“You don’t really want it, Ruchi. All those years just studying,” said Deepa. Once the crust was gone, her friend stuck her finger in the filmy center of the toastie and examined it. “If you wanted it, you would do it anyway.”
“Ere, how do you know?” Ruchi said, though Deepa had unsettled a doubt. What did Ruchi know about what she wanted? So little. Deepa had a habit of making her feel shaky, uncertain, which Ruchi took as a sign of internal weakness, some lack of decisiveness on her part. She was going on sixteen and all she’d known was what was asked of her.
“In any case, they’re witches, the sisters,” Deepa said as Sister Ferrao strode into the middle of a group of fourth-standard girls, then took hold of an ear and twisted. “They only want to say they sent someone from this horrid school to Medicine. Someone from an easy, ‘forward-thinking’ family. They don’t care about you.”
Deepa couldn’t have known that this hurt her and made her feel small. Ruchi thought of her precise writing inside the blue form booklet. She’d slept with the booklet under her gadda until it went missing. She blamed Aruna or Tejas, but maybe...Read more
