Chloe in India by Kate Darnton Read Free Book Online

sounds good.”
    “And while we make them,” Mom said, snapping her laptop shut, “maybe you can tell me about this mystery texter who doesn’t care to spell or to punctuate.”
    We headed to the kitchen. I got the eggs and butter from the fridge, while Mom rummaged through the cupboards, looking for the measuring cups.
    “So, who’s your new friend?”
    “It’s Anvi,” I said. “You know, the girl I mentioned last night? The one with the tycoon dad? She asked me for your number at school. Said maybe her mom would call. They have some big house with, like, horses and a pool.” I dumped my ingredients on the counter. “She’s really pretty.”
    “Hence ‘sax farm’…” Mom was measuring out the flour.
    “Is there a problem, Mom?” This was the first invitation I had had from anyone at school—Anna had already gotten five or six—and it had come from Anvi, which made it especially important. It felt like a test.
    “Why would there be a problem?” Mom’s voice had that sharp edge, like when you tell your parents you were picked for the softball team but they really wanted you to play chess.
    I cracked three eggs into the bowl. “One more?”
    Mom nodded.
    “You know anything about her family?” I could tell Mom was working hard to make her voice sound all casual.
    “Not really.”
    I got a fork from the drawer and started whisking the eggs. There was a pause in the conversation.
    “She told me she has cousins in New York City,” I said. “She goes there every summer.”
    “Well, that must be nice,” Mom said.
    Dad walked into the kitchen.
    “Uh-oh,” he said, reaching for the coffeepot. “Your mother never thinks anything is ‘nice.’ ” He poured himself a mug, then leaned against the counter. “Need any help?”
    Mom was sifting the flour by banging a sieve against her open palm, and banging it a little too hard—flour was snowing all over the counter.
    “Maybe I’m missing something”—
bang, bang
—“but I don’t quite understand how people expect me to send my eleven-year-old daughter off to their
farmhouse
”—the word came out like a sneer—“when I don’t even know them, I’ve never met them, they’ve never introduced themselves to me. I mean, what happened to having coffee first? Or even a plain old phone call, for Christ’s sake!”
    Dad and I exchanged glances. “You want me to take over for a bit, Helen?” he said.
    Mom looked down at her Barnard T-shirt, now covered in flour.
    “Yeah, maybe.” She sighed.
    Dad took the sieve out of Mom’s hand and placed his coffee mug into it instead. Then he nudged her toward the kitchen door. “You go write,” he said. “We’ll get breakfast on the table.”
    “What’s she all worked up about?” Dad turned to me once Mom had left the room. “You have some kind of a playdate?”
    I rolled my eyes. “They don’t call them playdates when you’re eleven.”
    “Right,” Dad said. He started mixing the batter. “Chocolate chips?”
    I nodded and reached into the freezer for our stash of Hershey’s. (Real chocolate chips are hard to find in Delhi. We got this bag from one of Mom’s journalist buddies, who brought it back from Singapore a month ago. We ration the chips, one scoop at a time. If we don’t keep them in the freezer, they melt into one big puddle. We learned this the hard way.)
    I dropped one precious handful of chocolate chips into the batter. Then I watched as Dad mixed them in, scraping the wooden spoon against the sides of the big glass bowl.
    These are the things I miss most about Boston: chocolate chips, soft toilet paper, sidewalks, artichokes, blueberries, the public library, clean tap water, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and my best friend, Katie Standish.
    Standing there, watching Dad pour the chocolate-flecked batter into the pan, I suddenly really, really missed Katie. It hit me like a wave, that missing. Bang. It knocked me over.
    “You okay, honey?”
    Dad was looking at me, a metal