“You’ve just been home all day?” she asks. “Just … lying in bed?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“And Ammu and Abbu just left you?”
I shrug, and Nik heaves a sigh.
“Well, get dressed, all right?”
“What?” When I turn around, she’s adjusting her shirt like she’s getting ready to leave. “I thought we were going to talk or something. Come up with a plan, or—”
Nik shoots me a glare. “We can talk later. First, we have to fix everything. To do that you need to get dressed.”
“But—”
“No questions, Ishita. Get dressed—we’re going.”
The last thing I want to do is let Nik drag me off somewhere, but she did fly all the way here to help me. So I can hardly turn her down. I slip into jeans and a t-shirt before stumbling down the stairs. I guess Nik isn’t particularly happy with what I’ve done because she looks me up and down once more and sighs.
Digging into her bag, she pulls out a hairbrush and smooths down my hair, parting it right in the middle and pulling out all the tangles. “Better,” she says, though she’s obviously not super satisfied.
Still, we head outside. She unlocks her car—“Rental,” she says while guiding me in—and we head off.
chapter thirty-six
hani
AMMA OBVIOUSLY KNOWS SOMETHING IS WRONG without me having to tell her. After Ishu is gone, and I’ve been holed up in my room for too long to explain away, she comes in, her feet shuffling against the plush carpet softly as she settles down on the bed beside me.
She brushes locks of hair out of my face and wipes a thumb over my cheeks to wipe away any remnants of dried tears. “Did you and Ishu have a fight?” she asks.
I shake my head while sitting up. “No … yes … kind of. I don’t know.” I don’t know if I can describe what we had as a fight. That doesn’t feel like it’s doing it any justice. “It’s … complicated.”
“I’m listening,” Ammu says.
Then, before I can really even think about it, everything is pouring out of me in great big waves. From Aisling and Dee’s dismissal of my bisexuality all those weeks ago, to Ishu and I agreeing to start a fake relationship, all the way to our growing closeness, Aisling’s accusation, and our fight. Ammu listens with rapt attention, her expression almost never changing. When I finally reach the end, Ammu nods her head sagely like she understands exactly what I’m going through.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” she asks after a brief pause.
I can only shrug. Maybe if I had told her from the beginning, I wouldn’t be stuck in this mess. Maybe she would have helped me make better choices to begin with.
“I don’t think you’ve exactly been fair to Ishu here,” Amma says finally. “Do you?”
“I don’t know …” I trail off. “I mean … Aisling and Dee are my friends.”
“And Ishu isn’t?” she asks.
“Ishu is … I mean … I’ve known Aisling and Dee for a lot longer. They’ve been with me through so much.” Aisling and I have been best friends since primary school. We met Dee in our first year of secondary school. We’ve been doing everything together for years. We have always supported each other … haven’t we?
“That doesn’t mean you should be unfair to Ishu.” Amma sighs. “Do you believe Ishu would really cheat on her biology test?”
“Ishu is the most hardworking person I know,” I say. “And the smartest. She could probably regurgitate our entire biology book if I asked her. But … why would Aisling lie?”
“I think you’ll have to talk to her about that,” Amma says. The thought of confronting Aisling sets my stomach rolling. When I say that to Amma she fixes me with a glare. “If you and Aisling are really friends, you should be able to talk to her about this. Friends can talk about things. They can figure things out. Get past things. Do you want a friend in your life who you can never disagree with? A friend who you can’t grow with?”
“I guess not.” I sigh. The thing is I don’t even know anymore what kind of friends Aisling and I are. And—if I’m being honest—I’m afraid of finding out.
Ishu is not at school the next morning. It’s probably for the best because people are already talking about how she cheated on her biology test. They’re wondering what else is true or false about her—if they couldn’t even rely on her being the top of our classes. I know I should defend her—as far as everyone at school knows, Ishu and I are still together—but I can’t bear the thought of going up to people I barely know just to defend Ishu. Especially when I don’t even know what the truth is. Especially when it’ll get back to Aisling.