Chapter 19
JAHNVI
“J ahnvi?”
“Huh?” I jolted in my seat. There were only ten minutes left in class, and we were supposed to be working on that night’s homework. But even the teacher knew that no work ever gets done in the last ten minutes of class anyway.
Make fun of me all you want, but I was a little nervous. Okay, not a little nervous but very nervous. I was very, very, very nervous for that evening because I was going to have to take Ev e rett driving all the way to a random store a few hours away that sold sugar in bulk.
My dad’s car was getting fixed after the dent Ms. Smith’s mailbox had caused.
So, we were taking Everett’s truck.
That just made me even more stressed. I really didn’t want to put a dent in his truck too. My dad would murder me if he had to fix another person’s car because of a mistake I made. I’d been sitting in class zoning out because I was thinking about the worst things that could happen.
Well, I was until someone tapped my shoulder.
I looked up to see a very tall girl with blond hair. A lot of blond hair that was all wavy and perfectly messy. She was also wearing a sage green dress and had a red bandanna in her hair.
She was weirdly familiar. I wondered where I knew her from.
“Jahnvi, right?”
“Yeah. Sorry...I forgot your name,” I said, laughing, and stood up. She was too tall for me to keep talking to her while I was sitting.
“I’m Evelyn.” She smiled and loosely waved with one hand. I smiled back, not knowing what she wanted. It was driving me insane because I had definitely seen her somewhere. “Anyway, I just wanted to ask you how you do your hair. The ribbon is really cute.”
“Oh, yeah, thanks!” I instinctively touched the ribbon in my hair. Today’s ribbon was white with a pattern of green little vines and purple grapes. “I just found this YouTube tutorial on it, and, like, I bought the ribbons online.”
“Oh, okay, okay.” She nodded her head with a perfect smile. A strand of her wavy blond hair fell in front of her face, and she swept it behind her ear.
I’ve never been one to get self-conscious.
Well, not much anymore. Of course, when I was younger, I had that phase along with every other girl where I thought I needed to look like those photoshopped models in magazines.
I’d argue it was even worse for me since girls in magazines didn’t look like me at all.
The world can be cruel to little Brown girls.
I tweezed my upper lip in seventh grade after my “friend” told me I had a mustache, started eating less to get that skinny figure White girls just seemed to get naturally, and even went far enough to buy makeup from an Indian cosmetic company with the catchphrase For a lighter you!
And then as I touched high school and gained some Indian friends myself, I realized I wasn’t that out of the ordinary or ugly. The change in my ego wasn’t instant, of course, but it took time. It took time and work for me to like myself again.
But of course, the world was still just as cruel to teenage Brown girls. I still often found myself dressing down, shaving various parts of my face, and sucking my stomach in to look like the crowd around me. I still wasn’t perfect at the whole “loving myself” thing.
And that really showed when I felt that tinge of jealousy deep in my stomach when I looked at Evelyn.
She was actually really sweet, and we were talking about different ways to tie ribbons until we got to the main entrance.
I told her I was waiting for a ride, so she left before me, thanking me for my help before opening the main entrance doors and making her way to her car in the parking lot.
That’s when I saw her car. It was a yellow Volkswagen Beetle with the most adorable flower decals above the tires. That was the girl Everett was talking to late at night, who came over to his house late at night.
Not that I was hating on her, but she was perfect. Too perfect. She was stunning and exactly what any guy’s type would be. And even though I was perfectly content in the way I looked, I didn’t look like her.
I wasn’t even close.
“Hey.” Everett jogged up behind me breathlessly. “Sorry I’m outta breath. I just finished up weight training.” His hair was wet. He had probably just stepped out of the shower.
“You do weight training?” I asked, an eyebrow raised.
“Yeah, it was the only elective left. Why that tone? Do I not show it?” He flexed his biceps as a joke, and I laughed. He opened the door for me, and we walked out.
I peeked behind his shoulder to see where Evelyn was. She was putting her backpack into the little trunk of her car. I walked faster, trying to make sure Everett didn’t see her or she didn’t see Everett.
I was too slow.
“Hey, Everett, wait up!” My hands clenched in my pockets as I heard Evelyn behind us. Everett and I turned to see her running toward us, looking adorably perfect.
Everett’s entire face morphed when he saw her.
“Eve, hey! Where were you at lunch today? I didn’t.
..” He walked away from me to meet her halfway.
His face had the biggest smile I’d ever seen.
Everett’s body language had changed too.
He seemed much more relaxed and at ease when they were talking a bit of a distance away.
I didn’t want to be a third wheel or anything, so I waited by Everett’s truck.
Kicking the little pebbles by my feet, I leaned against his truck and pretended to look out into the road or at the sky when I was really watching them.
Evelyn had pulled out her phone to show something to him, and they were standing close enough that their elbows were touching.
They looked perfect together.
Like those couples on TikTok or Instagram that go viral because they’re just so perfect together.
Evelyn said something that made Everett laugh, and what a laugh it was. He arched his entire back and roared.
Okay, come on, nobody could be that funny.
I perked up when I saw Everett point over to me and start walking backward. Evelyn nodded and waved to him. She also raised her arm higher and waved to me. I gave her a firm smile back.
“Hey, sorry that took a while,” he said.
“S’fine.” I absentmindedly tugged at the driver’s seat door, motioning that I wanted him to unlock the door.
When he didn’t, I looked back to see him looking at me intensely.
I looked down. Had I gotten something on my shirt, or had I grown a third arm?
With the way he was looking at me, I could’ve easily sprouted out an extra limb. “Is something wrong?”
He smiled in a weird, all-knowing way. “You should calm down before you get into my car.”
I frowned. “Um, I mean, I don’t seem to be understanding your point. Could you, by any chance, elaborate?”
He laughed. Granted, it wasn’t as big of a reaction as Evelyn had gotten, but it was still something, and I’ll take it.
I’ll take anything if it makes him forget about how jealous I had just acted.
Shit, he noticed.
He unlocked the car for me, and we both hopped in. It took a while for me to fix his seat so that it fit me and not a colossal mammoth from the ice age.
“You know,” Everett said after a few minutes of me aggressively cranking the seat lever, “I think that’s as high as it’s gonna go before you break it. Do you want me to get an encyclopedia for you to sit on?”
“Oh, shut up. I can barely see over the hood.”
“You don’t need to see over the hood.”
“But I do . How else am I gonna know what’s in front of me?”
Everett ran a hand through his wet hair. It was much longer now and didn’t have its usual volume. I thought the gesture meant he was irritated with me, but when I looked again, he had a faint smile.
He grabbed my hand that was resting on the wheel and moved it to the gearshift in between us. My nervously thumping heart stopped entirely at his touch. And just when I thought I couldn’t get any more nervous, he made it worse.
He leaned over toward me, his hand reaching out. I couldn’t even comprehend what he was doing. Really, all I could think about was his hair.
How it moved when it was wet.
I don’t think I’d ever seen his hair wet before, and I was mesmerized. I was so lost that I didn’t even notice he was turning the key in the ignition. The car rumbled to life, and he straightened back into his own seat.
“Just drive, Jahnvi,” he said with a grin.
I gulped as I put the car in reverse. This was going to be a long ride.