Chloe in India (11 page)

I spread the contents of my jewelry box on the bedspread and then flopped down on my tummy, thinking we could paw through it and try on junk rings, but Lakshmi only hovered in the doorway, surveying the scene.

I am not a tidy person. Saturdays are particularly bad for me because I have a pact with Dechen: she won't enter my room till late afternoon. Which means that by five o'clock on Saturday, the place is a biohazard.

My bed was a mess. There were piles of clothes in the corner of the room and books scattered across the rug. My trunk was half-open, scarves and hats and various bags spilling out. Some outgrown toys were pushed under the bed. A half-finished jigsaw puzzle of the Taj Mahal covered one corner of the floor. I'd been working on it for a couple of days, so pieces were littered about. A partially eaten peanut butter sandwich sat on the night table.

“Sorry for the mess,” I said.

Lakshmi shrugged and walked over to the bookcase. She leaned forward and picked up an old Barbie from the clutter on the top shelf. It was an American Barbie with blond hair, pink skin, arched feet, and big boobs. It was also butt naked. (Indian Barbies have white plastic granny panties built in.)

Lakshmi turned the Barbie around, inspecting it carefully. She touched the Barbie's hair.

“You want it?” I said. “You can have it.” I hadn't played with that Barbie in years. I don't even know why Mom had brought it from Boston, especially since she herself hates Barbies. You do
not
want to get her started on that subject.

Lakshmi stroked the Barbie's hair for a few minutes. Then she walked over to me—still lying on the bed—and reached out to touch my hair. It felt a little weird.

“Gold,” she said.

“Um, no, not gold,” I replied, ducking my head out of her reach. “It's blond. My hair is blond.”

“So pretty,” Lakshmi said. “You hair so pretty.”

I gave her a funny look. “I wish it were dark, like yours,” I said.

Lakshmi shook her head. “Everyone in America have fair hair,” she said.

“Um, no,” I corrected her. “No, they don't. What about Anna? She's American and her hair's practically black.”

Lakshmi was silent for a moment, still staring at the Barbie. “She look like Katrina Kaif,” she said. “But she…” She hesitated, pursing her lips together. “But blond. She blond.”

“Katrina Kaif ?” I said. “Who's that?”

Lakshmi's eyebrows practically disappeared into her hairline. “Who Katrina Kaif ?” she exclaimed. “She megastar. She
Ek Tha Tiger.
She
Tees Maar Khan….”

When I shrugged, Lakshmi leapt up onto my bed. With one hard push, she shoved me to the floor.

“Hey…”

But Lakshmi was already on her knees on my bed. She was pulling the top sheet up around her chest. She started pumping her chest up and back, flinging her schoolgirl braids from side to side. She closed her eyes, lifted her chin, and started to sing: “I know you want it but you're never going to get it,
tere haath kabhi na aani….”

Then she threw the sheet down and sprang off the bed. She started sashaying up and down the room, shaking her hips from side to side and waving her hands above her head. Puzzle pieces went flying.

“My name is Sheila, Sheila Ki Jawani! I'm too sexy for you….”

I sat on the floor, staring up at her.

She was transformed. She was amazing.

After a good five minutes of singing, clapping, shoulder shimmying, and hip gyrating, Lakshmi finally collapsed on her back on the bed. I could see her chest heaving through her kurta.

“Oh my God,” I said. “That was…that was brilliant.”

Lakshmi grinned up at the ceiling.

“I didn't know you could dance like that. You never dance like that in school.”

Lakshmi shrugged.

“How'd you learn?”

“My cousin brother have Tata Sky high-definition TV.” She was still breathing hard.

“Wow,” I said. “Does he get a lot of movies? I mean, do you know how to do a lot of dances?”

Instead of answering, Lakshmi pulled herself off the bed again, crouched down on the floor, then popped back up, doing a full split in the air. She landed and went straight into a spin, ending with a fist pump.

I stared at her, my mouth open. “That would be a ‘yes,' ” I said.

Lakshmi nodded. “I do all dance: Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi, Meenakshi Sheshadri—”

I cut off her list of Hindi movie stars. “So maybe you could teach me?” I said. “I mean, you could help me with the dance? The Annual Day dance?”

Lakshmi grinned. “Piece of…what you say? Biscuit?”

“Cake,” I said. “Piece of cake.”

Except it wasn't.

See, what
I
had meant was that Lakshmi could help me with that tricky little bit of the finale—the part where she and Meher and I were supposed to skip forward to join the line of dancing girls snaking out to the exit. I figured it would take fifteen minutes of rehearsing, tops. But what
Lakshmi
wanted to work on was the spins.

“No way,” I said, shaking my head. “There is no way that I could ever do those spins. No way. No how. Never.”

But Lakshmi insisted. She blocked the door with her little stick body and crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn't going to let me out of the room (
my
room!) till I at least gave it a shot.

I shook my head again. “There's no point, Lakshmi. I can't do them.”

“If there no point, it not hurt to try,
na?
” she said.

“All right, all right,” I groaned. “I'll give you fifteen minutes to teach me how to do five spins. Then we're having lunch.”

Lakshmi grinned. “Deal!”

One hour later, she was still drilling me. She was a tough teacher, but a good one, showing me how to turn on the ball of my left foot, keeping my right foot close so that I wouldn't fall out of position, and how to pick a spot on the wall and stare at it so I wouldn't lose my balance. Heading into the next turn, I had to whip my head around and find that same spot again. And again. And again.

“Head up! Chest up! Arm in!” Lakshmi barked.

Dad poked his head into my room. “What's going on in here, girls?” he asked. “Don't you want some lunch? Dechen made grilled cheese.”

“Give us a few more minutes, Dad,” I said. “Five minutes. We're working on something.”

“Okeydokey,” he said. “Five more minutes, then time to eat.” His head disappeared.

I hit the play button and “Desi Girl”—our Annual Day song—blared out from the tiny speaker on my iPad.

Lakshmi wasn't the only one doing the teaching; I had drummed some phrases into her.

“Take it from the top!” she commanded in a perfect American accent. “A-five, a-six. A-five, six, seven, eight…”

Lakshmi spun on the left side…I spun on the right…one, two, three, four, five…we nailed it! We ended at exactly the same time, our arms extended toward the ceiling, our hands twisting in sync to the music.

“Screw the lightbulb! Screw the lightbulb!”

Our hands twisted in the air.

“And freeze!”

We froze, the music stopped, and everything went quiet.

Then I started jumping up and down. “I did it, Lakshmi! I really did it!” I held my fist up at her, chest level, expecting a congratulatory fist bump in return.

“What this?” Lakshmi asked, pointing at my fist.

“It's a fist bump, Lakshmi! C'mon, do it!”

Lakshmi just stood there, her arms glued by her sides.

“You know, it's a sign of friendship, um, like a cooler version of a high five?”

I took her hand and formed it into a fist, then bumped our fists together.

Lakshmi grinned.

I flopped down on the bed. “Oh my God,” I said. It was slowly dawning on me. “We could actually do this. We could actually steal the show.”

“Steal the show?” Lakshmi echoed. She shook her head. “I never steal, Chloe.”

I let out a laugh. “It's just an expression. It means we're going to be the best dancers.”

Lakshmi sat down next to me on the edge of the bed. “Better than…Anvi?” There was a glint in her black eyes.

Anvi. I was so focused on getting those spins, I had forgotten all about her. What if Lakshmi and I won the dance competition? What if we actually got to do the spins in the finale? Anvi would be beyond furious. She would never forgive me.

I swallowed and then nodded. “Sure,” I said. “Even better than Anvi.”

We practiced all weekend: Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon.

By Sunday evening, Lakshmi and I could do the spins in perfect synchronicity almost every time we tried them. My shoulders ached. My calves were sore. There was a blister on the bottom of my left foot. But I was happy—as long as I didn't think about Anvi.

Then, as we took a water break on Sunday night, Lakshmi leaned over and picked something up off the floor. It was the pink heart card from Anvi, the one that she had slipped into the birthday party invitation. Before I could grab it, Lakshmi had flipped it over.

“BFF?” she said. “What is BFF?”

“It's stupid,” I said.

“Yes, but what does it mean?”

I shrugged and leaned over, pretending to check on my blister. “Best friends forever.” I mumbled the words quickly, hoping that she wouldn't hear them and would drop the topic.

But she did hear.

“Best friends forever?” Lakshmi echoed. She looked at me for a moment, her head cocked to one side. “But Anvi doing the spins with Prisha, no?”

I stared down at my toes.

Lakshmi was silent for a moment. Then she gave me a playful shove. “You right, Chloe,” she said. “BFF? That
is
stupid.”

I still couldn't look up. What was I doing with this spin thing? If I entered the competition with Lakshmi—even if we lost—Anvi might never want to be friends with me again. And then who would I hang out with at Premium Academy? Lakshmi and Meher? Was that what I wanted?

Lakshmi gathered her
dupatta
from the bed. She draped it over her shoulders and then stood up. Without a word, she walked to the door. Right before she opened it, her hand already on the doorknob, she turned back to me. “You know, there no such thing, forever, Chloe,” she said. “Nothing is forever.”

Then she walked out, closing the door quietly behind her.

Mondays are the pits. When my alarm goes off at 6:30, I just want to pull the covers up over my head and go back to sleep. Sometimes I do. And then Anna storms into my room, yanks the covers all the way down, and stands there, hands on her uniformed hips, glaring at my curled-up body until I mumble that, yes, I am getting up.

Today she threw my uniform on top of me.

“Hurry up!” she snapped. “It's already 6:56. Vijay and I are leaving for school in nine minutes and you are
not
going to make me late today!”

I groaned, my eyes still closed.

“I mean it, Chloe!” Anna warned. “Mom!” she yelled over her shoulder.

“Okay, okay,” I said, pulling myself up to a seated position. I thrust one arm through the sleeve of my uniform, only to find that I was putting it on backward, so I pulled my arm back out.

I was even more tired than usual. Strange dreams had bothered me all night: me dancing with Lakshmi, Lakshmi dancing with Prisha, Mr. Bhatnagar dancing with my mom. All of us spinning, spinning, spinning in endless circles.

“Chloe!” Mom yelled from the kitchen.

“Okay, okay, I'm getting dressed.”

First bell rings at 7:25. Last bell rings at 3:15. You do the math.

Yep, that's seven hours and fifty minutes of school. Every. Single. Day.

In Indian school, there is a lot of school.

And boy, do they love testing. We have a test, a quiz, transcription, dictation, or recitation practically every day. First Monday of every month we take a General Knowledge Test, which means I get to make up answers to “universally known” questions like these:

Who was the first Indian bowler to achieve a hat trick in One-Day International matches? (The answer, in case you're wondering: Harbhajan Singh)

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went to which temple to seek blessings on New Year's Day? (Answer: Siddhivinayak Temple)

Write the full form of the given abbreviation: IAS. (Answer: Indian Administrative Service)

Quizzes are graded. Homework is graded. Classwork is graded. You even get scores for phys ed, music, and dance. Every month, a messenger hand delivers a report card to my parents at home. It has over seventy different grades on it. At the bottom, a bar graph documents my progress. And all these hundreds of grades are accumulated and vetted and tallied and scrutinized and mushed up to determine which ultraspecial half-dozen kids will receive (drumroll, please…) the Achievement Awards, which are handed out by the head of the school at the conclusion of the Annual Day performance—in other words, this Wednesday night.

This is not a big deal for me. I've been at the school only a couple of months, so—thank God—I am not eligible for any kind of an award. But it is a
really
big deal for my classmates since they've been working toward these awards for
two years.
The pressure has been ramping up on them since third grade, when all the testing began.

When I got to my classroom (and for the record, we
were
on time), kids were huddled in small groups, their heads close together, whispering. Some had red eyes from crying. Apparently, Mrs. Anand had called a few lucky parents last night to let them know their child had been selected for the Class Five Achievement Award.

It was easy to see who was among the chosen few—those kids were beaming. And I couldn't believe it—one of them was drippy-nosed Dhruv Gupta.

“How about
that,
Chhole?” he crowed as I was hanging my backpack up. “What do you have to say about
that
?”

“About what?” I said, pretending I didn't know what he was talking about.

“About the Achievement Award for yours truly on Wednesday night,” Dhruv answered. He gave a little bow.

“You mean achievement in ultra-annoyingness?”

A couple of boys snickered. Dhruv scowled, but before he could say anything, Ms. Puri started clapping her hands to get everybody's attention. She was standing in front of the blackboard, one arm wrapped around Soumya Singh. Poor Soumya—who always wears glasses and a navy-blue headband and who is really hardworking—was sniffling, her eyes fixed on the floor. She must have been in the running for the award.

“Boys and girls,” Ms. Puri said. “Kind thanks for your attention.”

The class quieted down.

“The Achievement Award winners have been notified. Let us all extend our heartiest congratulations to these winners for this acknowledgment of their accomplishments.”

I felt a jab between my shoulder blades. When I looked around, Dhruv was grinning at me, his eyebrows raised expectantly. I glared and turned back toward the front.

“I want all of you to know”—at this point Ms. Puri gave Soumya's shoulder a tight squeeze—“that each and every one of you is talented in his or her very own way….”

Ms. Puri paused for a moment and that's when Mr. Bhatnagar burst through the door.

“Ms. Puri?” he said. “A word?”

The two teachers disappeared into the foyer and the classroom erupted into excited chatter. It was as if the Achievement Awards had already been forgotten.

“Anvi, Anvi, did you see?” Prisha was squealing. “It must be about the tryouts! He wants to do them early! He wants to shift the schedule!”

Anvi had been purposefully ignoring me all morning. Now she talked loudly enough that I was sure to overhear. “Hmm,” she said. “That
would
make sense. Then we'll have more time to practice our spins with the ensemble this afternoon.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Did I tell you? Papa has taken one extra sponsorship banner, maximum size: ‘Congratulations to Anvi, the shining star that spins through our universe. May nothing stand as impossible in your journey to success.' ”

“Ooh,” said Prisha.

It was at this moment that it dawned on me that things might have gone a little too far. If Anvi was so confident that she was going to star in our show that she had already convinced her tycoon dad to buy advertising…Um, well, that was going to be a problem, because Lakshmi and I were planning on winning the tryouts. We had practiced all weekend. We were ready.

Ms. Puri strode to the front of the classroom, her face folded into a frown.

“We have a change of program,” she announced. Her voice was clipped. “Mr. Bhatnagar is requesting all girl students to please proceed to the stage immediately. We will resume with maths class as soon as this”—I could swear I heard her mutter the words
rehearsal nonsense
—“is over.”

“Girls!” Mr. Bhatnagar was clapping loudly to get everyone's attention. “We have very less time,
betas
! Line up! Line up!”

All the girls lined up in one row at the front of the stage, while the boys sat down on the amphitheater's stone steps. I saw Dhruv Gupta nudge his neighbor, then point at me and snicker. I looked down and tucked my loose shirttail back into my skirt.

Ms. Puri was standing to the side, leaning against a pillar and watching everything, her arms folded across her chest. Her face was still creased in a deep frown, but when she caught me watching her, she gave a little wink through her blue plastic glasses.

That's when Mr. Bhatnagar walked up to Lakshmi, who was standing next to me at the very end of the row of girls. He leaned forward and said something to her in Hindi. I couldn't understand, but I felt Lakshmi tense up.

Mr. Bhatnagar was pointing at the steps. He must have been telling her to go sit.

Lakshmi didn't say anything. She didn't move. She just stared at the ground. Then she gave her head a little shake.

“Is there some problem, Mr. Bhatnagar?” Ms. Puri had come up and was standing next to him.

“Er, no,” Mr. Bhatnagar said. “It's just this new girl, she is not wanting to listen.”

“Her name is Lakshmi,” Ms. Puri said. She stared hard at Mr. Bhatnagar, who seemed to be getting flustered. He took off his glasses and started cleaning the lenses with the hem of his white kurta.

“It is simply…we have no place in the finale for one new girl,” Mr. Bhatnagar said. He was having trouble meeting Ms. Puri's gaze. “We are already practicing for so much of time.”

This reasoning made no sense. Lakshmi wasn't that new anymore. She'd been at Premium Academy almost as long as I had. And she'd been practicing the dance with all the rest of us.

“But surely, there is no harm in letting her audition?” Ms. Puri said. She was raising her eyebrows at Mr. Bhatnagar, her head tilted to one side.

“Er, no,” Mr. Bhatnagar said. “No, I suppose not.”

“All right then!” said Ms. Puri brightly. “That's sorted.” As she turned, she gave Lakshmi and me a tight smile.

So, here's the good part:

We aced the dance tryout. I mean, we nailed it. Five spins in sync, no stopping, no stepping out of position. Everybody was shocked. I could tell because when the music stopped and Lakshmi and I were frozen in our final pose, the amphitheater went totally silent. I mean, you could have heard a pin drop. I glanced out over the audience and drippy-nosed Dhruv was sitting there with his buddies, just staring at us, his mouth hanging open. That's how amazing we were.

Finally, one person started clapping. It was Ms. Puri. She was still leaning against the pillar, but she was clapping loudly. And then a couple of the nicer girls in the class—Soumya Singh and her smart-girl friends—started clapping too. And then even Dhruv gave a whistle and a couple of his buddies stomped their feet, and that's when I realized that we had pulled it off. I looked over at Lakshmi. She was grinning this enormous grin and then she leaned over to me and held her fist up and I gave it a bump.

Here is the kinda bad (but also exciting) part:

Anvi and Prisha did not do so well. In fact, they messed up pretty badly. Prisha stepped out during one of the spins and Anvi looked a little wobbly herself. When they finished, nobody clapped. A couple of girls started whispering. Prisha looked like she might cry.

At the end of the tryouts, everyone was sitting on the stone steps, waiting for Mr. Bhatnagar to announce the winners. Lakshmi and I sat together in the middle. Soumya and her friends were next to us, Dhruv behind us. Prisha sat alone, off to the side, on the front step. Anvi must have gone to the washroom or something.

Mr. Bhatnagar had taken off his glasses and was massaging his temples with his fingers again. Ms. Puri walked up to him. She whispered something in his ear. He nodded wearily.

“We have exciting news, boys and girls!” Ms. Puri exclaimed. She was beaming. “The winners of the dance tryouts are new members of our community! Let us all give a round of applause to Chloe and Lakshmi!”

Even though I knew we had nailed the routine and totally deserved to be selected, I was still stunned to hear our names said out loud. And then Lakshmi hugged me and Soumya and her friends were clapping us on the backs. Even Dhruv gave me a high five.

“All right, all right,” said Ms. Puri. “It's over now. Back to maths, everyone.” There was a communal groan. Then we all got up and started shuffling out of the amphitheater, toward the classroom.

Now here's the
really
bad part:

I was so stunned, I had to go to the washroom to splash some water on my face and make sure that everything was really happening. As I stood there, filling my cupped hands with water from the tap, someone came up next to me.

It was Anvi. She smiled at me in the mirror but it was one of those non-smiles—the corners of her mouth turned up but her eyes stayed the same.

“Congratulations, Chloe,” Anvi said, but it didn't sound like she was congratulating me. It sounded like she was firing me as her friend.

“Um, thanks,” I said. My hands were full now, so I had no choice but to splash the water over my face. When I straightened up, the water dripped, leaving wet splotches on the front of my uniform.