Prologue. Promise.
Tamara
Then
It’s been a week and there’s no sign of Patrick and now I’m worried.
He’s always the first person to greet me when I get out of my grandparents car. This time, he wasn’t there. And nobody has a good explanation for why.
Since we met at sports camp five years ago, we’ve been attached at the hip. At first I wasn’t sure of this shaggy-haired boy that everyone seemed to love instantly. Two years younger than my fourteen, he had the rest of the kids and coaches eating out of the palm of his hand. I wanted to make him my enemy, to keep him at a distance to protect myself. But he was too charming and confident even at that age.
During the first group activity, he walked over and flashed me a smile with one hand held out.
“Hi, I’m Patrick.”
“I know who you are,” I replied, staunchly ignoring his light brown eyes.
“What’s your name?”
“Thaamara.”
“Lotus flower,” he said and my gaze finally snapped to his. “Your name is Lotus?”
“It’s Tamara.”
“That’s not what you said.”
I sighed and turned away, ignoring the way he looked at me. “Nobody calls me that but my grandmother.”
“Can I call you that?”
“Why?”
“We’re friends and friends have nicknames.”
“What do I call you?”
“Anything you want.”
It took me the rest of that summer to come up with a name for him and only because he played a prank on the entire girl’s dorm. Patrick became Tricky and then eventually shortened to Trick. And he became mine. He didn’t know it at the time, but when my Velliamma and Velliappa?1 came to pick me up at the end of summer, I had a full-blown crush on Patrick Joseph.
We started the next camp season as best friends and ended it as people who pressed lips together. The year after we practised kissing some more and by the end of summer, I was addicted to him. I confessed my feelings and Patrick insisted he fell for me first. Given that not a single boy looked at me during the school year, I couldn’t believe anything he said to me. That didn’t stop him from grabbing my hand whenever we walked together or kissing me when we were alone.
Sneaking around became our thing. I was always worried we’d get caught, but Patrick was confident we wouldn’t. He insisted he’d scoped out the perfect hiding places for us and I trusted him implicitly. We explored forbidden parts of the camp property, got trapped in an abandoned shed for hours and punished separately when we got back. For all the secret things we were doing, we were definitely oblivious to how the coaches and counselors were very aware of our activities. Well, almost all our activities.
I hoped they never told my grandparents. The last thing I wanted was for Velliamma to take camp away from me. I’d lost enough already.
My parents died when I was six, in an accident that even now nobody talks about. My mother’s family took me in instantly. It was two more years before I was enrolled and spent the school year in Chennai with my mother’s older sister, Tessammai?2. And the summer with my grandparents in Bangalore?3. Older than most of the kids in my class, I kept my head down and did the best I could to keep up. When it became clear that I was struggling to get through assigned holiday tasks, Velliamma signed me up for sports camp.
I’d love to say she did it as a way for me to learn a sport, but it was mostly to help me lose weight and keep me busy. By that point, I knew better than to fight with her about how she criticised my body while stuffing me full of food. So I went along with her camp idea. It got me out of her crosshairs for a month and a half.
Madar Summer Sports Camp was started by a retired army major who believed children of all ages should explore and experience different sports and athletics. I wasn’t a sporty type of person—unless you asked me to pick my favourite Spice Girl—but when I got to Madar, I discovered there was so much more to it than running and cricket.
That first summer, I tried everything at least once. Patrick joined me for a few things, but kept insisting he was going to be a famous hockey player one day. When I asked him why he was experimenting, he simply shrugged. I never brought it up again. He taught me how to swim, we learned table tennis together, we tried out basketball and gave up. Every time I attempted something new, I was rewarded with his beautiful smile. Then it turned into kisses and being pressed up against trees as our hands explored each other’s bodies.
Love was what people said in books and movies—even the ones Velliamma and Tessammai forbade us from consuming—but I knew what I felt for Patrick was pretty damn close to it. It might have taken us a few more years to say the words, but when he said it the first time, I felt sparks everywhere. Like we were meant to be.
The kissing evolved and improved, our hands traced each other thoroughly and everything changed. So did our secret spots. They went from being around the corner to taking fifteen minutes to reach. The only reason we didn’t keep our relationship a secret anymore was we saw other couples doing the same thing. Most of them only held hands and sat together during Friday campfires and meals. Patrick and I were inseparable. He always found me in the crowded dining hall and I knew when he was in a room before I saw him.
