Passing my room to get to the attic after one of those toasting dinners, my father paused. “You can do what Prachi did, too,” he said.
I thought I’d heard him wrong. “What?”
“We are feeling like our decision to come here makes sense, with you two doing so well.”
I almost wished for him to revert to his old suspicions.
I had, if you counted it out, what I needed to not fuck up debate nationals. I took a regular dose from our competitors—Soumya Sen, and one of Anita’s Bobcat classmates whose earring and anklet she had nabbed from the PE locker room, just for me. But I had come to understand that brewing the perfect lemonade was not a matter of taking luck or specific talents from another person and drinking those down. I needed whatever it was that had caused Shruti Patel to so effectively move on when I had done to her worse than what Anita had done to me the previous year. I needed her belief, her faith, and the thing that ignited both in her. I needed something to get me through tomorrow and tomorrow, tomorrow—when I would finally, finally be able to begin the process of becoming a real person.
* * *
? ? ?
A few days before she left for New Jersey, Anita’s instant messenger avatar reappeared online for the first time in months. She must have unblocked me, at long last. I found the conversation in adulthood, archived in my old email. I can’t remember what I felt like during or after the chat. It is like one of those artifacts of history I studied later as a graduate student—the thing the people experiencing it missed, the thing that might have changed the rest. When we handle such artifacts, we condescend about how ignorant the denizens of the past are. But we forget that the past is a blind, groping place.
neil_is_indian: sup
anibun91: guess whos gonna be in new jersey this weekend
neil_is_indian: uh u?
anibun91: other than me!!
neil_is_indian: ur mom ba doom chha
anibun91: sigh sam
neil_is_indian: o shit
anibun91: im like:OOO
anibun91: hes visiting his cousin or something
anibun91: who goes to rutgers
anibun 91: n then his parents r gonna take him to see princeton lol w/e
anibun91: not that he could get into princeton （！）
neil_is_indian: thats rando
anibun91: ok ya
anibun91: but then when i mentioned the pageant he was like o maybe ill come
anibun91: （！?!!?!!?!?!?!!?!?! whaaaaat）
neil_is_indian: the brown ppl will trample him
neil_is_indian: “one of these is not like the others”
neil_is_indian: “kill outsider”
anibun91: im so embarrassed
neil_is_indian: no ur not
anibun91: what do u mean of course i am
neil_is_indian: ur gonna win its gonna be fine
neil_is_indian: & he likes u even if he is an asshole
anibun91: who says hes an asshole?
neil_is_indian: u did?
anibun91: w/e no he isnt
anibun91: but actually im like so sick of this pageant and all the fobs
anibun91: and sick of being only
anibun91: like
anibun91: pretty for a brown girl
anibun91: hey u still there
anibun91: ??
neil_is_indian: ya sorry @ debate
neil_is_indian: wendi on my ass
anibun91: oooooooooh
neil_is_indian: not like that shes anal
neil_is_indian: also not like that
anibun91: w/e u have yellow fever
neil_is_indian: ???????
anibun91: melanie, wendi, lol
neil_is_indian: theyr both twinkies and im a coconut so nothing counts
anibun91: um literally ur screen name
neil_is_indian: its IRONIC
neil_is_indian: g2g
anibun91: ok bai
neil_is_indian: good luck
neil_is_indian: this weekend
neil_is_indian: w the pageant i mean
anibun91: i might not like him
anibun91: like im not totally sure now?
neil_is_indian: sam?
anibun91: ya
neil_is_indian: who do u like then
anibun91: who says i have to like someone?
neil_is_indian: okok
anibun91: now i g2g
neil_is_indian: actually wait
neil_is_indian: can i talk to u about smthg
neil_is_indian: kinda important
anibun91 has signed off
* * *
? ? ?
The weekend Anita and her mother were in New Jersey—which was also the weekend before debate nationals—I let myself into the Dayals’ house early on Saturday morning using the key beneath the watering can.
In the basement, I set about performing the routine I had been memorizing for months.
Shruti’s chain piled into itself in the basin. Was this how the forty-niners felt—sweaty, exhausted, sick with themselves, having left behind all that was familiar for this gleaming element? Flux, sloshing. Goggles, the rest of the ill-lit basement obscured through the plastic.