Chloe in India by Kate Darnton Read Free Book Online Page A

spatula in his right hand.
    “Yeah,” I said. I wiped my eyes with my T-shirt.
    Dad flipped the first batch. “Saturdays a little tough?”
    I nodded.
    “Well, it’s nice you have a, um…” He paused, searching for the right word.
    “An invitation,” I said. “I have an invitation.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “You wanna go?”
    I shrugged. “I dunno.”
    For weeks, all I had wanted was to get in with Anvi and Prisha. Now here was my big chance and I could already feel it slipping away. I wasn’t going to go. I was too chicken.
    I picked at some batter that had dripped onto the counter. “I mean, maybe Mom’s right and we should get to know the family a little better first?”
    Dad lowered the flame. “I’m not sure we’re going to, um, be fully compatible with the Saxenas, Chloe,” he said. Then he put one hand on my shoulder. “But we can try. We’ll do whatever you want, sweetie. And you should do whatever makes you most comfortable today. Do whatever feels right.”
    I looked down at my bare feet. “I think I might feel more comfortable maybe going a different weekend,” I said.
    “Okay,” Dad said. He took his hand off my shoulder. “That’s okay.”
    And even though nothing had changed—I still had two long, hot weekend days to fill and nothing to fill them with—I felt a little better because I had an invitation. I might not be going, but at least I’d been asked. And that was a start.

It was Dad’s idea to go to Humayun’s Tomb that afternoon. Maybe he wanted a little culture, or maybe he thought I needed a change of scenery since I had chickened out on going to Anvi’s.
    “Let me get this straight—you want us to visit a
tomb
?” I was lying on my bed, reading, when he came into my room. “Like, a place that has dead people?”
    Back in the U.S., weekend excursions meant a couple of hours at the Museum of Science or the aquarium. We went hiking. We went for a splash at the pool. Maybe stopped for ice cream. We did not hang out at tombs.
    “Not dead
people.
One very important dead person: the emperor Humayun. And it’s not just a tomb, it’s a mausoleum.”
    I raised one eyebrow, a trick I’d been practicing in the mirror lately. It was supposed to make me look skeptical, which means grown up. At least, I think that’s what it means.
    Dad didn’t seem to notice the eyebrow thing. “It’s one of the greatest historical sites of Delhi, Chloe. It has gardens.”
    He crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head at me. “Shreya said you’d like it. She said it’s nice.”
    —
    Shreya is my parents’ best friend. She has silver hair that’s cut really short, like a man’s, and studs that line both her ears all the way to the tippy top; there must be a dozen of them. There’s a sparkly one stuck in her right nostril, too. She wears long, colorful scarves and those baggy pants that only circus clowns wear in America but that normal people wear here. She doesn’t wear any makeup. And her two front teeth are crooked; they overlap like a door that’s slightly off its hinges.
    Shreya works for an NGO, which stands for nongovernmental organization, and which she explained to me once: she wants the world to be more fair for more people, but she doesn’t trust the government to do it. Plus, she’s a big help to Mom with her work. Whenever Mom’s confused about something or needs help with Hindi or background for a story, she calls Shreya first.
    I like Shreya because she’s one of those grown-ups who talks to kids like we’re normal people. The first time she came over, I was curled up on the couch in the living room, rereading this Judy Blume book that Mom hates.
    “
Please
tell me you’re not reading that junk again, Chloe,” Mom groaned.
    Shreya leaned over to get a look at the cover. “
Blubber
’s even better,” she said, and winked at me.
    You can see why I like her.
    Our first week in Delhi, Shreya took Mom and me to buy clothes at Fabindia and books at