Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed.

Amina walked a little faster. “Yeah. I mean, not that anyone in my family is anything, really. Our mother has taken us to church, like, twice. But we’re not Hindu. Although apparently the converts to our kind of Christianity were probably, like, Brahmins when Saint Thomas came down to India in 50 A.D., which is when our religion started, although everyone just, like, assumes it was some British colonization thing.”

Was she babbling? She was babbling. She fought down the inexplicable urge to tell him about how she and Akhil had once found a viper in their grandmother’s garden, or how Thomas used to see dead bodies burning on the banks of the river when he was little. They turned another corner, and Amina noticed with disappointment that the lights were on in the gym. Groups of kids were starting to come out the doors.

“We should go back,” Jamie said, walking across the field. She followed him.

“Fu-uck. Fu-uh-uh-uck.”

Akhil was knocking his head against the windshield repeatedly as they approached the station wagon, his hands gripping the roof.

“What is wrong with you?” Amina said, wanting more than anything for her brother to retain at least a whisper of the cool that Jamie had attributed to him earlier.

“Kee-ee-ee-eys,” Akhil said, not missing a beat. “Ssee-ee-ee-eat.”

Amina pushed him out of the way. Sure enough, there they were, glinting behind the sealed window and locked door.

“Oh my God.”

“You locked your keys in the car?” Jamie asked, and Akhil looked confusedly from him to Amina and back again.

“Apparently,” he said.

“Be right back,” Jamie said, and turned and walked toward the gym doors, where people were still coming out in sweaty clumps. “What are you doing with that guy?”

“Nothing. How are we going to get home?”

“Dunno.”

“What about Mindy?”

“I dropped her off at her house. We were done.”

Amina looked at the car, wrinkled her nose. She hated getting in with the overheated smell of Mindy (Giorgio of Beverly Hills, menthols, yeast) clinging to the upholstered seats. “Great.”

“You locked your keys in?”

Amina and Akhil turned to see Paige walking briskly toward them with Jamie behind her.

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t have a coat hanger on you?”

Dimples cupped either side of her smirk.

“No.” Akhil scowled.

“Joking,” she said. “I was joking. I think I’ve got one in my car.”

“Don’t worry about it if it’s a hassle.”

“It’s not,” Paige said. “I do it all the time.”

“She’s good,” Jamie said, as they watched her walking across the parking lot to a yellow van. “Faster than anyone.”

“I’m Akhil, by the way,” Akhil said, reaching forward to shake Jamie’s hand. Jamie returned the introduction, and then they dropped hands and stuffed them into pockets, awkward with the sudden formality.

“We have class together,” Amina volunteered. “English.”

“Oh yeah, with Tipton?” Akhil smirked. “What do you think of that guy?”

“I try not to.”

“Good answer.”

Paige reemerged from the van, waving a triumphant hand.

It was nothing short of riveting, really, watching Paige Anderson untwist the neck of the hanger while she studied the lock on the door, taking in the dimensions and calculating the geometry that guided her hand to the tip of the hanger. She bent it into a tiny u and then slid it first up, then down through the window crack. She bit her tongue between her front teeth and hooked the hanger around the lock. It slipped.

“Crap.” She shook out her hands. “Gimme a minute.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Akhil said, and she took a deep breath, wedging the hanger again, this time pulling it at an angle. The lock popped up.

“Nice.” Akhil smiled.

“Thanks,” Paige said, looking a little pleased. She opened the car door and handed him the keys.

“Amazing.” Akhil wasn’t even looking at the keys; he was looking at Paige, his face stretched into emotions Amina had never seen — wonderment, desire, and raw happiness riding over its surface.

“We should go,” Jamie said, breaking what had become a too long silence.

“Right,” Paige said faintly, backing up. “I’ve got to get my bag from inside. Can you grab the car and meet me?”

“Yep.” He held out his hands. Paige threw him her keys.

“You can drive?” Amina asked.

“Around the parking lot,” Jamie said, and started off, already ten feet away before Amina could say goodbye.

“Well,” Paige said to Akhil. “See you on Monday, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Akhil watched her go, grinning that crazy grin that made Amina want to kick him or cover his head with a paper bag. “Wait!”

“Yeah?” Paige stopped.

He cleared his throat. “So … what’s your name?”

Paige looked at him for long, increasingly painful seconds. Finally she said, “We’re in Mathletes together, I just picked your lock, and you’re going to pretend you don’t know my name?”

“Well …,” Akhil started, but she was already walking quickly away, fingers sprinkling a wave behind her. She was halfway to the gym, her dorsal softness jumping in and out of puddles of light before Akhil let out his breath. His features pooled with panic. “Shit. Should I …?”

“Don’t ask me—” Amina started, annoyed, but he was sprinting before she even finished, his shirt filling with wind, his legs slowing to a jog and then a very quick walk that would catch Paige just before she got to the gym door. Amina watched as he tapped her on the arm and then recoiled, running a hand through his hair and saying something she couldn’t hear. There was a beat. A pause. A moment of silence between them that Amina would later recognize as the forgettable turning into the extraordinary. Then Paige threw her head back and laughed, revealing a white slash of teeth, the long curl of her neck, and a fate that Akhil never stood a chance of resisting.

If her mother had been surprised at all to see Amina come home from the airport, she had not let on, frowning briefly at Monica’s car idling in the driveway before walking straight back to the kitchen, opening the fridge, and pulling out the dosa batter and potato masala for lunch.

“So you’re staying?” Kamala ladled white batter into a flat pan, slowly circling it into a thinner and thinner round.

“Yes, for a little while.” Amina sat at the kitchen counter, starving, her bag at her feet. “A few weeks, at least. I just talked to Monica, and she said—”

“Then I will get some beef and some chicken.” Kamala straightened her braid with a sharp tug.

“What?”

“You need to eat, don’t you?”

“Yes. Right.” Amina sipped at her water, as though it could satisfy her roiling gut. The hunger was making it hard to think.

“And then you can photograph the Bukowskys’ wedding, too,” Kamala said.

“What?”

“Julie’s daughter! I told you about it! The wedding this weekend?”

Amina looked at her mother blankly.

“Jenny Bukowsky is one of the nurses in the OR. Her wedding is Saturday and we have to go anyway. You can take some pictures. We’ll buy them for them as a present.” In one smooth move, Kamala flipped the thin pancake onto a plate, adding a fist-sized clump of potatoes in its center and folding it in half. She handed it to Amina. “Coconut or tomato chutney?”

“Yes, please.”

Kamala spooned a generous amount of both onto her plate before turning back to the stove. As she placed the ladle back in the batter, she said, “I canceled the dinner with Anyan. Eat.”