Nice and Mean (14 page)

A lump rose in my throat. I hated thinking about everything they had given up for me. I missed our relatives all the time. To know that they felt it too made me wish I had never even heard of video class.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered. “I didn't do it to be disrespectful. I just—wanted to—” Blinking back the tears made it hard for me to speak.

“Will you explain to us, first, please,” said my mother, “why it was necessary to do exactly what we asked you not to do?”

My gaze fell to the table. I had never noticed the waves in our wood, like the topographical maps we had studied in science. I wished I could ride them and sail away.

“Sachi?”

I couldn't answer my mother's question. Despite what I had thought in the kitchen, now my reason seemed unimportant. “I was wrong,” I managed to croak out. “I'm sorry.”

“I am glad you are sorry,” said my father. “I only hope it is not too late to make up what you have missed. On Monday you will go to the test preparation class and ask if you can be included.”

I nodded. “All right.”

“You will have to work very hard to catch up,” my father
intoned. “No computer, no phone calls. You must catch up on studying for the test.”

“Okay.” I loved my twenty minutes of phone time each night, but I deserved to be punished. “I do know test prep is important. I've been studying on my own.”

“That is not as good as being in the class,” my father warned. “You need to do what the teachers tell you. They are the ones who can help you learn the tricks.”

“I know.” I looked up at last, glad to assure him of something. “But I won't be too far behind. I'm using Priyanka's books.”

This time my father's face showed surprise. “What?”

“I—” Oh no. I hadn't meant to . . . oh no.

My mother gasped. “Priyanka lent you her books?”

I couldn't lie again. “Yes.”

My mother held her hand to her chest. “So she knew you were lying to us?”

“I . . .” Oh no. No! “Yes.”

My father smacked his palm on the table and turned away from us, pressing his hand against his moustache.

“Both of you.” My mother seemed to be in a daze. “Both of you were lying.”

I bent my head.

“Priyanka!” My father's voice roared through the house.

“Yes?”

“Come in here, please.”

I pressed so hard into Nani's ring, my index finger burned.

Priyanka entered, wary.

“Priyanka,” my father instructed, “sit down.”

She obeyed.

“Sachi tells us she has not been in the Test Prep class. That she has been doing this video class instead and you knew.”

Priyanka bowed her head. “Yes.”

“So.” My father's wide fingers stroked the glossy wooden table. “You knew and you didn't tell us. You deliberately deceived us.”

“It was Sachi's idea.” Priyanka's chair creaked. “I was helping her. Doesn't that count for something?”

“But you lied to us!” my mother cried. “You both lied!”

“What was I supposed to do,” said Priyanka shrilly, “tell on her? When Sachi doesn't get her way, she makes my life miserable.”

“What?” I broke in.
“I
make
your
life miserable?”

“Don't try to make
me
look bad!” Priyanka shot back. “See if I help you with Test Prep ever again. I hope you
don't
get into Stuyvesant, so I don't have to see your face for the next three years.”

“Stop it!” my father thundered. “We did not raise you to talk to each other like that.”

“She started it,” said Priyanka. “She's the one who—”

“Girls, that's enough,” my mother said. “It's late, and I don't want your sister to hear you arguing like this. Sachi—sleep in Pallavi's room for the night.”

“What?” They didn't think Priyanka and I could sleep in the same room? “I don't need to—”

“That is
enough
!” My mother's nostrils were fully flared. “Go right now, and go to sleep. Priyanka, when you are done with your homework, you must go to sleep immediately. No Internet, no telephone.”

“Yes, Ma.” Priyanka left the table, ducking her head. I glared at her. Even at a time like this, she had to be the perfect daughter.

“And Sachi,” my father informed me, “we will write your teacher a letter removing you from this video class. Your mother and I will discuss your punishment further, but you must know now that we don't want you to do anything like this ever again.”

I ran to the bathroom and burst into tears. Most parents would be proud of a child who did well in school, who had hobbies. Why weren't mine?

“I don't even want to wear a strapless dress or neglect
my homework,” I whispered to my tear-streaked reflection. “I just want to skip Test Prep for one semester and see my friends on weekends.” I buried my face in a towel.

There was a knock on the door. “Sachi?” my mother asked.

“What?” The towel muffled my voice.

“Come here.”

I opened the door. I didn't care if she saw me crying.

“Beti,” she said.
Daughter
. My mother opened her arms and I fell into them—I couldn't help it. “You know how we feel about your education,” she said, stroking my hair. “I understand that you want to do fun things, but education is not something to compromise on.”

“I know,” I said into her shoulder.

“I see you concentrating on your schoolwork,” she said, “just as I did. Would you want to work that hard and make a good life for yourself, just so your daughter could throw it away?”

I raised my head. “Taking Video is not throwing my life away.” Video was a real subject, even if there was no test. Without it I'd have no way to show anyone that I had a thought in my head. I'd go back to being Nicest Girl, whose friends thought they could walk all over her.

“I know you see it this way,” my mother said, “but in a
few years, even a few months, you will see that your father and I are right.”

I had thought she had come to make me feel better, but I'd heard her say all that a million and one times. I knew what my parents wanted for me, and everything my parents had given up for me and Priyanka and Pallavi. Still, it wasn't like we had asked them to do it. Were the schools really so much better in Manhattan than they were in Queens? And what if I would have been happier playing kick the can in front of Nani's house, instead of stranded in our neighborhood with only homework and unpaid babysitting to keep me company—where none of my classmates lived and the nearest playground was ten blocks away? Suddenly I felt too overwhelmed to argue.

“I'm tired,” I said, my voice sounding thin as a crack. “May I go to bed?”

“Of course.” My mother kissed me and left.

I slunk into Pallavi's room, where my little sister was sprawled out asleep above her blankets, and cried in the child-size chair in the corner.

   
   

“Mr. Phillips?” He was facing me but looking at the computer screen, a bagel in his hand. I wasn't sure if he saw me or not.

He stuck his head around the computer. “Sachi. Good.” He put the bagel on its tinfoil wrapper. “Did Ms. Avery send you?”

My parents had called Ms. Avery? I couldn't believe it! And what was the note—some kind of test to see if I'd obey them? “Ms. Avery wasn't in homeroom today,” I told Mr. Phillips. “I haven't even seen her.”

“Hmm . . . hold on a second.” He picked up the phone and punched in some numbers. “Yeah, hi again, it's Brian. I've got Sachi up here now.” He took a bite of his bagel and chewed as he listened. “Oh. Okay. Sure. Yes, and call you back. Will do.” He hung up.

What?

“So,” he said, “can you tell me about what you did on the
Victim/Victorious
video?”

I had not been expecting that at all. “Um . . . I helped Marina film it. We were partners . . .?”

His eyes, as dark as my own, were steady on mine. “Did you edit it with her outside school?”

Why would I do that?
I wondered. “No,” I said. “We didn't even really edit together
in
school. Was I supposed to help her more?”

“So you don't know anything about this business with Rachel Winter?”

“She was in the scene Marina filmed . . . I'm not sure what you mean.”

He shook his head. “We're just trying to see . . . what's going on.”

“Okay.” What was going on?

“You can go back to homeroom,” he said, and picked up his bagel again.

“Um.” I wondered if he'd forgotten that I was the one who had come to him. “I need to give you something.”

He tore the bagel away from his mouth. “Oh, sorry, right. Let's see.” He wiped some cream cheese off his fingers and held out his hand. I passed him the letter, already sad for what he would say.

He read. “Hunh,” he said. “Oh, wow. Hunh.”

What did it say? And why “Oh, wow”? Watching him was making me squirm, so I looked over at the laminated instruction sheets on the walls. I'd almost memorized them, down to the marker colors. And the posters—I loved the one of the women directors looking tough, with the big letters that said
direct this
. Would I ever set foot in the video lab again? Even the posters of movies I hadn't seen felt as familiar as my own wallpaper. The video class felt more like home than home did.

“Well,” he said when he was done reading, “that's too
bad.”

My insides unknotted a little. He wasn't mad. I guessed my parents hadn't written,
Sachi has lied to you and us and is a terrible person.

He felt around the computer for a pen, scribbled something on the letter, and handed it back to me. I glanced down and saw that he'd written his signature on a typed line. How sneaky! If I hadn't shown him the letter, I wouldn't have known I was supposed to give it back to them signed. How humiliating, to have parents who knew more tricks than I did.

He leaned back in his chair. “I guess your parents care a lot about where you go to high school?”

Talk about stating the obvious. “Yeah.”

He picked up his bagel. “My parents were like that too.”

“Oh.” A teacher had never told me something about his personal life before! Was this what I would miss, dropping out of Video? I couldn't stand it.

“They didn't want me to become a filmmaker,” he continued. “Every time I came home, they'd tell me, ‘The world needs black doctors, not black directors.' But I stuck to my guns, and I won some awards for my short films, and finally they're starting to soften up.”

“Oh. That's great.” Were there any awards for people my
age? Maybe if I won an award, my parents would change their minds too.

“So keep trying,” he said, pulling his chair up to the computer. “I know you will.”

I swallowed hard so I wouldn't cry. Sometimes when people were nice, it made me sadder than if they were mean. “Thanks.”