The Poison Apples (8 page)

Point is, I already had one snotty blond woman in my life making me feel bad. I didn't need another.

Which is not to say I wasn't seized by terror when I walked into the cafeteria that first night and realized that I was going to have find someone else to talk to. And somewhere to sit.

I picked up a plastic tray and made my way toward the hot food line. I waited as the line moved forward, trying to keep a nonchalant expression on my face.
Show no weakness, Reenie,
my father had told me on my first day of school in Beverly Hills, right after we'd saved up enough money to move there.
The key is to never let anyone know you feel bad.

I stared over the heads of my new classmates so it looked like I was spacing out and thinking about something incredibly important.

“Ew,” someone behind me in line said.

I turned around. The someone was a frighteningly perfect-looking girl with shiny red hair and porcelain skin. She was wearing a purple minidress and purple eyeliner. Her pink lip gloss was flawlessly applied. Was she talking to me?

“What
is
that smell?” she asked, her lips pursed in distaste. Our eyes connected. Okay. She was talking to me. I had to say something witty in return. Something cool. Something disaffected. I assumed she was talking about the smell in the hot food line, which, to be honest, was not as bad as it could have been. But there was something else my father liked to say to me:
Pick your battles, Reenie. Pick your battles.

“It smells kind of like homeless man,” I said thoughtfully. “Combined with old cheese. And nail polish. And my grandmother's sweat.”

The girl shrieked with pleasure. “That is, like, the grossest thing I've ever heard!”

I grinned. “You haven't heard anything yet.” It was true. I was famous at my high school for my disgusting sense of humor.

“I'm Kristen,” the girl said. She held out her hand. I shook it.

“I'm Reena,” I said.

“Reena? What is that?”

I wasn't sure exactly what she meant. “Um. It's Indian?”

“Oh. Cool.” Her eyes flickered up and down my face, then up and down my body. “I like your shoes.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you new here?”

I rolled my eyes. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Me, too.”

“Where are you from?”

Kristen tugged on the edge of her purple dress. For a split second, it looked like she felt uncomfortable. Then the look evaporated. I wasn't sure what had happened. She tossed her shiny red hair behind her shoulder.

“Westport, Connecticut,” she said.

“Oh. Cool.” I'd never even heard of it, but it sounded nice. Connecticut. I pictured thousands of red-haired Kristen clones, all living in perfect white houses with perfect green yards.

“Where are you from?” Kristen asked.

“Los Angeles.”

“Agggh!” she yelled. “I hate you! That's where I want to move when I grow up!”

“Oh. Yeah. It's okay.”

“Okay?”
she said while cafeteria ladies spooned shapeless lumps of chicken and sauce onto our plates. “I want more information. Do you, like, know any movie stars?”

“Nah,” I said, as we moved out of line into the dining hall. “I mean, except for the fact that some of them work out at my gym.”

“You're kidding me.”

“Uh, no. But that's not a big deal or anything. I mean, you see celebrities all the time. On the street and stuff. It's really not that exciting.”

Kristen sighed. “I
totally
hate you.”

We were standing in the middle of the dining hall, balancing our dinner trays on our palms. I cleared my throat nervously.

“We might as well sit together,” Kristen said after a long pause.

“Yeah,” I said. “Might as well.”

I could have kissed her.

We made our way through the crowd, looking for an empty table. Suddenly I saw Alice Bingley-Beckerman. She was standing alone in her black skirt and T-shirt, looking around the cafeteria with an expression of utter terror on her face. For a second, I felt bad for her. But then I realized that what looked to me like fear was probably classic New Yorker disdain. She was just thinking about how uncool all her fellow classmates were.

Another nugget of gold from Rashul Paruchuri:
Be nice, Reenie. Just not
too
nice.

Kristen and Alice bumped right into each other, and I saw Alice's face light up.
Oh no,
I thought.
I'm not cool enough for her, but Kristen is!
Before either of them could say anything, I leaned over to Kristen and whispered the first thing that popped into mind.

“I have to get out of here and smoke a cigarette,” I hissed.

Kristen stared at me, delighted.

“You are so bad!” she shrieked, and the two of us headed off toward the exit, leaving Alice Bingley-Beckerman in our wake.

At first I felt a wave of relief. Then, slowly, I started to realize what I'd just said, and my stomach dropped.

I have this terrible habit of … well, you wouldn't call it pathologically
lying
, because I never mean to
lie
, but I have this habit of sometimes just saying things that, well, In No Way Correspond to Reality.

For example: My father once threw this party for all the surgeons at his hospital, and we were all standing around and mingling with champagne glasses when this one old guy said to me: “You know, I actually attended Woodstock in 1969.” And, without even thinking about it, I nodded enthusiastically and said: “That's so funny! So did I!”

I was born decades after Woodstock.

The problem is, I can't control it. I don't even know that I've lied—I mean, said something that's not exactly true—until after I've already said it.

So when I leaned over and told Kristen that I needed to go outside and have a cigarette, I didn't anticipate that I'd actually have to go outside and … have a cigarette. I mean, I don't smoke. I took one puff at a party in seventh grade and almost hacked up a lung.

But all of a sudden Kristen was leading me out of the building and over to a shady tree next to our dorm.

“We can eat here while you smoke,” she said cheerfully, and plunked her tray down onto the grass.

I patted my pockets. I think I was half-praying that a pack of cigarettes would mysteriously appear inside of them.

“Aw geez,” I said, “I'm out. I'm out of cigarettes.”

“Oh no!” she said, a concerned look on her face.

“Yeah. It's okay. I can survive.”

“Well, you must be
dying
for one.”

“Um, well—”

“I mean, you must be, like, totally addicted, right?”

I nodded, my stomach churning. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

She stared at me.

“Um,” I said. I looked around the lawn. Agnes, my extremely weird Residential Advisor, was lying on the grass about twenty feet away, chatting with a guy wearing leather pants. I peered over at them. The guy was holding something small and white in his hands.

“Hold on a minute,” I said to Kristen, and marched purposefully across the lawn toward them.

“Hi, Agnes,” I said.

Agnes squinted up at me in the sunlight, her arms crossed behind her head. A slice of her stomach was exposed, and I saw that the skin below her bellybutton was pierced with a small silver barbell.

“Hey, Nina,” she said.

“It's Reena.”

“Right. Reena.”

I swallowed and smiled at Agnes and her leather pants–wearing friend. “Um, I was just wondering … do you … do either of you have a cigarette?”

The guy raised his eyebrows at Agnes. Agnes sat up.

“You smoke?” she asked, staring at me.

“Uh, yeah.”

“No,” she said. “No way. Not you.” Her eyes seemed to penetrate into my very soul.

“Oh, yes,” I said.

Agnes sighed and turned to her male companion. “God. Smoking doesn't mean anything anymore, does it?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. Neither did he apparently. He shrugged, withdrew a red pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and held them out to me. I took one, tentatively held it between my thumb and forefinger, and stared at it. One end was light brown. The other end was white. Which part did you put in your mouth?

“Cool, thanks,” I said to the guy in leather pants.

“You need a light?” he asked.

“Uh, sure,” I said.

I held out the cigarette. Agnes chortled.

“You put it in your
mouth
first,” she said. “Are you
sure
you're a smoker?”

I nodded, and looked across the lawn at Kristen. She waved at me. I waved back.

“Yup,” I said. “We just, uh, do it a little differently in California.”

“Like,
how
differently?”

I pretended not to hear. I put the white part of the cigarette in my mouth.

“WRONG END!” shrieked Agnes, and then she fell back onto the grass, laughing hysterically. I prayed that Kristen couldn't hear.

I put the brown end in my mouth. The guy in leather pants held out his silver lighter. A blue flame leapt up. I put the cigarette in my mouth, leaned over, and dipped it into the flame. What next? I glanced up at the guy. It looked like he was wearing mascara.

“Inhale,” he whispered.

I inhaled.

What felt like a brush fire went through the cigarette, into my mouth, and down my throat. I started choking. Some kind of phlegm rose up in my throat. Before I even knew what was happening, I'd spat out the cigarette onto the grass and was crouched over on the ground, hacking. Agnes wailed with laughter. The guy in leather pants was shaking his head.

“Thanks, anyway,” I whispered, my eyes burning with tears, and jogged back across the lawn toward Kristen.

It felt like small demon was running around inside my throat, setting fire to my tonsils.

“What happened?” Kristen asked.

I was planning on just giving up and telling her the truth.

I really was.

But then That Thing happened again.

“Those
cigarettes
,” I said. “That guy had the worst cigarettes.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. I'm, like, extremely picky about the cigarettes I smoke. And those were really gross. Blech.”

“What kind of cigarettes do you normally smoke?”

“Um. This really expensive French kind.”

I wanted to punch myself in the face.

“I guess we'll go buy some later,” Kristen decided, and patted a spot on the ground next to her. “Now tell me more about LA.”

I sighed with relief.

I had a friend.

Now I just had to make sure not to compulsively lie to her.

*   *   *

“LIGHTS OUT!”
Agnes bellowed, running up and down the hallway. “LIGHTS OUT, YOU LITTLE SUCKERS!”

Another big surprise about Putnam Mount McKinsey: It felt a little, just a little, like a prison.

All freshman and sophomores, Agnes informed us during our orientation meeting, had dinner at 7:00
PM
, study period from 8:00 to 10:00
PM
, and then lights out at 10:30.

I couldn't believe it.

In LA, I went bed at midnight. At the earliest.

Alice Bingley-Beckerman and I sat on the edge of our parallel twin beds, waiting for Agnes to knock on our door. Alice was wearing a beautiful black satin nightgown, and her blond hair rippled down her back.

I was wearing a pair of Pradeep's old boxer shorts and a tank top.

We were ignoring each other.

I felt ugly.

Even worse, I was starting to get this weird stomachache. I tried to remember another time I'd felt this way, and the only thing I could think of was this summer vacation Pradeep and I took when I was ten. We'd never met our mother's parents before and so they sent the two of us to Bangalore, India, to meet them. After a sixteen-hour plane trip, we spent two weeks in a tiny, hot house outside of the city, listening to a grandmother we'd never met before lecture us on how we were leading pointless, immoral lives in America. Between lectures, she'd chew dates and spit the pits into the palm of her hand.

There were also servants we weren't allowed to touch.

And one night I was forced to eat goat.

Anyway, the whole time we were in Bangalore, I had a stomachache. Maybe it goat-induced indigestion, but mostly I think it was homesickness. I missed my mom. I missed my dad. I missed my friends. I missed my dolls. I missed running in and out of the sprinkler in our backyard.

And the second I got back to LA and was folded into my mother's warm, rose-scented bosom, the stomachache went away.

Now I was sitting in a strange little room at this strange little boarding school in Massachusetts, next to a snotty blond girl who was ignoring me, waiting to be checked on by a scary older girl who seemed to be the only parental figure around, and it was that same feeling again. That same stomachache. That same feeling of homesickness.

And then I realized something even scarier: I wasn't even sure what I was homesick
for
.

I didn't want to go live with my mother and Pria.

I definitely didn't want to go live with my father and Shanti Shruti.

I was missing something that didn't exist.

I was missing the past.

I was pastsick.

There was a loud knock on our door.

“Yes?” Alice murmured.

Agnes threw open the door. “Yo,” she said. “Just making sure you're both here.”

“Yo,” I said sadly.

She peered at me. “You know you can't smoke in the dorm rooms, right?”

Alice whipped her head around and stared at me. “You
smoke
?” she asked.

It was the first sentence she'd spoken to me all evening.