Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot, page 6
He took me to lunch, we had a great time, I thought he was into it, and then he said I was cool and that if he was Indian he’d date me and that I should meet his Indian friend Rohit.
A few long minutes passed by. The ellipsis of someone typing kept popping up and disappearing. I tried focusing on the sounds of the daal and sabzi simmering behind my laptop screen—my mom had three pots on the stove and had moved on to creating the atta for the roti. She kneaded the dough, punching down into it, her hands shining with oil and water.
Finally, my computer dinged with a response.
NEIL PATEL
That’s…really messed up.
DIVYA BHATT
I’m so mad for you, girl!!
The messages came nearly in tandem, and I had to wonder if they were texting about me separately.
Well, this is awkward. We have to plan how to talk to you so we don’t mess it up. Phantom Neil was smart. If the situation were reversed and he or Divya had gone through the afternoon I had, I wouldn’t know what to say either.
PAYAL MEHTA
Yeah. It sucked.
NEIL PATEL
Sry, dude. Gross, ignorant yt dudes.
DIVYA BHATT
Ugh! You’re too good for him anyway.
I paused, considering what to say to change the subject, and then a separate chat window popped up on my screen.
PHILIP KIM
Hey. I started working on the psych project already, so if you wanna put ur name on it, let me know.
With a shock, I remembered Philip had been the last person to see me before I had lunch with Jon! Did he secretly jinx me??? It was that ridiculous thought that made me realize maybe I was losing it. Without answering Philip, I closed my laptop with a bang.
My phone dinged almost immediately, signaling a text from Neil asking if my internet went out, and then a second in quick succession asking if he could fill Finn in on what happened. I shot a text back letting him know I was going to go offline until tomorrow and that he could tell Finn whatever.
“AAAAH, kyaa banari hai, Deepa?” My dad’s deep voice echoed in from the garage, beating him into the room by a few seconds. Before my mother could answer him, or even say hello, the landline rang as his house slipper tapped softly against the kitchen tile. He rushed to answer the phone.
“Hello?…Who? Why? Who are you?…It is dinnertime. Payal will have to call you back.” He glanced at me as he said that last line. That couldn’t be good. Who would be calling the house phone asking for me? I thought the landline was for spam and my dadi-ji in India, who adamantly refused to write down any other phone numbers.
My mom had paused rolling out the last roti and was looking at me. She subtly nodded at the phone. I made a face and shrugged.
“Payal. Who is this American boy calling for you?” I turned back to face my father.
My dad’s not an imposing man at first glance. He’s maybe five foot six, clean-shaven, and has finely coifed hair…always very well put together. When new friends meet him, they’re always impressed with him. “Payal, your dad is so cool. He looks so young,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It’s annoying because usually when they’re talking about how awesome he is, he’s yelling at me in Hindi to clean my room. Now he was in one of the tailored suits that he wore to his practice every day, but with a look that could strike the fear of god(s) into you. Sometimes I thought my dad might have been a scary Halloween mask in his last life. Right now, he used that scary mask energy to glare at me.
“What? I have no idea. What was his name?” I frowned.
“Philip, no surname.” His expression matched mine.
But at his words, I hung my head, because why did you call my house, Philip Kim? Why?
“Oh, that’s Philip Kim.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mom go back to finishing up the roti for dinner. My dad was standing on the other side of the counter still holding his briefcase, staring at me as if he could figure out whether I was going on dates with an evil boy named Philip Kim just by seeing the truth of it on my face. I carefully settled my features into something neutral.
“Jaante hain? Yeh American?” My dad loved to talk about “Americans” like I wasn’t one. Most of the time it was funny; right now it was annoying. The false neutrality broke, and I sighed.
“Yes, I know the American, Dad. We’re partners on a psychology project.” His mood immediately brightened.
“Oh, why didn’t he say it was for school?! Stupid boy. Chalo, make sure you call him back.” He started to head upstairs to get into more comfortable clothes before dinner.
“Dad, you know that I’m American, right?” I asked him, not for the first time.
“Payal, don’t be silly. I know you’re very American.” It wasn’t the first time he mocked me with that answer. After the day I’d had, I almost replied and asked if he’d consider calling Jon Slate and telling him that. But I bit my tongue. I was just sad, not trying to get murdered by my own father.
Besides, I knew some of my dad’s annoyance came from the fact that his dad—my papa-ji—tried to immigrate here in the 1970s but hated it so much that he went back to India after, like, eleven months. Knowing that didn’t make my dad’s teasing any less irritating, though.
“Oi! Arun! Don’t go upstairs and turn on the TV, okay, khana taiyar hai!” My mom knew my dad too well.
“Haan ji, haan ji.” He called back to her from the stairs.
“Payal, table to set karo.” I got up from my perch at the counter and pulled plates and glasses out of the cabinet. “Who is Philip?” Mom was moving food from the pots into serving dishes. Dinnertime was for real in my house. Mom did not mess around.
“He’s no one—some jerk from class. Mr. Lutton made us be partners.”
She paused her movement and caused some daal to drop onto the counter as a result. She rushed to grab a wet paper towel to stop the haldi from permanently staining the surface yellow. Once that near disaster was averted, she looked at me again.
“Payal, you don’t need to say such mean things.” I rolled my eyes at her obvious naivety.
“Mom, trust me when I say this”—I grabbed the rice and daal from her to place on the table—“Philip Kim can handle it.”
And I knew it was true—Philip might be my nemesis, but we had an agreed-upon mutual respect for our disrespect! I nearly dropped the glass I was holding as I was hit with a sudden realization—was Jon Slate a new nemesis worse than Philip Kim?
Skip Notes
*1 It is a complete travesty that Fawad Khan’s IMDb page is not a thousand movies long, because I deserve a thousand movies with his handsome face in them.
*2 Not all Desi parents were like mine, obviously. Divya’s mom was the Cool Desi Mom™—the unicorn that fit into the very-Hollywood ideal of “Oh, my mom? She’s my best friend.” Who even???
*3 Followed by me dying for want of a good paratha.
Chapter
Eight
In the parking lot, the cool morning air mixed with our state’s famous humidity to make my skin feel extra clammy. I was not into it. I’d emailed Philip before going to bed to meet me before homeroom so we could go over whatever his idea was for the experiment. Our project deserved at least some of my focus, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wasn’t American[*1] enough for Jon Slate or for my parents or for…maybe anyone at all.
I leaned against the side of my car and knocked my heel against the tire. Why was I letting this affect me so much? I didn’t want to be the kind of girl who let a cute boy ruin her self-esteem. According to society, I was supposed to be strong and independent and not care about anyone else’s opinion but my own. But that’s hard. I scowled at the empty lot around me. Now I felt bad because of Jon’s ignorance and how easily he’d implied that I was only an option for his Indian friend and because I cared about what he thought. I let my head fall back against the roof of the Honda and stared up at the sky. There was a huge, cartoonishly fluffy cloud passing by, and I wished on it to stop thinking about Jon Slate and his annoying opinions.
The sound of wheels turning into the gate broke through my thoughts. Philip pulled into the spot next to me. I watched him get his things together and wondered if he ever went through the same thing I was experiencing—people making assumptions about who he was based on his culture. Like me, he couldn’t hide how different he was. He didn’t only hang with other Korean kids, though; his friend group was a mixed bag. If there was one commonality within his friend group, it was that they were people who liked to talk about being smart.
I wasn’t being mean; it was a fact. He opened his door and unfolded out of his tiny compact to join me in my leaning.
“How do you even fit in that car?” I asked, but I knew the question sounded more tired than biting.
“Very comfortably, Mehta. What’s up your butt?” I shot him a stink eye. But he didn’t even notice, choosing instead to survey the path to the school ahead of us. Like he was deliberately not looking at me. My stink eye shifted to a glare.
“Nothing, jerk. Tell me your idea that we probably won’t even do because I’m sure it won’t be good.” Philip laughed at me, and I glowered. He scrubbed at the back of his head before shaking it.
“Okay, we will not go into Payal Mehta’s weird psyche and instead I’ll tell you about my excellent plan to get us both A’s on this project.” But before Philip could go into it, another car turned into the lot. We both turned toward the sound, and then I did a double take. It couldn’t be. It was a Kia. A Kia containing a guy who’d thrown me into the depths of an identity crisis. Shit. I immediately dropped down to a crouch on the ground between my car and Philip’s. “Mehta?” Philip looked down at me, his bangs hanging forward so I could see thin black brows drawn together in confusion.
“Shhh!” I reached up and yanked on his sleeve to get him to duck down with me. He landed next to me with a thud.
“Ow—hey—what is happening right now?” He started to get back up, which could not happen.
“Just stay down, Philip. Please!” His eyes widened and he nodded, pulling his knees up and falling back against his car door.
“Okay, okay.” He was talking to me like I was a scared puppy. I did not care for it.
“Don’t patronize me! I just…don’t want to see…someone.” Good job at explaining that one, Payal. He gave me a deadpan stare and then crawled to peek around the hood of his car to see who I could possibly be talking about. “Philip! No!” I said as emphatically as I could while still being quiet enough to not be noticed by Jon Slate.
“Is that…Jon?” Jon was making his way to the school doors. Why did this keep happening? He never came to school early, and now two days in one week? “Oh, right. I heard about the vomit thing. Things.” He looked back at me and how I was ducking my head extra deep into my hoodie. “This seems…excessive, though. Even for you, Mehta. Didn’t I see him give you a very public apology?”
I covered my face with my hands.
“Please stop talking,” I said into my palms before pulling my hands back down to see what was happening. Philip had turned back to watch Jon walk into the school. I fell onto my butt and sat on the cold, hard ground. Is this how it was going to be every time I saw him? Having to sit through the burn of inadequacy his words had manifested to run through my veins over something I couldn’t. Even. Change. Something I didn’t want to change!
“Okay…I’m standing up now if that’s alright with you.” Philip didn’t wait for me to answer. He stood and dusted off the knees of his black jeans. I stayed seated. “Seriously, Mehta, what is with the drama? Who cares about that pill?” He softened his harsh words with a hand out to help me. I sighed and took it, surprised by how strong his grip was as he pulled me up. He let go as soon as I was standing, and I stretched my fingers out before running them through my hair, pushing it off my face.
“It’s not the throwing-up thing. That was…” I paused, looking for the right words to finish the sentence, before finally deciding on “whatever.” I pulled the sleeves of my hoodie over my hands. “He took me to lunch yesterday.”
“Oh damn. Is that where you were running to with your face looking like that?” Philip gave me an appraising look, one eyebrow cocked.
“With my face looking like what?” I challenged. That was one thing I didn’t regret; I’d looked cute yesterday! Philip looked away from me, and instead of answering, he went back to the subject of Jon Slate.
“Didn’t know Slate knew how to talk to people who don’t know the Big East schedule by heart.”
“Shut up. It was his way of apologizing, I guess. He was trying to do a nice thing. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.” Why was I telling Philip Kim anything? He was standing there in his annoying polo with his annoying bomber jacket with all the annoying pins stuck on it. The morning sun glinted off the shifting pins as he shrugged.
“I don’t know, man. So, he took you to lunch and now you have to duck between our cars like you’re on the run after a bank heist?”
I opened the back door to my car and sat, legs hanging over the edge. “I thought it was a date, and he thought it was a great time to set me up with his other random brown friend.”
“Oh…Yikes.” Philip had stayed leaning against the driver’s side. The open door was between us. “That’s…shitty.”
“Yeah.” It was surprising that Philip was being nice. I didn’t trust him. “Look, it was humiliating, but please don’t use this against me.” He moved to throw his arms over the door and leaned down, resting his chin on his crossed arms. There was a small bemused smile on his face.
“Against you? I’m not your enemy, Mehta.”
I looked up at him and was immediately disoriented by the angle. His cheekbones looked like they could cut glass. “Aren’t you?” I had to ask. We’d been competing forever. He tilted his head to the right.
“Feels like Jon Slate’s more of an enemy than I am. That was a fucked-up thing he said to you.”
“You don’t think I’m overreacting?” More cars were pulling in, and the lot was starting to fill up. Soon Neil would get in and find me so we could dissect the entire afternoon. But for some reason, I wanted to get Philip’s perspective. He wouldn’t lie to me, because he had no reason to spare my feelings.
“No. Look, Mehta. I know we screw with each other over grades and shit. But I am telling you that that wasn’t cool.” It was a strange kind of relief, being validated by someone you constantly disagree with.
“Thanks, Philip.” I put my fingers through the handle above the window and pulled myself up. After shutting the door, I turned to look him in the eye. “But if you say anything about this, I’ll take you down, cool?”
His cheek indented in a telltale sign that he was biting the inside to keep from laughing. The scar under his eye disappeared as his eyes scrunched with suppressed mirth.
“Philip! Seriously!”
He raised his hands in acquiescence. “Okay, okay. I swear that I won’t say anything.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket to look at the time. “And now that we’ve spent the whole morning talking about your boy issues—”
“Hey!”
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “We don’t have time to go over the experiment. Lunch?”
“Payal!” Neil was waving to me from the stairs to the school. I pulled my backpack onto my shoulders and nodded at Philip.
“Yeah, that works. Let’s meet in the media center.” He shot me a quick thumbs-up before rushing off to do whatever it was that Philip Kim did before class started.
* * *
“Well, now you can put Slate into the thanks-but-no-thanks column, right?” Neil had been trying to find the bright side of yesterday’s fiasco since I met up with him at the school steps. It was exactly what I did not want to go through.
“I guess.”
I took stock of the people we passed in the hallway while we walked to class. It was South Florida, so it wasn’t like there wasn’t a decent number of non-white kids at the school. That didn’t stop so many of us from feeling the minority label pretty hard. When I was little, I’d endured taunts about weird smells or being dark or ugly, but as I’d gotten older, it seemed like people had realized that those jokes weren’t that funny. Or maybe it was the mainstream proliferation of yoga and chai? Who knows. Whatever the reason, they’d stopped, mostly.
At the very least, I’d stopped hearing them.
If I was being honest with myself, I did always wonder if there were cliques where the jokes continued. I took another look around. Was it just me or was the hallway more monochromatic than I remembered? I’d spent my whole life knowing I was Indian, but it had rarely felt like a reason for me to be an outcast at my high school[*2]. I mean, there had been that month in ninth grade when Kevin Miller had called me Curry Pie for a week, but he was kidding, and it was harmless. At least that was how my teacher had described it when I told on Kevin. So I brushed that kind of stuff off. And it wasn’t like the real world, where the words I feared were terrorist or un-American. Honestly, I’d take Curry Pie over terrorist any day of the week.
“Payal, are you listening to me?” I looked to my left in surprise to find it vacant of my best friend. Neil had stopped walking and was several feet behind me, tapping his foot. He was unconcerned by the crowds of kids trying to get around him. My kingdom for that confidence.
“Umm, no. But I’ve had a very trying day and it’s not even eight o’clock yet.”
