Lovetorn (12 page)

Mr. Jeremy raised his glass of wine and toasted my father, wishing him a “happy semi-anniversary,” thanking him for his hard work. And my sweet father looked radiant with pride and joy. I so deeply wished my mother had been there to see it.

Chapter Sixteen

AS I WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR
after school, my father was just ending a phone conversation with Dr. Gupta. He had scheduled another appointment. The doctor wanted to see how my mother was responding to the new medication.

“She thinks your mother needs therapy,” my father said, rubbing his forehead. It was hard for him to get the words out. In his mind they symbolized family dysfunction, some great failure on his part to make his wife happy.

“Will she go?” I asked. The house was otherwise quiet. Sangita was with Amy at a swim meet.

“It will take a lot of convincing. It’s hard enough to get her to see Dr. Gupta.”

A few days later, I accompanied them back to the doctor’s office. After half an hour, my father came out.

“There is nothing physically wrong with her, thank the Lord. The results of all her tests are normal.” There had been a CBC, a thyroid function check, something else to determine the health of the kidneys and liver, tests to determine calcium and magnesium deficiencies. My mother had always been a strong, healthy woman. I hated that she was being treated like an invalid, that I knew the difference between Zoloft and Lexapro.

“So what then, Papa?” I asked.

“It’s all in her head,” he said a little uncharitably.

My mother stayed with the doctor for another twenty minutes or so. When she came out, she looked a little more relaxed. She sat down next to me, and my father went back in to speak with the doctor. When he was done, we all walked in silence to the car.

My mother fell asleep in the car on the way home. We had stopped at a red light. My father turned toward me, casting a quick eye toward my mother in the back to make sure she was fully asleep.

“Dr. Gupta has had some experience with these things,” my father said. “She runs a support group for women from the subcontinent who have different problems. Marriage issues. Abuse. Whatever. It is more common than you know. They meet once every two weeks, there in her office. Women from our country. Women like your mother. The doctor thinks that maybe Asha will feel a kinship with some of the other women who come there. Perhaps someone who knows what she is going through. She thinks there is a good chance there will be progress.”

I thought for a moment about what my father was saying. In the end, maybe my mother needed a bit of what I’d found recently: a place to fit in, with people she could relate to. It wouldn’t hurt to try.

The light turned green. We sped home.

Charlie and I stood outside the library after our study hour, our sixth together.

“You’ve really helped me,” he said. “You explained it in a way I could understand.” The sun’s rays glinted off the silver studs on a black wrist cuff he always wore, and his usually gel-spiked hair looked tamer today.

“So I’m good,” he said. “I mean, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. I think I’ll do okay on the final. You got me through a rough spot.” He looked down at the ground, kicking a tiny rock.

“In that case, I’m very glad I could be of help,” I said, smiling broadly. “Should you ever require my assistance again, you know where to find me.”

“Listen,” Charlie said, looking at me now. “In the beginning, when you first got to school, I was a real douche. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, my feelings were hurt,” I said. “But what is important is that you are no longer a douche.”

We both laughed.

That evening Amina called me at home, sounding as rushed as she usually did.

“The stuff we’ve been doing so far has been great; we’ve made some money, but we kinda need to up the stakes a bit,” she said.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“There’s a school orchestra; it’s really great, one of the best in the region. They’ve been invited all over the place to perform. I think last year they even went to Mexico.”

“And?” I asked hurriedly. I had been about to go give my mother her meds.

“I’m thinking we can see if they might consider doing a concert for us. We could sell tickets, and all the proceeds could go to Food4Life. We could make a chunk of change if we fill the auditorium.”

Some of the orchestra members were going to be in regular practice the following afternoon. Amina asked me to meet her at the auditorium.

She and I were the only people sitting in the darkened empty audience section of the auditorium. There were just a handful of performers, each playing a solo while the others offered critiques. There was a long-haired Asian girl with thin arms pounding on the keys of a grand piano. Then came a few kids on the violin, viola, and cello, all playing skillfully. After they finished, a tousled-haired boy blew through a French horn, and someone next to him played a gleaming trumpet.

“They’re great, aren’t they?” Amina whispered.

“Yes, I guess,” I responded. I knew very little about music and had nothing to compare this to. But it all sounded very professional.

Amina’s eyes scanned the stage. “There’s a student orchestra liaison guy. Don’t think he’s here yet. He’s the guy who works things out between the players and the conductor. We need to talk to him.”

A latecomer rushed in through a side door and quickly unpacked a silver flute from a black case. He waited till the trumpeter was finished and then put his flute to his lips.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from him. It might have been the distraction of him coming in so late, rustling the pages of his music book on the stand in front of him. Or it might have been how he played. The music from his flute alternated between soft and mellow, high and piercing. His fingers breezed along his sparkling instrument. His head, topped by a soft mop of black hair, bounced in tune with the music as if it was coming from his whole body instead of just his lips. I was fixated, hearing him and nothing else, nothing more than the magnificence of the music that resounded off these walls, seeing nothing more than a boy with a gray T-shirt and faded black jeans, his eyes closed, his head lilting in time to his own music. All I could see through the empty rows in front of us, past the diffused illumination from the spotlights overhead, was him, a modern-day Krishna with his flute.

Amina, Patrick, and I sat on a blanket under a thick oak tree, its branches overhanging, waiting. She had arranged to meet with orchestra members who were interested in helping out with the concert. Amina had told me that the boy with the flute was the “go-to” guy. The conductor, also the head of the music department, was too busy to get involved on a day-to-day basis. The flute guy was the buffer between the orchestra members and the rest of the school. If the concert was going to happen, it would happen on his say-so.

I felt a little thrill at the thought of seeing him again. I couldn’t comprehend it, but I had thought of little else since seeing him play. After I had left the auditorium, my legs were wobbling and I was sweating. I’d wondered who he was, what year he was in, why I had never noticed him before. I had shaken my head to dislodge those thoughts of him, thoughts that should have been reserved for my Vikram. This flute-playing boy had no right to be there.

A small group approached: I recognized the thin Asian pianist, a cellist, a boy at the back who had played the drums. And walking behind them, smiling as he talked to one of his companions, was the flute player.

Patrick began making the introductions. I blanked out when the musicians were telling us their names. The only name I heard was Tobias.

“But call me Toby,” he said, grinning. “I suppose I’m kinda in charge. I brought along some other players to help make a decision. So, what are we doing?”

Toby was sitting three people down from me. I leaned forward to look at him. Up close he was even nicer looking than he had been onstage. His black hair came to below his ears, long in the back and swept to one side at the top, covering his forehead. His eyes were a deep, dark brown. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with a large graphic of a silver-winged motorcycle on the front. He had on a thin white jacket. When he smiled, a small dimple appeared in his right cheek.

“Well, here’s the plan,” said Amina. “We want you to put on a concert that we’d sell tickets to. We’re thinking maybe in six weeks? Enough time to get the word out, but not too close to the craziness of finals and prom. This is going to be our biggest fund-raiser of the year, so we really need it to work. What do you guys think?”

Toby looked at the group.

“Well?” he asked. “Are we in?”

Everyone nodded.

“I’ll talk to the rest of the orchestra, but I don’t see why not,” Toby said finally.

Amina punched her fist in the air and looked around at us.

I was thrilled too. But for an entirely different reason.

“Holy crap, you have a crush!” Renuka said in typically understated Renuka-speak. “That is wicked funny!”

We were on the phone, and she couldn’t stop laughing. I was now questioning the wisdom of having called her.

“I knew that even
you
wouldn’t be able to resist,” she said, her giggling fit thankfully subsided. “There are way too many hot guys in high school. I’m just shocked it’s taken you this long.”

“Renuka, I’m
engaged
,” I said, stating the obvious. “I have a boy in Bangalore waiting for me. What am I doing even thinking about another boy?”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re engaged. Blah blah blah,” she said. “But you haven’t seen the dude in months; and he’s, like, nine
thousand
miles away. You know, just because you like a new boy here doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. You’re not going to run off and marry him. You just like a boy. Don’t get all freaked out about it. He probably has a girlfriend anyway.”

I didn’t like hearing that. Not one little bit. Ever since that meeting on the grass two days earlier, Toby had been my perpetual imaginary companion. As I made dinner, I wondered what he was doing at that precise moment. As I served my father
jalebis
, I wondered if Toby liked Indian desserts. I had searched for him on the Valley Crest Youth Orchestra page to see if anything came up. I called Amina and tactfully fished for information. She was way too immersed in her busy life to think too much about it. But at least I found out a couple of things: he was a senior, had been playing the flute since he was four, and was considered something of a prodigy. She said that on his Facebook page he mentioned that he hoped to get into Juilliard.

Renuka was right: this
was
a crush, based on what I had read in teen novels and seen on TV shows. I just really, really liked this boy. I liked the way he spoke, how he looked, how kind his face was, and how beautifully he played. Something about him reminded me of Vikram.

Vikram! I banged my palm against my head as if doing so would crush these terrible, disloyal thoughts. What of Vikram? My betrothed and my intended? Was I even
allowed
to be thinking of another boy? What would my parents say? And his? And, worst of all, Dada?

I took a big, deep breath. “This is ridiculous,” I said to myself out loud. “This boy is nothing to you. Get him out of your head. Stop all this silly daydreaming. You have to get it together.”

Chapter Seventeen

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
reminded me of Dada’s favorite saying: “Man proposes; God disposes,” which essentially means that people can plan anything they want, but sometimes life has something else in mind.

I had resolved to stay firmly focused on the task at hand: helping Amina organize and sell tickets to a concert to raise money to help women in remote Nepalese villages learn how to read. It seemed pretty straightforward. And it was—until Amina made yet another request of me.

“Listen,” she said, cornering me as I rummaged through my locker. By now I knew that when she started a sentence with “Listen,” she would be asking me to go above and beyond the call of duty.

“You know how with the previous stuff we’ve done everybody kind of pitched in and helped out, right? Well, we need to be a bit more organized this time. Each one of you guys in the group will have a task or, like, a few tasks.”

“Okay,” I said, slamming my locker shut. “I can get posters printed and put them up, maybe organize for a concession stand on the night of the concert? Bring some extra money in?”

“Yeah, yeah, all good,” said Amina. Like me, she was rushing to get to her next class.

“But a bit more than that. You know how Toby is kind of the liaison guy at the orchestra, right?” she asked. The mention of his name made me stiffen my back. “Well, I need you to do the same for us. You basically need to liaise with Toby. If an orchestra member has a question or problem, they go to him, he goes to you, you come to me. You make sure the musicians have everything they need on the night of the concert. Basically, get what Toby says the group needs. Sort of the go-between between them and us. Cool?”

My immediate instinct was to say no, because doing what Amina asked would require me to be in close proximity to Toby; and proximity to him wasn’t something I needed right now. But what reason could I give her—especially when I had so enthusiastically volunteered my time and support during our earliest meetings? How could I backtrack now?

Still, it was worth a shot.

“Um, you know, Amina, maybe I should focus on some of the other things, like selling tickets. You could ask Catherine instead. I think she knows more about music than I do.” I realized how feeble I sounded.

“Oh, please,” said Amina, turning to walk away. “You can totally do it. Text him. Just get going on it, okay?” And off she went.

I stood there leaning against my locker. I could do this. I would just be professional, composed, controlled. I knew how to be all those things. I wouldn’t let this throw me. I had a fiancé.

The bell rang, and I rushed to class.