From Twinkle, With Love(5)
Caveman Callum (CC): Oh, you mean how each of us could chop a different fruit onstage? Showcase our strength as swim-team studs?
Patrick: Yep. I’m gonna do a pineapple. Unpeeled.
CC: Dude. Epic. fist bump and grunting follow
Okay, Callum doesn’t grunt. And he isn’t a caveman (not technically, anyway). But he got his nickname because one time, in third grade, Maddie and I were playing on the jungle gym at recess when Callum came over and began to taunt us. He was saying stuff like how Maddie and I weren’t real Americans and how my parents were fresh off the boat.
And then he accidentally-on-purpose hit me with a basketball.
Maddie and I looked at each other, and in one coordinated move, we hopped off the jungle gym and walked over to Callum like we were in a music video. Maddie pinned his arms behind his back (he was pretty scrawny back then) and I kicked him in the shins until he howled. Guess what? He never bothered us again.
That was all cool. But my favorite part was when Maddie and I began to call each other sisters after that. And ever since, Callum’s been Caveman Callum. (To me, anyway. Maddie stopped calling him that when she stopped being a groundling. I hold grudges a lot longer. What can I say? I’m like a cat. They can hold grudges for ten years.)
I was staring at Maddie, wondering if she was thinking about the good old days like I was, when she grabbed my elbow and speed-walked me around the corner.
We passed by Sahil Roy, also apparently on his way to class. Huh. He was taller than I remembered, in a good way. And … better built, too. I briefly wondered how he looked in swim trunks.
“Ow,” I said when Maddie finally stopped rushing around like the Road Runner. “What are you doing?”
“Did you hear what Callum and Patrick were talking about?”
“You mean Caveman Callum?” I asked, and she rolled her eyes. “Um, what? Something about making fruit salad?” I waggled my fingers at Sahil, who was still looking at me.
And then he tripped over nothing that I could see. I looked away and pretended I hadn’t noticed. We groundlings have to watch out for each other.
Maddie sighed in this overexaggerated way. She forgets sometimes that we mere mortals don’t automatically assess a situation and then arrive at a conclusion at the speed of computers. “Maybe if you were less focused on calling him Caveman Callum and imagining him grunting, you’d hear the more important stuff. I’m talking about Midsummer Night being on the twenty-seventh.”
Principal Harris had reminded us about the Midsummer Night festival during morning announcements too. “Oh, yeah. What about it?”
“I have this genius idea.” Maddie’s eyes sparkled, and that’s when I knew I was in trouble. Not that she doesn’t have good ideas. Just that when she relies on me for execution, things generally don’t go as planned. Like when we tried to throw her dad, Mr. Tanaka, a black-tie forty-fifth birthday party two years ago. I was supposed to get a cake shaped like the Eiffel Tower, one of his favorite places in the world. Only I somehow picked up a cake meant for a bachelorette party and … well. Let’s just say the tower inside was not of the Eiffel variety. Mr. Tanaka nearly choked on his whiskey in front of eighty-five guests while I couldn’t stop staring at the cake and, in my shock, asked loudly, “Well, are we still going to eat it?” Total disaster.
I rallied my courage. “What’s your idea?”
“You should make a movie for Midsummer Night!”
I stared at her. “Are you serious?” Midsummer Night was the biggest event of the year at PPC, before we got our measly one-month-long summer break.
She raised her eyebrow, like, Duh.
“Maddie, no. I can’t do that. Everybody would be watching it and stuff.”
“Um, yeah. That’s basically the point? Plus, you could use it in your college apps!”
I felt a pinprick of cringy-hotness again. Like my parents could afford college. “I’m still thinking no. I mean, I’ve only ever made videos on YouTube before. You know how many subscribers I have on my YouTube channel, Maddie? Seven. Three are Dadi, who keeps forgetting she made an account and making more, one is you, and the rest are porn bots. That’s a little different from airing a movie for the entire school to watch on-screen in an auditorium.”
Maddie sighed so hard I felt my hair move a little. “Twinkle, what’s your number one goal in life?”
“To change lives with my films and show the world what a Desi girl can do,” I said proudly. It was sort of my mission statement. (Mission statements were Maddie’s idea from three years ago. Hers is “To become the premier physician-scientist working in the realm of gender-based medicine and, specifically, takotsubo cardiomyopathy as it affects women.”)
She nodded. “Okay. So, do you have any other ideas to get the world to notice you?” Maddie crossed her arms, and all her charm bracelets clinked together.
Not to be nitpicky, but she used to hate bracelets. She said they made it super annoying to type and lowered her words per minute to under one hundred and thirty. But then Hannah, Francesca, Victoria, and she went to this little boutique in Denver, and now they all wear the same matching charm bracelets.
“No,” I mumbled, scuffing the floor with the toe of my Converse. How am I supposed to begin changing lives if said lives don’t even know I exist?
Someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned to see Sahil Roy looking down at me from his six-foot vantage. “Hey, guys. Sorry for eavesdropping, but, um, I might have an idea. About how to get noticed?” he said.