“I don’t know …” Aisling and Dee invited me to the cinema, and I already know that their boyfriends, Barry and Colm, are going to be there. I’m not sure if I want to spend a whole afternoon listening to them shift in the movie theater, being the fifth wheel. Before I can make an excuse, Aisling leans forward and shoots me a glare.
“Don’t you dare back out!” she says. “Come on, Maira. We came to your dad’s thing. And you promised!”
It’s the last thing I want to do after a whole day of school, but I nod. “Sure, yeah. I’ll be there.”
Aisling still seems a little annoyed at me the next day at school. I try to appease her with bright smiles all day.
But at lunchtime, while I’m slipping books out of my locker, Aisling shoots me a strange look.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She leans her back against the locker next to mine and says, “Are you really friends with Ishita Dey?”
Dee stops secretly scrolling through her Instagram by her own locker next to mine to give me a once over at Aisling’s question.
“Why would you ask that?” Ishita and I are definitely not what I would call friends. I wouldn’t even call us friendly. Honestly, I’m not sure what I would call us. Complicated, I guess.
“This Instagram picture you put up last weekend has her in it?” Her statement comes off more like a question, even as she’s holding up her phone to show me the picture. Aisling must have really been analyzing the picture well, because you can only see Ishita in the very corner and she’s not even very clear.
“She’s like … a family friend, kind of. Or like … a Bengali friend. I don’t know. I was at a Bengali thing.” I shake my head. I don’t know how to explain myself. The whole Bengali thing is so different from anything my white Irish friends have ever dealt with—there’s no way to explain it without getting into the nitty gritty of it. And even then, they don’t get it. Or don’t want to get it, I suppose. There’s just no Irish equivalent of dawats.
“It looks like fun,” Dee says, tucking her phone into her breast pocket and away from the prying eyes of the teachers. “How come you never invite us to your ‘Bengali’ things?”
“Urn.” I hesitate, unsure of exactly how to answer that. Because you’re not Bengali seems a little too direct. But it’s also the truth. I’m not sure why they would even want to come. They would fit in about as well as an elephant in the middle of a poultry farm. “I guess … it’s just a thing that … my family does. It’s not really for … friends.”
“Ishita isn’t your family,” Aisling points out.
I have to stifle a sigh. I also have to stop myself from rubbing my nose in frustration. And I have to keep my tone in check, ensuring none of my annoyance seeps in. “Yeah, Ishita is like … a family friend. So it’s a little different. It’s complicated.” Aisling and Dee look like they still have a million questions. Questions I don’t have answers to. Questions I don’t want to answer. So I zip up my bag and swing it onto my back and say, “I’m starving. Can we have lunch please?”
By the time the last bell rings, I am exhausted. Somehow, Aisling and Dee are the exact opposite. They seem to be even more energized by the fact that it’s Friday afternoon.
“We’re going to get changed in the bathroom,” Aisling tells me. “You coming?”
“I have to get my stuff from my locker first. I’ll meet you guys there.”
As I’m getting my things, I notice Ishita glaring at her locker on the other side of the hallway like it has somehow wronged her. I swing my P.E. bag out of my locker at the same time that Ishita shuts her locker door with a thud. Nobody else seems to notice just how loudly the door hits home. What did that locker ever do to you, Ishita?
“Hey,” I call over, even though I know I shouldn’t. Ishita isn’t exactly known for being happy-go-lucky, but I don’t think I’ve seen her this angry since last year, when she got a B+ on an English essay. She tried to contest the grade by talking herself up to Ms. Baker, the English teacher, but Ms. Baker had smiled wanly and said she’d made up her mind and the result couldn’t be changed. Ishita threw a fit and got a week of detention.
“What?” Ishita turns her glare to me.
“Everything okay?” I lower my voice so she knows we can have a private conversation.
“What do you care?” Ishita asks.