“All of them drink,” Anita said, peeling away. “You can’t run in that crowd and not drink.” Did Anita drink? A pang in my chest—for wasn’t she now in that crowd? “She ditched with Hudson Long because she knew she was going to lose Spring Fling Princess.”
“She lost?” I sighed. Even if Prachi escaped Coach Jameson, she’d be smarting from defeat. I didn’t fancy enduring one of her performances of grief, wherein she refused to make eye contact with us for days, or ensured I overheard her vomiting in the bathroom. “See anything?”
“Nah,” Anita called, a little nasally.
I cast my light beneath the dumpster, knelt and got a smashing stench of cafeteria chili and old bananas and a number of other smells both animal and human. I covered my nose, stood, ran the beam in a long line like a searchlight hunting a fugitive in desolate farmland, sweep, one, sweep, two, but nothing on the asphalt glinted like gold. “Nothing?” I called.
“Nothing.” Anita was kneeling by the wretched emergency exit door and reaching for something on the ground.
“Is that it?” I half jogged over.
“Nope,” she said. “It’s not here.”
I was right next to her now. “You didn’t find it?”
“I just said I didn’t. My mom’s gonna be mad; we have to go.”
“Your mom’s never mad.” I waved my hand dismissively. Anjali Auntie was different—a given—and Anita could not believably invoke her as a threat. “What’s in your hand, Anita?”
For her fist was clenched, her knuckles bloodless. She looked ready to slug me.
Her jaw tightened. Then she growled through her teeth, as though she’d been trying to tell me something and I’d been too dense to hear it. “Neil, you are such a freak! Prachi lost her necklace because she’s drunk and making out with Hudson Long, and I’ve got enough to worry about without helping you fix her shit.”
She opened the door and stomped over the green-and-gray carpeting. I followed. I couldn’t do anything but slide into the back of the Toyota. Anita and her mother sat in wooden silence up front. Anjali Auntie’s eyes landed searchingly on mine in the rearview mirror a few times before settling sidelong on her daughter’s taut expression. Her own face remained impassive; I could not tell if she was surprised at the coldness between Anita and me.
Back home, in my room, I wrenched myself free from my father’s tie and tried to fall asleep as the landline rang and heels sounded below me—Prachi coming home, Prachi in trouble, my parents’ voices rising. （“Who were you with?” “Open your mouth, show your breath!” “Where’s Ajji’s—？” “Ayyayyo!” “You’ll jolly well tell us—！”） Prachi, the golden child, fallen from grace, some essential blessing lifted from her.
I dreamt in shards, and I encountered Anita in my sleep—an Anita who had Melanie Cho’s red lips and was wearing a bright green dress like her mother’s, an Anita who removed said dress to display the body of one of the porn stars I had become familiar with, which meant a white body, ivory skin, and dime-sized, pert nipples. I woke up and found that my boxers were wet. In the bathroom, I tried to scrub away all that had happened that night.
* * *
? ? ?
I sat at the dinner table one evening the following week, poking my bisibelebath around with my fork, listening as Prachi stood in the kitchen and called our grandmother to issue a formal apology with regard to the necklace. （“Ajji!” Prachi overarticulated, glancing pleadingly at our mother, who had mandated the call. She wound her fingers through the cream-colored curlicue phone cord. “Ajji, it’s Prachi! Can you put your hearing aid in?”） I looked up to see my father poking his food around, just like I was. My mother furiously scrubbed the white Formica countertop, which was irrevocably stained with splatters of hot oil and masalas, and glowered at Prachi.
In our house, it took only one gesture in the direction of India to compound an already grave situation. The accusation was that Prachi had flouted her responsibility as a daughter, a sister, a former Spring Fling princess, and yes, a granddaughter, too. She had imperiled the very nature of the sacrifice of crossing oceans. My parents relished that phrase, “crossing oceans,” as though they had arrived in steerage class aboard a steamship instead of by 747, carrying two massive black suitcases with pink ribbons tied around the handles and the surname narayan written in blocky letters on masking tape along the side.