Gold Diggers, Sanjena Sathian [hardest books to read .txt] 📗

“Dad.” I pushed the papers to the side, and with it, his hand. He slipped and caught himself on my chair. He placed one palm on my shoulder and I instinctively shrugged it off. “I have to pack. I’m leaving for Michigan soon.” I hadn’t brought down my laundry; the whole room smelled of oversprayed Old Spice and other, less pleasant odors.

“Neeraj, we are worried about you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“These things, Neeraj, they occur sometimes, but—”

“Dad.” I stood so violently that he took a few steps back, tripping on the clothes strewn about. I was taller than he was now, and unaccustomed to my new size. I could see the brightness of his bald spot anew; it beamed beneath my bedroom light. His mustache quivered. He smoothed the lapels of his coat. He stood there, breathing hard, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing. I looked on his anger as a curiosity. There was so much he didn’t know—about me, about the world.

“You want me to treat you like an adult, you behave like an adult,” he finally said. He looked around my bedroom. “Clean up this damned filthy place.”

Guilt, grief, yes, but also the worst crash, the endless jonesing, the withdrawal that my pharmacist father never suspected as such. I shivered and sweated as my body ached for lemonade. On Kartik’s advice, I approached Lowell Jenkins, who had an ADHD diagnosis, and used my leftover allowance for debate tournament meals to buy some of his Ritalin. I would find ways to acquire the stuff readily over the following years. Pharmaceutical methylphenidates could instill focus, and they kept some of the worst awareness of what had happened at bay. But they offered none of the comfort of the lemonade, none of the assuredness of identity, none of the implicit promise that tomorrow would contain in it a home.

There was no memorial service for Shruti, at least not one her classmates were invited to. But in late May, a few days after my run-in with Pranesh Uncle, Manu told me people were gathering notes to send to the Patels. “Overdue, man,” he said. “I feel like shit I didn’t do it sooner. Just. Exams. Killed me.” He rubbed his eyes; he’d grown dark bags beneath them. It was the unlikely Mia Ahmed, whom I’d never seen speaking to Shruti except in passing, who had trotted a big condolence card around the honors hallway during AP week, but there had been nothing more personal. We were in Kartik’s basement. The other guys were playing Grand Theft Auto. Manu and I stood in the kitchen, drinking Pibb Xtra. I felt like I was made of bubbles and syrup and nothing else. I’d dropped several pounds in the past month, and I stood at five-ten now, a few inches taller than Manu, though haggard in the cheeks, growing irregular patches of facial hair.

“Who’s people?” I asked.

“Juhi and Isha and all.”

“Seriously?”

I’d shut down Facebook—and never came back, even in adulthood—the morning they announced Shruti’s death at school. My feed was clogged with statuses from the girls who’d snickered at her, now claiming the deceased as their intimate: Last weekend we lost a classmate and a friend, Juhi wrote. We will miss you and your brains and your laugh, Shruti.

Manu’s brow furrowed. He lowered his voice. “It’s not their fault, and it’s not yours.”

“They were so mean to her,” I said. All the saliva in my mouth dried out. I put the soda down and filled a glass with water. I couldn’t rid myself of the bad taste. “We—”

“I know you feel bad, Neer. I do, too. I think about Spring Fling a lot.”

I had almost forgotten that Manu had preceded me as Shruti’s date. So, he had avoided her for a few hours on a dance floor. Some part of me ached to tell him he had no idea how small his unkindness had been in the scheme of things. Another part wanted him to keep self-flagellating, so everyone would share the blame.

“You didn’t do much,” I managed.

“That was exactly the problem, wasn’t it?”

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a plastic Kroger bag full of knockoff Hallmark cards. Teddy bears and hearts and flowers. I’m sorry, in our thoughts, condolences. None of the language of the brown parents who had been squeezing out their inadequate explanations. Here was white procedure, American custom, and in it, relief.

Manu left me with a pen and a card—a mournful chocolate lab on a white backdrop beneath a cursive phrase: sympathies—as he went over to distribute the others. There was some groaning as he shut off the television, but it was replaced by the scratching of pens.

“Do we know how she did it?” Kartik whispered.

“K,” Manu snapped. “How could that be relevant?”

“I just don’t know shit about any of this,” Kartik huffed. “What am I supposed to say?”

“I’m writing that they’re in our prayers,” Aleem said.

“Man, but you’re Muslim. What if they don’t want to be in your prayers?”

“I think they’ll understand, dude,” Abel said softly. “It all goes to the same place.”

My grip on my pen faltered. I didn’t want to write to the Patels; I wanted to write to Shruti. I had an urge to write backward in time, into the past, to run to OHS and shove a note in her locker, the way we used to communicate with girls in middle school—Circle yes/no if you want to be bf/gf. Now: Circle yes/no if it was/wasn’t my fault. Manu was gathering the cards. He stood next to me and sealed each one in an individual envelope. I still had not written anything.

“They might not even open them, Neer,” he said. “Do it so you can say you’ve done it.”

I clicked my Uni-ball over and over. I pressed it to the paper. Manu had given me a glossy card and a too-inky pen; the words bled. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Patel—I didn’t remember their first names to write So-and-So