The Henna Wars: Chapters 1–5

The streetlights cast a strange glow on the road ahead, marred by the bright, full moon in front of us.

I take my time making my morning tea, stirring especially slowly and going over the words I practiced last night. They seem lackluster and silly now.

My parents have always been forthcoming enough about their thoughts and feelings; why is now the moment they choose to shut themselves up?

To distract me Priti pulls up a movie on Netflix, and the two of us slip under my duvet.

It’s Ammu’s voice again, dripping with something akin to disgust.

When we were younger, our Nanu used to spend hours applying intricate, beautiful henna patterns to our palms.

She casts a wary glance at the things I’ve laid out on the bed and then up at me.

Compared to the lopsided flowers and inconsistent vines I was drawing on Priti’s ankles a few months ago, I’m practically a henna genius.

She’s taking a million photos of her outstretched hand, no doubt to put up on her Instagram. That gives me a slight jolt of happiness—that my handiwork has been deemed Instagrammable by my little sister, aka my second worst critic—but it doesn’t distract me from my work.

I only have a moment to wonder where everybody is before Priti and I are ushered into a back room by a woman in a black and white salwar kameez who looks like she means business.

Because there she is, made up all beautiful like a bride in a traditional red lahenga with a pattern of gold gilded on the edges.

Priti and I hurry toward it, giving a fleeting smile to Sunny Apu before slipping inside.

It takes me a moment to snap out of the dissonance of entering a room where everybody is dressed the same and to politely murmur a hello.

I have to cut myself off because Priti has abandoned any notion of subtlety and is staring directly at the group of girls.

We have no more time to mull it over because a moment later, the door to the room is flung open again and the woman in black and white is giving us instructions about how to properly enter the wedding hall.

The woman in black and white gives us a scathing look from the front of the line and I wonder if you can be thrown out of a wedding when you’re a bridesmaid.

I try not to let my dejection show on my face.

She looks happy now, I think, looking up at the stage. She looks happier than happy. She looks exuberant.

It brings out a kind of beauty that I hadn’t seen in the back room, a beauty that has nothing to do with her red and gold dress or the intricate henna pattern weaving its way up the length of her arm, or with the heavy set makeup that makes her skin twice as pale as normal and her red lips as dark and voluminous as Angelina Jolie’s.

She’s speaking with someone she bears a striking resemblance to.

The Auntie sitting opposite us looks at me fearfully, like she didn’t think Priti and I could be so ravenous in our hunger.

Priti gives me a look that says don’t grab the biryani dish before the rest of the table have taken some, presumably because the Auntie opposite us is eyeing the biryani with even more fervor than me.

They sit on a settee lined with gold and silver that looks more like a throne than commonplace furniture.

I give the Auntie at our table a smile that I hope conveys apology, condescension, and mischief all in one, and the two of us slip away from the tables and into the throng of people waiting to take a photo with the bride and groom.

I give the Auntie at our table a smile that I hope conveys apology, condescension, and mischief all in one, and the two of us slip away from the tables and into the throng of people waiting to take a photo with the bride and groom.

She’s wearing a salwar kameez that a Desi girl wouldn’t be caught dead in at a wedding, but Flávia wears it with such nonchalance that she pulls it off.

Priti obviously doesn’t understand any of it, because she just glowers at both me and Flávia.

Priti looks so huffy that for a moment I think she’ll say she really doesn’t want to. But she nods, even through her pout.

I can’t really mean it as a reprimand when Priti has done what I naively forgot to do.

I can’t really mean it as a reprimand when Priti has done what I naively forgot to do.

She smiles cheekily and gestures that I should read it.

All I have left of these—probably—unrequited crushes are the dreams and memories, and that familiar feeling of butterflies in my stomach.

Priti looks absolutely prim and proper.

The truth is, I did a little bit of Internet stalking of my own, and Flávia is definitely living in the vicinity.

“I’ve spent a lot of time...perusing her online presence.”

But I had that inkling of hope, and now I feel it wither away to nothingness.

"Hey!" I muster up the brightest smile I can offer at this time of the morning.

All-girls Catholic schools aren’t always the most exciting places to be, but there’s something enthralling about being back here and seeing everyone again after a whole summer.

For once I’m glad for my dark skin, which somewhat obscures what would otherwise be a red face.

I’m about to sidle over to them but Flávia’s voice stops me.