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?
“What’s going on? You’re scaring me.” Suhani’s throat tightens as she takes in Zack’s red eyes, the urgency on his face.
“Natasha’s in the emergency room.”
Eighteen
Bina
She can’t sleep.
To be fair, Bina was always a bad sleeper. Ma said that even when she was a baby, she’d just stare at the ceiling as if she was lost in thought.
She goes through a breathing exercise that’s Suhani approved. (She told Suhani she found the exercise through Psychology Today when really she found it on WhatsApp, her main source of information. Suhani got irritated every time Bina started a sentence with “I found the best remedy on WhatsApp. . . .”)
Deepak’s on his side, snoring. His white undershirt is bunched around his waist. He can fall asleep anywhere: on the recliner while they’re watching Jeopardy!, during the short drive home from Anita and Jiten’s house, in the middle of monotonous speeches at weddings. He said it was because of residency-training sleep deprivation, but Bina’s always thought it had to do with his mind being at ease. Meanwhile, she just saw a post online that read “a woman’s brain is like an internet browser with dozens of tabs open” and she’s never related to something more.
She pushes the cloudlike duvet cover off her legs. The blue-gray morning light peeks in through the blinds. When she’s stretched out on the recliner in the living room, she pulls up Natasha’s videos for the tenth time since Mira showed them to her. Maybe if she watches them enough, she’ll be able to view them more like a spectator than a mother.
But as she takes in her daughter’s vulnerable but strong voice, the glint in her eyes, she knows that’ll never be true. She can’t decide if she’s in awe of Natasha’s courage, appalled by her audacity, or both.
Bina pauses at one section of the video that she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about.
“Some of you may be wondering why I’m here if I’m feeling so shitty,” Natasha says. “And I get that. I really do. But here’s the thing. I’m trying to get out of my head. And telling all of you how shitty I’m feeling helps me because now all that crap that was brewing around in there is out there with you. What I’m trying to say is, thank you all for coming here and being my therapists.”
Bina presses the pause button. The only sound is the faint chirping of birds outside the living room window.
I know why that part is getting to me, she texts Devi. It’s what I said about acting. I used to tell my parents I wanted to get out of my own head. I stopped telling them that because they just didn’t get it.