In Which Aru Regrets Opening the Door
The problem with growing up around highly dangerous things is that after a while you just get used to them.
For as long as she could remember, Aru had lived in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture. And she knew full well that the lamp at the end of the Hall of the Gods was not to be touched.
She could mention “the lamp of destruction” the way a pirate who had tamed a sea monster could casually say,Oh, you mean ole Ralph here?But even though she was used to the lamp, she had never once lit it. That would be against the rules. The rules she went over every Saturday, when she led the afternoon visitors’ tour.
Some folks may not like the idea of working on a weekend, but it never felt like work to Aru.
It felt like a ceremony.
Like a secret.
She would don her crisp scarlet vest with its three honeybee buttons. She would imitate her mother’s museum-curator voice, and people—this was the best part of all—wouldlisten. Their eyes never left her face. Especially when she talked about the cursed lamp.
Sometimes she thought it was the most fascinating thing she ever discussed. A cursed lamp is a much more interesting topic than, say, a visit to the dentist. Although one could argue that both are cursed.
Aru had lived at the museum for so long, it kept no secrets from her. She had grown up reading and doing her homework beneath the giant stone elephant at the entrance. Often she’d fall asleep in the theater and wake up just before the crackling self-guided tour recording announced that India became independent from the British in 1947. She even regularly hid a stash of candy in the mouth of a four-hundred-year-old sea dragon statue (she’d named it Steve) in the west wing. Aru knew everything about everything in the museum. Except one thing…
The lamp. For the most part, it remained a mystery.
“It’s not quite a lamp,” her mother, renowned curator and archaeologist Dr. K. P. Shah, had told her the first time she showed it to Aru. “We call it adiya.”
Aru remembered pressing her nose against the glass case, staring at the lump of clay. As far as cursed objects went, this was by far the most boring. It was shaped like a pinched hockey puck. Small markings, like bite marks, crimped the edges. And yet, for all its normal-ness, even the statues filling the Hall of the Gods seemed to lean away from the lamp, giving it a wide berth.
“Why can’t we light it?” she had asked her mother.
Her mother hadn’t met her gaze. “Sometimes light illuminates things that are better left in the dark. Besides, you never know who is watching.”
Well, Aru had watched. She’d been watching her entire life.
Every day after school she would come home, hang her backpack from the stone elephant’s trunk, and creep toward the Hall of the Gods.
It was the museum’s most popular exhibit, filled with a hundred statues of various Hindu gods. Her mother had lined the walls with tall mirrors so visitors could see the artifacts from all angles. The mirrors were “vintage” (a word Aru had used when she traded Burton Prater a greenish penny for a whopping two dollars and half a Twix bar). Because of the tall crape myrtles and elms standing outside the windows, the light that filtered into the Hall of the Gods always looked a little muted. Feathered, almost. As if the statues were wearing crowns of light.
Aru would stand at the entrance, her gaze resting on her favorite statues—Lord Indra, the king of the heavens, wielding a thunderbolt; Lord Krishna, playing his flutes; the Buddha, sitting with his spine straight and legs folded in meditation—before her eyes would inevitably be drawn to the diya in its glass case.
She would stand there for minutes, waiting for something…anything that would make the next day at school more interesting, or make people notice that she, Aru Shah, wasn’t just another seventh grader slouching through middle school, but someoneextraordinary….
Aru was waiting for magic.
And every day she was disappointed.
“Do something,” she whispered to the god statues. It was a Monday morning, and she was still in her pajamas. “You’ve got plenty of time to do something awesome, because I’m on autumn break.”
The statues did nothing.
Aru shrugged and looked out the window. The trees of Atlanta, Georgia, hadn’t yet realized it was October. Only their top halves had taken on a scarlet-and-golden hue, as if someone had dunked them halfway in a bucket of fire and then plopped them back on the lawn.
As Aru had expected, the day was on its way to being uneventful. That should have been her first warning. The world has a tendency to trick people. It likes to make a day feel as bright and lazy as sun-warmed honey dripping down a jar as it waits until your guard is down….
And that’s when it strikes.
Moments before the visitor alarm rang, Aru’s mom had been gliding through the cramped two-bedroom apartment connected to the museum. She seemed to be reading three books at a time while also conversing on the phone in a language that sounded like a chorus of tiny bells. Aru, on the other hand, was lying upside down on the couch and pelting pieces of popcorn at her, trying to get her attention.
“Mom. Don’t say anything if you can take me to the movies.”
Her mom laughed gracefully into the phone. Aru scowled. Why couldn’tshelaugh like that? When Aru laughed, she sounded like she was choking on air.
