Ari
The first thing Ari notices about Sam—not her eyes, bright and wide; not her hair, straight as a sheet of dark water—is that no one else seems to notice her.
He wouldn’t know what that’s like. His entire life, eyes have followed him—even back in Surat, Gujarat, of which his memories are sparse and blurry. Even here, in middle school, which is a block-long stretch of concrete buildings behind chain-link fencing, right across from an abandoned apartment complex and three miles from the Shrine Auditorium, which hosts assorted celebrities on the weekends. Sometimes he hears other students gossiping about him—why’s he so shy, does he speak English—and sometimes boys shove him, laughing, teeth white and threatening, trying to make him react. He just hunches up against his backpack and tries to disappear. Every morning, a black car drops him off a block from school and he turns the corner to see Sam by the gate. He always notices her immediately, his gaze snapping onto her the instant she steps off the school bus and heads into the main hall. She has a particular knack for staying out of the other kids’ way, as if she can predict when they might bump into her, and he finds himself envious of how easily others ignore her, how she can become invisible. He can’t for the life of him understand it. To him, she is the most obvious person in the building. He can’t not look at her.
On the first day of seventh grade, Ari glances up from the doodles in his notebook to see her arrive right as the bell rings. She hesitates at the front of the room, her eyes scanning the space for a seat farthest from the teacher, then aims for the empty chair beside him. As she passes by, he catches a whiff of cooked food—scrambled eggs, chives—on her clothes, mixed with the scent of the wind. A kid nearby snickers, mutters that someone must have shit on their shoes, but no one else looks in her direction.
She throws her backpack down and settles in her chair. There is nothingparticularly remarkable about her—her black hair is pulled up in a thick ponytail, her face is small, the bridge of her nose is dusted with freckles. But her eyes are luminous, taking in the room as if memorizing it.
He whispers, “Hi.”
Her wide eyes turn to him in surprise, and he feels a sudden urge to draw her.
“Hi,” she whispers back.
“I’m Ari.”
“I’m Sam.”
Then the teacher arrives in a rush, calling out hellos, and she looks away from him, but he finds himself lingering on her just a beat longer, his heart fluttering, wanting for the first time for someone to notice him more.
If Ari concentrates, he can pull forward threads of his childhood memories from back in Gujarat: roads crowded with cars and motorbikes, rickshaws jostling along in a line, street stall vendors shouting at passersby, humid heat reflecting off the asphalt. Sunlight filtering through the dagger-shaped leaves of neem trees lining the avenues. Tin sheet roofs against a backdrop of gleaming skyscrapers, narrow alleys with strings of laundry hanging overhead, the air pungent with smoke and sewage and spices and damp walls crumbling to dust.
Shy boy,aunties and uncles would cluck at him as he followed his mother to the river to wash the laundry, to the vegetable stalls to buy brinjal and garlic and okra, to the temple to make an offering of bananas and mangoes. And he would hide in the folds of her sari and turn his eyes down, study the grass until the attention diverted from him.
He was fortunate, in some ways; poor but not untouchable, and not born a girl. His sister, Kriti, was frequently harassed by men; a classmate went missing when she was thirteen; another neighborhood girl’s body was found on the riverbank. Still, as he grew, people watched him with interest, and he felt the discomfort of it stamped into his skin.
Those eyes,they would say.That hair.
He would run away when he wanted to escape the gazes that liked to linger on his large, dark eyes, the hands that liked to brush the gleaming curls of his black hair and the curve of his cheeks. People had a tendency to touch him; he didn’t understand why. As a child, he was still whollyinnocent to the concept of attraction, what pulls one human to another. The attention only made him fret over himself—had he said something wrong, done something embarrassing, looked unkempt? Over time, he learned to keep his distance. Many of his memories from that era are of the flip-flop of his slippers through dusty streets, the world flying by around him. He loved to run, relished the feeling of warm wind through his hair. The only times he would walk were with his uncle, because sometimes his uncle would stop to buy cigarettes and give Ari ninety rupees for an ice cream bar at the nearby Kwality Wall’s stand.
It was on one of these errands that Ari saw the man sitting at an open-air café across the street, hair stirring under the ceiling fans as he clinked cups of foamy chai with the store owner. Indian, light-skinned, with a loud laugh and a well-starched suit that signaled wealth. Ari’s curiosity stirred. Perhaps he was a diamond dealer.
Ari looked away for a moment to buy his ice cream bar. When he glanced again in the man’s direction, the man was staring straight at him. Ari quickly turned his eyes down and tried to tame his rising anxiety. Had the man noticed Ari staring? Had Ari offended him?
After a minute, the stranger rose from his seat and crossed the street to approach him. Ari’s gaze darted to his uncle, quietly seeking help, but his uncle was in the middle of a joke with the clerk, their laughter as rapid as their words.
The stranger knelt to his level. He had an odd appearance—an older gentleman with streaks of salt in his tidy beard, but with eyes that seemed to belong to someone younger. Now that he was close, Ari could smell a whiff of cologne—sandalwood, lavender, amber, luxurious scents unfamiliar to him. A pin in the shape of a golden fox gleamed on his lapel, tempting the eye.
“People stare at you,” the man said. His Gujarati had a hint of a foreign accent.
Ari chewed on his ice cream bar’s wooden stick and said nothing back.
“Do you know why?”
Ari didn’t, not really. His legs twitched, longing to run.
“It’s because you have a strong soul.” The man reached out to tap Ari’s chest, and Ari recoiled, his skin tingling, the touch like a hot iron through his shirt. “Everyone is drawn to a strong soul. It pulls, and people notice. Some like to call it charisma. You’re a little one, though.”
It sounded like criticism, and out of instinct, Ari straightened, trying to make himself look bigger. The man laughed.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Ari shook his head again. His heart thudded in his chest.
“No?” The man studied him. “Where do you live?”
Ari looked again toward his uncle.
