Hirsh Sawhney - South Haven

Arjun closed his book. “So I take it your friend has a girlfriend.”

“Kind of.”

“What about you?”

Siddharth shrugged. “That Korean girl — Liza — I hooked up with her once.”

“What do you mean, hooked up?”

“I mean I kissed her.”

“You’re lying,” said Arjun.

“I swear to God.”

“I don’t believe in God,” said Arjun. “Swear on my life.”

“Look, we French-kissed. At least she’s not a Pakistani.”

Arjun returned to his book, underlining a passage in pencil.

Siddharth cocked his head to one side and examined his brother’s beard. It looked neater now. Arjun had shaved his neck. A few bristles on his hairy chin were red, which Siddharth thought was a good thing. Perhaps some English blood cells flowed through their veins after all.

Arjun cleared his throat. “I just want you to remember that it’s not your fault.”

“What’s not my fault?”

“This whole thing with girls.”

“What whole thing with girls?”

“Listen, when the time comes, you might find it hard to get a girlfriend.”

“But I already told you — I hooked up with Liza.”

“It was hard for me too, you know.” Arjun smiled. “The white girls, they wouldn’t give me a second look. But that’s the way they’ve been conditioned. They’re attracted to guys who remind them of their fathers.”

“You don’t know everything, you know,” Siddharth muttered.

Arjun returned to his book once again. Siddharth lay down beside him and stared up at the white swirls on the ceiling. He remembered a day many years ago when Barry Uncle and Mohan Lal had painted the entire guest room. His mother had made them fresh puris, and everyone had seemed happy. He fought to keep his eyes open but was soon asleep.

He woke up to Arjun’s gentle snores and the singing of a bird. The lights were off, but morning was softly glowing outside the window. His elbow grazed the flesh of his brother’s back. Arjun’s skin felt nice, so he touched it with the tips of his fingers. He was dreading the day ahead of him. He was dreading the entire school year.

Eli Whitney Junior High was a drab single-story building, a part of which seemed much taller due to the vaulted ceilings of the gymnasium. A concrete slab in the school’s foundation announced that it had been built in 1958. Arjun had gone here six years earlier, and the trophy case in the lobby still contained two of his photos.

In one photo, Arjun was standing with his cross-country track team, which had come in second place at the regional finals that year. The other photo was of him, Iris Chang, and William Evans, all three of them with braces and glasses. They had just won a statewide science olympiad for ninth graders. During Siddharth’s first days of school, he occasionally paused to stare at these photos on his way to the bathroom. But he never mentioned them to any of his friends.

The school combined kids from three different elementary schools — Deer Run, Lower Housatonic, and Rolling Ridge. Siddharth had attended two of these schools in his short academic career, so there was no dearth of familiar faces in his seventh grade class. But during the first days of junior high, he dreaded reconnecting with the students from Rolling Ridge, where he had spent first through fourth grades. Those kids would always talk to him in that irritating formal tone, which said it all: We feel bad for you, you single-parent loser. To those kids, his friendship with Luca Peroti or Marc Kaufman would never matter. He would always be the boy with the dead mom.

He dreaded seeing his neighbor, Timmy Connor, who was now an eighth grader at Eli Whitney. Siddharth had successfully avoided the Connor boys over the past couple of years, ducking down in Mohan Lal’s minivan when they passed them on the road, or staying out of the backyard when Timmy and Eric were cutting the grass. But now he was on the same bus as Timmy, so it would be almost impossible to escape him.

During the first two days of school, he timed it so that he was a solid five hundred feet behind Timmy on the three-quarter-mile trek to his new bus stop in front of the rickety Miller farmhouse that belonged to Sharon Nagorski’s great-uncle. When he got to the top of his street on the third day of school, however, he found Timmy waiting for him. He was standing there with his faithful mutt, Naomi, wearing white jean shorts and a black tank top. His hair was spiked, with little lines shaved into the sides of his head.

They greeted each other with a handshake and walked in silence, kicking a gray stone back and forth to each other. As they neared the farmhouse, Timmy finally spoke: “Yo, what’s up with those people who are always over at your house?”

“Which people?”

“That woman. The one who’s always with that tall kid.”

“Marc Kaufman? He’s my best friend. She’s his mom.”

“Kaufman?” said Timmy. “Wait, I’ve heard of Marc Kaufman. Isn’t he, like, nuts?”

“Nuts? He’s really nice, actually — really cool.” He tensed up, preparing for an avalanche of further questioning.

Fortunately, Timmy changed the subject, telling him that his brother Eric was dating a hot senior. “They haven’t done it yet, but he’s doing her up the butt.”

“Gross,” said Siddharth.

“Why, you gay or something?”

“Nah. I’m just more of a pussy man myself.” He looked over at Timmy and was relieved to see he was smiling.

“Yeah, me too. But he doesn’t wanna get her pregnant.”

* * *

Even though things were going smoothly with Timmy, Siddharth still dreaded seeing his ex — best friend, Chris Pizzolorusso. He had slept over at Chris’s house at least a dozen times when he was younger, and his mother had been friendly with Chris’s mom. After the accident, Chris had tried to be nice. Every time he called, he said, “I’m here if you wanna talk.” Siddharth had found that shit suffocating, so he cut himself off.

For the first week of seventh grade, he glanced down whenever he passed Chris in the hall, or took refuge in the lavatory upon spotting him at lunch. One day, as he was squirting ketchup onto his fries in the cafeteria, he felt someone touch his shoulder. He turned to find Chris standing there with a smile on his face. He had braces now, and was much lankier.

When Chris started going on about a summer fishing trip to Lake George, Siddharth loosened up. He even made a couple of jokes, saying how their new English teacher must do her hair in the morning by sticking her finger in a light socket.

Chris laughed, but then suddenly got serious. “Yo, I gotta ask you something.”

“What?” said Siddharth, grinding his teeth.

“Those shoes — are they, like, suede?”

“Yeah. Yeah, they are.” He breathed out in relief. “Of course they’re suede. I don’t wear that fake-ass shit.”

“Dude,” said Chris, “I gotta get me some of those.”

* * *

The person he most dreaded seeing was Sharon Nagorski, and when he spotted her in the back corner of his first-period English class, he made a plan: he would have his father call up his guidance counselor and get him transferred to another class.

His English teacher, Mrs. Wadsworth, was a tiny elderly woman with a bloated belly, which made her appear pregnant. She had a crown of jet-black permed hair, but her curls were so thin that the purple dye stains on her scalp were visible underneath the flickering tube lights. On the first day of school, Mrs. Wadsworth recognized his surname while taking attendance. “Arora?” she said. “I have fond memories of an Arjun Arora. Would you by chance be his son?”