The Poison Apples (27 page)

After a long pause, she shook her head. “Never mind.”

Then she turned back to the mirror and started pulling her hair back with her hands.

I tried to look like I didn't care. “Okay,” I said, taking a step back toward the dressing room door, “I'm gonna go now.”

She nodded, not taking her eyes off her own reflection. “I'll see you after the show.”

“Cool.”

I opened the door and was about to leave when she called after me: “Alice?”

I whirled around. Maybe the apology was coming after all.

She was looking at me curiously, her head tilted, her hands on her hips. “How did you get here ten minutes after I called your father and told him about my mother?”

I shrugged helplessly.

“The commute from the Upper West Side is at least twenty minutes,” she said.

“Um…” I said.

We looked at each other.

“It was a Thanksgiving miracle,” I blurted out. Then I turned and ran as fast as I could, down the hallway, out the stage door, and onto the crowded, smelly street.

SEVEN

Reena

It was our old house.
Or at least it looked like our old house, from the outside. Same marble white mansion, same green lawn, same puny dying palm tree next the driveway that Pradeep had always refused to let us chop down. (He had a tendency to get attached to random nonhuman objects and attribute them with human traits. “That tree is a good tree!” he would scream at us. “It knows right from wrong!”)

So when Dad pulled up to the house after picking us up from the airport in his brand-new red Audi, I was relieved to see that the tree (or “Palmy,” as Pradeep was fond of calling it when he was younger) was still there. I wasn't sure how Pradeep would've reacted if they'd chopped it down.

And then we stepped inside.

It's hard to describe what we encountered in the foyer of what used to be our normal, all-American home. I guess it was the twenty-foot-tall wooden statue of Vishnu that caught my attention first. And I only found out it was Vishnu because I gasped and said, “What is
that
?”

“Vishnu,” Shanti said, gliding out of the kitchen and smiling at us. “Don't you recognize Vishnu? He's one of the most famous Hindu gods.”

I shook my head. “I don't know any Hindu gods.”

Pradeep tugged at my sleeve and pointed. “Forget Vishnu. Look at that.”

There was a huge golden fountain right next to the entrance to the living room, with a gigantic leaping golden fish spitting an arc of water out of its mouth.

I shook my head in disbelief.

“And
that
.” Pradeep pointed to the right. There was a tapestry hanging on the wall next to the staircase. Set against a forest background, it was an intricately embroidered picture of a blue man intertwined with a red woman.

“Oh, my God!” Pradeep shouted. “Are they having sex?!”

Dad, who was standing behind us, placed his hands on our shoulders. “Okay, you two. Calm down. The house is decorated differently now. No reason to go crazy.”

“I repeat the question,” Pradeep said, not taking his eyes off the tapestry. “Are they having—”

“ENOUGH!” Dad boomed.

We fell silent.

I gazed around the foyer, then walked over and peeked into the living room. Then I opened the kitchen door, looked inside, swallowed a gasp, and walked back into the foyer.

“Wow,” I said to Dad and Shanti. “It's very…”

“Different!” she said cheerfully.

I nodded. “Also … Indian. It's very Indian.”

Dad shot me a warning glance.

“Yep,” Pradeep piped up. “It's, like, more Indian than it was when four Indian people were living here.”

“Pradeep…,” Dad said.

“Which makes me think,” Pradeep said thoughtfully, “is it actually Indian at all? Or is it just a white person's version of—”

“OKAY!” Dad yelled. “I'm taking your bags upstairs! Follow me!”

We followed him. Reluctantly.

“Rash!” Shanti called up after us. “Don't forget! The landscapers are coming this afternoon!”

We turned around at the landing and peered down at her.

“Why are the landscapers coming?” Pradeep asked suspiciously.

“Forget it,” Dad said.

But Shanti didn't hear him. “To cut down that tree!” she yelled gaily up to us. “The horrible little one next to the driveway!”

I can't even really put into words the look that passed across my brother's face.

But I will never forget it.

*   *   *

“Why don't you come
see me tonight?” My mother's voice was buzzing plaintively in my ear. Sort of like a mosquito.

I transferred my cell phone from one side of my face to the other and propped my legs up on the windowsill. I was sitting in my bedroom, which—it was hard to believe—looked pretty much the same as it did before.

Except for a tiny decal of a many-armed Hindu goddess stuck onto the windowpane.

But I was okay with that.

“I'll come visit you and Pria tomorrow, Mommy, okay?”

“I don't understand. I don't understand why your father and…” Her voice shook. “… and That Woman get to see you first.”

I sighed. “You don't understand. I have something I have to do here tonight.”

“What?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “I sold the flat-screen TV. Did I already tell you that?”

“Yes.” My mother had taken up the habit of calling me and telling me which luxury items she was being forced to sell, post-divorce. So far she'd mourned the loss of her Manolo Blahnik high heels, her television, her visits to her favorite five-hundred-dollar-an-hour hairdresser, and her jet skis. (There was no way she was giving up her Porsche or her personal trainer or her monthly visit to the Golden Door Spa. Or the lawyer she'd hired to sue my father within an inch of his life.)

“So what are you doing tonight? Are you doing something fun with That Woman?”

“No. They're not even home. They went to some kind of fund-raiser.” The second I said it I realized it was a mistake.

My mother gasped in indignation. “You're choosing to be home alone tonight when your poor mother is—”

Without even thinking, I pressed End on my cell phone and snapped it shut.

Then I stared at it, horrified. I'd never hung up on my mother before.

She was going to kill me when she finally did see me on Thanksgiving. But I had no choice. This was the one night Dad and Shanti Shruti were guaranteed to be out of the house. And Pradeep was hanging out at a friend's house down the street.

I had a mission to accomplish.

And I had to do it all by myself.

I crept out of my bedroom and into the hallway.

“Hello?” I called out.

I wanted to make sure no one was home.

“HELLO?”

Still no answer.

I walked down the hallway, past some kind of wrathful wooden mask hanging on the wall, and then I descended the staircase.

I had to find the penguin.

Dad and Shanti Shruti had both pointedly avoided the subject when showing us around the house, and I didn't want to ask, in case they got suspicious.

But there was a million-dollar arctic terrarium somewhere inside the mansion. And I was going to find it.

First I walked around the kitchen. Besides the fifty new paintings hanging on the wall (illustrations from the great Indian epic, the
Ramayana
, Shanti had informed me), everything was the same. Then I walked around the living room. Then the dining room. Then the foyer. Then Dad's study (I almost puked when I saw the framed picture of Shanti in her pink sari on his desk). Then I ran back upstairs and, starting to get frustrated, checked everyone's bedroom.

Nothing.

Where was Ganesh the penguin?

I walked back inside my bedroom and, exhausted, collapsed on my bed and stared out the window. I'd always loved the view out my bedroom window. Our house was on top of a small hill, and my window faced the sloping green of the backyard. In the nighttime, everything was black except for a few twinkling lights in the distance that made up the small cluster of skyscrapers in downtown LA.

But this time there was something different.

A small white light was pulsing in the darkness of the backyard.

I sat up and stared at the source of it.

It looked like a little barn, with a single, brightly lit-up window.

I leapt out of bed, ran downstairs, through the kitchen, out the back door, and stood in front of the small building.

I reached out and opened the metal door in front of me. It made a suctioned slurp, like the sound of a refrigerator opening. Then a gust of freezing-cold air blasted my face.

Bingo.

I shielded my face, hugged my sweatshirt close to my body, and walked inside. The door shut behind me.

What I saw once I was in nearly took my breath away.

It was like I was back on top of Mount McKinsey. In the middle of Beverly Hills.

Snow crunched under my feet. Snowdrifts lay piled against the walls. A bright white light shone down from the ceiling, so it suddenly seemed like midday.

There was even a small blue pool of half-iced-over water in the center of the room.

And then I saw Ganesh himself. Paddling slowly through the miniature lake. Leaping out of the water and skidding onto his stomach against the snow.

I yelped in delight and clapped my hands. “You are so cute!” I exclaimed.

He looked my way, terrified, and flapped away behind a snowdrift.

I tiptoed after him, crooning, “Good Ganesh, good Ganesh.” I peeked around the snowdrift, and he angrily waddled away again.

If I could just pick him up—and then make sure he didn't squirm his wet little penguin body out of my grasp—I could get him out of his little habitat and then just … leave him somewhere. The side of a highway? Next to the ocean? No. That would be too cruel. I would take my old childhood bicycle out of the garage, put Ganesh in the basket, and then deposit him at the gates of the Los Angeles Zoo.

Then Shanti Shruti would learn her lesson.

“Ganeshy,” I murmured. “Come here, Ganeshy.”

He was standing by the pool again. I leapt forward, my arms outstretched. He jumped into the water. I groaned and watched as he swam in anxious little circles.

I reached into the water and winced. It was, as I should've expected, painfully cold. I trailed him in the water with my hands for a few seconds, and then, gritting my teeth, grabbed his slippery little body and lifted it out of the water.

He writhed and squawked and almost successfully slid of out of my grasp, but I held on tight.

“Shh,” I said, and brought his soaking-wet penguin body to my chest. “Shh.”

He was still squirming.

For some reason I was starting to feel miserable. I wasn't sure why.
Maybe,
a little voice inside me said,
it's because you're kidnapping a penguin. What could be more depressing and pathetic?

I grunted and made my way toward the door while Ganesh attempted to launch himself out of my arms. I couldn't wait to get out of there and just get the deed over with. I put my free hand on the metal doorknob and turned it to the right.

Or tried to turn it to the right.

It didn't budge.

I turned it to the left.

Still nothing.

“Oh, no,” I breathed. “Please, God, no.”

I tried pulling the door. I tried pushing the door. Ganesh squealed feebly and then attempted to peck me through my sweatshirt.

“NO!” I yelled, kicking the door.

Still nothing.

In one final burst of strength, Ganesh kicked his little penguin feet and flapped his little penguin arms and pushed his way out of my arms. He landed on the ground with a thump and skidded away into the outer regions of the room.

“I don't care,” I shouted after him. “We're screwed anyway!”

I tried pushing and turning the doorknob at the same time. I tried pulling and turning it at the same time.

It was hopeless. I was locked inside.

I slid down along the ice-covered wall and sat down in a pile of snow, shaking. I was too cold to even start crying.

I'd left my cell phone inside my bedroom.

I was going to freeze to death unless someone came home in the next two hours and, seeing I was gone, thought to look for me in … Ganesh's terrarium.

That was
so
not going to happen.

Oh, my God,
I realized.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die because of Revenge Plot Number Two. I'm going to die because I tried to steal a penguin to get some kind of control over my life. Instead I locked myself inside a freezer. Now I'm not even going to live to age sixteen.

Thoughts of my life, my beautiful life, flashed through my mind. The chapel on top of the hill at Putnam Mount McKinsey. The times Alice and I stood at the window of our dorm room and watched the sun set across the highway. Molly lecturing us on word derivations at the lunch table. David Newman and his gorgeous flashing eyes. Pradeep and the way he could always make me laugh, even when I was feeling horrible. My mother and the way she loved me, fiercely, so I never felt like a little piece of her wasn't with me. My crazy aunt Pria. Why hadn't I gone to see them tonight? Regret started welling up in my stomach. Why didn't I appreciate everything while it had lasted? A great brother. A great mother. Best friends. And even though things were terrible with my dad, at least he was alive. After all, Alice only had one parent.

I had the urge to cry again, but my tear ducts were frozen. My body was beginning to convulse and shake uncontrollably. I held my hands out in front of me and looked at my fingers. They were starting to turn purple.

Please,
I prayed to the fluorescent white lights on the ceiling,
someone rescue me. I promise to start appreciating everyone in my life. I will be nicer to my mother. I will be nicer to the Putnam Mount McKinsey cafeteria ladies. I will be nicer to the nerdy kids who hit each other with foam swords on the student union green. I'll even be nicer to the mean popular kids like Jamie Vanderheep and Rebecca Saperstein and Jules Squarebrigs-Farroway and, okay, even Kristen Diamond, I will be nicer to Kristen Diamond, and, okay … I will try to be nicer to Shanti Shruti. I will never attempt to steal her stupid penguin again. I will
—