Lovetorn by Kavita Daswani Read Free Book Online Page B

pink wigs. Even the teachers, who had, in my mind, always been the model of restraint and self-control, came in costume. People laughed as they greeted each other, complimented one another on their outfits. Sangita and I stood by in our regular pants and shirts, our satchels over our shoulders. Sangita looked at me a little sorrowfully. I patted her on the shoulder.
    I made my way to class quickly and quietly, like I always did. I sat at the back, waiting for class to start and watching as my classmates, now transformed into a parade of wild characters, filed in one by one. There was a Betty Boop, a vampiress, a couple of M&M’s, and three zombies. Sasha was carrying a tiny puppy in a bag and wearing a miniskirt and high heels. In my few weeks here, at least I now knew how to recognize Paris Hilton. Magali followed close behind.
    I gasped when I saw her. She had pulled her hair into a single, thick braid that lay flat down her back. Using a black pencil, she had joined her eyebrows together and had drawn some short, slight whiskers along her upper lip. A fake set of braces gleamed through her parted lips. Her body was covered in a dress: a frilly white blouse attached to a knee-length pleated black skirt. I knew that dress. It was mine, my best one, the one I had worn on my first day of school. She had copied it exactly, down to the panty hose on her legs, her covered toes peeking through a pair of clunky black sandals. Her costume was me.
    She caught my eye as she walked in and threw back her head in laughter. Some of my classmates laughed with her, while some of the others, seeing the look on my face, squirmed uncomfortably in their seats. Mr. White, now standing at the head of the class, said only a cursory “Settle down” before instructing his students to direct their attention to a particular chapter. But I couldn’t really hear him; his voice was flattened out by the pressure that seemed to be building in my head, the spiky heat I was feeling all over my skin, the large lump that was sitting in my throat and prohibiting me from even swallowing, even breathing.
    The rest of the day was sheer misery for me. A few of the students in my class whom I would run into in the hallways pointed at me and giggled behind their notebooks, while others averted their eyes, perhaps picking up on my embarrassment. I felt angry, angry that even after a few weeks here people still felt the need to pick on me, and angrier still that I didn’t have a clue what to do about it.
    At home that night I picked up my pink diary with the creeping vine on the front. I went back to the line that had “sadness” on it, the one I had crossed out, and wrote it back in again.

Chapter Nine
    SIX WEEKS AFTER WE ARRIVED in America, my father bought a secondhand burgundy Toyota Camry.
    “We will be free to go where we wish, like regular Americans!” he said. Even without the car he had wanted to be an active participant in this new American life, talking longingly of exploring faraway places: Yosemite and Sonoma, Ojai and Oxnard. He liked to experiment with different foods, to connect with people and forge friendships. Part of him wanted to be like the American man he had pictured in his head. I half expected to come home one day and find him holding a pair of tongs, standing next to a sizzling grill, a dog wagging its tail at his feet. He would happily open up a conversation with the person waiting in front of him in line at the bank, segueing into how he had just come from India, how it was his first trip abroad, and my, how lovely and clean were the roads here—no bullock carts! And so terribly efficient the services! And who knew so much was available in all those huge stores! He said people liked hearing how their country offered so much. He said it made them proud.
    “Asha, we now have a car! We are mobile!” he said enthusiastically.
    My mother grunted from the couch, from where she had been watching an Indian game show. My father had had a