her eyes narrowed.

“Well, um, we're not really friends,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “You looked like friends. You looked like
good
friends. And you must have practiced together.” She paused. “When did you practice?”

At that moment, I didn't want Anvi to know that Lakshmi had been coming over to my house after school. I didn't want her to know that she had met my family and had snacks with me and played with my stuff. I didn't want her to know that we did origami together. I didn't want her to know that it was Lakshmi who had taught me the spins. That we had practiced in my room all weekend.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We're definitely not friends.”

“Okay,” Anvi said. “Just checking.” She lowered her voice. “You're not from here,” she said, “so you may not know, but her father is a
mali.
” Anvi wrinkled her nose in disgust. “And who knows what her mother is. It's probably worse.”

If I had been someone else—like my dad or Anna—I would have stopped her right there. I would have said “So what?” or “Who cares?” If I had been my mom, I would have hurled a question back in her face, something like “Could you explain to me the relevance of that statement?” or even, “That seems to make you uncomfortable. Could you tell me why?”

But I am not my mom or my dad or my sister Anna. I'm just me.

And so I said, “Oh, okay.”

Anvi gave me one last non-smile, then turned on her heel and walked out.

You can guess what happened next because it is the
absolutely
worst part:

Lakshmi opened a stall door. She just stood there, staring at me.

My mind was racing. Maybe she hadn't heard? We were talking in English pretty fast. Maybe she hadn't understood?

But then Lakshmi walked over to the sink next to mine and washed her hands slowly, pretending like I wasn't there. When she shook her hands dry, some drops of water flicked onto my sleeve.

And then she walked out.

Without saying a word.

That's how I knew she had heard and understood everything.

After school, Lakshmi did not come to the park.

I waited for a long time, sitting on the grass, my back against our champa tree.

I had brought a ziplock bag of Lakshmi's favorite candies: gold coin chocolates and silver-wrapped toffees. There were even some gummies shaped like worms for Kali. After an hour of waiting, the chocolate had melted a bit and gotten stuck to the worm gummies. The candies were one messy clump.

I waited for another half hour. It was getting dark. I threw the bag of candy in the trash and headed home.

I woke up the next morning with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I lay in bed for a long time, staring at the water stain on the ceiling and listening to the singsong of the wallahs as they bicycled past my window, advertising their wares: “Pomegranates! Papaya! Bananas! Pomegranates!”

My brain was spinning over everything that I had said in the bathroom, repeating it in an endless loop.

I had been so stupid, so cowardly, so wrong.

And now I was worried about the Annual Day performance. It was tomorrow night. How could I do it without Lakshmi? This was our special moment. The two of us together. We had practiced so hard….

I was standing at the counter, spreading Nutella on my toast, when Mom burst into the kitchen. She raised her eyebrows in surprise to see me up and dressed so early.

“You okay?” she asked, giving me a quick peck on the cheek.

I just nodded.

Mom was wearing pearls and a business suit—always a bad sign.

She asked Anna, who was sitting at the kitchen table eating yogurt, to fasten her watch for her while she chugged some coffee. She was definitely in a rush.

That's when she let the bomb drop.

“Girls, I have a meeting with the minister of housing today. I need the car, so you'll have to take the school bus home. In fact, I think it would be a good idea for you to take it every day from now on. I need Vijay for work.” She grabbed a dish towel off the counter and dabbed at the corners of her mouth, trying not to smudge her lipstick. “Besides, I think we're more of a bus family.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I dropped my knife in the sink. It clattered loudly. “I don't wanna take the bus.”

Mom grabbed her keys off the counter. “I don't have time for this right now, Chloe. We can discuss it tonight when I get home.”

“Where's Dad?” I said. I was not going to let this go without a fight.

“He's gone to Mumbai. He's back tomorrow night.”

“But tomorrow's Annual Day!” I said.

“Oh, shit,” Mom said.

“Mom!” Anna protested. She doesn't like swearing, especially from grown-ups.

“Sorry,” Mom said. She glanced down at her BlackBerry. “Listen, Chloe, I'll talk to Dad. He'll catch an earlier flight home.”

“You guys cannot miss this, Mom,” I said. “It's really important.”

Anna, for once, agreed with me. “It's pretty much the biggest school event of the year.”

Mom kissed us both on the foreheads and then wiped at the lipstick smudges she must have left behind. “Don't worry, pumpkin,” she said, leaning down to look into my eyes. “We'll all be there for your big event.” She smiled. “Even Shreya's coming. We can't wait to see you dance with Lakshmi.”

I looked down at my feet. I
had
told Mom and Dad about winning the dance tryout with Lakshmi. I
had not
told them about backstabbing her in the bathroom afterward. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. They were too proud of my “clever ploy” and “frankly heroic scheme” to help Lakshmi fit in with the class. Those were the actual words they used. The prouder they seemed, the worse I felt. How could I tell them what was really going on?

First thing at school that morning, we had two straight hours of dance practice. It was a fiasco, which is a fancy word for total-and-complete mess. Lakshmi wouldn't even look at me. We kept falling out of step. We were like two toy tops spinning at different angles.

Finally Mr. Bhatnagar took us aside. “What happened,
betas
?” he said. “Yesterday, you did the spins so nicely. Today, you cannot do them even once!”

Lakshmi and I stared at the ground.

Mr. Bhatnagar took off his glasses and ran his fingers over his bald head. He put his glasses back on. “The performance is tomorrow night.” His voice had gone hard. “I don't know what is happening, but you two must figure it out or you will ruin the show.” He glared down at us. “Is that what you want,
na?
To disappoint your teachers, your families, your friends?”

We shook our heads.

“
Chalo,
then. Take it from the top.”

To make matters worse, over the course of the day, I grew more and more anxious about the bus. I'd never taken a school bus before—in Boston, we walked to school—and I didn't know what to expect. Who would be on the bus? How would I know where to get off ? What if I missed my stop? For once, I was relieved that Anna would be there with me.

When the final bell rang and Anna and I climbed onto the bus, the only person already there was the bus monitor: a grumpy-looking assistant teacher with orange lipstick and earbuds plugged into her ears. She nodded at us and then went back to her iPhone. She was sitting in the front row, so we took the row directly behind her. Anna sat on one side of the aisle, I sat on the other.

I looked out the window to see who else would be coming. My heart soared when I saw Lakshmi walking toward us. She was surrounded by a group of other kids, all various ages and sizes, kids I had never noticed in school before. They all piled onto the bus, laughing and chattering away in Hindi. It surprised me. I had never seen Lakshmi with these kids. I had never seen her with anyone but Meher.

Lakshmi didn't see me until she was standing in the aisle right next to my seat and then she jolted like she had gotten an electric shock. I smiled at her, hopeful for a moment that she might sit down next to me, but she continued down the aisle without a word. At the very back of the bus, she settled in between two other girls with long, thick braids tied with navy-blue bows, exactly like hers. They looked like triplets, in their matching uniforms and matching braids and matching dark brown skin. Lakshmi whispered something to each of them and then they all stared at me till I turned around. I was facing forward, but I could feel their eyes on the back of my head. Had she told them about what happened in the bathroom yesterday? About what I had done?

As the rest of the kids boarded the bus, I stared out the window, chewing hard on my bottom lip so that I wouldn't cry. I could hear Lakshmi chattering away in the back. When I snuck a peek, she was breaking her
chikki,
left over from school lunch, into little pieces and handing them to her friends. A boy leaned over and said something to her and she let out one of her earth-shattering cackles.

Lakshmi had a whole group of friends, but I had nobody. Not Anvi. Not Lakshmi. Not even Katie back home. (Are you really friends if you can only Skype—and then lie the whole time that you do it?) Even Katie felt like a stranger to me now.

I had nobody. Nobody at all.

I bit my lip harder.

The bus coughed and lurched forward, out of the school gate.

If you're imagining a cheerful yellow school bus with big glass windows and wide padded seats, guess again. This bus was a tin can on wheels. The outside had once been white but was now so scraped and rusted and dented you could hardly tell.
Compresed Naturel Gaz
was painted in wobbly script across one side. The windows were iron bars. The only outward indication that it was a school bus was a small, hand-painted signboard propped up next to the Sai Baba figurine on the dashboard: the outline of a boy and girl wearing backpacks and holding hands. The girl had long braids like Lakshmi's.

The padding on the seats was so thin, I could feel the hard metal bars underneath. I found myself tensing over every bump and pothole, bracing myself for the bang to my spine. I've always suffered from car sickness and, as we swung around corners, the exhaust that filtered through the bus made my stomach sour.

Anna didn't seem to mind. She kept her nose in her Hindi recitation book, trying to memorize a poem for homework. I don't think she looked up once. She hadn't even noticed Lakshmi.

After what felt like an eternity, we finally came to the first stop.

“Jhuggi!”
yelled the driver. He wore a maroon-colored turban, and his scraggly beard was so long, it dangled through the gaps in the steering wheel.

His voice came out like a scratch.
“Chalo, chalo!”
he yelled.

All the kids from the back—Lakshmi and her gang of friends—trotted to the front of the bus and tumbled down the steps, still laughing and chatting with each other in Hindi. Lakshmi didn't even say bye to me. She never even looked my way.

As my eyes followed her through the barred window, I suddenly realized that we were at the same traffic light where Vijay always got stuck. I craned my neck to see out Anna's side. Yep, we were across the street from the slum.

Then it dawned on me: this is where Lakshmi lives.