From Twinkle, With Love(14)
Perfect! I was planning their first date in my head already. It would be at Staples, naturally. Maybe in the office furniture section? Lots of comfortable seating available.
I wasn’t able to tell him that, though, because Ms. Langford’s Honors Speech and Debate class came in. Matthew Weir came to sit by Brij, and then they were discussing what it was like to be a five-hundred-level mage in a two-hundred-level wench world. Or something. I wasn’t really paying attention.
Love,
Twinkle
Thursday, June 4
My room
Dear Sofia Coppola,
Maddie and I are going to a paint-and-sip event tonight. Usually it’s just old married people or working women in their thirties who go there to basically get drunk and paint pictures (why are adults so strange?), but Maddie goes to these things to unwind. She says she didn’t inherit the Tanaka creativity gene (which she also says does not exist but is just a figure of speech and I shouldn’t get sucked into that misconception like so many laypeople do), but that’s not true. Even though we’re both following a template and we get a lot of help from the instructor, Maddie’s bridge at sunset (for instance) always ends up looking like a bridge at sunset and mine somehow ends up looking like a puppet with dentures or something.
She was by my locker after school this time, but she didn’t apologize for ignoring my call last night. It was like déjà vu.
“Hey,” she said, texting furiously while she talked.
“Hey. Oh, it’s working?”
She raised her eyebrows without looking up. “Huh?”
My heart raced for a second while I debated changing the subject. Then I went for it, feeling reckless. “Your cell. I called yesterday.”
She stopped texting. “Oh. Right. I’m sorry. I was at Hannah’s and she was upset about this final in chemistry. …”
I waved her off. “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”
Slipping her phone into her pocket, Maddie came up to me and put her arm around mine. “I’m sorry. But you can tell me about the movie tonight, can’t you?”
I looked at her sweetly smiling face and knew I should say something more. I shouldn’t just accept this weak apology. But did I mention before that I’m desperate to hold on to my old BFF/sister from another mister? I didn’t know how to not be Maddie’s friend anymore. “Sure,” I said, feeling all crumpled.
Artsy Fartsy has 50 percent off their admission for Teen Thursdays and Dadi gives me the ten bucks if it’s to spend some quality time with Maddie. Dadi acts like Maddie is her lost grandchild. That’s why I haven’t told her that Maddie and I hardly ever hang out anymore. It would devastate her. And then she’d probably want to burn a couple dozen candles and make me dance around them, and we all know that would end up with the cute firefighters storming our house again.
Anyway, I’m wearing my old Nora Ephron T-shirt (the unintentionally creepy one where her eyes have chipped off; I really should throw it out) with leggings tonight, my DIY glitter Keds, and my movie-reel earrings. I went downstairs to get a drink of water—dressing up makes me thirsty—and Mummy and Papa, both of whom were miraculously off work, were sitting at the kitchen table, reading and drinking chai, while Dadi fed Oso bits of Parle-G biscuits under the table. (Papa frowns on feeding dogs people food, so Dadi does it when he isn’t looking and he pretends he doesn’t know.)
So then Mummy looks up at my shirt and smiles and goes, “Oh. Princess Diana. Very nice.”
I’ve worn this T-shirt so many times. How could she think it was Princess Di? When have I ever expressed an interested in British royalty, a concept with which I don’t even agree on principle? I stared at her, realizing that it was because she’d never asked me, not once, who it was on my T-shirt. We don’t talk about my movies or filmmaking or anything of substance. So I literally didn’t even know where to start. It was this gigantic sign of how Mummy and I are like two ice floes, passing each other, cold and silent. Even when we try to make a connection, we can’t get any traction. That’s our relationship. It sucks, but what am I supposed to do?
Oh, and get this. Papa looked up from his book and his face broke into a grin. “You have leg pain?” he said, between guffaws.
You know, because my leggings remind him of compression bandages. Har de har.
Then Dadi looks at me and says, “Oh! Princess Diana! Chandrashekhar says she has a very regal and respected presence on the other side.”
I smiled. “That’s great, Dadi.” So what if she got it wrong? At least Dadi shows up. At least Dadi tries.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if my mother and I are related at all. I bet I was dropped on her doorstep, like Harry Potter, and she just hasn’t figured out how to tell me yet.
I walked off to my room to look for my lightning bolt scar. Because that is the only way any of this makes sense.
And I didn’t even get my cup of water.
Love,
Twinkle
Five
Thursday, June 4
Artsy Fartsy
Dear Kathryn Bigelow,
Maddie’s in the bathroom. She always drinks way too much Sprite when we come here and then spends 10 percent of the time peeing. So I’m just hanging out, sorta painting (that’s the best I can do) and petting Roux, the adorable red Lab that belongs to the lady who owns this place. He keeps putting his gigantic head in my lap every time I pick up my brush and looking at me, like, You can’t resist this, Twinkle. Let’s be real.