Hirsh Sawhney - South Haven

“Mustafa mia,” said Barry Uncle, “one more question for you.”

“Barry Uncle,” said Siddharth, glaring in his direction.

“Your wife — she’s your cousin, right? You people still do that, right?”

Chewing his fried mozzarella, Mohan Lal mumbled, “Enough, Barry. Let Mustafa get back to work.”

Mustafa definitely wasn’t smiling anymore. He was rubbing his neck and looked as if he might hit someone. Siddharth made a plan: If Mustafa hit Barry Uncle, he would grab Mohan Lal and run. If he hit Mohan Lal, however, then he would have to retaliate. He would give him a sharp kick — right to the balls.

Barry Uncle said, “Wait. . don’t tell you married your own sister. Mustafa, that that would be too much. That’s when we get into problems.”

Mustafa put both of his hands on their green tablecloth and leaned forward. He said something sharp in Hindi that Siddharth couldn’t understand.

Siddharth prayed for Barry Uncle to apologize.

“Mustafa-ji.” Barry Uncle emptied his whiskey into his mouth, then slammed the glass down on the table. “Mustafa-ji, how many thumbs do your little girls have? How many toes? Because if you married your sister, you better count those toes.”

Mustafa switched back to his guido English: “You know what, guys? We’re gonna need this table sooner than I thought. Why don’t I get your food wrapped up tonight? Why don’t you eat it at home?”

Mohan Lal stood up, dabbing his face with his napkin. “Good idea. That’s a very good idea.”

Siddharth glanced to the right and saw a gaggle of police officers staring in their direction.

Mustafa placed a hand Mohan Lal’s shoulder. “Arora sahib,” he said, “see you again — soon, I hope. But I’d lose the friend if I were you.”

Mohan Lal cocked his head to one side. “What was that?”

“Yous are always welcome in my restaurant. Always. Just not him.”

Shit , Siddharth thought. Mohan Lal was going to say something stupid. Something that could get them arrested.

Mohan Lal clasped Siddharth’s arm and yanked him out of his seat. “Come, son. Get away from that bloody mullah.”

For the first time in his life, Siddharth found himself actually looking forward to school. In junior high, he felt a new sense of freedom. He got to walk by himself to his classes, not like the primary-school drones with their regimented routines and single-file lines. He tried to plan his routes so that he could use the breezeway, an open-air corridor with a roof but no walls. The breezeway reminded him that he could flee the premises any time he wanted, and he used it even when it was raining.

Having his own locker that he could decorate any way he chose was another source of simple but constant pleasure. He put up a picture of Kurt Cobain that he’d ripped out of one of Marc’s copies of Rolling Stone, and a photo of a television actress in a sports bra from one of Sharon’s teen magazines. Luca gave him a magnetic mirror from his father’s beauty salon, and Siddharth used it at least twice a day to brush his hair, which was now long on top and shaved on the sides.

In some ways, Luca had changed over the summer. He was taller and had lost some weight. He dressed better, wearing brown moccasins and tucking in his shirts. A little stubble now shadowed his cheeks, and he had long, stylish sideburns, like the actors in 90210 . He even acted fairly normally around other people, talking about sports with boys and listening to girls as if he really liked hearing about their summer breaks. But he would then do something to remind Siddharth that he was the same old Luca, like telling a joke about Mrs. Wadsworth sitting on someone’s face.

Luca liked to say good morning to the dorks in a voice that sounded retarded. He often snapped Carol Corcoran’s bra as she opened her locker, but strangely, Carol didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Luca and Siddharth were getting close to Carol, one of the pretty girls from Lower Housatonic Elementary. She and her friends were good at sports, but also liked to smoke cigarettes and drink wine coolers. Even though these girls had older boyfriends, they hugged Siddharth in the hallways or gave him a squeeze on the waist.

Each morning, he met Luca at his locker, and the pair combed the hallways together before the first bell, talking shit and joking around. Eddie Benson usually joined them, and by the second week of October, a whole squad of seventh graders was following them around. Random wiggers and metalheads who Siddharth knew through Marc — grubbers, as Luca called them — nodded their heads as they passed him by, and Marc’s friend Corey Thompson always stopped Siddharth to shake his hand. Sometimes Corey asked him if he could borrow twenty bucks, so he would steal a bit of extra cash from his father’s wallet. Corey always paid him back, occasionally with a buck or two of interest or a miniature bottle of rum.

Siddharth was developing a reputation for being smart and funny, and he didn’t want to ruin this, which was why he was perpetually anxious about being seen with Sharon Nagorski outside of class. If Luca saw them together, there would be trouble. Fortunately, she didn’t pay Siddharth any attention in the hallways, and in the morning, when everyone else was roving and socializing, she went to the band room to practice her trumpet. She did the same thing at lunch, and, thankfully, she only mentioned Luca a single time during the fall semester.

It had happened on a Monday morning in science class. Sharon said that Siddharth seemed upset, and he told her that he was just tired after a crazy weekend.

“Why, what did you do?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just hung out with a couple friends.”

“Friends? Oh, you mean Luca — Mr. Asshole?”

“Take it easy. Once you get to know him, he’s not that bad.”

“Sure,” said Sharon, blowing her bangs out of her eyes.

“Hey, it takes two to tango, you know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you just sit there and take it. If you want him to respect you, you should say something back.”

“Whatever,” said Sharon. “I’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

“You mean your boyfriend?”

She smiled, revealing a dimple. “He took me out to Pasta Palace on Sunday. The bill was, like, forty dollars.”

* * *

By the end of October, Siddharth was going over to Luca’s on most Saturdays. The house was dark and old-fashioned. Luca’s family room had a La-Z-Boy recliner, which was great for watching movies. It had thick brown carpets and a wallpaper mural of the Grand Canyon. This wallpaper reminded Siddharth of the mural that had once adorned his own family room, back when his mother was still around — before Ms. Farber had taken over his father’s life.

Mrs. Peroti had grown fond of Siddharth. She cooked him fresh manicotti or ravioli, always sending him home with some. She said, “I got plenty of pasta for you. Just keep my Luca outta trouble.”

Luca would mutter the strangest things in front of his mother. One time, when she was cooking and watching television, he said, “Ma, do you like pussy better, or cock?”

When she turned around, her blue eyes were blazing, and her ringed fingers were clasping one of her ample hips. “Did you just say what I think you did?”

Luca threw his hands in the air. “Jeez, Ma, I asked you a simple question — are you a Pepsi woman, or are you into Coke?”

In moments like these, Siddharth’s heart beat quickly, and yet he couldn’t help but grin. Luca was definitely one of the funniest people he’d ever met, and Siddharth was pretty sure that Arjun would like him.

Initially, he avoided spending the night at Luca’s, as he had heard about the crazy things that Luca and Eddie did during sleepovers. They went out shitting houses, which had once consisted of spray-painting dirty words on people’s driveways but had evolved into more serious acts of vandalism, like burning mailboxes and shattering windows. Sometimes Luca and Eddie sat in the woods by the edge of the Merritt Parkway and chucked stones at passing cars.