Nice and Mean (18 page)

She stares helplessly at her computer screen.


“Fine!” Priyanka slammed the door with a grunt. “I'll fail, and it'll be
their
fault!”

My eyes popped open in the dark bedroom. My mind had been stuck in a Video Nightmare, and the slam had sent my heart racing.

“What's wrong?” I asked, hoping she didn't take my head off.

She threw herself onto the bottom bunk, and the whole bed shook. “Everything. I wanted to type my paper, but Papa said no, because I'm still being punished for your stupid video.” She clicked on her reading light. “Now I have to handwrite it. It'll take forever!”

“Oh.” The reading light was so bright that I had to shield my eyes. “Sorry.”

“Hmmph.”

“Do you want me to talk to them?” I asked.

“Oh, right.” I could hear her smacking her pillow into a backrest. “Like that'll help.”

From underneath my arm, I stared up at the ceiling. It was the first time she'd talked to me since Saturday night. I didn't know if she'd listen to my apology now, but I had to say it. “Priyanka,” I said, “I didn't mean to get you in trouble. I'm sorry.”

Her pen clicked. “See if I ever help
you
again.”

Oh.

Pages rustled. Her pen scratched.

What if I needed her?

“Priyanka?”

“I'm trying to work.”

“Never mind. I'm sorry. Good night.”

I turned onto my side.
Never
help me? My gaze fell on the bookshelf across the room, and the picture of us from elementary school, dressed like twin dogs for Halloween. I couldn't see it well from where I lay, but I knew that if I looked closely, I'd see the dots Ma had made with her eyeliner for whiskers. We'd insisted that she match the position of
the dots exactly so that people would know we were twins—never mind that Priyanka was taller and had glasses. We had been best friends.

She'd helped me then, too. In first grade, when I'd thrown up in school and felt so mortified, I couldn't remember my mother's work number, the school secretary had sent for Priyanka. She'd marched right into the office and dialed the number with the confidence of a grown-up. I might have felt grown-up sometimes, but seventh grade was only halfway through school. What about high school? What about college? Would I have to go through the rest of my life as one half of twin dogs?

Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes and rolled down the side of my face. I sniffed.

“What's wrong.” Priyanka said it so impatiently, it didn't even sound like a question.

“Nothing.”

Her pen scratched against the page as I fought off another sniff.

“I can't write my essay if you're crying up there,” she said.

“I just . . . I don't know why you started being mean to me.” My voice squeaked.

There was a light thump—a pen dropped on a notebook, maybe. “Why
I
started being mean to
you
?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, like you didn't start ignoring me when you came to Jacobs?”

“I did?” I asked in astonishment. “Like when?”

“Like, all the time.” Her tone mocked me from the bottom bunk.

I racked my brains. “Really?”

“Like when you read your speech at the Thanksgiving assembly last year. I went up to you and said ‘Nice job,' and your friends were there and you barely even thanked me.”

“I did not!”

“Yes, you did!”

For the life of me, I didn't remember having done that. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean to.” That was why she'd been mad at me? That was why we had stopped riding the bus together in the mornings?

“And your video,” she said. “I told you not to do it, and now you're in trouble, and Ma and Papa are mad at us.”

“I'm
sorry
.” I felt so sad and cold, and pulled my knees up to my chest. “I just didn't think they would find out.”

“Why couldn't you just go along?” she asked. “Why did you have to get them all mad like that?”

The light from the bunk below threw dark shadows across the ceiling. “I didn't mean to get them mad. I just really
wanted to make the video. They tell us to go along with what they want, that we'll have choices when we're older, but it's hard. And Ma didn't just do what her parents did. I mean, she came here.”

“That's different,” said Priyanka. “She was doing something good for the family. You're just making a video to make yourself look cool.”

“I'm not,” I cried. “Or if I am—well—you're the one who didn't want me to tell Ma and Papa about a boy you met this summer! Or was that ‘doing something good for the family'?”

“Mohan is completely different,” Priyanka said quickly.

“How?” I asked.

“Because—because—because it just
is
!”

I didn't want to make her any madder, so I just said “Okay” and stared up at the ceiling while she scribbled away in her notebook.

“I can't believe you're not telling me about it,” I said. “We always promised we'd tell each other if we got a boyfriend.”

“Sachi,” said Priyanka, “please. I'm writing a paper.”

I sighed. “I know. I just . . . you'll tell me sometime, right?”

“Maybe.” Now she sounded smug. “Maybe not.”

I leaned over the railing. “Oh, come on! Please? I promise I won't tell anyone.”

“Girls!” Our mother's voice rang through the apartment. “It's bedtime.”

“Sorry!” we called.

And then I whispered, “Tell me!”

Priyanka groaned. “You're impossible,” she said. “I can't concentrate on anything in here.” She started rustling around.

I bit my lip. Was she going back into the living room? I had only wanted to talk.

“I might as well just take a break,” she said, and before I knew what was happening, the ladder was creaking, and she appeared at the foot of my bed, her hair loose and cascading over her shoulders. “Can I come in?” she asked.

“Sure!” She hadn't asked “Can I come in?” in years.

I scooched back so she had room to climb up, and she leaned against the wall near my feet. “Wow,” she said, looking out at the room, “I haven't been up here in ages. You know, when we first got the bed, the top bunk scared me.”

“Priyanka!” I had guessed that about the bunk bed, but I wanted to know about the boyfriend. “Tell me about Mohan!”

She pulled her T-shirt over her knees. “Well . . . remember the last night we were at Nani's, when Ma couldn't find me?”

“
Yes
. I had to pack Pallavi's suitcase, and she kept saying I was doing it wrong.”

“So . . .” Priyanka rocked back and forth slightly. “He snuck into the courtyard to say good-bye, and—we kissed! That was when he became . . . you know . . . my boyfriend.”

“Oh my gosh!” I clapped my hands to my mouth. “I can't believe it! What was it like? How did you know what to do?”

Priyanka cracked up.

“Shush!” I protested, but I was laughing too. “How else am I supposed to know? You have to tell me! Was it on the lips?”

She smiled. “Yup.”

“Oh!”

Her smile deepened. “Yeah.”

“Are you still going out?” I asked.

“Yeah. At least, we still e-mail. He uses a girl's screen name to write me in case they see.”

“Sneaky!”

Priyanka wiggled her eyebrows. “What can I say?”

I couldn't believe it. I didn't like the way Marina and her friends divided the class into cool people and nerds, but all the same, I had pretty much thought Priyanka was a nerd. All this time, though, she'd had a boyfriend, and even gotten kissed! I felt a new respect for her. Not because it made her cool, but—she had secrets too.

“I didn't mean it before,” Priyanka said suddenly.

“What?”

“About not helping you ever again.”

“Oh.” Tears prickled my eyes, but for a different reason than they had earlier. “Thanks.”

“Why?” Priyanka sounded wary. “What's going on?”

I tried to sound normal. “What makes you think something's going on?”

“Sachi.”

She said it so knowingly, I sighed. I guessed you couldn't hide too much from someone you'd shared a room with all your life.

“Marina asked if I wanted to work on the video with her outside of class,” I told Priyanka, “and I said yes.”

“What?” Priyanka's eyes bulged out. “On that
Victim/Victorious
thing? You're helping her with
that
?”

“No!” I said, although I couldn't believe that even Priyanka knew what Marina's video had been about. “We're working on my video.”

“What? Why? And why do you have to work with
her
?” Priyanka hunched over her knees.

I pulled my blanket up to my chest. “I think it's going to be good. I had filmed all these interviews, and they didn't turn out that well, but Marina thinks she knows how to
make it all work.” Although before Priyanka had come in, I had been worrying about that . . .

“What's it about?” Priyanka asked.

So she wasn't going to tell? “Well,” I said cautiously, not wanting her to change her mind, “have you ever noticed that people seem to think some cultures are cooler than others?”

She looked suspicious. “Yeah?”

“So, that's sort of what it's about. Like how you hear kids say ‘Wassup?' like the African-American kids do, or they say ‘Ojé, Mami' like the kids from the Dominican Republic. But they never say, ‘Hey, Ma-ji! How's it hanging?' ”

“Yo!” said Priyanka, grinning. “Namaste! Welcome!”

We giggled. The sound of footsteps came near our room. “Girls?” said my mother.

As Priyanka and I laughed silently into our hands, the footsteps padded away.

“It's true,” Priyanka whispered. “Everyone listens to R&B, but Indian music, forget it.”

“Not when
My Jaiphur Bride
came out,” I pointed out. “That was the year everyone wanted us to dance bhangra, remember?”

Priyanka rolled her eyes. “Oh, I remember. Every few years something Indian becomes cool, and then people forget about it.”

“I know!” I cried. “I want to say to them, ‘Wait! I was cool last year.' ”

“Hello?” said Priyanka, with a hint of Nani's accent that made me giggle. “Have you forgotten about us over here, on the other side of the globe?”

It felt so good to laugh about it! And I couldn't believe I was laughing with Priyanka. All this time, I'd wanted Lainey or Phoebe or Marina to explain to me how popularity worked, but it was Priyanka, with her koala bear key chain, who made me feel better about it.

“Who decides that stuff?” I asked. “Is there someone sitting in a room somewhere, sticking their finger on a map and saying, ‘This will be the year of the Indian'?”

“Maybe. We talked about that in social studies. People need a way to make money, so they're like, ‘Everyone needs to buy short skirts. . . . Okay, no more short skirts—long skirts. And now you must buy Indian clothes!' ”

“Which people?” I asked.

“I don't know,” said Priyanka. “The Gap.”

I giggled. “Do you think the Gap will ever sell saris?”

“Oh, yes,” said Priyanka, now definitely sounding like Nani. “Saris will be their number-one bestselling item.”

We laughed into our hands again, then widened our eyes as we heard Ma and Papa walk down the hall, talking softly,
and click their door shut. It must have been later than I thought.

“Hey,” I said, “could I interview you for my video? Everything you just said—that should be in there.”

Priyanka shrank back against the wall. “Who are you showing it to?” she asked.

“I don't know yet.”

“I don't think so,” she said. “I mean, it's kind of personal.”

“But it was
good
.”

She made a face.

“Will you think about it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Okay.” Then she pulled off the blanket. “We should get some sleep.”

“Wait.” I had to be sure of something. “Are you going to tell Ma and Papa that I'm still working on it?”

She paused for a moment on the ladder. “No,” she said finally. “But if they find out, you really can't tell them I knew.”

“No, of course not.”

“Okay, then.”

As she started to disappear from view, I sat up. “Hey,” I said, “thanks.”

She nodded and continued down the ladder.

Sachi's Video Plan 16.1


INTERIOR. MS. AVERY'S CLASSROOM—DAY


SACHI


Marina! I figured out what we need to do.


* Most Shocked: Marina Glass

She's so shocked, she can barely even write this.

* Still Most Wrong: Rachel Winter

No! No! I still won't say it.

* Most Annoying Idea: Sachi Parikh

You said I had good ideas. How about listening to them?

“And don't forget,” Mrs. Ramirez was saying, “we have another quiz next Monday. Study hard, people.”

The class groaned. The bell rang. The talking started.

“I can't believe we have another quiz.”

“I know, she's so mean.”

“Dude, do you know what's for lunch today?”

“It better not be taco salad. That stuff was nasty.”

“Wait, I have to tell you what she said.”

The voices floated into my ears whether I wanted them to or not. I had never noticed how much people talked before. It was like they never shut up. When I had people to talk to again, I would make sure not to sound as stupid.