Star Daughter(10)

Sheetal hesitated. What she really wanted to say, just as breezily, was, Hey, so guess what? I’m half star, and my hair’s going rogue, and the sky’s singing to me, and I don’t know what to do. Wanna get tacos?

She settled for, I guess I can do my part to prevent that existential crisis.

All hail Sir Sheetal, champion of Cookie Monsters everywhere.

One side of her mouth lifted in spite of itself. Omnomnom.

So are you going to ask what I did today?

Maybe. I’m still deciding.

You know you want to.

Do I? Sheetal made him wait a couple of minutes before typing, Fine, what’d you do today?

I finished my song! The whole thing. It took me all night, but it was like I finally broke through this wall, you know?

I can’t wait to hear it, Sheetal replied, and now she really was smiling.

So come over. No one’s here but me.

An electric thrill ran through her, mixed with guilt. She hadn’t gone to Dev’s house once in the three months they’d been together. Dad would never be okay with it.

But he didn’t have to know, and besides, she really, really didn’t want to obsess about star stuff anymore.

Minal broke into her thoughts. “The moment of truth. Time to wash it out.”

Okay, Sheetal typed. See you soon.

She got up and put her phone by the sink. “Minu, what if it doesn’t work?”

“It will.” Minal gave her a quick hug. “Even if I kind of wish it wouldn’t.” With that, she left Sheetal to the shower.

Even after everything, as Sheetal climbed under the hot jets, she kind of wished it wouldn’t, too.





4


Minal’s car idled against the curb in front of Dev’s white colonial house, engine rumbling. All Sheetal had to do was open the door and get out.

All she had to do . . .

Her butt stayed planted in the passenger seat like it had been glued down. “Check again,” she begged for the fifth time.

“Good news,” Minal said, glancing up from her phone. “Your hair’s still black as a politician’s heart. Same as it was five minutes ago.”

The dye had set for real. Sheetal should be overjoyed. Instead, it felt like she was teetering on a seesaw between relieved and regretful. “That’s pretty black, all right. No roots, even?”

“Nope.” Minal gestured with her chin toward the house. “Going in?”

Relieved, Sheetal decided, testing a strand of her undeniably ebony hair. It was lank, dry, and coarse from being dyed twice in one week, and she really did need to take scissors to those scratchy little branches of split ends. But at least they were black scratchy little branches.

So what was she waiting for? “Maybe?”

Minal reached past her to point out the window. “See that rectangular thing there? Between the pillars? It’s called a front door. I know it’s a whole ten steps from here, but you can’t get lost, I promise.”

Sheetal pressed her crimson-stained lips together. Maybe it was stupid, but her palms were sweaty and prickling, and an entire ensemble of butterflies was performing a ballet in her belly.

She had remembered to put on deodorant, hadn’t she? And brush her teeth? Oh, gods, what if she was breaking out—

“Just think, Sheetu,” Minal said, deadpan, “if you don’t get out of my car, starting tomorrow, you’ll spend the rest of the summer stuck in that test prep class, cramming vocab lists under your auntie’s watchful eye and wishing you’d actually gone inside instead of just staring at his house when you had the chance.”

Sheetal sat up ramrod straight at that. She smoothed out the lace-draped aquamarine waterfall skirt Minal had lent her, then reached for her messenger bag.

Smiling, Minal pressed the unlock button. “Go find that boy you like.”

Sheetal swung her legs back and forth on a stool at the island in the middle of Dev’s kitchen, playing tag with the sunshine splashing through the windows while he tinkered with the oven. It was the first week of summer vacation, and she was at Dev’s house. Dev’s house. Just the two of them.

They’d never been alone like this during the school year. A wild sense of possibility bloomed inside her, making her feel bold and shy at the same time.

She inhaled the aroma of vanilla and butter and sugar wandering over from where he stood. “That smells amazing.”

“Yup.” He straightened and turned around, a baking sheet in his hands. “Now you just need a sword.”

Cookies. He’d actually baked her cookies. Sheetal caught her mouth stretching into that dorky smile she always got around him.

He must have showered right before she came over, because the last of his dark hair was still drying into waves. Sheetal tried to focus on it while he transferred the cookies to a rack, on the blue band T-shirt that fit him so well, but her gaze kept straying to his mouth, and she found herself wondering what it would taste like after a cookie.

Dev made a ta-da gesture toward the cooling cookies, so clearly pleased with himself that she commandeered the whole rack. “If you’re nice,” she offered magnanimously, “I might let you have one. Maybe.”

His eyebrows came together in mock outrage. “I baked them!”

“And I stole them.” Balancing the rack in one hand, Sheetal searched the island drawers until she located a butter knife. “Look, it’s my sword!”