From Twinkle, With Love by Sandhya Menon (9)

Nine

Tuesday, June 9
AP Econ

Dear Jane Campion,

Brij just asked me if he could audition for Dracula! Apparently he saw one of the many, many flyers Skid and Aaron helped us plaster all over the school. Sahil and I were a little worried we’d get a ticket from Principal Harris for littering or something because so many of them fell off (cheap dollar-store tape), but they must be working. Of course I told Brij yes. I even said Maddie would be there and winked at him, and he just stared at me, all openmouthed like he tends to do. He must be so smitten. I mean, I’m still mad at Maddie, but (a) she brought me my favorite Peanut Butter Chocolate Mountain Majesty cupcake from the Cupcake Doctor, and I know she had to wake up an hour early to do that and (b) I can’t let an opportunity for true love pass her by. Look, it’s a choice I’ve made. Maddie with her friends is not the Maddie I know.

Anyway, that’s one-tenth of the people we need to show up so we can have our pick for the remaining four roles. We’re ten percent of the way there! Huzzah! If I wasn’t so nervous about tomorrow I might pay attention in econ. Poor Mr. Newton just can’t compete with auditions for my first-ever paid gig though. Not even if there’s a quiz next week, which I am sure to only squeak by with a C on.

Brij just passed me a note. Wow. I didn’t think he was a note-passing kind of guy.

Muahaha. Now I’ll stick them together and neither Maddie nor Brij will know what hit them. I should consider opening a matchmaking thingy on the side. Ooh, and maybe I could invite Sahil, Skid, and Aaron too. They’ve all been complaining about econ being overwhelming. Misery loves studying econ together.

Love,

Twinkle

Tuesday, June 9
Honors Calculus

Dear Nora Ephron,

You are never going to believe what just happened.

So, I was at my locker getting my books when Sahil stopped by. It’s funny. I never noticed that his locker was so close to mine, but now that there’s less than a month and a half until school gets out, we’re friends who eat together and hang out and stuff. Go figure.

“Hey,” he said, smiling at me. “Meet me here after school and I’ll give you a ride to Red Fox.”

“Sure,” I replied, thinking inside how Sahil wouldn’t forget and ditch me like Maddie had. I mean, it’s Sahil.

And then, almost like my thoughts had conjured her, Maddie walked by with (as usual) Hannah and Victoria.

“Hey, Maddie!” I called, raising my hand to get her attention.

There was a pause after she looked my way, and my heart clenched. She wouldn’t ignore me when we were two feet away, would she? Of course she would, this cynical part of my brain said. She’s Maddie 2.0 around Hannah.

After another millisecond of hesitation, she smiled. “Hey, Twinkle.” I let out a breath as she walked over, trailed (reluctantly) by Hannah. Victoria came, too, but she looked neither pleased nor displeased to see me. Victoria’s teenaged Switzerland, I think.

I kept my eyes on Maddie, ignoring Hannah as completely as she was ignoring Sahil and me. My philosophy was that it was best not to give people an opportunity to act their worst. “Thanks for the cupcake. It was delish.”

“You’re welcome.” Even as she smiled, she darted an uneasy glance at Hannah, who’d sighed loudly and stepped away to talk to Victoria. Sahil shifted beside me, probably not used to being so close to Hannah’s irk. I, on the other hand, was a professional irk-bearer.

“So, I’m studying with Brij and Matthew on Sunday,” I said, closing my locker. Glancing at Hannah, I lowered my voice and waggled my eyebrows. “Do you want to come? I know how much you liked his binder.” I stretched the word “binder” out to about twenty-two syllables.

Maddie gave me a look, like she was plotting something deep and dark. “Yeah … and how’s the planning for the movie coming along? Because, as I recall, there are some perks to doing it for a pretty girl like you. …”

Oh my God. She was teasing me about Neil right in front of Sahil, and she was using those puns to torture me. Tit for tat—you got me, Maddie.

My cheeks fiery hot, I said quickly to Sahil, who was watching us in confusion, “Um. Do you, Skid, and Aaron want to come, too?”

“Sure,” Sahil said. “Thanks. But what perks is Maddie talking about?”

I widened my eyes, and Sahil and I looked at her together. My heart thundered. I wasn’t completely sure I wanted Sahil to know about my centuries-long unrequited crush on his brother.

I mean, yes, there was definitely something between Sahil and me. But I’d already decided that we were just going to be friends. So telling him would be better. So he’d know there was no chance for us. But a small part of me just kept thinking about how, if I told him, there would be no chance for us. That felt too … final. I wasn’t ready.

“Oh, that. I just, um, it’s not—” Maddie started to say, and then Hannah grabbed her by the arm. Maddie shot me a guilty look, but then Hannah said, “Maddie,” and she, Hannah, and Victoria all began to talk, their backs toward me. It was pretty obvious I was being purposely excluded from that conversation.

Don’t get me wrong. I was glad for the interruption. But also? It was super rude. And it made me feel like total crap. Did that guilt cupcake offering mean so little, Maddie? I suppose you’re right back to being Hannah’s doormat at my expense again.

I glanced at Sahil, a hot, liquidy feeling of utter humiliation rolling over me in a nauseating wave. His face was neutral, but his eyes were moving from Maddie to me. Slowly, as they kept talking, his face got steelier and steelier. “They’re just going to … ignore you? It’s been, like, a full minute.”

I shrugged and glanced down at my tattered shoes. My face was purple. I could feel it. “Ah, that’s … that’s okay. It happens.”

Sahil looked at me disbelievingly. “Yes, but it shouldn’t.”

And seeing him looking at me like that, hearing his words—yes, but it shouldn’t—I realized two things: (1) He was absolutely right and (2) So what if Maddie was too scared or intimidated or felt bad to stand up to Hannah? That didn’t mean I couldn’t.

My hands were shaking, but I forced myself to go up and tap Hannah on the shoulder. My heart was pounding so hard, I was sure my shirt was shaking.

She turned, her thin blond eyebrows sky high when she saw it was me.

“It’s not okay to interrupt someone’s conversation like that.” I heard the quiver in my voice, but I kept going. “Also? It’s not okay to roll your eyes or laugh at people. We learned all of that in kindergarten, Hannah. Or at least, we were supposed to.”

Maddie’s face was pale. Victoria’s eyes widened, and she whipped out her cell phone and hid behind it, even though her tall red hair gave her away. I could see Sahil smiling encouragingly in my peripheral vision, and I straightened my shoulders. I had no idea what had come over me. But I was starting to get reeeeally tired. There’s only so much being invisible you can take before you just want to go supernova so no one can ignore you anymore.

(Not that this sweaty, shaking confrontation in front of my locker was exactly going supernova, but still. You had to start somewhere.)

Hannah looked so at ease, it was like she was born confronting people. (She probably was, now that I think about it. I could see her as a wrinkly newborn, demanding that the nurse wash her immediately.) She crossed her arms over her chest, and her fifty-two charm bracelets clinked together. “Why are you so angry, Twinkle?” she asked, smirking.

Because you’ve turned my smart, funny, confident best friend into a total bowl of Jell-O, I wanted to yell. Because you just take and take and take and never stop to think who you’re hurting. Because you’re a spoiled little brat. “Why are you so mean to me?” I asked. “What have I ever done to you?”

She just shook her head and yawned. She actually yawned. “Let’s go,” she said, and began to walk away. Victoria quirked her mouth at me, shrugged, and left.

Maddie stayed for a moment. “You … Don’t, Twinkle.”

I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. “Don’t what?”

“You’re just …You’re not helping.”

We looked at each other. Disappointment burned inside me. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it wasn’t for Maddie to just stay quiet the entire time and then imply I was making things worse.

“Fine,” I said, but my voice was so quiet, I wasn’t sure she heard me. Hitching her backpack up on her shoulders, she walked away.

I looked back at Sahil, my throat sore and tight. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. I would not.

“Wow,” he said, looking a little shell-shocked. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “I think so. That’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like that. Figures that I suck at it.”

“Hey. You don’t suck at it. You were awesome,” Sahil said, grinning.

I looked up at him. “Even though Hannah wasn’t swayed at all?”

“Pssh. Maybe she gets off on making people feel small. I don’t know. But you’re not small, Twinkle.” His eyes got serious, and my breath caught in my throat as I studied his face.

“Thanks,” I whispered. I knew there had to be people milling all around us, but I didn’t see any of them.

After a pause, Sahil nodded, still smiling. “I’ll meet you by your locker after school.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out—apparently my voice had pulled an Amelia Earhart. So instead, I just watched him walk away, my head all muddled and swimming.

Love,

Twinkle

Tuesday, June 9, post-hike at Red Fox Trail
My room

Dear Ava DuVernay,

Um. Whoa.

More soon. A lot more. But for now—whoa.

Love,

Twinkle

Still Tuesday, June 9
Later, still my room

Dear Ava DuVernay,

Okay. I think I can talk about it now. I’m still not even close to being done processing it, but … maybe writing to you will help.

So Sahil and I went off to Red Fox Trail like we’d talked about. He met me at my locker (he was there even before I was—yay!), and we didn’t speak while we drove. The silence was easy; he mainly just played some new music he’d downloaded.

When we got there, Sahil texted Skid and Aaron, but they didn’t respond. So we just began walking, figuring they must be out on the trail, which didn’t have the best reception from all the giant pine trees and stuff. I asked Sahil if he knew what musk thistle looked like so we could keep an eye out for Skid, but he just laughed and said no, he did not.

It was nice. The air was cool and I was perfectly comfortable in my T-shirt and shorts. Then something rumbled.

“Is that thunder?” I asked, frowning up at the sky. Sure enough, these giant black clouds were rolling in, and lightning was glittering in the distance. “We’re pretty far into the trail. I don’t think we can make it back to your car in time.”

“It’s all good,” Sahil said. “We can take cover under the trees.”

I was beginning to panic. Colorado thunderstorms are freakishly fast. There are many things that don’t scare me, but being outside in a lightning storm is not one of them. I have seen way too many charred and splintered husks of trees to be blasé about something like that, let me tell you. “I don’t think so, Sahil.”

“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” Sahil smiled his gentle, calm smile.

“No, you don’t understand,” I said, finding it not a bit calming. “I think standing under a tree is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do in a lightning storm.” The first drops splattered on my skin.

“Serious?” Sahil’s smile faded. “Crap.” The drops turned into streaks of rain. The ssshhhh sound of them hitting the trees intensified.

Another bright flash of lightning split the sky, and right on cue, we both grabbed the other’s hand and began to run just as a huge clap of thunder rumbled the ground under us.

“Um, where are we going, exactly? The car’s too far away, right?” I huffed after a while. I wasn’t even well-endowed, but my boobs hurt from running without a sports bra.

“It is! Let’s just find some other shelter!” Sahil said, shouting over the thunder and deafening rain. “I know that’s at least the right thing to do!”

“Stupid Colorado summer storms!” I yelled back.

“You’re joking.” Sahil glanced at me as we ran. He was barely breathing fast at all, but I felt like I was dying. Well, if you looked at our legs, mine were about half the size of his stilt-like numbers. It was no wonder. “That’s one of my favorite things about this place!”

“Let’s take it down a notch, please,” I panted, holding my side, and Sahil immediately slowed to what for him was a leisurely pace and for me was still a brisk walk. “I like storms when I’m inside and drinking chai and reading a book or watching a movie. Not when I’m apt to be the latest lightning victim. Although I did read once that this guy got zapped by lightning and when he woke up, he could suddenly paint and speak five different languages he couldn’t speak before. That’s the only way this will be okay.”

Sahil laughed and pointed with his free hand. “Hey, a cabin! Perfect!”

I looked at it through the needles of rain and then at Sahil. “Um. Doesn’t that remind you of the cabin in any number of horror movies?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Sahil countered. “Especially wet beggars.”

He had a point there.

The cabin was old and the floor was full of pine needles and the walls were full of spiders’ webs and it smelled like green, sludgy stuff, but at least if we stayed in the center, away from the holes in the roof, we would be dry. And I was fairly sure we were safer in it than out.

Sahil closed the crooked door behind us and blinked in the dim light. I could barely see him. I looked down at myself—and almost died. No. No. I was wearing a white T-shirt … which was now soaked through. My tattered old bra, the one I’d had since eighth grade, was on display. Immediately, I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to act casual.

Sahil was poking around. “Just looking for a lantern or something,” he explained. “It would be nice if we could see.”

“What? Nah,” I said with a flick of my wrist while still keeping my arms locked firmly around my torso. “This is fine. It’s a nice rest for my eyeballs anyway. I mean, they’re always on, you know?”

I thought Sahil was giving me a weird look, but I couldn’t be sure. “Um, okay,” he said, coming to stand with me in the center.

A sudden wind gusted through the single open window (the glass was completely missing), and I shivered.

It didn’t even seem like Sahil thought about it; he just put his arms around me. I froze again, but this time it was a totally different kind of freeze. “Are you cold?” he asked, rubbing his big, warm hands up and down my arms. Goose bumps sprouted immediately.

I tried to think about Neil in that moment. I did. The slight problem was, all I knew about Neil was that he had nice abs and calves. And all I knew about N was that he had questionable poetry skills (though of course I’d never tell him that) and favored an air of mystery. But Sahil? He made me laugh. I looked at things differently because of him. He supported me as an artist. How was Neil supposed to compete with that?

Oops, Sahil had asked me a question. “Um, yep,” I said, my voice all high and squeaky as I tried to remember to breathe. I don’t think he noticed, though, because he didn’t say anything. “I just hope this cabin doesn’t flood. That would be bad.”

“Very bad,” he said softly. “I can’t swim.”

I laughed a little. “You can’t? But Neil’s a swimming superstar.”

Sahil’s hands stilled and then dropped; his body tensed. “Yeah,” he said, his voice hard. “He is, not me.”

I looked up at Sahil. His eyes were glowing in the dim light, a drop of water on his thick eyelashes. The same thick eyelashes I’d always admired on Neil. “What’s that about?”

His face was closed off now. “What?”

I studied him carefully. “You don’t … you don’t like talking about your brother?”

A muscle in his jaw jumped as he looked somewhere over my head. He looked down at me a moment later. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry, though. I didn’t mean to bring that here.”

I shook my head and wrapped my arms around myself, shivering a little. “Don’t be sorry.”

“It’s just …” He sighed. “I’ve always been compared to him. It probably happens with all siblings, but it’s worse when you’re a twin, I think. And it really sucks when your twin is a rock star and you’re just an average nothing.”

“You’re not an average nothing,” I said vehemently.

He shrugged.

“No, look. Neil’s the kind of person who maybe ends up on the Fortune 500 list by the time he’s thirty. But you’re the kind of person I’d want holding my hand in the hospital if my grandmother was sick. And you tell me, which one’s more meaningful?” As I said the words, I understood how true they were. I’d trust Sahil with anything.

He met my eye and gazed at me for a long moment, his eyes softening bit by bit. “Thanks, T,” he whispered.

Outside, the thunder rumbled and lightning cracked into something. A tree, I think. I reveled in our cleverness at having come in here. Well, I sorta reveled. My brain was pretty tied up with other matters, to be honest. Like how I’d just gotten Sahil’s eyes to soften. How I seemed to be able to get to him just like he got to me. How he was still standing extremely close, and I didn’t know whether that was for warmth or … other reasons.

Smiling, I said in a slightly trembling voice, “I think I just heard a tree get smoked. Aren’t you glad we’re not out there?”

He didn’t return my smile. His eyes were intense, and he was studying my face. “I’m glad I’m here with you,” he said, coming closer.

His body heat was making it hard to think. I was beginning to lose sight of why, exactly, this was a bad idea. I should’ve thought of all the reasons kissing Sahil would be a bad thing, not the least of which is one of Dadi’s maxims: Desire has brought great women to their doom as surely as the Germanic leader Odoacer brought Rome to its knees. (It’s not very pithy—I mean, you couldn’t embroider it on a pillow or anything—but she swears it’s true.)

All I thought about, though, was Sahil’s eyes. How kind and funny and talented he is. How he lets me sit with him at lunch now. And so I leaned in when I should’ve leaned away. And I kissed him.

My first-ever kiss, and it takes place in the middle of a freaking thunderstorm, in a deserted cabin. And not an ax murderer in sight. How romantic is that? Nora Ephron couldn’t have planned it better. And all those things they say in romance novels about how your heart beats faster and your knees get wobbly and the boy’s stubble against your chin is the most delicious sensation ever? All of that is 100 percent true.

I sank into that kiss. It was perfect.

And it can never happen again.

Because in case you missed it, shiny, future Twinkle dates Neil. Neil, not Sahil. Maybe my heart didn’t care about that, but my brain did. My brain remembered just how long I’d been ignored and belittled. It remembered how badly I wanted to break free. And it knew my time to shine, to do what I was meant to do in this world, was just around the corner.

For some reason, though, when it came to Sahil, it was getting really hard for me to hold on to what my brain was saying. Something was happening between us, something very real, and it was getting more difficult to ignore. But maybe until I figured it out—whatever “it” might be—I should be more careful.

So as soon as we pulled apart for breath, I put a hand up to my mouth and stepped back, my eyes wide. “Whoa.”

“Are you okay?” Sahil asked, frowning slightly. I looked at his reddened mouth and felt my cheeks grow warm. I did that. Me, Miss Wallflower. “Was that … okay?”

Oh God. Now he thought I was reacting like that because he was a bad kisser. Which was so not the case it was almost funny. “N-no! I mean, yes!” I corrected when I saw his face fall. “Sahil, you’re … you’re a good kisser.”

“You mean that?” His face lit up so much, the cabin almost brightened. He took a step closer to me. “Then … why …?”

I opened my mouth to say, But … there’s something you should know. I have a secret admirer, and it’s probably your brother. By the way, I want to date him. Only how could I say that to Sahil now that my heart and my brain were warring? And after he’d told me about Neil and their sibling rivalry?

So I chose another, smaller truth. “We work together. And if we … do this … it might complicate things.”

“I can keep things professional.”

I took a deep breath as I looked into his clear brown eyes. It would be so easy to say yes. It would be so easy to be with Sahil. “I’m sorry,” I said instead, the words physically hurting me like they had sharp edges.

He studied my face for a long second and then nodded. “So … are you saying we can go out after Midsummer Night?” He grinned mischievously.

I laughed and pushed his chest, avoiding an answer.

Sahil’s phone beeped in his pocket. “Huh. I must have reception again.” He fished it out and looked at the screen. “It’s Skid and Aaron. ‘Did you see the news? Apparently big storm on the way.’ They want to postpone so no one gets drenched.”

We looked at each other, our cold, wet clothes clinging to us, our hair dripping, and then burst out laughing.

Sahil typed back a response and slipped the phone back in his pocket. “It would’ve helped if they’d sent that text about an hour ago.”

“Ah, well. Next time we’ll know to check the weather before we come.”

Sahil smiled a half smile that made my heart stutter. “I enjoyed being stuck here with you, though. I’d do it again.”

I bit my lip. “So would I.”

That’s when I realized the truth: I’d get stuck with Sahil in a cabin any day of the week, anytime. I’d even get stuck with Sahil in an econ class because I like being with him so much. I’d choose spending time with him over peanut butter chocolate ice cream. And over the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mountain Majesty cupcake.

So where the heck does that leave me with Neil?

At least I’ve managed to put Sahil off for now. I think what I need to do is meet up with N. See how I feel. Maybe?

Love,

Twinkle