Chapter 19
TO BE CLEAR, Simran never thought this was a good idea. But it’s the only one she had.
And even if Rajan’s always present when she’s working, at least he won’t be out there, on the streets, doing whatever Nick would have him do.
The chances of him being caught for this are much less.
Although admittedly, his presence is rather inconvenient.
She had to be careful yesterday, slipping the list of numbers into her sleeve.
She’s just curious. There’s no harm.
When she gets home, she inputs those forty-eight numbers into Excel. She orders them from low to high, then vice versa, examines their frequency, tries another alphabetical substitution algorithm. Nothing works.
So she examines the accompanying message instead. A Google search doesn’t tell of any drugs that are referred to as raisin strudel. It must be Ace-specific. Or just another part of the cipher.
A little while turns into a long while, and the next thing she knows, the sun’s first rays hit her laptop screen. She puts it away and kicks clothes off her bed to sleep. But ten minutes later she has a different idea and is up again.
She does the same thing the next night, only nodding off a few hours before her father wakes her for the gurdwara. Apparently, he’s tried to wake her three times already, and they’re going to be late.
It’s a big day for her mom—she hasn’t been to the gurdwara in weeks, and when Simran comes downstairs, she’s wearing a dark gold suit rather than the grubby home clothes that have become her norm lately. But not even that can hide the deepened lines in her face. All this, in a month.
Several people at the gurdwara notice, too. As they enter, Simran’s mother is greeted with questions like Are you ill? My, you’ve lost so much weight, what’s your secret?
Her mother takes it all with a strained smile. Simran suspects the only reason she came today was for this purpose: to stop rumours from growing.
While her mother’s smoothly explaining how a nasty virus kept her home for weeks, several kids run past clutching backpacks. One is crying. Simran automatically reaches out to touch her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
The little girl immediately turns to Simran, her face tear-streaked. “Preeti won’t give my backpack back. We got them from the playplace field trip yesterday.”
Simran turns her gaze on the other girl, who now looks guilty. “Preeti, come on. Give it back.”
Preeti does so immediately. Simran smiles, pleased. While she doesn’t exactly enjoy being seen as a paragon of virtue, it does have its benefits at times like this.
As the backpack passes hands, the pocket slides open a bit, and the lingering smell of yesterday’s popcorn wafts over to Simran’s nose. It immediately takes her back to the ledger.
Her smile slides away. She mentally shakes herself. First, two all-nighters, now this? Why can’t she stop thinking about it? It wasn’t like the message was especially outlined or highlighted. In fact, it was plain scrawl in a fine-tipped blue pen, like an afterthought.
But that makes her wonder if it was the most crucial thing of all.
“Will you be doing kirtan today?” a passing auntie asks, snapping Simran out of it. Simran hums her confirmation. She prepared one of her mom’s favourite shabads for this day.
But her mom isn’t the only one making her return, as Simran discovers when she gets onstage to sing.
As she’s puffing air into her harmonium, Jassa settles behind the tabla beside her like he never left.
She looks at him, but he only covers his mic to ask Which taal?
and she covers hers to reply Dadra, and then they get to it.
They are, as always, a good duo. Her mom clearly thinks so, too, because every time Simran looks up while singing, she spots her face in the crowd, those lines in her face smoothed away for the first time in weeks.
Simran doesn’t speak to Jassa right afterward, but later, in the langar hall for lunch, she spots him approaching while she’s sitting to eat.
He’s holding a steel water pitcher and cups, going down her row to pour water for people.
When he kneels in front of her, Simran says, “I thought you wouldn’t be back in Kelowna until fall. ”
He hands her a cup. “I’m taking summer classes.”
Smart move, getting ahead of the next school year. She should’ve done that too. “I’m sorry about your dada. How’s your family?”
“Adjusting. Somehow, I never imagined him dying. Kind of stupid, right? He was, like, eighty.” He laughs a little, shaking his head. “I just wasn’t ready.”
“Can you ever be ready?”
“Exactly.” He doesn’t seem to realize her question wasn’t rhetorical. “But listen, I really am sorry about before. There was a lot on my mind, but that’s no excuse. I should’ve texted you before I left that I’d miss our—”
“It’s okay,” Simran says quickly, not wanting to hear whatever he was about to call their coffee date. “I understand.”
He smiles apologetically and picks up his pitcher again. As he pours, she can’t help but admire his ever-graceful posture, the way the fabric of his dress pants and shirt stretch over muscle. What on earth does he do to maintain that physique?
“How’re you doing, anyway?” Jassa asks. Simran hastily tears her eyes away.
“Fine, why?” She shoves a piece of roti in her mouth to give herself something to do.
“You came in pretty late today. And...Neetu told me you’ve been acting off.”
Simran pauses in chewing. She has been acting off. Missing Neetu’s decoration night was just part of her new pattern of avoidance—of people and social functions. Half because of her mom, half because of the Lions.
Thankfully, Toor Uncle, who’s sitting next to Simran, bangs his cup on the ground at that moment. “Are you socializing or doing seva, boy?”
“Coming, Uncle ji.” Jassa grins at Simran and moves on. Simran exhales. Close call. Jassa’s too smart for her excuses.
As he’s leaving, another kid with a playplace backpack runs by, wafting that popcorn smell at her, and she sits up quickly. Wait. Jassa is smart. And he knows his way around a mathematical quandary as well as she does. If anyone could help with the Ace cipher...
“Jassa,” she calls impulsively. He turns. “Come eat with me.”
Jassa looks surprised at the request. She has a tiny amount of déjà vu—but this time, there’s no room for embarrassment. “Sure,” he says. “Just let me finish.”
Once Jassa moves on, Toor Uncle nudges her. “I understand your game, Birdie. Very clever.”
She blushes, and he cackles. Toor Uncle has no idea what game she’s really playing.
Jassa eventually shows up with his tray, and Simran makes room for him by tucking her legs beneath her. It’s a tight fit—their shoulders press together. They eat in silence as Simran tries to figure out how to approach her question.
Jassa speaks after a minute. “Another example of you acting off: You didn’t get the academic award this semester.”
It’s true. Her GPA slipped. Her exams...well, some of them hadn’t gone great. She knew it deep down, but it still stung when she didn’t get the email. Now she knows who did. “Congratulations.”
“I didn’t think I could beat you.”
His voice is curious. Time to segue. “Well, since you’re my academic superior now, can I ask a favour?”
Jassa laughs. “Yeah, okay.”
“This is going to sound strange.” She puts her napkin between them. “My cousin sends me on scavenger hunts sometimes, but this time she’s sent a code I can’t crack.”
He’s still smiling, clearly thinking it’s a joke. “You? Can’t crack it?”
“Give me a pen.”
He reaches into his front pocket to hand her one. She takes it, then writes the memorized list of numbers on her napkin.
Jassa looks much less amused now. “What the hell?”
“I know. But I need to crack it. I think it’s a hint of where I’ll find the next clue.”
Jassa pulls the napkin toward himself for a better look. “Your cousin sounds intense.”
“You’ve got no idea.” That reminds her, she has to stop avoiding TJ one of these days.
The fact that her cousin tasked Chandani with mining information shows how bad Simran’s been at acting normal.
“I’ve spent so long looking at these numbers.
Why aren’t three, four, seven, or zero used?
And if I replace the most frequent number with the most frequent letter in the alphabet—”
“E,” Jassa says softly. “You thought it was a Caesar cipher variation?”
Simran nods. Jassa speaks her language. “It didn’t work, though.”
He examines the napkin again. “Did your cousin use the Enigma machine to encrypt this or something?”
He’s starting to sound suspicious. Simran adds another layer to the story. “She got help from a math prof. She knows I like figuring things out. Well? Want to help?”
Without hesitation, Jassa takes the pen. “I do like a challenge.”
So, over the next few minutes, Simran watches as he repeats many of the strategies she’s already tried: frequency analysis, writing out the unused numbers, ranking high to low.
Finally, he sits back and frowns. “Maybe this isn’t just numbers at all.
” He taps the list. “These commas. Were they part of the original code?”
Simran stares down at the list. He might be onto something here. The fact that only the first and last number is single-digit...
“Maybe these commas aren’t separating numbers at all,” Jassa says. “Maybe they’re—”
“Coordinates,” Simran finishes. “Ordered pairs of numbers, like on a—”
“Cartesian plane.” Jassa flips his napkin and draws a graph. “Maybe all you need is an x and y axis.” He marks each axis with the numbers one through nine. “Give me the coordinates.”
Simran reads them out—1,8; 6,8; 1,8; and so on. He marks each point. There doesn’t appear to be a clear shape between the dots. But she copies the graph anyway, and silently, they study their respective napkins.
A pair of feet stops in front of them. Jassa looks up first, Simran too busy trying to connect dots until he says, “Sat Sri Akaal, Auntie ji.”
Simran finally tears her gaze away to see her mother, greeting Jassa with a warm smile. Then she looks down at their napkins, eyebrows raised. “What’s this?”
“A puzzle,” Simran says before Jassa can.
She tilts her head. “Odd puzzle.”
“Mom, you have no idea.” Simran grimaces. “It’s a math thing.”
Her mother’s smile widens. “Well, I’ll get a ride with Rupi, then. See you at home.”
Simran blinks. No tearing her away to leave? No meaningful look? Her mother is going out of her way to get a ride with someone else—someone nosy, who might question her on her absence—just so Simran can...what, hang out with Jassa?
Simran’s mother bids goodbye to Jassa before retreating. Simran watches her go, confused. Jassa says, “Your mom’s really nice.”
Simran wants to laugh. “To you.”
“And you.” At Simran’s skeptical look, he adds, “A few months back, I overheard her telling some other aunties about you. Apparently when you were little, you used to space out a lot, and she could tell because you’d chew your lip and ignore people talking to you.”
Embarrassing. “How is this an example of her niceness, again?”
“She said she always tried to make you stop, but looking back, you were probably just thinking about something. She said you were brilliant even then.”
Simran stares. “She...said that?” She almost can’t imagine.
“Typical nice behind your back parenting, isn’t it? My mom’s the same.” He clicks his pen. “She’s right, you know.”
“About what?”
“You’re brilliant.” He says it casually, but Simran’s face heats. She ducks her head back down at the napkins. If she’s so brilliant, why can’t she crack this cipher?
Jassa’s not done. “Also, you still do it. Chew your lip, I mean.” She stops chewing her lip immediately, and Jassa smiles. Now Simran’s certain her face has burst into flames.
She can’t look at him, so she bends over her napkin and adds, impulsively, “There’s more to the message, by the way.” She scribbles the date and message that were on the slip. It’s a long shot, but maybe it is part of the code.
When she’s done, Jassa says, “Are we sure your cousin’s not messing with you?” He pauses. “Or that you’re not messing with me as revenge for leaving you hanging?”
“I promise it’s real.” Now that she’s transcribed the message—PACK MY BAG WITH FIVE RAISIN STRUDELS TODAY—something about it niggles her. Written in all caps, letters evenly spaced out...something. She can’t figure it out.
“Maybe it’s an anagram?” Jassa suggests. Now that’s an idea.
But it doesn’t come to anything. Simran barely notices as people drift away, their plates get picked up, and an auntie brings them refills of chah. The sunlight from the window has slid halfway across the room by the time Jassa drops his pen. “As much as I wish I could keep at this, I have to go.”
“Sorry.” Simran sits up and sighs. They’re surrounded by crumpled napkins. “My cousin outdid herself this time.”
“Don’t be sorry. This was fun. But god, I have a headache.” Jassa stands and stretches, and then, eyes landing back on her, grins. “You really know how to put a guy through the wringer, Simran.”
And he’s gone, strolling out of the langar hall, before Simran can figure out whether he’s flirting with her.