“Well, then—”
“Priti.”
She looks up, holding my gaze for only a moment before looking away. “I’m never going to forgive her for it, if it makes you feel better,” she mumbles.
I take a deep breath, trying to process this information. It wasn’t Flávia. It wasn’t Flávia. It wasn’t Flávia.
It was my sister.
“How could you … why would you … tell her? That’s not your right.”
Priti furrows her eyebrows together and leans away from me, like I’ve said something she wasn’t expecting. “How was I supposed to keep that to myself?”
“So you just had to go and give your best friend a piece of gossip about me? Is that what it was?”
Priti scoffs. “Of course not. But … you saw what was happening here. The tension, you being upset, Ammu being upset, Abbu being upset, nobody ever talking about it. It was all driving me insane. I had to talk to someone and it couldn’t be you or them. It’s a taboo subject. I couldn’t just keep it all bottled up inside.”
“You had no right to tell her. And then to lie about it, to pretend it was Flávia—”
“Look, I’m sorry. I know. I was upset and I knew you would be mad and I thought if you could just believe it was Flávia for a little while at least … you wouldn’t be so mad. I thought I could sort it out, get Ali to fix it.”
But her words barely register in my head. All this time I suspected Flávia, and my sister was lying straight to my face. She knew exactly what was going on and she was letting Flávia take the blame for it.
“I can’t believe you hate Flávia that much. That you would let me hate her for nothing.”
Priti frowns. “That’s not …” she shakes her head, her eyes settling into a glare. “You really don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you?”
I blink. “What?”
“You’re so obsessed with this girl who doesn’t even care that you got outed to the entire school. You don’t even care about what’s been happening here. With us. With me. Ali and I have been on the rocks for weeks. Weeks. And of course I couldn’t tell you about it because oh no, poor Nishat is dealing with so much. We must all walk on eggshells around her, in case she gets too upset. And Nanu is sick, which you would know if you actually bothered to keep up with her on Skype like you used to before you got too smitten with some girl who doesn’t even care about you. Who was obviously just using you to win this stupid business competition.”
“She wasn’t …” The words get stuck in my throat. Not that Priti is listening anyway. She has sprung up and is pacing around the room, her hands on her hips. She looks strikingly similar to Ammu.
“You want to know something? Ammu and Abbu are doing everything they can. They have been ever since we got here, but you can’t see it or appreciate it. They may have messed up after you came out to them, but they just want to be able to look people in the eye when they go back to Bangladesh. Is that so, so wrong?”
There are tears pricking at my eyes, and despite me trying my best to stifle them, they somehow manage to sneak out until Priti blurs in front of me. My little sister doesn’t sound like my little sister at all.
When she stops, turns, and sees me rubbing at my eyes, I expect her to come to her senses. That’s how it usually goes with us: we get angry, we say things we don’t mean, but then we come back to ourselves. Go back to our rhythm. To being sisters who are there for each other no matter what.
But Priti recoils from me, like my tears are something heinous. Before I know it, my bedroom door is slamming shut behind her.
25
PRITI CATCHES THE EARLY BUS THE NEXT MORNING. OR SO Ammu tells me, when I stumble down the stairs. I’m not sure how to feel about it. If anyone should be angry, it should be me, for how she lied to me.
“Ammu,” I say, at the edge of the doorway, ten minutes before my bus.
She looks up and catches my eye, a frown on her lips. We’ve gone back to barely speaking a word to each other since I was outed to the whole school.
I blink back the tears prickling behind my eyes and swallow the lump in my throat.
“Is Nanu sick?” I manage to get out.
The look on Ammu’s face, stricken and sad, makes me instantly regret saying anything.
“She’s … she’ll be okay.”
“So she isn’t now? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Who told you?”
“Priti …”
Ammu shakes her head. “Your sister spends a little too much time eavesdropping when she should be studying for her exams.”
“There are more important things than exams, Ammu.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to protest, but instead she nods slowly. “I know.” She looks at me with something that resembles a smile, something that softens her face, and says, “Don’t worry about your Nanu. Or … about your sister. Go, or you’ll miss your bus.”
But I can’t help the worry that floods my brain about both Nanu and Priti. How have so many things been happening around me and I haven’t even noticed?
When Flávia catches my eye by the lockers I know exactly how. Priti is right. I’ve been so caught up with Flávia and the competition and everything else that I’ve forgotten to pay attention to the important things.
But as Flávia approaches me with a brown shopping bag clutched in her hand, I’m not sure I regret any of it.
“This is for you,” she says as she hands me the bag. Our fingers brush as she does it. I try to tell my body to shut up, to not react, but obviously—obviously—my heart isn’t very good at listening to me. It beats a million miles a minute.
“What is it?”
“Open it.” She nods encouragingly.
A furled white poster paper sticks out of the top of the bag. I pull it out and unroll it—and almost gasp aloud.
It’s a banner.
It has NISHAT’S MEHNDI written in colorful letters in the middle, and below it even has some words in Bengali script. It’s carefully done so that it looks sharp and geometrical—not like the rounded and soft letters that my Bengali handwriting usually is.
The background is a mishmash of bright colors, and on one side there’s a drawing of joined hands with henna winding down the palms.
It’s far better than anything I could ever have done.
There’s something lodged in my throat. I think it’s my heart.
“This is beautiful,” I breathe.
Flávia just shrugs like it’s no big deal. It’s definitely a big deal. It’s a huge deal.
Trying not to steal too many glances at Flávia, I slip the banner into my locker. When I close my locker though, we catch each other’s eye. She smiles, dimples and all, and I can’t help the grin that spreads out across my lips too.
“So, um.” She brushes back a curl that’s fallen in front of her eyes. “Yesterday with Chyna … I’m sorry about that. Her parents are away a lot so she comes over to ours or my dad’s, but …” She shakes her head like she’s not sure if she wants to finish that thought. “Do you … want to come over this weekend? We could … work on our French homework?”