I glanced at him but then went back to scrolling through photos. “My dad is. I’m actually American.”
He leaned an elbow on my workstation and openly scrutinized me. “ ’Cause you don’t really look Indian. I mean, I always figured you just tanned easily.”
Did he think he was complimenting me? I turned an arched eyebrow at him to let him see that I didn’t really care for the direction this conversation was taking. It opened up way more worm cans than Derek could ever imagine because I did look Indian—just not enough.
I inherited my spiral locks and sepia-toned skin from my dad, but the ash brown hair from my American-as-apple-pie mom separated me from an entire subcontinent. My hybrid coloring was only the most obvious indication that I never quite fit in.
It was the great curse of my existence that I was never enough. Not Indian enough. Not American enough. Not artistic enough. Not tabloid enough. Not healthy enough. Never enough.
This became apparent the summer my dad took me to India. One afternoon, after we’d been there for almost a week, my dad and grandfather argued. My dad, who rarely raised his voice to me, spoke so loud, I heard him from outside the house where I leaned against a banyan tree eating the coconutsukhiyanAcha-ma had cooked for me.
The words “avamalayi alla” carried out the open front door, followed by my livid father, who gave me one look and told me to go pack my bags.
I repeated the phrase: “avamalayi alla”—she is not Malayali. I didn’t know if my grandfather was talking about me or my mom. In any case, we left the house in a taxi, my dad talking to my mom about how his father could not decide his life. But when we got home, he and Mom argued, and he began to travel more often. And then he stopped coming home.
The kicker was that I’d always expected my Indian family to accept me since my mom’s mom had apparently taken one look at me and decided I was too Indian.
How could I be too much and not enough at the same time?
This memory flashed through my mind more as a fleeting feeling than a thought and disappeared in the blink of my bone-dry eyes. I turned away from Derek and swallowed down the stupid frog in my throat.
Derek attempted a course correction. “I mean, it’s cool if you’re part Indian. Kind of hot, really. I just didn’t know.” I ignored him, but he persisted. “Hey, if you’re free tomorrow night, I was wondering if you might like to go out and do something.”
“On a Tuesday?” I turned and leveled him with a what-kind-of-idiot-do-you-take-me-for look. He’d never asked me out before. Either he had an Indian fetish or he was after something. The trouble with working in the gossip industry was that everyone always had an angle. I trusted no one. Except Zion. I trusted Zion with my life.
He ignored my skepticism. “Yeah, there’s this club opening, and I’m on the guest list.”
“Sorry. I’ve already got plans.”
“Oh, yeah? Whatcha doing?” He was way too interested and not nearly disappointed enough.
“Washing my hair.” I threw him a withering glance. I wasn’t about to tell him I had tickets to Micah’s show. He could pry into my business the old-fashioned way, by rummaging through my backpack when I wasn’t looking.
The door opened and bounced hard against the wall. Andy walked through it before it could swing back and hit him. He slowed as he passed behind my desk. “Wilder. In my office. Now.” His pace picked up. He didn’t even check to see if I followed behind him.
I climbed from my stool and caught Zion watching me. I mouthed “What?” at him, but he shrugged, hands outstretched, palms up. I sucked in some air. Andy was no fun on his best days. He seemed to be riding a storm cloud today.
When I entered his office, he had his phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear. Clumped strands of unwashed hair striped his forehead. His right index finger scrolled across images on his tablet, making them careen off, chasing after each other. In his left hand, he held a pen over a temporarily forgotten copy of the competitor’s paper. I suspected it may be the paper featuring a photo of me.
He fluttered the pen at a futon chair and readjusted the phone on his shoulder. I shoved over a stack of week-old papers and took a seat, awkwardly eavesdropping on his phone call.
“I have to say I was pretty annoyed Friday night.”
I settled onto the seat and glanced up to discover the phone lay abandoned on the desk, and Andy now stared directly at me, waiting for a response. “Oh, uh. Friday night.”
His eyes bored into me. “I didn’t think I’d need to give you a deadline, but I also never expected you’d send in your work past midnight.”
My fists clenched, damp from the anxiety. “I can explain.”
Andy tsked. “Zion already filled me in.”
“Zion?”
“Right. He explained why you were so late.”
“He—” Zion wouldn’t have sold me out. I squirmed in my seat but resolved to wait for Andy’s explanation rather than undermine both of us with the wrong panicked guess.
“You need to be better prepared, Scout. You know there are things you can carry to recharge on the go.”
