Aditya’s eyes widened like saucers upon seeing others wearing his hard-earned privilege. No one is going to steal from the Shetty family ever again.
“Aditya Shetty?” Rakshan’s pudgy friend asked. “More like Aditya Shitty.”
How dare he? Aditya hadn’t been called that since high school. Facing away from the kitchen, he swung his right fist at Rakshan’s friend.
The boy leapt backwards, planted his feet against the Persian rug behind him, and launched like a slingshot. He slammed into Aditya, sending their two bodies rolling over the floor like a cobra and mongoose as they slapped and kicked at each other.
Aditya broke wooden floor panels with his fists and kicked through drywall until, finally, the fat friend managed to throw him through his fireplace. He landed like a cat on the other side of the apartment. Lifting his head, Aditya saw Rakshan taking another line of WP off the floor.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Aditya said, jumping in the air and throwing his left fist down. Rakshan rolled to the side as Aditya’s blow broke through the floor. “Too much of a good thing can be quite a terrible thing.”
Rakshan swept his old boss’s legs out from under him as Ash and Krish joined the fray. Now it was the five boys versus Aditya.
“You took too much, Rakshan.” Though Aditya was outnumbered, the grin on his face made Rakshan shudder. “You won’t last another hour before OD’ing.”
“It’s not smart to taunt someone with WP.”
“You’re nothing but a skin grafter,” Aditya said, venom practically dripping from his bared teeth.
“That’s a bit rich coming from you,” Rakshan said. “From the day you became my boss, I’ve seen how you think you’re better than me, how you think you’re basically white because you stole WP.”
“I’m no thief,” he growled. “I earned my share!”
“Face it, Aditya,” Rakshan said. “Steal it, earn it, call it whatever you want. For all practical purposes, you and I are the same, according to the government. America will only ever see Caucasians and skin grafters. There’s no in between.”
As Rakshan leapt towards him, the man threw his body to the left and crashed through his bathroom door. As soon as he hit the tiles on the floor, his eyes lit up like Christmas lights. The narrowness of the room made it impossible for more than one of the boys to face him at a time, and so Rakshan challenged him as the others went back to the kitchen for more WP.
When Rakshan threw a leg forward to hammer Aditya’s gut, the man grabbed it and spun him like a top so that his body collapsed on the ground. Ripping the base off his toiletries cabinet, Aditya brought it down over Rakshan’s head.
Pushing through the ache in his back, ignoring the blood and glass rolling off his head, Rakshan got up and grabbed Aditya around the chest, throwing both their bodies into the bathtub behind them. Not my brightest idea. Rakshan’s whole body lit up in pain.
The ferocity in Rakshan’s blood matched the look in Aditya’s eyes, and when he grabbed behind him to rip the faucet off the tub, he meant to bring it down over his old boss’s head. Before he could, though, Aditya used a free leg to kick the tap on. Rakshan yelped as ice cold water rushed down his back, and Aditya used the brief distraction to bring his left knee around and hit Rakshan’s jaw so hard it dislocated.
Fuck. As he stumbled in pain, Aditya got out of the tub and ripped the seat off his toilet.
“We were supposed to be a team!” Aditya brought the seat down on Rakshan’s head as he tried to pull himself up. Rakshan’s fingers gripped the side of the tub as if it was a life raft. “Getting the Medulla account was the first step, but you ruined everything.”
Aditya loomed over Rakshan, the power of WP coursing through his veins as he wielded the broken halves of the toilet seat like scimitars. Drawn by Rakshan’s moans of agony, two of the boy’s friends appeared in the doorway.
They didn’t matter, though. Nothing matters but the Shetty name. He hadn’t been able to protect his father from losing everything because he’d been a kid at the time. What would be my excuse now?
Aditya raised his right arm down to slash Rakshan’s throat—but one of the friends caught him and snapped his arm like a twig.
Pain rocketed through Aditya. He dropped the toilet seat and screamed as the other friend leapt over him and brought a leg down in mid-air to kick the weapon out of his other hand. With his left arm now free, Aditya seized his attacker by the collar and threw his body backwards into the other one’s face. Pain and anger surged through Aditya as he fell and slammed his back against the bathroom floor, but he smiled upon seeing the two men sprawled over one another.
“It’s over, Aditya.” Rakshan had gotten up and now loomed overhead. Though his jaw hung open like a door, he still managed to smile. Out of the corner of Aditya’s eye, he saw the rest of Rakshan’s friends had joined them, too.
“The WP doesn’t belong to you,” one said.
Aditya gave a dark laugh. “You think it belongs to you?!”
“It belongs to everyone.” Rakshan nodded to his friends, who all carried plastic baggies filled with the white powder.
“But you won’t be giving it to everyone, will you?” Aditya sneered before picking himself up from the floor. He knew the battle was over, but there were other ways to draw blood in this world. “You’ll want it all for yourself, but just look at me. Sooner or later, it’ll destroy you.” He smiled, seeing a gash on the side of Rakshan’s face. “It’ll be sooner, in your case.”
“We’ll see,” Rakshan said. “Make the call, Ravi.” Rakshan turned his face for a moment to watch his friend dial, and in that moment, everything changed.
Fourteen days passed before Rakshan regained consciousness. When he awoke, he found himself in a bed at Mount Sinai Beth Israel.
“Guys!” Abhinav screamed, jumping up from the seat by Rakshan’s side. His voice reverberated like gongs in Rakshan’s head. “He’s up!”
What happened?
The others ran in from the waiting room to swarm around Rakshan’s hospital bed. As he used his elbows to force himself up, he noticed that his head was wrapped with gauze and he could barely understand himself, as his jaw was wired shut.
“Don’t push yourself,” Ravi said. “You must have a million questions.”
Ravi started filling in the gaps in Rakshan’s memory with a history lesson. Nonwhites had gone straight from not being affected at all by WP to being affected way too much. Fractions of seconds might feel like hours to someone who’d sniffed too much, and Rakshan had sniffed eighty milligrams before stepping on bathroom tiles laced with the stuff. He’d never experienced it before, either, unlike Aditya. The man had used those realities to his advantage, and when Rakshan had watched Ravi dial the cops, Aditya had grabbed him by the collar and knocked their heads together like coconuts. The blow had taken them both out; it had taken an EMS unit hours to clean up all the blood. The doctors had had to act fast, but had managed to save both Rakshan and Aditya from hypovolemic shock.
“You’re both at this hospital,” Krish said.
“I suggested a group photo while both of you were still unconscious, but the doctors didn’t think it was a good idea,” Abhinav said, grinning.
“The paparazzi will be here soon enough,” Ash said. “Aditya’s trial has already started. He’s been awake for a couple days. You can watch the testimony tomorrow on the TV here.”
“A trial?” With each syllable spoken, a fire burned in Rakshan’s jaw. He brought his hands up to touch his chin and knew someone had performed surgery.
“Haven’t you heard?” Ash smiled as he spoke. “The motherfucker tried to break into your apartment and steal your WP.”
My…apartment…it worked?
Rakshan closed his eyes, and when he opened them Abhinav had shoved a newspaper under his nose.
“It’s been all over the news. WP theft is taken pretty seriously, especially when someone tries to steal from the head of a large hedge fund like Adrsta.”
“What?” Rakshan blinked rapidly, uncertain if this was an elaborate dream or not.
“We took care of it,” Ravi said. “After EMS and the cops and all the hullabaloo died down, the four of us talked to your friend the doorman and made sure he got his cut. We talked to the cops, and then your colleague, Claire, who had a friend at the New York Times, Harold something. They corrected their original story. You were minding your own business when an irate ex-employee brutally attacked you. Thank heavens your best friends happened to be there.”
Rakshan’s eyes widened.
Ravi continued. “WP, man. It’s nuts. No one understands it. Some doctor in that article even said it’s possible to alter memories with enough of it. Oh, and don’t worry about your subordinates. Everyone at Adrsta heard our truth.”
“And they believe it?” Rakshan stared. How can they believe it when I can’t?
“Who are they to disagree with not just the press, but with Claire, too?” Abhinav laughed as he took the newspaper back.
“It’s like I told you,” Ravi said. “With enough WP, anyone can be nudged to accept a better version of reality.”
“Anyways,” Ash said. “Aditya’s trial has already begun. It’s enraptured the nation. With those congressional hearings coming up, President Brooks’s allies are keen to see WP thieves tried to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Aditya could get life without parole,” Abhinav whispered. “That’s what happens with thefts over a gram.”
“How much WP did we get?” Was it worth it? Is this going to change all of our lives?
Krish answered. “Between the bathroom tiles and the safe, and after paying off Tyrone, there’s over six dozen grams in that apartment.”
“Fuck!” Rakshan winced in pain after shouting through his closed lips in excitement. “That’s enough to last someone for twenty years.”
Ash whistled to himself, staring out Rakshan’s window at the skyscrapers around them. “I can’t believe your bullshit paid off this time.”
“Yeah,” Rakshan said. “Better hope I don’t get cocky.”
“No chance of that happening,” Ravi said. “I still remember that time you tried to convince us a Ferrari was a type of giraffe.”
After continuous protesting, Rakshan convinced his medical team to let him observe one day of the trial in person. The press went nuts, and by the time the five boys showed up at eight thirty the next morning, it was total chaos.
“Let him through, let him through,” Krish said. His long arms and legs came in handy navigating through the crowd. “Afterwards, you can take as many pictures of me as you want. My mother would tell me to tell you that, yes, I am indeed single.”
Rakshan’s testimony wasn’t needed in the trial, and so the five of them just sat quietly in the back as they listened to the Medulla brothers testify. Rakshan felt like a baby, learning about the world for the first time. He was now the head of Adrsta, and the Medulla brothers were among his best clients. Claire had been promoted to VP and testified as well that, after being blackmailed by Aditya, she’d bribed the doorman to let him inside Rakshan’s apartment.
“No further questions, your Honor,” the prosecutor said as the trial ended for the day.
Claire stopped to talk to Ravi before leaving the courthouse. “I lived up to my end of the bargain; now it’s your turn.”
“I haven’t had a chance to brief him yet,” Ravi pleaded.
“Tough shit. Either you tell him to sign the papers now, or I go back in there.”
“You’d go to jail for perjury,” Ravi argued.
“The hell I would.” With her blonde hair pulled up in a bun, she looked like a stern librarian disciplining a student for ripping pages out of a book. “Listen, you little shit. You’ve had WP for a couple weeks? I was born with it. Don’t try me, or I’ll bury you.”
“Okay, okay,” Ravi said. “Give me a second.”
A half hour later, Ravi returned with Claire’s signed papers. Power never gave anything up for free in America, and wielding some WP wouldn’t change that reality for anyone. Rakshan hadn’t been that upset, anyway, not really—in the end, Ravi was relieved that all of this had been for Sadiya and not WP. That fact made the deal with Claire a no-brainer.
Rakshan had signed over ownership of Adrsta to his new VP, and now he’d retire with a well-earned severance package after bringing in the Medulla brothers. No one would suspect a thing…except, maybe, Chad. No one cared about Chad, though.
Five days later, Aditya Shetty was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. As soon as he heard the news, Rakshan bought a ticket to Hoboken. The entire Shetty family had come under a microscope as a result of the trial, and the least he could do was meet them in person and hand over some WP as a token of his forgiveness. On his way back, he ran into a familiar face at Penn Station.
“Rakshan?”
The world froze. His friends had begged him not to use any WP until his jaw healed, but when he looked at her, he didn’t need any to feel a sense of euphoria. “Sadiya?”
As she hugged him, he noticed her breaking off hands with her friend.
“I heard about the break-in,” she said as she returned to Maadhini’s side. “That’s awful. Thank god they caught him.”
Maadhini kept to herself, but she eyed Rakshan with suspicion; he wondered how much she knew.
“You remember Maadhini?” Sadiya took her friend’s hand again.
“Of course,” Rakshan said. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t mind her,” Sadiya said. “She’s a little anxious. We’re on our way to JFK.”
“Oh?” Rakshan heard the disappointment in his voice.
“I, uh, we should get lunch after I come back.” Sadiya wobbled on her feet like a top as she spoke, making Rakshan wonder if she really meant it.
“We’re going to Bangalore,” Maadhini said in the awkward silence.
“Oh.” Again, Rakshan’s voice dripped with sorrow. Something was wrong here.
“Rakshan,” Sadiya said, “you helped me a lot.”
“Yeah?” Penn Station pounded with activity, as rhythmic as a veena, but every time Sadiya said his name, Rakshan forgot anything else existed.
“I’m, uh, well…”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Maadhini said, letting go of Sadiya’s hand. “We’re going to tell our parents about us.”
Rakshan blinked. “About you?”
“We’re a couple.”
Fuck. Nothing he’d done had mattered, Rakshan realized. All his planning, all his scheming, the hell he’d put his friends through. I was so dumb. I never tried to find out what she wanted. The thought of surveilling Sadiya like he’d done with Aditya had never occurred to him. I guess that’s a good thing. I don’t want to be a stalker.
Rakshan couldn’t hide the disappointment on his face. I have WP. My life is supposed to be better now. He saw Sadiya’s fingers twitch, her lip quiver. That’s something, right?
Clinging to anything he could that he still had a future in her life, Rakshan hoped she’d be disappointed that he was disappointed.
“I’m a lesbian, Rakshan!” She lowered her voice to just above a whisper when others started staring. “We’re very happy together.”
Fuck.
“That’s, uh, that’s great.” Deep down, he knew he didn’t mean it, but he pretended his words were honest. “I’m happy for you.”
“Yeah?”
“At least you didn’t leave me for another guy.” He offered her a weak smile.
“…Thanks. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Sure,” he said. When they parted ways, Rakshan knew they’d never meet again. Nothing I did mattered. He had WP, but Maadhini had Sadiya.
Aditya was sent hundreds of miles upstate to the town of Romulus. He told himself it was fitting, since Remus and Romulus had founded Rome together as abandoned wolves. This was a jail of his own making, for familiarity’s partner was complacency. Rakshan had been right; he’d allowed himself to think he was one of them. But just because he’d gotten his hands on some WP and money didn’t mean he would be treated equally. There would always be people like the Medulla brothers and Claire to put him in his place. He wouldn’t make that mistake next time. After breaking out of this cell, he’d form an empire as daunting as Rome and take his revenge.
Aditya closed his eyes to try and sleep, but a lone fly kept buzzing over his head to distract him. As it rested on his eye, he slapped it and plucked the bloody insect from his face. He swore its gossamer wings had flecks of white in them. When he tried snorting it, though, all that resulted in was his choking and twitching in discomfort.
Therese’s grief didn’t ebb over the next six weeks as she tried to find justice for her child, not even a little. If anything, she felt worse than in the immediate aftermath. How can time matter? How can anything? She rarely slept. Showers seemed pointless, as did eating. Her boss had agreed to give her two months paid leave, but she still showed up to work some days just to talk to another human being. Eventually, they had to take her into a corner of a room and tell her she was a “disturbance” and should take a break to deal with her “trauma.”
The world had ended, but the sun still dared show its presence. Reading through the official police report and perusing the support groups she’d found online and in the city, she wasn’t even sure anymore if that white cop was the murderer. Enough moms had explained how cops stuck together that she half-expected it was Jackson who’d fired the fatal shot. After all, ballistics had shown that both cops had fired.
After Therese’s tear glands stopped working from overuse and she’d turned her braids orange with Cheetos, she joined a Facebook group for mothers in positions like her own. She used shampoo for the first time in weeks and tried to convince some local lawyers to offer advice pro bono, but there was just no traction. The police department’s internal investigation was ongoing, and no one in New York wanted to help before that was resolved. The papers said Jerome was a thug, a murderer who’d gotten high on his own supply. He hadn’t even gotten a Twitter hashtag like the sons of the other moms on Facebook.
She returned to her employer to try and work again; they seemed forgiving enough, but insisted on her taking another month. So now here she was, in Penn Station, going to Washington, DC after one of her new Facebook friends had recommended she meet with some hotshot lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union if she truly wanted to take her case nationwide. It was time, she told herself. She was ready, she had to be ready—for Jerome.
Returning from a trip to Connecticut where he’d seen Abhinav, Rakshan saw Therese entering the station as he was leaving. He’d seen her picture in the paper—such a tragic story. Cops were killing unarmed Black people so fast one would think they posed a larger threat to the country than WP thieves.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am about what happened to your boy. It’s not right.”
She stared in shock for a moment, then squinted at him as if in recognition. She probably knew him from the papers, too. “Yes, well, thank you. It’s not right what happened to you, either.”
“No, it’s not.” He retrieved his card from his pocket and handed it to her. “People like us have to stick together. I got my justice; give me a call if there’s ever anything I can do to help you get yours.”
“I…I will.”
She hugged him for a long time before the two went their separate ways.
No sooner had Rakshan entered his new apartment than Therese called him from the train. Someone had given her their paper, complete with an article about the upcoming Senate hearings. She read it out loud to Rakshan as he traced newly forming abs on his stomach. Why aren’t these coming in faster?
His mind was split between the past weekend he’d spent with Abhinav and the others in Connecticut and Therese’s words.
DEMOCRATS SET TO BEGIN HEARINGS
By Harold Mueller
After months of negotiations led by Senator Joseph Begaye (D-NM), the U.S. Senate is poised to hold the first-ever hearings on WP legalization next week. The Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism will hear testimony from FBI agents, police officers from departments across the country, and even from people of color who’ve bought WP off the black market. Additionally, Dr. Jocelyne Clark from the Foundation for Actions against Injustice and Racism (FAIR) will present exclusive findings from a study funded by the ACLU.
“I am grateful that at least some good has come as a result of the increased hateful rhetoric we see across this country,” Dr. Clark said. “In the wake of the KKK rally in Virginia last year, I can now announce for the first time that donations to the ACLU spiked and they readily agreed to fund the comprehensive report I will present next week.”
Three months had passed since Rakshan had first read about the hearings, and now enough evidence and witnesses had been gathered to stage the event itself. That’s all it would be, though—an event. But…
The wheels in Rakshan’s mind spun with an idea so grand it would make Rumpelstiltskin jealous. A global event? One you’d hear about even from Bangalore? Sadiya hadn’t been interested in Rakshan the boy—how could she be? But Rakshan the man? He traced the outlines of his abs again as Therese continued to speak. I can use her.
Helping Therese find justice in the midst of a national debate? Securing equity for minorities after Democrats had failed for decades? That was a story that’d impress anyone. That’ll get me my family.
“Yeah,” he said, “I can help you. Promise the lawyer you meet with that money won’t be an issue, and then get back here as soon as possible.”
I can make this work. The hearings would give him the preface he needed to re-enter Sadiya’s life. Working with this Therese woman, he’d find his way back to her.
Back in his apartment, Rakshan opened his freezer and found a frozen block of WP. There was nothing quite as beautiful as frozen-solid privilege. He could sculpt it into anything. “We’ve got work to do before the hearings begin.”