Vanished by Sheela Chari

Author:Sheela Chari
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction - Middle Grade
Publisher: Disney Publishing Worldwide

“Why are you whispering?” Pavi asked.

“Because I’m in trouble and not supposed to be on the phone,” Neela whispered. “I was so late from school today, my mother totally flipped.” She told Pavi about Harvard Square and Lynne buying the expensive camera with her big wad of money.

“Sounds like crime money.” Pavi was excited. “Maybe she robbed a convenience store.”

“She didn’t rob a convenience store,” Neela said. Pavi came up with ridiculous ideas sometimes. “I don’t think it was stolen money.” She thought about the photographs in Lynne’s locker and the big photography book Lynne looked at during recess. Maybe she wanted to be a photographer. “I don’t even think it matters where she got the money. Maybe if we had followed her later, that would have helped.”

“We?” Pavi asked. “Who’s we?”

“Oh, this guy in my class, Matt.” Neela tried to be casual. “He came along, too.”

There was a silence on the other end. Then: “Is he friends with Penny?”

“No. The worst part is that Sudha Auntie saw us together in Harvard Square.”

“Uh-oh. If my mom caught me alone with a guy in Harvard Square, she’d freak.”

“So would mine,” Neela said. “I guess.”

“Of course she would. Remember what happened to Shoba?”

Shoba was a friend of theirs that lived in the next town. Her parents had caught her going to the movies alone with a boy from her school, and Shoba had been banned from seeing movies with anyone for the rest of the year.

“That’s different.” Neela remembered her parents talking about it when they thought she wasn’t listening, wondering if Shoba’s parents hadn’t overreacted.

Her mother’s voice floated up the stairs. “I hope you’re not on the phone, Neela.”

“So, did you tell your parents about him?” Pavi asked.

“No. I mean, yes,” Neela said, flustered. “I mean, nothing happened.”

“So he came all the way to Harvard Square on a bus for no reason?”

“He came to help me.”

Pavi snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m warning you,” Neela’s mother called again from downstairs.

“I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of it,” Neela said to Pavi. “I just hope Sudha Auntie doesn’t say something stupid to my mom, that’s all. You know how she is.”

“Maybe she’ll forget about it.”

“You know she won’t.”

“Well, maybe she has more important things to think about than you.” Pavi’s voice was sharp.

Neela was taken aback. She waited for Pavi to say “kidding,” but she said nothing.

Until now they had never discussed boys. She knew Pavi’s parents were a lot more strict than hers. That was one of the reasons why Pavi wore a bindi these days. But it went beyond that. Pavi’s family saw themselves differently, as though it were us, the ones who were Indian, and them, the ones who weren’t.

Neela’s parents had never been this way. They had always made great pains to tell her she was Indian and American. “Take the best of both cultures,” they said to her. “Be both.”

By now, Neela’s mother had appeared at the door. “Neela!” she said.

“I have to go,” Neela mumbled, glad to get off the phone.

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