“I got up to go to the bathroom,” her mom said, shaking her head. “I’m just so glad I did.”
“Me too,” Pinky’s dad said, putting one arm around her mom and another around Pinky. “Do you know what caused the fire?”
The fireman nodded. “One of the other guys found what looked like a few kerosene lanterns in there. Someone must’ve forgotten to turn them off when they left. There was also some debris that looked like bottles of alcohol.” His eyes brushed past Dolly and settled for just a moment on Pinky, on her wildly colored hair and her eyebrow piercing. Dolly’s mom and dad gasped softly, but Pinky’s parents were still. Smoothly, the fireman turned to look back at her dad. “I’d advise against lighting fires in enclosed spaces like that next time. Especially if there’s any alcohol around. Alcohol, as you probably know, is highly flammable, as is kerosene.”
Her dad opened his mouth, but her mom got there first. “Of course it’s flammable! We would never do something as irresponsible as lighting a fire in a wooden barn!” Before the fireman could respond, she rounded on Pinky, her eyes flashing. “What do you know about this?”
Pinky stared at her, her mouth dropping open. “What? Me? I don’t know anything!”
“Do you think I’m stupid, Priyanka?”
Pinky heard Dolly begin to speak. “But it’s not—it’s—”
Pinky’s mom spoke right over Dolly. “Drinking alcohol, lighting fires, sneaking out at night—do you recognize this song?”
“Now, honey,” Pinky’s dad said, “let’s give Pinky a minute to speak for herself.”
“Speak for herself?” her mom said, still glaring at her. Her silk pajama bottoms flapped in the stiff breeze, and her hair blew behind her in a thick black stream. “How can you possibly defend yourself from something like this? What were you thinking?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Pinky said, finally getting over her shock and feeling a wave of hot anger engulf her. “Why am I always at the top of your suspect list?”
Her mom barked a laugh. “Are you joking? How many times have we caught you and your delinquent boyfriends sneaking alcohol or vandalizing something or doing precisely whatever it is we’ve told you not to do, over and over again?”
Pinky opened her mouth and closed it again. The ghosts of boyfriends past hovered between her and her parents, all of them jostling for space.
“So?” her mom said. “Which one of the summer boys was it? Whose parents do we need to go speak with about this?” She thrust her hand at the charred remains of the barn.
“No one! I’m not—” Studying the hard, angry lines of her mom’s face, Pinky felt a monstrous indignation swell within her. This was so ridiculously unfair. Her mom hadn’t even glanced at anyone else before immediately sentencing Pinky. There were two teenagers in this house.
Pinky looked at Dolly, who stood huddled into her dad’s side, her big hazel eyes wide and scared, and then turned back to her mother. “I didn’t do this, and I definitely wasn’t drinking out here with some random summer boy—”
“Sure,” her mom said. “And you expect us to believe that.”
“I don’t care if you believe it because it’s true!” Pinky said, her mouth forming the words before her brain had a chance to react. As if from a great distance, she heard herself add, “It couldn’t have been me out here with a boy because—because I already have a boyfriend! And he’s… he’s nothing like any of the boys I’ve dated before! He’d never do something like this!”
Her dad looked surprised, but her mom’s expression didn’t change. Finally, shaking her head, her mom turned on her heel and stalked off. Pinky stood staring after her. After a long moment, her dad kissed the side of her head. “I’ll go talk to her,” he said quietly.
Pinky looked into his eyes. “What’s the point?” she said, raising her chin. “She’ll just think whatever she wants to think, and what she wants to think is the worst of me.”
“I’m going to try,” her dad said. “Go back to bed, okay?”
Pinky watched him walk away.
Someone took her hand. “I’m going to fix this,” Dolly said, her eyes feverish and bright when Pinky looked over at her. Meera Mausi and Abe were walking out of the backyard, talking to the cute firefighter. “Okay? I’ll fix it.”
Pinky frowned. “Fix what? What are you talking about?”
Dolly just looked at her, the sparkly straps of her Hello Kitty pajamas glittering in the near dark. “Don’t worry about it.” Then she strode after her parents, a determined set to her shoulders.
* * *
Pinky couldn’t sleep. She’d let herself in via the back door, and as she walked down the hallway to her room, she’d heard Dolly and her parents murmuring in Dolly’s room. She’d been super tempted to stop and eavesdrop, but she’d made herself walk into her bedroom and close the door instead. What was going on? And why had Dolly said she’d fix everything? What did that even mean?
As she lay gazing at the ceiling, the morning sun lightening the sky bit by bit, she couldn’t stop thinking of the way her mom had looked at her, eyes blazing, voice full of judgment and anger. Judging her without even giving her a chance. Her mom’s voice echoed in her ears. How many times have we caught you and your delinquent boyfriends sneaking alcohol or vandalizing something or doing precisely whatever it is we’ve told you not to do, over and over again?
And Pinky’s response: I already have a boyfriend! He’d never do something like this!
Okay, maybe the “boyfriend” part wasn’t true in the Webster’s Dictionary sense, but what was she supposed to have said? Her mom was totally haranguing her and trying to make her feel guilty for something she hadn’t even done.
And now her mom and dad would ask if she’d really meant what she said about her boyfriend and she’d have to tell them she just made it up. God, she’d feel like such a loser. Who made up a boyfriend? It would just convince her mom that she was a liar and a cheat, someone totally capable of burning down a barn.
Pinky balled her fists in frustration and turned on her side, her eyes falling on the phone on her nightstand. If only there were some kind of a rent-a-boyfriend app she could use, just for this summer. Just imagining her mom’s face if she paraded around some stand-up guy in a respectable striped polo shirt who casually talked about how he was applying to Princeton—
Out of nowhere, an image of Samir Jha popped into her head. Pinky blinked.
Near perfect to the point of being a robot, not a single anti-establishment bone in his body, dressed like a J.Crew catalog, wanted to apply to Harvard, handsome in that conventional, square jaw, made-Pinky-yawn way… She sat up in bed, her pulse pounding. Sure, all of those things sounded mind-numbingly boring. But what made Pinky want to fall into a dreamless stupor was exactly what impressed her mother. Ash had said Samir was knocking around DC, dragging his feet about going back home. He was aimless and internship-less.
And Pinky was in need of a boyfriend. A perfect summer boyfriend.