Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating(16)

“I’m sorry.” Ishita halts in her tracks. I bite my lip, wishing that I didn’t have to do this. “I … need you. More than you need me, I guess.”

Ishita turns to face me. There’s a flash of something in her eyes that I can’t quite make out. “I’m sorry too.” The words take me aback. Ishita Dey apologizing instead of gloating in her win? “We both need each other to make this work. So … we should both try to make this work. Right?”

I hold her gaze for a moment before taking a deep breath and nodding. “Right. Sorry. I should have given you my number.”

“You should have.” There’s a hint of smugness in Ishita’s voice as she sits down. There’s the Ishita I know.

“So … I guess I can lie to Amma,” I say. It’ll be hard but Amma will definitely figure out something is up if I don’t. “But … then you’ll be outed to my parents. And to the school. Are you okay with that?”

Ishita shrugs. “It’s not being outed if I out myself, you know. As long as it doesn’t get back to my parents—and it won’t—I’m good.”

“Okay … so … you should probably call me Maira from now on. It’s what my friends call me. Nobody calls me Humaira.”

“I’m not calling you that,” Ishita scoffs. “That’s a bastardization of your name. Why do you let them call you that?”

“It’s difficult to say Humaira.”

“It’s literally one extra syllable. Plus, they say Maira wrong. They say it like Máire, which is a different name!”

I can’t help the smile that bubbles up inside me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone get worked up over a name before.

“Look … you can’t keep calling me Humaira. It’s … weird.”

I insist. “Nobody calls me that. Maybe you should call me Hani.”

“Fine,” Ishita says like that’s the last thing she wants to call me. “Then, I guess … you should call me Ishu.”

“Cute.” My smile widens. Ishita is definitely not an Ishu.

“Shut the fuck up.” Ishita rolls her eyes, but I can see the corners of her lips twitching with her attempts to bite back a smile. “It’s what my family calls me, okay?”

“I said no cursing.”

“Sorry.” Again, the apology. Those words out of Ishita’s—Ishu’s—mouth sound blasphemous. I stifle my surprise for it as fast as I can. If I say anything, she’ll probably take it back. So I just change the subject.

“If you want to be Head Girl, you’ll have to do stuff you probably won’t want to do, you know. School events, parties, talking to people, being … a pleasant human being.”

She frowns but nods. “Yeah. I can do it. I was pleasant to your mom downstairs.”

“You looked like you were constipated,” I say. “I don’t think anybody wants a constipated Head Girl.”

“My constipation wouldn’t stop me from doing a good job so that’s just fucking—shit—fuck.” She clamps her hand over her mouth, her eyes widening as she looks at me. She looks so adorably terrified—in the most un-Ishita way I’ve ever seen in my whole life—that I can’t help but burst into a fit of laughter.

A moment later, Ishita joins me until our laughter melds together into one large guffaw.

If someone had told me Ishita Dey and I would be laughing our asses off in my bedroom today, I would have never believed them in a billion years.





chapter nine


hani


AFTER OUR LAUGHTER DIES DOWN, ISHITA—ISHU—and I settle down into a strange silence. It’s not exactly awkward, but it’s not comfortable either.

I grab hold of the laptop on the top shelf of my desk and open it up. If we’re going to do this, we need to do it properly.

I sign into my Google Docs and create a brand new document. Untitled Document glares up at me brightly from the screen.

I turn to find Ishu looking at me with a question mark on her face.

“If we write down our lies, then we won’t get caught,” I explain. I’ve never really lied to Amma or Abba, and I don’t really want to start lying to them now, but I guess I don’t really have a choice. So if I’m going to lie, I might as well make sure I’m doing it well.

I type Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating into the title space, stifling a grin of satisfaction at having come up with that all by myself.

“So … how did it start?” I ask.

“What?”

“You know …” I turn to her slowly. “How did we start … dating?”

Ishu shrugs. “Is it anyone’s business?”

I heave a sigh. I should have known Ishu would be like this. “You can answer people like that,” I say. “I can’t. That’ll just come off as defensive.” Not everyone is as abrasive as you, Ishu, I want to say, but I keep that little thought to myself.

“Make something up. I’ll go along with it.”

A prickle of annoyance crawls up my skin at her nonchalance. I narrow my eyes. “You said we both need to make this work, Is hi—Ishu.”

I can almost see her stifle a sigh of her own. She shifts, the bed creaking under her weight. “Maybe … we started hanging out during one of the Bengali dawats? They’ll be so confused at the concept of a dawat that they probably won’t even ask any more questions.”