FOR THE THIRD TIME since the plane landed Sejal fished the curling photograph out of her backpack and studied it. She walked as she looked at her host family, posed and smiling before a softly blotchy blue backdrop. Everyone wore a different kind of sweater. The father was tall with large-framed glasses and a tawny sweater vest the color of chinaberries. The mother’s wide frame was seated below him, pink skinned and in a pink-on-pink cardigan and sweater ensemble—so round and bright that Sejal’s father had taken to calling her “gum ball woman” when Sejal’s mother needed cheering. The photo family’s oldest daughter, who was now away at college, wore a lavender sweater. Sejal panicked briefly as she realized she could not remember the girl’s name. She went to a college out of state, and wasn’t expected to be around much during Sejal’s stay, so her name hadn’t been important enough to stick. At least she remembered Catherine’s—the other daughter, the daughter who was Sejal’s own age, wore a black-and-white striped sweater two sizes too large for her. The tips of her fingers looked like tiny pink tongues, barely emerging from the gaping mouth of her sleeve to taste the cotton candy fuzz of her mother’s shoulder. Her face was pale, no makeup. Her dark blond hair was long in front and shaved on the sides in a style Sejal had never seen before.
“She does not want to be there,” Sejal’s father had said, with what would prove to be his characteristic insight. “Look at her hand. I don’t think she even touches her mother’s shoulder.”
“Felu, stop,” her mother said then. “You want to turn Sejal against them before they even have a chance.”
“Did I arrange this photo?” he protested. “The evidence is all there. I’m not the one who killed this poor girl and stuffed her and posed her in this clearly unrepresentative manner. Look at her.”
Mother laughed. Sejal looked. Catherine’s tight smile seemed suddenly like rigor mortis compared to her family’s sunny grins.
Now, in the airport, Sejal walked out past security and looked up from the same photo, expecting at least three of its four subjects to be standing there smiling and half smiling, perhaps with the softly blotchy blue backdrop somehow behind them, and Catherine posed awkwardly like she’d been placed in the wrong exhibit. A crow among canaries.
There were families here, but none of them the right family. There was a strangely madeup teenage girl who appeared to have already found the passenger she was meeting, and a group of blond girls in matching sorority sweatshirts holding a handmade sign that read WELCOME BACK, CASSIE!
Sejal stood still as fellow passengers streamed past her, pressed too close, their swinging arms and hot breath fanning a guttering panic in her chest. She had been traveling for eighteen hours and she felt worn and thin. What now? Would they be waiting in the baggage claim instead? But her host father, Mr. Brown, had been so insistent. Weirdly, overcautiously insistent. In his email, and in all caps, he’d assured her that they would BE WAITING JUST OUTSIDE SECURITY, IN A-WEST TERMINAL, RIGHT NEXT TO THE CASH MACHINE NEXT TO THE VIDEO SCREENS THAT SAY “ARRIVALS,” and that they would LOOK LIKE THE PEOPLE IN THE PHOTO. There were two people standing by the cash machine, but they were only the teenager and a female passenger from Sejal’s flight. Sejal approached.
Both girls turned. One was a fellow Indian, the other a girl with dangerous-looking bottle-black hair and thick eyeliner. Blue lips. Pale skin. Black everything else.
“Oh, thank goodness,” said the Indian girl in Hindi. “Do you speak English? This very odd Amrikan girl will not leave me alone—do you know how to tell her that I don’t want any pamphlets or whatever it is she’s selling?”
Sejal turned to the American girl. “Are you…Catherine?” she asked.
Catherine glanced at the other passenger in confusion, then back to Sejal.
“Oh, shit,” she said.
“Please don’t tell my parents I did that,” said Catherine as they walked to baggage claim. “It took so long to get them to let me pick you up myself. I had to promise to rake leaves.”
Sejal smiled, pleased to be worth bargaining for.
“I did not know you at first either,” she said, looking down at the photo in her hands. “You look different than your picture.”
“Oh Jesus. Don’t look at that.” She snatched it from Sejal and ripped it in half. “I thought I’d gotten all of these.”
Catherine threw the pieces of family to the floor, then stopped.
“Sorry,” she said.
She took two steps back, picked up the pieces, and presented them to Sejal.
“Sorry, that was yours.”
Sejal took the two halves and reconnected them in her hand.
“It is fine.”
“No, I’m acting stupid. You’re going to think I’m stupid.”
“I am not. I think you are…interesting. I think you have interesting clothes.”
Way to go, thought Sejal. Well said. She’s going to think I’m insulting her. But Sejal did find her clothes interesting. They looked like she felt. She thought with some embarrassment about the skirt and sweater outfit she was wearing now, as though she’d meant to audition for a spot in the Brown family portrait.
Catherine watched her face as they mounted the escalator. Sejal tried to look as earnest as possible, and after a moment Catherine smiled.
“Well, I like your…sweater,” she said. “Really yellow.”
They held each other’s gaze for another moment, then laughed.
“Thank you, Catherine.”
“Ooh. Call me Cat. My parents won’t, but…I was hoping you would.”
“Of course.”
They found the baggage carousel that corresponded with Sejal’s flight and staked their claim to a small gap between other passengers. For reasons she didn’t entirely understand, Sejal did not look forward to seeing her luggage. She had already claimed and rechecked it twice, the last time being in New York’s JFK airport only a few hours ago, and each time she had seen her big pink bag it had seemed less like a thing that belonged to her, more like something that should have stayed in Kolkata with the mess she’d left behind. She considered grabbing another bag, one of the nondescript black ones that just now thumped onto the conveyor, and taking her chances with someone else’s affairs.
“India seems so cool,” said Cat.
“Truly?”
“Sure. I guess, right? At least it’s not here. I don’t know why you wanted to come here.”
Sejal had not often thought of her home, or of India as a whole, as cool. She was dimly aware, however, of a white Westerner habit of wearing other cultures like T-shirts—the sticker bindis on club kids, sindoor in the hair of an unmarried pop star, Hindi characters inked carelessly on tight tank tops and pale flesh. She knew Americans liked to flash a little Indian or Japanese or African. They were always looking for a little pepper to put in their dish.
“India and I had a talk,” Sejal said finally, “and we decided it would be best to see other people for a while.”
Cat stared for a moment, not laughing. Sejal had to smile to let her know that she could, too.
“You were joking,” said Cat.
“Yes.”
“It didn’t sound like you were joking.”
“Perhaps it is my accent.”
This was the second time that day that Sejal had used what she’d considered to be a discreet and charming line about India and her needing some time apart, and in neither instance had it gone well. On the flight from JFK she’d been asked the same question by a University of Pennsylvania undergrad, and had given the same answer.
“What do you mean?” the coed had asked. “Are you in trouble with your government or something?”
“No,” Sejal answered. “I am sorry. I only mean that I had a…personal situation back home. It was a good time to try some studies abroad.”
“What was the problem?”
Sejal had pulled her arms closer to her sides and folded her hands.
“Nothing so terrible. Just a situation.”
“Yeah,” said the girl, “but what was it?”
Sejal lowered her eyes to the seat pocket in front of her.
“C’mon,” the girl prodded, leaning close. “You can tell me.”
Sejal sighed. “I have the Google.”
“Oh. Oh,” said the girl, and she pulled back against her seat.
Sejal had been one of the first clinical cases. India was a bit of a hot spot, Kolkata in particular. So many software companies, so many new jobs making web protocol work better, faster. The old system had been pieced together by all kinds of different people in cubicles and basements all over the world, and it worked about as well as a steam-powered igloo. The last couple years had seen significant upgrades. There were suddenly so many sites and stats and blogs and vlogs that you could search your own name and find out what you had for breakfast that morning. You could download a widget that graphed your last five haircuts. Webcams were everywhere.
Some people couldn’t deal with all the new information. They couldn’t pull themselves away from their computers. But that had always been a problem. That was nothing new. The people who contracted a clinical case of the Google couldn’t pull themselves away from themselves. With everyone online, there was always somebody mentioning you in a blog post, and you were always in the background of someone’s video. The new search engines could show these things to you. They could show you to you. The internet knew what you looked like. The internet had your scent. And if these rumors and blurry visitations weren’t enough (and they weren’t), you could move out of your body and onto the web’s muddy crossroads for good, forever.
It was like a great democratic future where everyone had his own television show—the perfect realization of Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame, one streaming minute at a time. Shows and shows about shows and shows showing people watching shows.
It got so she was on all the time. She had old friends and new friends and real friends and web friends with blogs and video blogs, and she checked them every day. Then it was a few times a day, just in case. Then she started a vlog of her own. Her parents were working long hours and had no idea how much time she was spending on it. They had no idea how much time she spent just watching her old posts, admiring the better things she’d said, obsessing over the little mistakes.
Gradually, it all became more real to Sejal than the real world. Gradually, online Sejal became actual Sejal.
She once saw a banner ad that read, “If a tree falls in the internet and no one’s there to stream it, does it make a sound?” On some level Sejal understood that it was meant to be funny, but she didn’t sleep for three days.
Then one night, her mother came home from work and poked her head through the curtained door of Sejal’s room.
“Hello, princess,” she said.
Seconds passed before Sejal answered. Ten, twelve seconds. She sort of half turned to her mother and said “Hey” before her head jerked back to the screen again.
“What are you looking at?” said Amma, entering the room. “Sejal? What are—”
“Shh,” said Sejal.
Amma looked over her shoulder. It was Sejal’s own video blog, and it was live. Sejal stared back from the screen, and just now her mother’s mouth and chin entered the picture.
“You’re home from work,” Sejal said to the screen with a smile.
“…Yes. Darling, do you think maybe you’ve been spending—”
“Shh-shh.”
“Sejal, I really think—”
“Amma, shh,” she hissed. “Something might happen and I don’t want to miss it.”
“It is not contagious,” Sejal told the girl on the plane.
“I know. Sorry. So you guys…have the internet in India?”
Sejal laughed. “We have the internet. Both my parents are computer programmers. Our connection speed was supernatural,” she said, aware that her voice had become draped with a flowery longing.
Her American foster family had assured her parents in writing that they had only dial-up.
The baggage carousel was filled with luggage now, and it was beginning to thin out as passengers took up their lives again and wheeled them out the sliding doors. Sejal saw her bright pink bag, as radiant as a wound, and when it came within reach she didn’t move to claim it.
“What does yours look like?” asked Cat.
Sejal followed it with her eyes.
“I do not see it yet.”
“I can’t believe they lost your bag,” said Cat from the driver’s seat of her black Jetta. “Those meathead asswipes.”
Sejal smiled faintly in the passenger seat, shifting her feet to avoid the seasick tide of bottles and empty drink cups on the car floor. Sorry about my car, Cat had said when they’d found it in the airport parking garage, but it had turned out she was apologizing not for the mess but for the simple fact that it was a Jetta.
“We should have waited at that counter longer. Or gone to find somebody,” Cat added.
“We can maybe call tomorrow?” said Sejal. “I’m anxious to see my new home. And my new bed.”
“Oh, right. You’re probably tired.”
“Very tired.”
“Only I think my mom has a special dinner planned,” said Cat, wincing.
“Oh!” said Sejal, brightening even as her heart sank. “Of course, that is wonderful, no? My first American home-cooked meal.”
“Actually,” said Cat, “I think we’re going out for Indian.”
The Brown house was larger than Sejal expected. She glanced around it cautiously while Cat and Mr. Brown shouted at each other.
“What were you thinking?” Mr. Brown shouted. “Were you thinking at all? What is Sejal going to wear?”
“It isn’t my fault they sent her bag to the wrong city!” Cat answered. “Why don’t you call up those asswipe…”
“Catherine!” Mrs. Brown gasped.
“…airport…bag…people and yell at them?” finished Cat.
“I will call them, but you should have stayed and talked to someone! If you don’t get them looking for a lost bag right away, they’ll never find it!”
“I didn’t know!” Cat moaned. “Call them then, and stop yelling at me!” She tore out of the room and up the stairs. Mr. Brown stomped into the kitchen. There came from above a whuffing noise, the sound of a door that was too light to slam.
Mrs. Brown was wearing two different kinds of orange. Her small, quiet smile seemed at odds with her outfit, which announced CAUTION: ROADWORK AHEAD. “How was your flight?” she asked.
“It was my fault about the luggage,” said Sejal. “I told Cat I wanted to go.”
“You couldn’t know,” said Mrs. Brown, patting at her curly hair. “But in America we get our bags. They’re not supposed to get lost.”
When she’d first arrived, Sejal had deliberated over whether to bend down and touch the Brown parents’ feet. She considered how it might look in a nation of firm handshakes and high fives, and let the moment pass. Now Sejal could only smile reflexively and glance around the room again. She was finding it difficult to look directly at Mrs. Brown, a condition for which she blamed her father. The woman looked, at the moment, not so much like a gum ball as a goldfish. One of those very round goldfish with the cauliflower heads.
Mr. Brown emerged suddenly with a cordless phone. “I don’t know how to spell your name,” he told Sejal. “Could you speak to this person a moment?”
Sejal got on the phone. “Namaste.”
“Yes, Ms. Namastay,” said a dull voice. “Can you spell that?”
“No, I was merely saying hello. My name is Ganguly.”
“Please spell it, Ms. Namastay.”
Sejal thickened her accent to molasses as she tried to spell as swiftly and unhelpfully as possible. She hoped each odd stress and pause would string out an uncrackable code between her and the bag she did not want. Then, pleased with herself, she said her good-byes and returned the phone to Mr. Brown.
“Are you feeling hungry?” asked Mrs. Brown. “We should leave soon to beat the dinner rush.”
“I’ll go tell Cat,” Sejal answered.
“You see what I have to put up with?” Cat said immediately upon opening her door. Behind her, on walls the color of eggplant, were black posters and clippings from magazines. Many photos of girls looking morose in cemeteries. People in complicated outfits; black and red and white material laced up backs; arms and legs waffled by fishnet. A chunky laptop and a cherub-shaped lamp with a counterproductively black lamp-shade stood on a desk so haphazardly piled with CD cases it appeared to be molting. “Sorry your room isn’t cool like mine. I’ll show you.”
Sejal’s room was through the next door down the hall. It was stupefyingly beige. It had a beige computer in it and an off-white bed.
Neither this computer nor Cat’s antique laptop had stirred more than the slightest pang in Sejal. If she were an alcoholic, these machines would have been weak lemonade shandy. She felt intellectually safe but oddly claustrophobic.
“Your mom wants to leave soon,” said Sejal.
“To ‘beat the rush,’ right?” said Cat in an impersonation of her mother, if her mother had been a dim-witted cartoon bear. “It’s like, there’s a reason they have a dinner rush—that’s when all normal people eat.”
“Do you think we can wait a bit? I promised my mother I would have a puja in my new room.”
Cat wrinkled her nose. “That can’t possibly mean what it sounds like.”
“It’s only a…small ceremony about new beginnings. You bathe and burn incense, and offer flowers and sweets to Ganesha—”
Sejal gave a small cry and tented her hands over her face.
“What?” said Cat. “What’s wrong?”
“Ganesha is in the bag I…lost,” Sejal said.
“Ganesha…Is that the god with the elephant head?”
Sejal thought of her little pink Ganesha figurine in her big pink bag, turning slowly on the dull airport merry-go-round. She nodded.
“The airport lost your elephant god,” said Cat.
Both girls slumped onto the bed.
“Asswipes.”