ON SATURDAY I WAKE UP WITH BUTTERFLIES IN MY stomach. These butterflies are completely different from the ones I feel because of Flávia; around her, I feel anxious in a pleasant way. Like I’m going to throw up, but at least there’s a pretty girl in front of me. Now I just want to throw up.

When I get into Abbu’s car with all my things, Priti’s already there with her schoolbag full of books.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m going to help you,” she says, tapping her book bag like that should explain everything. “I’ll just study there, while helping you.”

I slip into the seat beside her, even though I know Ammu probably won’t be very happy about this. But Abbu doesn’t seem to mind. He even puts on Rabindranath Sangeet and sings along for the entire drive, even though Priti and I groan and ask him to shut up.

As Abbu gets everything in the restaurant in order, I pull a curtain in front of the corner booth and stick a copy of the poster I made onto the cloth with some tape. I hung copies up around the school throughout the week, in the hopes that people would actually come down this weekend. It’s a simple poster—one of the pictures from our Instagram blown up, with NISHAT’S MEHNDI on it in cursive and the date, time, and place of the pop-up shop printed neatly below. Above it I hang Flávia’s banner.

“Is that—”

“Yeah.”

Priti crosses her arms over her chest, and begrudgingly takes the banner in. “It’s nice.”

It’s probably the most I’m going to get from Priti. I still haven’t told her about what happened with Flávia and me at her house a few days ago.

We both slip inside the booth, and Priti takes her phone out of her pocket to snap a quick photo of the henna tubes that I’ve stacked up on the table.

“There. We’re open for business,” she says, tapping at her phone with more gusto and flourish than necessary. She pulls her books out of her bag while I lean back against my seat, waiting for the sound of customers arriving.

Five minutes pass.

Then ten.

Fifteen.

No sign of customers.

I unlock my phone and scroll through the Instagram account. The picture Priti put up has our location tagged and is captioned, open for business! It has a couple of likes, but no comments yet.

My phone buzzes and I click into my messages to find a new one from Flávia. It just says, good luck today! :). I smile in spite of myself. Nothing has happened between us since that day in her bedroom. We haven’t spoken about it, either, and I can’t bring myself to ask her what it meant, if anything. I’m too afraid of the answer.