The sudden rain made everyone rush back to crowd the school porch. She stayed where she was, by the pillar. One by one, cars inched past, and kids got into them and drove off. Where was her mother? Late again? She pulled out her mobile and Speed Dialled # 1.
‘Mom, where are you?’
‘Coming, darling, coming,’ her mother said, out of breath as usual.
‘Hurry up, Mom. I’m practically the last one here!’ she said. Jeez, when was her mother ever going to get it together? She was sick of her being scattered all the time. How on earth did she look after her patients? She had been this way for some years but of late it had gotten worse. Even Dad was getting sick of it, she knew. Now Mom had this whole new brain-dead scheme of taking Rahul to some godforsaken place in New Jersey for some herbal bullshit from India. As if it was going to work! Why couldn’t she just accept Rahul as he was, and get on with it? She and Dad managed, didn’t they? One year more, and she would have her own car, and not be dependent on them for everything.
The white SUV drove up at last. There was someone in the front with Mom. Oh, crap! She had forgotten about the visitor from India. As if things weren’t bad enough already, her mother had now wished some stranger on them. She had told Mom that she would be fine on her own, she didn’t need babysitting, she was fifteen, for chrissake. Her mother had gone all teary, said she should have someone ‘from the family’ around when she was preparing for her subject test. What for? Tara was hardly family, she was her mother’s sister, she barely knew her. Besides, people from India were – weird. She didn’t want to deal with some new relative. Why couldn’t she just have had Ariel stay over? Or let her go to Ashley’s house? But Mom wouldn’t hear of it. That’s how she always was these days, either really tough or completely disorganized. She preferred the disorganized phase. At least it meant she could do pretty much what she wanted.
She ran down the short driveway in the rain that had thinned to a drizzle and jumped into the back.
‘Lavi,’ said Mom, turning around and smiling at her, ‘this is Tara, your aunt. She arrived at noon today. Do you remember her from when you were little?’
‘Hello, Laa-vanya,’ Tara said, pronouncing her name in the Indian way, ‘how are you?’
‘Hi,’ she mumbled, slumped in the backseat. ‘Mom, can we stop at Bianchi’s after we get Rahul?’ She pulled out her iPod from its usual place in her backpack.
‘Sure, darling.’ Mom shook her head at Tara. ‘You don’t mind a stop on the way home, do you?’ She looked in the rearview mirror at her and said, ‘No iPod, Lavi, please.’
‘Then turn on the radio,’ she said.
Her mother sighed and fiddled around with the stations till they came to one that had Green Day on.
‘Stop!’ Lavi said. She looked at her mother’s sister secretly as they talked. She looked a bit like her, younger, much thinner, probably taller, too, but Mom must have had the prettier face once, before she let herself go like that. Not that Tara was bad-looking or anything. Her mother, Rahul, Tara, they all had the same look. She looked more like Dad’s family, that’s what they always said. She saw Tara looking at her looking at herself in the mirror, and turned away, flushing. She stared out of the window. ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ played on.
They got to Rahul’s school. Her mother got out. ‘I won’t be a second, you guys,’ she said.
Thank goodness for the music, she didn’t have to make small talk. Tara turned round to smile at her, then was quiet, looking around her. ‘Are those dogwoods in bloom?’ she asked after a while. ‘I seem to remember they flower about now.’
What, she wanted a botany lesson now? ‘Yes,’ she said, slumping further into the seat, hoping not to have to make any further conversation. Where was Mom? She was taking forever.
Kamala opened the back door for Rahul. He paused by the door, grinning at Lavi. ‘Get in, darling,’ their mother said, nudging him. He shrugged her off, still looking at Lavi.
‘Mom,’ she said, ‘don’t push him. Give him a second, for heaven’s sake!’
Rahul got in, holding his shoulders stiffly.
‘Strap him in, Lavi, please,’ Mom said, reaching across Rahul to give her his backpack. She dumped it in the back.
‘Hi, Rahul,’ she said, careful to touch him as little as possible as she helped him with his seatbelt. ‘Nice day?’
‘Nice day.’
‘Rahul,’ Mom said, ‘this is your Aunt Tara, from India.’
‘Hello, Rahul,’ Tara said.
Rahul looked indirectly at her.
‘Well, let’s get you two something to eat. You want to try a panini, Tara?’ Mom said in the perfect TV family voice she used whenever Rahul was around. For god’s sake, he was not an idiot. Why couldn’t she just be normal around him?
When they got home, Tara went upstairs to her room. She came down a few minutes later, her hands full of things.
‘Here, Lavanya,’ she said, ‘this is for you.’
It was one of those Indian kurta-type things, pretty enough, the kind of top Tara had on herself. But didn’t she know that people around here didn’t wear stuff like that? At the Indian parties, her mother sometimes made her dress up in traditional clothes. She hated going to them. All the kids competing like horses on the Downs – who got what test scores, who won which spelling bee, who was going to which Ivy League with a full scholarship, who was putting in how many hours and where in the summer to jazz up their CVs. And forget the humanities as a career choice. Mom went a little nuts in their company. It had to be SAT subject tests and APs so she could tell everyone her daughter was taking them. ‘Thanks,’ she said, dropping the top on the dining table.
‘And, Rahul,’ Tara said, ‘this is for you. I hope it fits.’ She gave Rahul a shirt with an Indian print on it.
Rahul took it and flung it across the room.
Lavi held her breath, looking at her mother’s sister. ‘He doesn’t mean anything by it,’ she said. ‘Probably doesn’t like how the plastic wrap feels.’
‘That’s fine,’ Tara said. ‘Maybe you should pick it up, Rahul.’
Rahul looked indirectly at Tara.
‘We never speak to him like that,’ Lavi said. ‘Mom doesn’t like it.’
‘Well, maybe you should,’ her mother’s sister said. ‘Stop babying him. Pick it up, Rahul.’
Rahul stood there. Lavi picked up the shirt and put it on the kitchen counter.
‘You should have let him pick it up,’ her mother’s sister said.
Mom came in and saw their faces. ‘What’s going on? Oh, that’s a pretty kurta, Tara. I hope she thanked you.’
Lavi felt tired. ‘I’m going up now, Mom. I have homework.’ She shook her head and walked out.
‘Lavi!’ Mom called out.
‘What?’
‘Take your kurta with you, and put Rahul’s shirt in his room, please,’ her mother said as she sat down at the table with her sister.
In her room, she picked up the framed photo of Ashley and herself, taken at the class dance some years ago. She couldn’t even remember when they had first met. Elementary school, maybe second grade? Thank god for Ashley. What would she do without her?
She texted Ashley. ‘Wassup? You busy?’
Ashley called her back in a second. ‘What’s going on?’
Lavi pictured her in her pretty pink bedroom, so neat and girly and unlike her own.
‘Stranger in the house – unfriendly stranger in the house,’ she said.
‘Your aunt from India?’
‘Yup. She’s being pretty rough on Rahul.’
‘Next it’ll be you!’ Ashley giggled.
‘Let her try. How’re you doing with the prep?’
‘Oh, you know. Hey, you going to the party Saturday night? Dave says Chip’s going to be there.’
‘Yeah, yeah, like it makes a difference. Stop trying to make it a double date, it’s no use. He doesn’t even know I exist!’
‘That’s not what I heard.’ Ashley giggled some more. ‘He’s just the kind of geeky American boy who would go for you, straight ‘A’s and luscious lips!’
‘Stop it. How on earth am I going to be able to go? True, Mom is taking Rahul to see someone, and Dad’s going off somewhere on work, only Indian Aunt will be around.’
‘See, you can come! We’ll sneak you in and out, no one will ever know.’
‘Mom would kill me if she found out!’
‘What, you’re not allowed to meet your friends? You’re fifteen, aren’t you? Besides, it’s not a school night. I don’t see what the problem is.’
‘Tara, my aunt, is here to “watch over me”,’ she said, in her best Madras-meets-Memphis accent. ‘We Indian girls, we need our chastity protected. My mom would approve if I was friendly with a “nice Indian boy” like that dork, Sameer.’
‘That’s so racist. You’re not Indian, you’re American! Okay, Lavs, I have to go. We’ll figure Saturday out. See you tomorrow.’
She collapsed on her bed. It was the only orderly space in her room, kept that way by Ariel, not herself. The rest of it looked as though the tornado warning had been accurate for once: clothes, books, papers, shoes, CDs mosaicked the floor while the walls and ceiling were plastered with posters: Coldplay, Green Day, Linkin Park, Twilight. Luckily, her mother rarely came in there, although once or twice she thought someone had been through her stuff. She had assumed it was either Mom or Ariel and couldn’t be bothered. If they found something there that interested them, it was their problem.
Her comp sang. Someone had posted on her MySpace page. Oops. She had forgotten to log out that morning. She got up, sat at her desk. ‘LaVS’ said her open page. Gosh, she looked weird in the profile photo, as if she had too many teeth. She had better change it. Maybe the one that Dad had taken of her and Rahul outside in the backyard on the first sunny day this year. ‘Female, 15 years old, Kentucky, United States’ it said below her name. ‘Online now!’
The message was from Ashley, for the present safe in her place in the upper left spot on the screen, reserved for boyfriend or girlfriend. That could change if she and Chip … She was silly to be even thinking about it. She felt her face flush, her heartbeat race. She turned so she could see herself in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door. Café latte skin, no zits, glossy dark brown hair that looked as if it was permed but wasn’t and worn shortish, eyes to match, and yes, well, the lips. She pursed them critically, turned her face this way and that. Sometimes she wished they were less full but they were a nice colour, sort of a lilacky-pink. Chip liked them? How could Ashley even know that? She was making it up, for sure. Just to make her happy.
She had liked Chip since the beginning of ninth grade but as a sophomore he hadn’t even noticed her once, even though she was in math class with him. Then something had changed a couple of weeks ago. She had bumped into him and Dave as Ashley and she were leaving the cafeteria after lunch. Ashley had introduced her, she had smiled at him, too embarrassed to think of anything to say. He had smiled back. Since then, he had waved at her in class but sat in his usual place by the window, a few rows ahead of her. She was conscious of him throughout class, her mind only half on what Mr Daniels was teaching. She had memorized every detail of the back of his head: the way his dark hair curled into the nape of his neck, the hairline that slanted a little to the left, the ears that were set close to the head, the backs of his red-brown spectacle frames. Once, feeling her gaze, he had turned back, and she had quickly looked down at her laptop, pink with embarrassment and hoping he wouldn’t notice.
Well, if she and Chip got together – if, if, IF! Ashley would be flipped to Spot Two: the best friend spot.
‘Lavs, take it easy. Think about what you’re going to wear! It’ll be gr8!’
She typed: ‘OMG how am I even gonna come, you’re crazy! There’s no way.’
‘Way! You’ll see. Dave’s picking us up. Details tom. BFN’ came the reply a few seconds later.
She pulled her iPod out of her backpack and put her headphones on. She lay back on the bed and let herself be soothed by Green Day. She had a book report due in a few days and hadn’t even read A Patchwork Planet yet.
How on earth did Ashley plan to sneak her out? What was she going to wear? She didn’t have one thing that would work. How did you dress for these things, anyway? Just a bit more formal than school? Or just regular stuff? There was no way Mom was going to allow her to buy anything. There would be a hundred questions to answer. What do you need new clothes for? You have tons of clothes in your closet I’ve never seen you in. Where are you going? If you need something new, wear what your aunt got you. It’s pretty, the kind of thing I like. Jeez!
Her mother would totally freak if she thought she was interested in an American boy. But Chip wasn’t particularly American. He was just … well … a boy. A boy she liked. A lot. A boy who might even like her, want to hang out.
Mom would never get that.
DANISHA
EDGAR ALLAN POE, ‘THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO’
The speaker seems insane. Wants revenge. Motive not clear. Persecution complex?
Story seems set in Italy. Names, wines and other details. Houses called palazzos. Palaces? So aristocratic people? They have family mottos. Montresor’s motto is about not putting up with insults (I think. Latin.)
Lures the other fellow into cellar and bricks him up. Love it. Would like to do that to some people. When the victim screams, Montresor screams even louder! Bizarre. Funny.
Story told fifty years after the event. Point-of-view of killer. So guess he never gets caught!