All day long, the guilt churned in my stomach. I couldn’t shake the memory of my parents’ anxious expressions. What had they wanted to tell me? Well, maybe this would convince them to let me have a cell phone, like every other twelve-year-old kid in the universe. I planned my argument all day at school with Zuzu, who was obsessed with languages and loved using long, complicated words to get her way.
“Mobile telecommunications are a critical component of modern society,” I rattled off as I opened the front door that afternoon. But I stopped mid-argument. The house was strangely still.
Ma and Baba never both worked on my birthday. At least one of them was usually waiting inside the door to ambush me with food and presents. Where were they?
I took off my boots and crossed into the kitchen, noticing the back door was propped open at an odd angle. I knew that the hinges were old, but this was ridiculous. One more item to add to the list of things that needed fixing. I shut it the best I could behind me, and stepped back into the house.
That’s when I noticed that Ma’s normally spotless kitchen was a mess. The kitchen chairs were this way and that, with one upside down near the door, like someone had knocked it over as they ran.
My heart started beating so loud, my head felt like a drum. I’d seen way too many television crime dramas not to think that maybe someone had broken in.
“Hello?” I called, my voice cracking. I eased a knife out of the countertop butcher block.
But as I took a quick turn around our small house, there was nothing else out of place. Even Ma’s small jewelry box was where it should be on her bedside dresser. I returned to the front hall, confused.
Where were my parents? How had they forgotten about my special day?
What I saw by the front door made me feel a little better. On a rickety folding table rested a covered tray of homemade rasagollas and sandesh with a note that read:
For the dear trick-or-treaters
(gluten-free, nut-free, and made with lactose-free milk obtained humanely from free-range cows)
Classic! I laughed shakily, putting down the knife. I was letting my imagination get the best of me. Nothing could be wrong if my mother had remembered to make homemade Indian sweets for the neighborhood kids. It was one of her Halloween traditions. The problem was, cloth grocery bags and old pillowcases aren’t made to carry around the syrupy, round rasagollas or molasses-sweetened cakes of sandesh she handed out to unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. But it would never have occurred to my parents to just give out store-bought candy. Another example of their overall cluelessness.
I was about to grab a sticky rasagolla myself when I spotted something else lying on the floor. A birthday card, half in and half out of an envelope. It was Baba’s typical sense of humor—a bright neon pink and sparkly card meant for a baby. On the front was, what else, a crown-wearing princess under the words Daughter, you’re 2! Only, Baba had taken a Sharpie and written a number 1 before the 2 so that it read 12. Har-dee-har. Again, typical Baba. But why was it on the floor like this? Wiping my syrupy fingers on my jeans, I picked it up.
Inside the card, under the words Have a Spark-a-licious birthday!, was a scrawled message, so unlike Ma’s normally precise handwriting.
Take heart, dear daughter.
We were hoping for the last dozen years that it would not come to pass. But it has happened—the magical spell protecting us all has been broken on this, your twelfth birthday. Forgive us for trying to shield you from the truth. Now there is too little time to explain.
Whatever you do, do not let any rakkhosh into the house. Trust the princes to keep you safe, but more importantly, trust yourself. We leave here some extra rupees and a moving map in case you find them of use.
But I beg you, do not try to find us. It is far too dangerous. We go now to that dark and terrible origin place where all spells meet their end.
(Oh, and make sure to take your gummy vitamins every morning.)
Darling piece of the moon, the first thing you must do is to find—
The note broke off there with a big, ugly inkblot, as if she’d been startled by something into stopping mid-sentence.
I shook the envelope, and out fell a small wad of colorful, unfamiliar bills—the rupees Ma had mentioned. But the other thing in the envelope wasn’t a map at all—just a yellowed piece of blank paper.
That was it. They had always been odd, but now my parents had totally gone off the deep end. I called their cell phones and the phone at the store. When I got only voicemail, I started to really panic. If this was some kind of a bizarre Halloween trick, it wasn’t funny. All that stuff about princes and rakkhosh—what planet did Ma and Baba think we were living on?
I felt myself start to tear up, and bit the inside of my cheek to stop the waterworks from spilling out. Along with dressing and acting in ways that were unnoticeable, it was another of my self-imposed rules for making it through middle school. There was no crying. Not ever. Tears were like a door to a scary room inside myself I’d most definitely rather keep closed.
I took a big breath and tried to calm down. Weeping is for wimps.
I was about to call Zuzu at her parents’ restaurant when the doorbell began to ring nonstop. It was the little kids—dressed as fairies and animals and superheroes—out with their parents before it got dark. In a daze, my head still swirling, I handed out the messy sweets.
“Gee, thanks!” said a little boy dressed as Robin Hood. “This is a lot better than the dentist lady next door. She’s giving out toothbrushes!”
I shut the door with shaking hands, my heart tight in my chest. Dusk was settling onto the neighborhood. Where were my parents? What had happened to them? Why had they told me not to try and find them?
Just then, the doorbell rang again.
Standing on the front porch were the strangest trick-or-treaters I’d ever seen: two boys, about my age, maybe a little older. They looked like brothers. The smiling one was so handsome he almost melted my eyeballs. The other one was taller and broader, and looked a little bored. The funny thing was the way they were both dressed—in flowing shirts and pants in the same sparkling fabrics as Ma’s saris. They were wearing silk turbans and shoes with curling-up toes. Each had what looked like a jewel-encrusted sword tucked into the sash around his waist. The handsome boy’s sash and turban were red, and the taller boy’s were blue.
“Blast you, little brother; she’s probably been eaten already,” the boy in blue was saying as I opened the door. “You just had to stop for that Giant Gulpie, didn’t you?”
“That Giant Gulpie is the only reason we made it here at all,” argued his brother. “You never want to ask for directions, you stubborn rhinoceros.”
But I didn’t have time to make sense of all that, because at that moment, the boy in red looked straight at me with his movie-star eyes.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those boy-crazy goobers whose rooms are wallpapered with posters of floppy-haired boy bands. And I don’t fill my school notebooks with my initials and the initials of some cute boy surrounded by a goofy heart. It’s not that Zuzu and I don’t have a few celebrities whose pictures we like to look up on websites like Cute Boys Do Dental Hygiene Too. (I mean, who doesn’t like to see their favorite TV star flossing his teeth for the cameras?) But until that moment when I opened the front door, I’d never met someone so handsome in real life.
“Are you ready, my lady?” the boy must’ve been asking, but something had gone all wonky with my hearing, so he just sounded like one of the teachers in a Peanuts cartoon—“Waa waa waa waa waa.” Boy, was he good-looking. I felt a shiver, the kind I might describe in a note to Zuzu with little asterisks around it. *shiver*
The boy looked at my dark jeans and black sweatshirt, furrowing his brows. Not that it made him any less pretty. “Brother Neel, I don’t believe the lady is ready.”
Then the other guy—whose name was Neel?—reached out for the tray of sweets in my hand. He popped at least two rasagollas in his mouth, not even worrying about the sticky sauce dripping down his chin. Gross.
“You’re supposed to say ‘trick or treat,’” I said primly, then immediately wanted to kick myself. Two cute boys come to my door and the first thing out of my mouth is, “You’re supposed to say ‘trick or treat’”? How uncool was I?
“It must be like a costume, Lal.” Neel winked while licking syrup off his fingers. “No one wears boring clothes like that for real.”
An uncomfortable heat rushed over my face. “What are you, the fashion police?”
Even though I amazed myself by coming up with a smart answer in time, the tall boy’s statement stung. Here was another rich kid with fancy clothes, I thought, making me feel bad about what I could afford to wear. And what about them—Lal and Neel? Weren’t those the Bengali words for red and blue? And they were dressed according to their names? How fashion forward was that?
When Neel reached out to pick up more sweets, I slapped his hand away. Hard.
“Yo, easy, Prin-cess!” The way he said it, all sarcastic and dragged out, made me think he was making fun of me. Obviously, I was the furthest thing from a princess in his mind.
I felt a pricking behind my eyes and I blinked the moisture away like crazy. Then, as if the atmosphere was reflecting my mood, the air became filled with a putrid, garbage-y smell. What was that?
I turned my back on Neel and his mocking eyes, and appealed to the handsome Lal. “Am I ready? Am I ready for what?” I put my hand on the door.
But the boy in red didn’t answer. Instead, he took out his sword—which suddenly didn’t look like a costume sword at all. It looked shiny. And sharp. Before I could react, he grabbed my wrist and tried to yank me out of the house toward him.
Now, if I wasn’t as streetwise as I am (I’ve been to Manhattan five times and ridden the subway twice), I might have made the mistake of thinking this was some kind of dream come true. But I’m a Jersey girl, and Jersey girls are no dummies. I knew perfectly well that no matter how handsome someone is, you can’t let them start grabbing at you. Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of made-for-TV movies in my time, and those serial killers are always super good-looking.
“Get off me!” I said in my loudest anti-attacker voice. Every muscle and nerve in my body felt taut—ready to fight. I shook him off, and pulled myself back into the house. I weighed the serving tray in my hand, ready to clobber him in his gorgeous head if I needed to.
“That, my dear lady,” Lal finally said. “Are you ready for that?” He pointed at something behind me.
It was then that I realized that Lal wasn’t the one I had to worry about.
Someone in a snarling monster costume had slammed through the half-open kitchen door. The creature was at least ten feet tall, with warty green-black skin, enormous horns and fangs, and beady eyes that squinted as if it couldn’t see very well in the light. It drooled a stream of thick saliva on Ma’s clean floor. The costume was freakishly good. Too good. My hand went loose and a bunch of sweets slid to the floor. Neel grabbed the falling tray before it crashed down.
My heart hammered so loudly in my ears, Lal’s next words came from miles away.
“It’s a rakkhosh, my lady! Come for tricks, I fear, not treats!”
A rakkhosh. A rakkhosh? Not somebody in a costume, but a real demon—straight out of one of Baba’s folktales? Right here, in my kitchen, in Parsippany, New Jersey?
I tried to scream, but the room had gone all wickety-wockety, like one of those paintings of melting clocks. My bones were molasses.
The monster crashed blindly around the kitchen, ripping off the refrigerator door with its razor-sharp nails, crushing the cabinets with its huge feet. It was kind of hunched over, but its horns gouged long holes in the ceiling, and plaster flaked down on its already beady eyes.
“My parents told me not to let a rakkhosh in the house,” I heard myself squeak.
The demon was tossing back dinner plates like they were pieces of popcorn. It then started chomping on the still-plugged-in toaster, making sparks fly everywhere.
“Hate to break it to you, but it’s too late now!” Neel took out his sword too, but he looked less worried than his brother. He filled his pockets with the sweets that I’d dropped on the floor.
I barely had time to grab my birthday card, with the money and map, before the brothers shoved me out of the house. The last thing I saw before they slammed the front door behind them was the demon emptying my fruit-flavored gummy vitamins into its ginormous mouth.
Finally, I shrieked.
“Oh, man, my mom is going to kill me!”