Read an Excerpt
1
Even after summer break, Orin High still smells of damp clothes left too long in the washer. The sweat from so many fourteen- to eighteen-year-olds must be baked into the ancient brick building and its many moldy crevices and dusty corners. But mixing with that musty cloth smell is the scent of softeners, of sloppy joes and baked cinnamon bread, of conversations and laughter, of rushing footsteps and slamming locker doors.
So, it’s not all bad. At least that’s what I tell myself. And as I take in the quiet of the last week of summer vacation, I can almost believe it. Stillness pervades every hallway, every bathroom, every classroom; even the desks and chairs quiet, holding their breaths.
It’s the last day to register for junior year and I managed to make it. Barely. The office secretary wasn’t too happy, judging from her frequent glances at the clock, whose minute hand hovered at three minutes to three. But I came in right before the office closed for a reason. All the registrants were done and gone.
I take a deep breath and start toward the exit to the parking lot.
It wasn’t always like this. I never used to dread the start of the school year. True, elementary school was hell—kids could be particularly brutal to newly minted orphans adopted and brought to Orin by their aunts. But the bullying subsided in middle school after I ceased to remain interesting, when I displayed none of the characteristics of what they thought a killer’s daughter should have, when I faded into the grimy school walls and became invisible. By the time high school came around, my latent nerdiness had kicked in and I fell in love with organic chemistry and calculus, much to my cousin and fellow nerd Mimi’s joy and my best friend Krista’s annoyance.
But things changed last fall, the start of my sophomore year, when the invisibility cloak fell off and I was recognized again. And the shadows returned, solidifying into a new threat, a new bully.
I shake off that familiar prickling of dread and push open the front doors to walk onto the school’s sprawling portico, where the soft glow of the midafternoon August sun turns the tiles a sparkling white. The oaks and maples scattered around the schoolyard remain brilliant green against the smooth blue cloudless expanse of sky, but look closely and you can see a tinge of orange, the foreshadowing of autumn.
Fall is on its way to southeastern Michigan. It’s my cousin Mimi’s favorite season and therefore mine, too. My fingers tingle, anticipating the feel of the smooth, velvety leaves turned crinkly and multicolored by a lack of chlorophyll. I imagine the satisfying bounce of throwing myself into a pile of dead foliage, scattering it, creating chaos. Of laughing with Mimi for hours over cider and Bollywood gossip.
But this fall will be different. Because she, my once best friend, my rock, the reason I could outrun the shadows from my past, has betrayed me to those shadows instead.
I spot her leaning against an oak, her pink halter top and faded denim shorts visible all the way across the parking lot. Looking at us, no one would think we’re related. Her skin is several shades lighter than my dark brown, and her features, her aquiline nose and wide forehead, take after her white dad. Her thick black hair and dark eyes, though, are as Indian as mine.
Those eyes fall on me and she straightens. I start to lift my hand, hoping to wave, hoping she’ll wave back. Hoping the widening distance between us in the last several months suddenly vanishes, like her coldness was nothing but my imagination.
But then her gaze shifts to something behind me.
My spine stiffens with the instinctive reaction of a hunted animal. I made a mistake; the school wasn’t as empty as I thought. And I know who it is before I turn and meet baby blue eyes narrowing with derision, the minuscule curl of lips painted a deep scarlet.
Beth Grant. She’s a senior and Mimi’s classmate and the unquestioned leader of Orin High’s popular clique. I chose the last possible minute before registration closed so I could avoid her, and yet she still managed to find me.
She allows the large front doors to swing shut behind her and strolls across the portico. Each click of her heels tightens the vise around my chest, my heart thudding with the same question I’ve asked myself a gazillion times. Why the hell did she target me? She displaced me as Mimi’s best friend last year and decided to salt the earth behind her, judging from the way Mimi froze me out. She’s not just a frontrunner in the race for Mimi’s affections—she’s won the damn thing and should fear no competition from me.
I edge toward the banister, creating a wide berth for her to pass, and lower my eyes, shame burning fire across my cheekbones, hating my fear. My breath hitches, counting the seconds as she lingers beside me. Then she swishes past, leaving the air scented with vanilla but not enough to muffle the tinge of something sharp and metallic.
I look up. Sunlight glints gold on her hair, turning blond strands into a fiery tiara. Turning her into a queen. She has everything: a castle for a home, reigning power at school—and my cousin’s undivided devotion, judging from the way Mimi hurries toward her.
I bet it’d be fun to be Beth Grant, Mimi told me months before she slid into Beth’s circle. To be taken care of and waited on hand and foot. To have all the money in the world and never have to worry about stuff like college and a job and shit.
I’ll take care of you, I tried telling Mimi, but she already had that look in her eye. That determined look she gets before a track competition she desperately wants to win.
Beth’s footsteps change from the clicking of heels on concrete to the muffled scrape on grass. Then they fade into the parking lot and the roar of an engine.
I stare after her blue Porsche with a bitter rage that’s as intense as it is helpless. I know bullies and I know what it feels like to be bullied. After all, I was exposed to my first dose at the age of eight. They punched me, knocked me down, called me a freak and a psycho.
But what Beth did destroyed me. When she lit my mom’s candles—the candles that shattered my life—and made me eight again, watching my mom turn into a monster.
Dark wisps of smoke creep into the corners of my vision, veiling the sunlight, filling my nose with an acrid scent. And above it rises the sound of Beth laughing as she recorded my meltdown on her phone while Mimi stood by, watching me throw up all over the pristine white carpet in Beth’s house.
Killer, killer.
I shake off the memory, but the fact lingers, making my head spin: Beth has that video. It’s all she needs to remind everyone of who I am, who my mother was—the killer who took her husband’s life. Then it’ll be back to square one. It’ll be like when I was in elementary school.
But Mimi won’t be there to fight for me this time.
She betrayed my secrets to Beth. She stole my mom’s candles and showed them to her new best friend.
Why did you do that? I screamed at her after waking up in a pool of my own vomit. You knew what I went through. You promised you’d protect me! But she didn’t care. Like she didn’t care when she got into Beth’s car just now and drove away without another glance at me.
The grass blurs under my feet, changes to tar, and then I’m on my bike, my face wet with tears.
I try to tell myself I’m paranoid, but the words fall flat. What else did Mimi tell Beth about me, about my past, that made Beth decide to come after me? And what if she doesn’t stop?
Why would Beth record me if she wasn’t going to show someone—everyone?
I can’t leave Orin and run away. Where can I go? My house in Detroit, once filled with Mom and Dad’s laughter, is now an empty shell, occupied by strangers. The only family I have left is my aunt and cousin.
Auntie . . .
She has stayed by my side for eight years, cried with me when the nightmares came, held my hand through every therapy session. You’re my daughter, honey, just like Mimi. We’re your family, and we’ll always be there for you.
I can’t leave her. I can’t lose her.
I blink hard, then wipe my face on my sleeve. For Mimi, always is over. If Beth wants to ruin my life, Mimi won’t do anything to stop her.
“That’s bullshit, girl.”
Krista’s voice practically echoes in Peace & Love, the New Age shop where she works. I glance around for disapproving frowns or reprimands. Luckily, the only customer is a woman in her midtwenties who raises her brow at my best friend, then returns to examining the crystal collections in a display case. The store is wedged in between a bank and a pharmacy on the busiest street in downtown Orin. Narrow windows, crisscrossed with multicolored lights, flank an antique glass door, making it the quaintest place in town.
“I get why you’re nervous. Everyone thinks Beth is perfect, but she’s a bully. If Mimi is hanging around with her . . .” Worry darkens Krista’s hazel green eyes, turning them the color of one of the beads on her rainbow necklace.
Krista and I are polar opposites: she’s sociable and extroverted, practically in every club at school and an ace athlete. I’m a total nerd who’d rather spend her time watching documentaries on obscure scientific subjects. Most people can’t make sense of our friendship. I can’t, either. I’m just glad Krista’s there to keep my shadows away. She knows about my mom, about the real reason I came to Orin. And she knew that before she walked up to me at the dojo during our Tae Kwon Do class during freshman year and invited me to her house where “a bunch of people are gonna binge on pizza and watch reruns of Star Wars.”
Krista sighs, then drops the price scanner she’s holding and wraps me in a warm embrace. “Let me make us some tea. We need fuel to think this over.” Tea is her obsession; she drinks it so much, I have no idea how she doesn’t have to pee twenty-four seven.
While she gets busy boiling water and rooting in the spice cabinet for hibiscus and rosehip, her favorites, I let my gaze wander over the tiny kitchenette in the back of the store. Next to the spices are tall cabinets stocked with candles, their smell almost cloying. Vanilla and eucalyptus, jasmine and rose. Along with another familiar scent. Sandalwood.
My chest squeezes painfully.
Sandalwood was Mom’s favorite incense. She used it for every puja, every festival. The scent from our last Diwali eight years ago lingers in my mind: incense sticks and oil-soaked cotton wicks in little earthen pots, which Mom placed along the wraparound veranda of our two-story colonial. At night, they formed rows of tiny magical flickering flames. Dad helped me light sparklers, and we made flaming patterns in the darkness.
I close my eyes, feeling the thin metal end of the sparkler between my fingers. Look, Daddy. I can make a star. Just like the ones in the sky.
He lifted me up high on his shoulders. Of course you can, princess.
I turn away from the cabinets. I was doing so well—I tapered off my therapy sessions, (almost) forgot my past. But ever since that damned video, I’ve remembered more things about Mom, images that keep intruding, and I wish it’d just stop.
Drawing myself into a tighter ball in the window seat, I stare outside. This window in the store’s kitchenette overlooks a little kiddie park. A little boy of about three stomps around the splash pad, giggling as the spray hits him on his bare stomach. A young woman darts toward the boy, lifting an imperious finger, her face twisted in a scowl. It’s a stranger, a white woman with shoulder-length blond hair, but the familiarity of that scowl stirs a memory.
An image of Mom’s expression when Daddy tried to stop her rituals. When she glared at him through the smoke from the circle of candles surrounding her.
When she insisted on going for a drive—just the two of us, Ramesh. I’ll drive.
When the sordid information was all over front pages of the newspapers and the local channels—
Case of murder suicide shocks the Indian American community in Detroit. Local investigators found evidence indicating the woman made no attempt to apply the brakes before the vehicle hit the guardrail at eighty miles an hour. She was pronounced dead at the hospital; the passenger, her husband, was pronounced dead at the scene after being thrown from the car. His seatbelt had been cut through with a sharp instrument.
Shadowy wisps invade my vision again, veiling the families, the park, smothering the sunlight. A heaviness clamps around my chest and I turn away.
