Rahul Kanakia

Ken sat quietly in the front passenger seat, his face lit up with a sideways smile. Ken had really dense eyebrows and a broad neck. His arms and shoulders were huge, but his legs were puny, and Pothan loved to call him chicken legs. Ken always said legs didn’t matter; girls didn’t go for legs, but I was sure he regretted his gym choices—he never, under any circumstances, wore shorts. The problem was that if he suddenly added a leg day to his workout, everyone would know Pothan had gotten to him.

“Umm, didn’t Avani say to meet at the lake house?”

“Nandan, this is an intervention. You cannot keep trying to hang out with her.”

Part of me wanted to force Ken and Pothan to let me out and let me make my own way to the lake house. But if I showed up by myself, empty-handed, without a party in tow, it wouldn’t be fun: it’d be stilted and awkward.

I wasn’t like Pothan. I didn’t have that indefinable extra something that marked a person as a leader. A party isn’t an end in itself; a party is just a container for exciting things. It’s a place
where you bring together lots of people and heat them up and see what will happen. But in order to experience the magic and grandeur of a party, you need to hang around the right people. My presence brought nothing extra to a party, and I’d resigned myself to this. I was a follower.

“Are we going to the lake house?”

“What?” Pothan yelled.

I reached for the volume knob, but Ken swatted my hand.

“Are we going to the lake house?” I shouted.

“What?”

“Are we going to the lake house?”

“What?”

This went on absurdly long, until I realized Pothan was toying with me. I slapped the back of his head, and he jerked the car into the next lane.

“Avani made you lazy,” Pothan said. “She was a decent start, but you got lucky, bro. Admit it, you got lucky.”

“I freely admit she was out of my league,” I said.

“Nobody’s out of your league, dude. That attitude is exactly the problem. You act like you’re not good enough, and the problem is that doesn’t work. If you’re not confident, most girls can smell that, and they stay away.”

More laughter. By now Ken and Pothan were sitting too. I looked with innocent eyes at the girl, and she shook her head and took everything off my hands. After that, we talked a bit more naturally. I lay down with my head in the girl’s lap, and she fell to stroking my hair. The joint passed, but I didn’t intercept it. The conversation swirled above me while her fingers went through my hair again and again.

“You’re so tangled,” she said.

“These two assholes grabbed me out of bed before I could shower.”

A hairbrush appeared, and she worked it gently through my hair, tugging here and there at knots. Her other hand massaged my ear, scraping out a little of the sand that’d collected inside. Everything was so incredibly perfect. The girl and I smiled at each other. I didn’t know her name, and I didn’t want to know it.

Ken’s laughter broke through. “What the fuck is going on there?”

I got up, shaking my hair, and the girl pulled away, embarrassed, even though we hadn’t done anything.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just brushing out the sand.”

Then a bright purple bow tie walked past my table.

“Dave!” I said. “Hey, Dave.”

The wind was loud, and he walked past unhearing, so I ran half a step and said, “Dave, dude. What’s up?”

Bow Tie Dave was my project. I always saw him hanging around the edges of parties, getting way too drunk, not really saying much, but the thing is—he was actually kind of hot. Maybe folks didn’t see it because he was Asian, and they were used to looking past him, but he had an interesting body—thin hipped and broad shouldered—that gave him a hawklike look. His face was nice too, with its high cheekbones and straight nose. In his glasses and blazer he was an Asian Clark Kent. And everybody knows it’s not the fifties anymore: nowadays girls think Clark Kent is way hotter than Superman.

I tried to smile. “Come on, dude, you want a churro? Let’s get a churro.”

“You just ate a churro.”

“Let’s get another churro. What? A guy can’t eat multiple churros in one day? You don’t know my life. You don’t know my struggle. Stop food-shaming me.”

He looked over his shoulder, as if expecting rescue, but I grabbed the sleeve of his collared shirt and gave it a slight tug. As we were ordering the churros, my phone buzzed.

The picnic tables were filled, so we leaned against the wooden railing. The wind beat against the collar of Dave’s shirt, and my eyes were drawn to a little smudge of sugar at the corner of his mouth.

“No, no.” I nodded my head. “I get it.”

“But do you actually? Or are you just trying to relate? Because shyness doesn’t seem like a problem you have.”

“Mmm.”

“I’ve seen you.”

“Things happen.”

“I kinda never want to see her again.”

“Dude, I get it. Do you know why Avani and I stopped hooking up?”

His eyebrows went up.

“He’s an idol for nerdy guys. Like, you guys—nonawkward guys—have Pothan. We have Niko. He’s completely oblivious to everything and everyone. And he talks alllllll the time about how terrible he is with girls, and you can see them just looking at him and being like, But you’re so hot, you’re so amazing, except maybe you don’t know you’re hot. Maybe you need my help, my sexual help, to get over your awkwardness.”

“But he wears a fanny pack.”

“I’m telling you, dude.”

Now I laughed. “Okay, so go to Niko for advice.”