Chapters (40)
- Cover
- Also by Saumya Dave
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Acknowledgments
- Readers Guide
- Discussion Questions
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“There’s no way I can sleep right now after everything,” Mom says. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve been trying to distract myself with phone calls and TV, but none of it’s really helping.”
“I know what you mean,” Suhani says.
“You must be hungry.” Mom raises a recently threaded eyebrow. “Were you asleep?”
Suhani forgot that in the midst of replaying Natasha’s videos, she had changed out of her maxi dress and into teal-blue Athleta pants and a faded gray Pleasant Hill High T-shirt. Her nails are chipped for the first time in months. Zack always joked that he could tell how Suhani was doing based on the state of her nails.
“Uh, no. I was just sitting in my room.” Suhani takes two Oreos from a box on the counter. With her outfit, glasses, messy bun, and now the cookies, she almost looks identical to her seventh-grade yearbook picture. “Why are you cooking again?”
“Just in case Dad wants one as a midnight snack,” Mom says, and Suhani can almost hear her adding the word “duh.”
“Can’t he figure something else out because he’s an adult?”
“You know I can’t just do that to him,” Mom says, as if leaving Dad to eat a bowl of cornflakes or pick up late-night Taco Bell would be some sort of crime. Suhani doesn’t even know what Zack eats most of the time. She couldn’t handle one week with a dynamic like Mom and Dad’s.
“I think it could be good for both of you if he fends for himself once in a while,” Suhani says.
“I’m fine. We’re all fine,” Mom says with an edge to her voice. “Whenever you come here, you think it’s your job to dictate the way the house runs. Even when people were visiting a few months ago, you got so upset.”
“Somebody has to say something about this throwback to the 1950s!” Suhani says as she thinks back to the extended family members who visited Mom and Dad over the summer. Of course Mom could never suggest they stay in a hotel. Instead, she made them chai multiple times a day, cooked them fresh meals, did their laundry, took them to Stone Mountain and the Coca-Cola museum, and sent them home with a combination of gifts and some of Anuj’s old video games for their own kids.