There's Something About Sweetie(5)

“Hoo, check this out!” Suki called from her locker. She’d thrown on a skirt and a top and was sitting on the bench, bent over her cell phone as usual, her straight black hair all wet.

They gathered around her. It was a picture of a handsome guy in a basketball jersey on the sports page of the Times of Atherton, the local paper.

“Ashish Patel at last weekend’s game,” Izzy said, leaning in. Her pale cheeks were flushed from the hot shower. “Yum-eeee.”

“I heard he led Richmond to another victory,” Kayla said. “He’s their golden goose. Coach Stevens wants to poach him.”

“Good luck with that,” Izzy scoffed. “His dad’s the CEO of Global Comm. His kind of money would never go to a school like Piedmont.”

Sweetie laughed. “We’re not a hovel. But yeah, we’re definitely not the Ivy League incubator that Richmond is either.” She crossed her arms, frowning a little as she looked at Ashish’s picture. “Is it just me or does he look kinda sad to you guys?”

Kayla, Izzy, and Suki just looked at her blankly.

“What would he have to be sad about?” Kayla said. “The boy’s got everything.”

Maybe on paper, Sweetie thought.

“Why? Is your Sweetie Sense going off?” Suki said, laughing.

Sweetie felt her cheeks get warm. She’d always been perceptive, prone to listening to her intuition about people. But Suki thought it was a bunch of crap, that Sweetie just believed what she wanted to believe. Who knew, maybe Suki was correct.

“Yeah, you guys are probably right.” Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Sweetie said, “Hey, want to get some breakfast before class?”

Suki put her phone away, and her friends all stood, laughing and talking about how Coach had seemed even more stressed out today than usual, chewing viciously on a wad of gum. Then she’d yelled at Andrea for not giving 110 percent and had almost choked on it.

Sweetie kept one ear on the conversation, but her mind kept drifting back to the picture of Ashish Patel at his basketball game. What did a boy like that have to be sad about? Sweetie gave herself a mental shake. Come on, what do you care? It’s not like you’ll ever find out.





CHAPTER 2





Ditching school was a nonevent, as always. Ashish had made a digital copy freshman year of the one legit pass he’d gotten to go off-campus, and he’d been printing it out and reusing it ever since. Updating their passes to stave off delinquents like Ash obviously wasn’t high on Richmond’s priority list.

Ashish parked the Jeep in his circular driveway and trudged up the marble stairs into the house.

The moment Ma saw him, she rushed up and put her hand on his forehead. “Kya hua? Sardi hai, beta? Bukhar hai? Bolo na, kya hua?”

Ashish tried not to cringe away at the litany of questions about his health. Usually he let her think he was sick when he ditched, but today he just didn’t have the energy. “No, Ma, I don’t have a cold or a fever. I’m just …” They walked together through the foyer into the large den. Ashish took his favorite chair and Ma sat next to him on the ottoman. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, sighing as she ran her fingers through his hair. “Girl trouble, Ma. Girl trouble.”

Her fingers stilled for just a moment before she began combing again. It was no secret that Ma, especially, intensely disagreed with Ashish’s badmashi, or “mischief,” as she called it. Pappa tended to look the other way, chalking Ashish’s medley of girlfriends up to his youth, or as he liked to say, Ashish’s javaani. Recently, though, he’d looked pretty annoyed at all the texts Ashish was sending Celia, as if he thought even javaani should have some kind of limit.

Ashish thought both Ma and Pappa had been secretly relieved when the texts stopped, maybe taking it as a sign of their younger son hopefully becoming more mature and seeing the error of his ways. Ha. As if. That would be Rishi, Ashish’s older brother and golden child. Ashish would always be the black sheep, the dark horse, the coal sack to Rishi’s freaking diamonds—

“Celia ke sath kuch hua?”

“Haan. She broke up with me for good.” He gave her a moment to wipe the smile he knew was there off her face before he rolled his head to look at her. “It really sucks, Ma. I thought we were serious. Like, I thought that at some point she’d get tired of being without me and come back. I mean, seriously, how could any girl not want this?” He made a vague gesture at his person. This was more information than he’d ever shared about his love life with her, but Ma’s outward appearance belied any internal screaming that might be going on.

“Dude. Celia dumped you?”

Both Ashish and Ma looked up, and then Ashish groaned. Great. “Samir,” he said, straightening and glaring at the Indian boy in front of him. “What sewer did you crawl out of?”

Ma slapped his knee and got up. “Don’t be rude to Samir. I invited him and Deepika auntie over.”

“That’s right.” Samir grinned and sauntered over, then lounged on the couch like it belonged to him. Well, he’d been over often enough that it sorta did.

Samir and Ashish had been frenemies since they were eight years old and Samir’s family moved into the nearby estate. Rishi, of course, got along with him just fine. But what annoyed Ashish about Samir was his self-assurance. The guy didn’t play sports and was homeschooled (the only Indian kid Ashish knew who was). As if that weren’t enough, he was completely smothered by his overbearing mother, whose only fear was that something bad would befall her only child. Deepika auntie told anyone who’d listen that her little miracle was born with a caul on his face, which apparently was a bad omen and required constant attention to ward off lurking evil. (Ashish had looked up what a caul was online. … Big mistake. Talk about lifelong nightmares.) Still, in spite of everything, Samir thought he was a gift to everyone.