Chapter 1
There are certain moments that define your life—a first date, a gut-wrenching breakup, making the winning goal.
Today would determine my entire junior year.
I had gotten up at 6:30 a.m. on the dot, giving me thirty minutes of a head start before either of my sisters woke up to shower. Three girls in one house are no joke on the water bill, as my dad likes to remind us often. By 7:00 a.m. I was dressed and wrestling my hair into submission as the house woke, which would leave me just enough time to zip over to Mimi’s Bubble Tea before first period to grab the classic with a double shot, the way Jake likes it.
Seems like a lot of effort, I know. But today I was going to ask Jake Nakamura to the homecoming dance—on the last day of the time-honored Edison High asking week. I had planned it carefully, from what I would wear to what I would say and, of course, the exact timing of it all. It was step one in my ultimate plan. Steps two to twenty were next (and outlined in my binder), all laid out to hopefully lead to one thing: getting the perfect boyfriend.
And finally finishing The List.
Lily, my best friend, and I had written our list—The List—after our first day at Edison High two years ago. It was the list to rule all lists, one that would tell us at graduation if we had managed to pull off the perfect Edison High School experience. Everyone always says high school is the most important four years of your life, so what better way to make sure you made the most of it than a plan?
Like my mom always said, a plan in hand was better than two opportunities in the bush. And it had worked out for her—award-winning ob-gyn, married to her high school sweetheart, three amazing girls (if I may say so). She was even halfway done with her plan to become the Dr. Sanjay Gupta of women’s medicine.
I’d already crossed off the smaller things, like performing at Edison’s famed International Night and getting Pete Hernandez’s sweaty jersey after the Edison–South Central soccer finals, and some of the bigger ones, like getting all As on my sophomore-year report card.
Now there were only two things on The List I hadn’t done, two things I had added at the last minute.
And this was the big one. This was my chance to clinch that coveted high school boyfriend, just one step away from high school sweethearts (like my parents), and three jumps and a skip from the perfect life. It had worked for my mom and dad; it would work for me too. My dad had been the first Josyula to find his true love during asking week and I would find mine too.
So, step one. Ask Jake Nakamura out to homecoming during asking week. Fingers crossed.
I smoothed my dress down and took a last look in the mirror. Hair tamed, fabulous dress on, and as a last touch, red lipstick. My aunt always said there was nothing a good red lip couldn’t cure, and if it could help the fluttering swarm of butterflies in my stomach, I was game. Plus, I liked the way it made me feel like a bolder version of myself.
That energy carried me down the stairs and to the kitchen.
“Hey, hey!” My dad popped his head around the corner, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. His hair was a messy mop of curls, so different from mine. I inherited my straight, refuses to curl, yet is infuriatingly thick hair from my mom. “Easy there. We just got those floors in.”
“We got them in like a year ago, Dad,” I said. “Anyway, the hardwood guy said we could tap-dance in stilettos, and it wouldn’t matter.”
My dad chuckled. “There’s that steel trap of a mind that I wish you didn’t have.”
“You love it,” I said. “The car salesman last weekend hated me. I’m a fabulous asset.”
My dad took a long sip of his coffee. “That you are. Where’s the fire? You’re ahead of schedule for the day. I bet Mani hasn’t even showered yet.”
A bang and the sound of shuffling feet came from upstairs.
“That’s Mani,” I said. Then came the yelling. “And Ratna.”
Cue the fighting: one, two, three . . .
“Get out of here!!” Ratna’s voice carried down the steps, to the kitchen, and probably out to our neighbors as well. I ignored the chaos and tried to think, rummaging through the kitchen drawers.
Ballpoint pens, paper clips, scissors, and—ah, there we were. I pulled out the
final touch I needed for my proposal, an old collector’s quarter I had hidden away from my sisters. Ratna’s special talent was finding anything you didn’t want found and then somehow losing it. I had avoided that whole mess by hiding it in the cutlery drawer, somewhere she would never want to look.
I held out the quarter and admired it. Well, I didn’t really get it, but I knew Jake had been looking for this last quarter, the 2004 Wisconsin state quarter with that squiggly little extra leaf. It was all he’d talked about during tennis warm-ups for the past six months.
We’d had pretty much the perfect meet-cute. It had been the first day of tryouts for tennis and we’d knocked heads going for the same down-the-middle ball. And when we got paired as partners for mixed doubles matches, I knew it was a sign from the universe that it was meant to be. We’d been talking for a while now and today was the day.
My mom walked into the kitchen then, white coat draped over one arm and keys in hand. She wasn’t particularly tall—none of the women in our family were—but she had a presence. Everything from her short, collarbone-length haircut to her sleek shoes and precisely applied makeup screamed “I have my life together.” She snapped her phone shut and sighed. “It’s worse than I thought, Suraj—”
She stopped the second she saw me, her eyes going wide.
“What is?” I said, even though these days, there was only one reason my mom took secretive phone calls. And it didn’t have to do with her book deal, which Ratna found out about in a day and told all of us about. She had totally stolen my mom’s thunder. “How’s she doing?”
My mom sighed and rubbed her temple. “Your aunt’s okay. Doing well, actually. Starting a new yoga retreat, I think. Or maybe it was a meditation workshop?”
“Still on that ‘finding herself’ kick?” my dad said. I thought I heard him snort, but when I turned around, he looked innocently out the window.
I grabbed two slices of whole wheat bread and popped them into the toaster.
“It’s not a kick, Suraj,” my mom said, swatting at his shoulder. “Or not much of one. You know what the past few years did to her. It takes time after something like that to figure out what you want. To make a new plan.”
A few years ago, just as I was about to enter high school, my aunt had come to stay with us out of the blue. It took a few days before I learned that my aunt’s marriage of six years had fallen apart, and my aunt with it. My beautiful, lively, free-spirited aunt’s entire life had vanished in front of her eyes, just because she had decided to give her heart away to the wrong person.
That was a mistake I wasn’t going to make.
I looked out to the garden as I prepped breakfast—tomato chutney and butter on sourdough—for my grandma. I knew she’d be gardening later. I was used to seeing her small sari-clad figure tending the flowers with a care that edged on reverential. I still remembered
when my aunt’s news first broke—my grandma had spent day and night out there, taking it on herself to rebuild our patchy, dying garden. Like it might fix my aunt’s marriage.
It hadn’t, but my grandma hadn’t stopped her habit of spending the morning with her flowers and plants. Which was probably why we had a jasmine bush in our yard that was still alive after being transported from India forty years ago. I called it Maya.
“Your aunt’s coming by next weekend, so taco night?” my mom said.
My mom and her sister couldn’t be more different, but they were close despite their large age gap, and I adored my aunt.
“Of course,” I said. “We can do Cantina Fresca. By then, I’ll have clinched my best year ever. I can give her the entire play-by-play over guacamole and perfectly salted chips.”
“Best year ever? Does that include the prank war?” my dad said. “You used to always say high school wouldn’t be complete till you won it once.”
My mom laughed. “If that’s what you’re talking about, you have a hard road in front of you, what with Vik winning every year.”
I flinched. I had thought it was an unspoken rule that we didn’t speak of that thing or anyone related to it, especially not before breakfast.
“We were in middle school, Amma,” I said. “We weren’t that little.”
“You’ll always be my little baby,” my mom said in Telugu, reaching over to pinch my cheek.
I rolled my eyes.
My mom had been feeling especially sentimental since I had started my junior year of high school a month ago. I’d be doing something totally normal, like folding my laundry, and I’d look over and she’d be sobbing. Even Superwoman needed time to just be.
My mom took a big bite out of her gluten-free blueberry waffle, somehow managing to not smudge her pink lipstick. “I ran into Reshma yesterday while taking out the trash and she was saying he’s been spending all hours of the night working on his new plans,” she said. “She was complaining that she never sees her son.”
Maybe that was a good thing. Vik was the bane of my existence, the neighbor from hell, the nightmare I’ve known since I was ten.
I scoffed at that. “Vikram Mehta does not plan. He schemes. I’ll have to warn Lily that he’s ramping up,” I said. “Wouldn’t want her to wake up and put her foot into a bowl of peanut butter, like in seventh grade.”
“Peanut butter?” my dad said. “You didn’t tell us about that one.”
I grabbed my toast and started spreading mango chutney and cream cheese on it. There were some things you didn’t tell your parents, but I knew my dad loved hearing about the stupid prank war. Too bad it was the last thing I wanted to talk about today. Asking week could determine your entire year romantically, and for senior year too. Lines were drawn in the battle of love junior year, and if I wanted a high school boyfriend at all, this had to go well.
“Anyway, I have better things to do, especially today,” I said. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Today I will finally get the—”
Something caught my eye through the window.
I stared out the kitchen window, our driveway in full view. The bright early-morning sun glinted like magic off the disaster in front of me.
My car was covered in pink Saran Wrap like a badly wrapped gift from a mall Santa shop. Painted on top of the Saran Wrap were the words “YOUR MOVE.”
Vik had struck again. ...
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