My senior year of high school would start the next week and Dev was leaving the next morning. I couldn’t have been more relieved to see him go. Even better, the Bashir’s mosque was having a special religious celebration and the whole family was attending, so I wouldn’t have to endure another dinner invisible to him, like a ghost.

I was used to staying behind on these occasions. I was an outsider and, as Annika explained to me, it would cause a huge stir if “some white girl showed up.”

I decided to go through my closet and cobble together some outfits for the new school year. Before leaving, Annika stopped in my room. She was wearing a beautiful Indian sari made of turquoise silk, and she was holding what appeared to be another sari in her hands.

“Oh wow, that’s gorgeous!” I gushed. She had lost her early teen pudginess and was blossoming into a lovely woman. No doubt Stephen Pearsal was still drooling over her.

“Mom got it from New Delhi last month.” She draped the other sari across my bed. It was light pink and fringed with matching crystals. It was stunning.

“Here, she has this one made for you…but she’ll tell you she bought it by mistake and can’t return it.”

I ran my fingers over the delicate silk. The shimmering silver detail was impressive. It would be the nicest piece of clothing I owned.

“Really? Wow. That’s…so nice. I need to go thank her.”

“You’ll have to do it later. They’re in the car waiting for me.”

After Annika left, I carefully held the sari up to my body. In the mirror, I could see that Mrs. Bashir knew what she was doing when she picked this color. The light pink matched the rose in my cheeks, and my pale skin didn’t look washed out all, but dewy and fresh.

What the hell. I pulled off my jeans and t-shirt and draped the sari over my shoulders. The classic Indian dress couldn’t disguise my ethnicity, but I somehow felt like I belonged in it. I threw my t-shirt and jeans into the laundry basket. Might as well wear this while finishing the laundry. Where else am I going to wear it? Dairy Queen?

 

Downstairs in the laundry room—which was larger and nicer than any room in my trailer back home—I felt a little overdressed in the silk sari while drizzling fabric softener into the washer, but it felt nice to have the run of the house for a few hours prancing around, feeling like an Indian princess.

Well, the princess who not invited to the ball anyway.

I noticed that the weekly maid service hadn’t put away a few stacks of clean laundry, so while waiting for my cycle to finish, I started distributing them around the house. The last stack was dark grey towels—definitely not from inside the house. Mrs. Bashir’s bathrooms were all meticulously decorated in browns, greens and blues.

Then it dawned on me: these must belong to Dev’s room above the garage. I grabbed them and trudged over. I hadn’t seen that room since it was converted from storage space years ago, and I was curious to take a peek in the Dark Master’s Lair.

 

I climbed the stairs to his door and knocked, just in case, but I knew he was with his family and they wouldn’t be back for a while. When no one answered, I gathered my courage and entered half expecting to find animal sacrifices or Satanic pentagrams painted on the walls.

Instead I was hit was faint traces of his cologne reminding me that he was probably naked in there just hours before. I silently reprimanded myself for lingering on that thought for too long and then clicked on the lights. I knew then that dark grey towels definitely belonged to him; everything inside was various shades of grey, black and cold steel…well-suited to his personality.

The room was meticulously clean and sparsely decorated. A desk with his laptop sat on one side of the room and a bookshelf filled the other wall, the top shelf displaying his awards and accomplishments from high school: captain of the debate team, honors society, first place in track and field. A guitar leaned against the side of his bed.

I didn’t know he played...

And then I walked over to his bed and saw something odd on his bedside table. It was a Texas Monthly magazine…and opened to my article.

He was reading it? How strange. I didn’t know what to make of it.

I set down the towels on his bed and then noticed that next to the magazine was an opened book of Indian Sufi poetry.

Dev reads poetry?

It was like finding out that Hitler liked kittens and ponies, and it surprised me even more than the magazine. I couldn’t resist a peek, so I picked up the book and read the open page.

 

After sleep, she is languor.

The house exudes her fragrance.

She adorns it

when she appears in the morning,

As if her anklets and ivory

were entwined around a calotrope

stopping the water's flow

in the bed of a wadi,

The white gleam of her teeth,

her immoderate laugh,

almost to the unhearing

speak secrets.

She is the cure, she the disease...

 

I was lost in the seductive poem when...

…the door opened.

And he was there.

Oh crap.

I still had the book in my hand, standing near the stack of towels on his bed. Dev was dressed in a dark grey suit (of course) which fit him perfectly and in a way most men would envy. What must he be thinking, catching me in his room, dressed in a silk sari and reading his Indian poetry books?

He must think I’m some wackjob.

We stared at each other for a moment, his hand still on the doorknob, frozen, in what must have been shock to see me rifling through his sacred things.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked in a voice that sounded almost vulnerable.

Is he…nervous?

I put the book down quickly and took a few steps away from his bed in an attempt to show respect for his private things. Of course it was too late for that.

“I was just bringing up your bath towels. I’m sorry for looking at your book. I didn’t mean to touch anything.” My heart was pounding. Why did he always make me feel like I didn’t belong?

He crossed the room and set his car keys onto his desk. Without looking at me, he took off his suit jacket and hung it over the desk chair. I caught a small whiff of his cologne. I hated that I liked it so much.

“I would appreciate it from now on if you wouldn’t come in here,” he said, his tone now serious, irritated.

Feeling the blood return to my limbs, I rushed toward the door. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

Just before I could make my escape, he spoke again.

“Wait—Scarlett. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

I stopped, one foot out the door. Did I hear him right? He didn’t mean to be rude? Being rude was his favorite pastime.

I turned around. His face was surprisingly apologetic, but there was a deafening and awkward silence between us. As usual, I had to fill it.

“I was just trying to help with the laundry. I should have left it outside the door,” I explained, not sure how to take his sudden change of demeanor.

His eyes grazed over the sari. I must have looked like an idiot prancing around doing housework in it.

“That looks nice on you.”

Uh, what? Did he just compliment me? Is he on drugs?

“Your mom gave it to me. It was a gift. From her.” I stammered, making sure it was clear to him that I did not take it from her closet.

“It suits you.”

If the lighting weren’t so bad, I would swear he smiled at me. I was utterly confused by his change of disposition, and my mind tried to make sense of it. Is he trying to have a conversation with me? Or does he want to make me feel at ease right before he kills me and buries me under the oak tree in the backyard?

“I was just trying it on, to see if it fit. I mean, I wasn’t going to wear it all night or anything.”

He took two steps toward me and I fought the urge to turn and run. What was his angle here?

“You should wear dresses more often.” He seemed to blush after saying this. I could only just stare. Maybe I was the one on drugs and this was a hallucination.

He continued. “I read your article. I supposed you noticed I had it by the bed.”

“Oh?” I lied.

“It’s good. You’re a good writer, Scarlett.”

I was dumbfounded. He kept going.

“Annika told me that you’re planning to go to college and study writing.”

Uh, really? I’ve spent hours with you every day for weeks and you just now act interested in my life?

“If I can get enough scholarship money. Some of us have to struggle to go to college.”

“Well, I think you’re a fighter.”

I squinted at him. “You do?”

“You put up with me for five weeks, right?” He smiled sincerely, shyly. For the first time I felt I was talking to a human being…with a heart. Oddly, his kindness to me was…unsettling.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” I lied again, through a forced, polite smile.

He pursed his lips and rubbed his chin, as if searching carefully for the right words that wouldn’t condemn him too much.

“It’s just that…I can be a jerk sometimes. That’s all.”

A jerk? No, the way he acted was beyond ordinary, run-of-the-mill jerkiness and I wouldn’t let him get off that easily.

“Well, you know that they say, prejudices are what fools use for reason.”

He gawked at me.

“You read Voltaire?”

I turned away and started to climb down the stairs. I only had a few carefully chosen parting words for him.

“Yes, Dev. We white trash just love Voltaire.”