Love, Hate & Other Filters(6)

I sigh. “You probably always know what to say to the cute boy, don’t you, Aishwarya?” I whisper. “I mean you probably don’t even need to speak; you just bat your beguiling eyes—”

“Maya, come eat some breakfast before school,” my mom yells up.

I wonder if she heard me.

“Everyone at the party was telling me you’re so thin,” she adds.

There is no acceptable in-between for Hyderabadi moms. You’re either too skinny or a little too chubby.

I scurry to get ready. I pull on a favorite blue V-neck sweater over a pair of skinny jeans. I search through my jewelry box and come up with an orange-and-blue beaded choker and a pair of silver crescent-moon earrings—from Hina. I dab a little mineral bronzer on my cheeks and run a reddish-brown gloss over my lips.

Before I walk out of my room, I wink at Aishwarya, perpetually cool and confident. “Maybe there’s a kiss in my future after all, Aishwarya. Maybe lots of kissing.”

I don’t want to eat, but my mom hovers in the kitchen. She always hovers. I wolf down a little cereal for her benefit.

“Let me make you an omelet,” she says. “You’re skin and bones. Skin and bones.”

“I’m not hungry, and Violet’s going to be driving up any second.”

She waves a wooden spoon in her hand. “Not hungry? How can you go to school on two bites of cereal? You need to take care of yourself, beta. I’m not going to be here forever, you know. Then what will you do with no one to look after you? You can’t cook a thing.”

“That’s why God invented takeout.”

My mother blinks, her face blank. She should be used to my snark by now. These days, honestly, she just seems bewildered by me. I’m an eternal stranger forced to reintroduce myself to her one bon mot at a time. Lucky for me, the silence is broken by three telltale honks from the driveway: Violet. My escape.

“I’ll take an apple with me, okay? Don’t forget I’m working after school. I’ll need your car. Khudafis.” I’m halfway out the door.

“We need to put cooking on your biodata,” my mom yells after me. “No suitable boy will marry you if you can’t cook.”

“Counting on it,” I whisper to myself.



Music pulses from Violet’s vintage Karmann Ghia, a gift from her dad shortly after they moved to Batavia, Illinois, from New York City. The orange paint and vanilla interior remind me of a Creamsicle. Sometimes I have the urge to dart out my tongue and lick the hood and see if it tastes like summer.

Violet tosses her blonde hair over her shoulder and bats her eyelashes. This is Violet. She will flirt with anyone. Even me.

“How was the dance?” I ask. It’s a courtesy. I don’t need to fish for juicy gossip; I know Violet’s been chomping at the bit to tell me in person. “Did Mike fawn all over you?”

Violet rolls her eyes and backs out of the driveway. Mike’s been crushing on Violet since she moved here freshman year. Clearly the guy’s an optimist.

“You know you love the attention,” I tell her.

“You’re right, I do.” With a laugh, she shifts into drive and heads toward school. “But it got a little wild.” She’s still smiling. “You missed the fight.”

“The fight?” I repeat. My cinematic imagination immediately takes over. “As in droplets of blood bouncing off the well-buffed wood floor of the gym?”

She groans. “You should listen to yourself talk sometimes, Maya.”

“I know how brilliant I sound,” I shoot back dryly. “So what happened?”

“No blood, but plenty of drama.” Violet glances at me. “It was Phil and Lisa.”

My heart thumps a bit. “Phil?” I repeat, before realizing I neglected to add Lisa to my question.

Violet nods. “Apparently something is rotten in the state of super couplehood. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Lisa made a huge scene of stomping out of the gym during a slow dance.”

A flaw in the perfection of Phil and Lisa is like my parents allowing me to go to prom (even if I had a date)—impossible. I almost sit on my hands to prevent the ridiculous gesticulations I want to make. I am a whirling dervish of what-ifs.

“Maybe this means Phil will be available for prom.” Violet raises her eyebrows at me. “For a certain hot, yet unassuming, and often exacting Indian chick.”

“Whatever.”

“Well, why not?” Violet prods. “I mean, you’ve had a thing for him forever. Like, literally, forever.”

I shake my head. “I have not had a ‘thing’ for him for any amount of time. I may have said I thought he was hot once—”

“Revisionist,” Violet interrupts. “Saying Phil is hot is not a confession; it’s a profound grasp of the obvious. You like him like him. Admit it.”

Phil and I have known each other since kindergarten, but we’ve never been really close or even truly friends. Then in health class last semester, the teacher assigned us to be partners for a project on “Aging in America.” We had to record oral histories from senior citizens in a retirement home. I braced myself to do all the work. But Phil showed up and charmed everyone. I remember looking over at him talking to one of the oldest residents at the home. He held her hand and listened to her so intently and smiled at her with this dimple in his cheek. He charmed me, too.