Indie Girl (4 page)

“You know, I think I’m going to go up and talk to her,” I said. My determination had suddenly returned.

“What?” Kim asked.

“I’m never going to have this opportunity again,” I said. “It’s now or never. She said you needed to have the right contacts to work in this business. I don’t have those and never will. I’m never going to be Brooke Carlyle. All I want to do is work at her magazine over the summer. So given the fact that I have nothing to lose, I’m going to go up to Aaralyn Taylor and ask her for that job.”

When I approached her, I couldn’t summon up the courage to actually talk to her. For all my resolute determination, when push came to shove, I just wanted to run in the opposite direction. It was like there was a glass wall around Aaralyn Taylor that could only be shattered by people smarter, savvier, prettier than me.

I watched as she picked up the metallic leather Fendi clutch that lay on a chair at the back of the podium, and kissed her niece good-bye. Then, accompanied by Ms. Jennings and Mr. Baker, she made her way right past me, down the corridor and toward a long, shiny, black car that was waiting outside for her. I followed them out, feeling a bit like a stalker, but relieved that so far, none of them had noticed me. At the limo, my teachers said good-bye to our visitor, and she turned toward her car, a door held open by a driver in a smart blue suit.

She slid into the car and slammed the door shut. The engine started, and the driver began pulling out, getting ready to turn around and head out the large gate that served as the main entrance to our school. For a second, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let her get away. I let my bag fall to the ground and, spurred on by some senseless desperation, began running after the car, waving madly as it slowly moved away.

“Miss Taylor, hello, Miss Taylor!” I yelled. “Please come back! I need to ask you something! Please!”

The car suddenly stopped. I swore under my breath. I walked closer and waited as the tinted rear window slowly slid down. Aaralyn’s perfect face appeared through it.

“Yes? What’s wrong? What do you want?” she asked.

“Miss Taylor, it’s
me. Indie.
” I waited for a look of recognition to appear on her face. My application for the internship must have been on the top of that pile! She MUST know my name by now! I just had to jog her memory!

“Who?”
she said, looking irritated. “Look, I have no idea who you are or what you want, but I really must go.”

“I applied for the internship,” I said, my voice trembling. “I sent in my application two weeks ago. Maybe you didn’t receive it?”

“Oh,
that,
” she said. “Look, I’m not really sure.” she said. “It’s really in the hands of our Human Resources Department. I’m too busy to be involved in that process. Sorry.” She was about to roll up the window again.

My heart felt like it was about to plunge into the soles
of my shoes. I had met the deadline! There wasn’t anybody anywhere more suited for the job—internally or externally! Surely someone would have brought my application to her attention?

“You have no idea what a fan I am, Miss Taylor,” I said, taking another tack. “I
study
your magazines. You are such an inspiration to me.” I was aware that I sounded like a lovesick groupie, but the words just tumbled out of my mouth.

“Thank you,” she said politely. “But if you don’t mind, I have another meeting to get to.”

The driver turned around to look at me, rolled his eyes in my general direction, and then went back to his steering wheel.

“Is there
any
chance I can intern with you over the summer? Please? I know a lot about fashion, ask me anything, go on, you’ll see.” I knew I sounded unattractively desperate, but couldn’t stop talking.

Aaralyn sighed and looked away, pausing for a minute.

“Do you have any idea how many letters I get every week from girls like you who want to come and work for me?” she asked. “Hundreds. I don’t even open them. There’s no point. They’re mostly from kids who think that just because they are wearing the latest little trend they have what it takes to be a fashion writer. They don’t.”

That’s when I started crying. The stress of the past few days had finally gotten to me. But it was also the
realization that, in Aaralyn Taylor’s eyes, I was nobody special, nobody unique. Indeed, I was nobody at all.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Now I must really go.”

She leaned back in her seat, pushed the button to slide the window up, and the car slowly started moving forward again. I stood still, staring at the red taillights as they inched away.

Then the car stopped. I went running toward it, my heart in my throat. She had reconsidered. She had maybe seen my beautifully put-together outfit and realized that there was something more to me after all. She was going to hire me!

The window came down again.

“What was your name?” she asked.

“Indie,” I said, a smidgen of hope returning. She remembered me after all!

“Look, Indie. I don’t know about that internship. But maybe there is another way you can help me.”

I stood still and silent, perplexed.

“Where are you from, anyway?” she asked.

“Here,” I replied. “I mean, I’m Indian. My parents are from Calcutta. But I was born here.”

“Do you have any experience with children?” she asked.

“I have an eight-year-old brother,” I replied, confused by the question. “Why?”

Aaralyn paused for a second.

“I hear that people from your part of the world are good with domestic duties,” she said, glancing at a lilac-painted fingernail. “I have a kid. He’s two. I’m desperate for a weekend babysitter. I can’t seem to find anybody who’s interested in giving up their Saturday afternoon to hang out with a baby. If you’re interested …”

I couldn’t imagine Aaralyn Taylor with a child. She had never mentioned him in any of the interviews I’d read about her or in the weekly editorial she wrote in her magazine. I couldn’t imagine her hugging a baby and changing diapers and kissing and cooing. There had never been mention of a husband either, if indeed there was one. Aaralyn didn’t seem like the kind of woman who would ever iron anything or whip up scrambled eggs for the family on a lazy Sunday morning.

“I’ll do it,” I said, the words out of my mouth before I even had a chance to think about what I was saying. “But, um, don’t you need to check references or anything?”

She cast a quick eye up and down me before scribbling down her home address and phone number.

“Saturday, ten
A.M.
Here,” she said, handing me her name card. “No. Don’t need references. You look pretty harmless to me. I’ll pay you seven dollars an hour. Keep the whole day clear because I don’t know how long I’ll need you.”

It wasn’t until the limo had finally made its way through the gate, down the street, and out of sight that I finally turned around again and headed back toward the school building, stooping to pick up the bag that I had let fall from my shoulder. I was clutching on to Aaralyn Taylor’s card like it was a lifeline, as if letting it out of my hand for even a second would mean that I would lose it forever.

Ahead, parked right outside the building, was my mother’s dark green Hyundai. She was facing me, a book in her hand, her eyes planted firmly on me. She opened the door, stepped out of the car, and stood up, a woolen shawl draped over her short-sleeved T-shirt, gray socks on her sandal-clad feet.

“Can I ask what you are doing?” Her voice was stern, sterner than it had been in a long time. I was, for the most part, what would be considered a “good girl,” so there was really rarely any reason for my parents to take any kind of tone with me. But now, she didn’t look pleased.

“What are you doing running after somebody’s car, dropping your bag on the ground? What was the urgency?”

I got into the front passenger seat, buckled up, turned on the radio, and tuned it to KISS-FM. “Fergalicious” was playing, and I tapped my foot in rhythm.

“Mom, you’re not going to believe what just happened.”

“Babysitting?” my father exclaimed. “You’re getting the best education, you excel at your studies, and now you’re going to do babysitting? Indira, what has come over you?”

As I had expected, my father was not impressed. His last patient of the afternoon had canceled, so he was home early. He had wanted to relax, to read the papers, and munch on some
chevda—
a spicy, crunchy trail mix—and maybe watch some CNN. But my mother had wasted no time in telling him that this coming Saturday, when I should be going to the Hindu temple with them and my younger brother, I was planning instead on spending the day at a strange woman’s house, cleaning up after her child.

“Let alone the fact that you have never done any babysitting,” my father chastised, reaching into the bowl. “You have never expressed an interest in such things. You don’t even help out with your own brother as much as you should.”

I turned to look at Dinesh, who was camped out in a corner with his LEGO pirate ship.

“Yeah,” my brother said, his face impish. His teeth had wide spaces between them—my parents would be paying off a future orthodontist for the next decade—and his hair stuck up in all the wrong places. He was scrawny and mouthy and could be a real pest sometimes. But he called me
Didi—
big sister in Hindi—and I loved that.

“You can’t look after a baby,” he said. “Didn’t you drop me on my head once?”

I ignored him, and turned back to my father.

“Dad, you know I’m really responsible. And it’s not like it’s a brand-new baby or anything. The kid is two. They just need someone to hang out with him, make sure he doesn’t fall out of a window or anything. I’ll be earning some extra pocket money. Haven’t you been telling me I need to do that? Really, how hard can it be?”

All the way to Aaralyn Taylor’s house the following Saturday morning, my father lectured me about what he described as my “poorly considered decision.” I nodded politely as he spoke, but was far more preoccupied with how I looked. I had agonized for hours the night before over my attire for my first babysitting gig. I needed to be comfortable and not care if ketchup ended up on my clothes. But I had also ruled out sweatpants and sneakers, reminding myself that, baby or no baby, I was still going
to Aaralyn Taylor’s house. So I had opted for black capri-length jeans with a cute trim, thong sandals, and an old Aerosmith T-shirt I had found at a garage sale, which my parents couldn’t believe I had spent eight dollars on, because it was somebody else’s junk. I had slid on the mirrored bangles again and, around my neck, a carved bone pendant in the shape of the Om symbol. Stuffed into my bag was a floppy straw hat, the kind an American grandmother might once have worn but that was now instantly hot after Mischa Barton was spotted in one while vacationing in Hawaii. I had thrust it in at the last minute, hoping that perhaps this babysitting thing might entail a visit to the beach. While we were barely in the first flush of spring, the weather had been gorgeous recently, and Kim and I had the hit Santa Monica Pier the past two weekends.

The traffic was light on this sunny Saturday morning, and we whizzed along the freeway. I glanced at Aaralyn’s name card and then at the directions that I had downloaded from MapQuest. Aaralyn lived in Brentwood, which I had only really heard about because Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck lived there too. In fact, as far as I could recall, a lot of Hollywood stars made Brentwood their home. Aaralyn was probably even a next-door neighbor to a couple of them, saying hello as she stepped in and out of the limo that was inevitably always waiting outside her house, maybe carpooling with them to some
glam event. I felt a chill go up my spine and a smile sneak across my face as I thought of all the sophisticated adventures that lay ahead of me.

I told my father that I would call him an hour before I was due to leave, to give him ample time to come and get me. He sighed, obviously considering that this little job of mine was going to cost him three hours of drive time today alone.

“I hope this is just a one-time thing,” he said as we pulled up outside Aaralyn’s house. I peered through the car window. In my mind, I had envisioned a grand mansion, the kind of place with security cameras all around it, a high gate topped with spikes, a circular courtyard with a fountain right at its center, a place like Madonna might live in.

But from the outside, the house looked smaller and a bit more ordinary than I had imagined, the only clues that someone successful lived here being the sparkling silver BMW convertible that was pulled up in the driveway.

I turned to wave good-bye to my father and slowly made my way up the path leading to the house, noticing plastic toys and a Radio Flyer Little Red Wagon on the lawn.

I rang the doorbell and heard the whirring of a vacuum cleaner gradually stop. The door opened, and in front of me was a small dark-haired woman in her fifties, wearing a maid’s uniform.

“Yes, miss?” she asked.

“Oh, hello, I’m here to see Aaralyn Taylor. She’s expecting me.”

“Oh, you new babysitter?” she asked. “Good. You come in. Kyle is go crazy today.”

In the background, I heard a high-pitched screech, and what sounded like Aaralyn’s voice yelling out, “Stop it! Stop it now!”

“Everybody crazy today,” the woman said, stepping aside to let me in.

I stood in the foyer and looked around. It was far more stylish inside than the exterior let on. It was the kind of place I might have seen featured on the pages of
Elle Decor,
all cool tones and chunky pillar candles. The shrieking in the background was the only thing to pierce the calm of the place.

I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me and turned around. In front of me was a handsome man holding a coffee mug, wearing a striped bathrobe, a big smile on his face.

“Hello, you must be the new girl. What’s your name?”

“Indie,” I replied, shaking his hand nervously.

“Hey. I’m Juno. Aaralyn’s husband. She told me a bit about you. Said you ran after her begging for the internship when she was leaving your school the other day? That’s pretty enterprising, I’d say.”