LITMIR.BIZ

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beer, I started running down the beach.

      Why did you die, Mumsy? How could you die and leave me so alone?

      I wanted to curl up in a dark hole and sob my heart out. I ran farther and farther away from the party. Had I been thinking straight, had I not been upset, I would never have set off alone. I ran past cars, kids, desertlike vegetation and the hemline of dilapidated shacks, abandoned and eerie little huts, along the sand. The villagers had been forced to move inland to safer ground. The government had started projects to save the beaches, but it was a long-haul process, and most of the villages had become ghost towns. I knew all this because Daddy had been passionate about saving the environment.

      Daddy...oh, my Daddy...

      The beach came to an abrupt end on a jut of rocks rising out of the sand. I had found my black hole to sink into.

      I began to climb. Please, no snakes, no crabs. I could abide anything but snakes and crabs. I stepped on something squishy—yuckity yuck—and then something poked my sole, and I nearly lost my balance. I was barefoot, my slippers languished in Smriti’s car. I’d thought it sensible to remove them there. I’d stopped feeling sensible the minute I stepped onto the beach.

      Tossing away the beer can, I clambered up the rocks on hands and feet. A great sense of accomplishment swept over me when I reached the top. It wasn’t high, just a few feet above sea level, but I felt like I’d climbed a mountain.

      I breathed in deep and let it out. I flung my arms out, staring at the limitless horizon. Without the music blaring, I heard the waves whoosh and slap against the rocks. Without the bonfire, the full moon dribbled silver light onto the world.

      My name meant silvery light in Persian. I was born on a full-moon night, and so my parents had named me Simeen.

      My parents...

      I dropped my arms as guilt stabbed at my chest. No! Khodai, please, I don’t want to feel anything anymore. If only I’d gone with my parents instead of arguing.

      I have plans for the weekend that don’t involve driving from temple to temple with a couple of old killjoys. I want to hang at the mall with my friends, okay? Why are you forcing me to go and not Surin or Sarvar? I’m almost fifteen. I can stay home alone. I hardly need you to babysit me.

      My last words to my parents had been antagonistic, churlish.

      If only I’d gone with them.

      If only I hadn’t been so selfish.

      If only...

      I remembered thinking that. I vividly remembered the feeling of sinking breath by breath into the quicksand of despair that night on Dandi Beach. I remembered screaming into the dark, raging at my parents, calling for them, begging them to come back.

      Please come back. I need you. I lied. I need you, Daddy, Mumsy.

      I pleaded with Ahura Mazda to take me, too, to stop punishing me. I wished the sea would swallow me. I should’ve died with my parents. If I were dead, I’d stop feeling, stop grieving. I didn’t remember leaning over the edge, but I must have because, if only for a second, I was staring at a pile of shiny black rocks before I was yanked back hard.

      Someone shouted, but I didn’t know who or why or what. A pair of arms locked tight around me. A hand pressed my face into a wet, warm chest.

      He smelled of the sea and tasted of it, the night Zayaan saved me. He let me go, only to push me into Nirvaan’s arms. Hopping from boulder to boulder, Zayaan disappeared behind a large outcropping, only to reappear within seconds in swimming shorts.

      With gentle but firm words, they calmed me. They sat me down on the sand and made me drink overly sweet Frooti from a Coke bottle. They petted me like I was a newborn kitten. And I, desperate to confess my sins, spilled my guts.

      Only after they’d handed me over to Smriti and I was on my way home with the taste of cake in my mouth, did I wonder how they had known it was my birthday or why I’d sipped Frooti from a Coke bottle. Only then did I recall what my peripheral vision had first registered but hysteria had censored.

      Zayaan had been naked, totally completely naagu, when he saved me. And there had been a girl half-hidden between the jut of rocks where he’d come from—a partially naagu horrified-looking girl.

      * * *

      I grinned in the dark, smearing the tears that had pearled in my eyes with a thumb before they leaked down my cheek. Reliving the Naked Savior incident always lifted my spirits, reminding me that life wasn’t all despair and darkness but could be as sweet as a Frooti and funny, too. I thought of how much I’d laughed that night.

      That first volcanic introduction had defined my relationship with the guys. That chance encounter had changed my world again, ripping me out of my shell, out of my grief, making me bold and greedy in a way I’d never been before.

      I turned on my side, hugging my pillow. Exhaustion made my eyelids heavy, but I wasn’t anywhere near ready to fall asleep. Stars had popped up in patches in the blue-black sky. The rain clouds had finally been lured away, letting rain fall somewhere else for a change. I breathed in the gentle breeze blowing in through the open windows, fluttering the wind chimes on the deck.

      Smells could trigger memories. Carmel’s salty, fishy odor would often take me home to Surat in spirit, reminding me of the beaches in Gujarat, family holidays taken at various beach resorts, and of the hundreds of happy days and nights I’d spent in Dumas and Dandi with the guys. All three of us were beach babies or beach horses or whatever people obsessed with the sun, sand and water were called. We didn’t mind other vacation destinations. We’d taken plenty of holidays where not a single beach had been on the itinerary. But if you asked us where our favorite place to chill was, without a doubt, we’d say the beach.

      Maybe it was, in part, because of the way we’d met. That night on Dandi Beach had been a gift none of us had expected, and everything that followed only brought us closer.

      The guys had sought me out the morning after the beach party. To check on my health and state of mind, they’d claimed. After confirming I was indeed sound in both, the true reason for their visit was revealed. They’d put me through a subtle interrogation about how much I’d seen and what I’d inferred from it.

      “Don’t gossip about us.” Zayaan’s low, hoarse baritone was as potent in daylight as it had been at midnight. “If you do, we won’t keep our mouths shut, either.”

      “Is it gossip if it’s the truth?” I teased with false bravado. Not that I wanted people to think I was some kind of nutcase or suicidal. I wasn’t. Or I was over it by then.

      They took me to lunch—a blatant bribe. If I blabbed to anyone about the naked bits, the girl’s reputation would be ruined, and the guys’ wouldn’t fare any better.

      What I hadn’t known then was that Zayaan couldn’t afford a tarnished reputation. His father was the administrator, the mukhi saheb, of the local jamaat khana, which was the Khoja community center-cum-mosque. No matter what sort of mischief Zayaan got up to behind closed doors, in front of the world, he had to be the no-nonsense mukhi saheb’s son.

      I was super-duper intrigued by the naked naagu bits. I was appalled, at first, but intrigued more. I’d spent the night picturing all kinds of debauchery, and I couldn’t get the image of a girl sandwich out of my head. I felt breathless just thinking about it. To be completely truthful, I felt hideously jealous.

      I wanted to be the sandwich filling. I wanted the growly-voiced guy to press my face into his chest while the American-accented guy with the quick hands massaged my back. I’d smooched a couple of boys from my old school. It’d been nothing impressive, just some suction action on the mouth accompanied by a waterfall of slobber. Totally yuck.

      I imagined smooching Zayaan and Nirvaan and decided it wouldn’t be yuck at all.

      I felt naughty. And for the first time in six months, I felt alive.

      I put forth a bold proposition in exchange for my silence. I offered

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