Free Chloe in India by Kate Darnton Page A

laughing really hard at Prisha’s joke, so I tried to brush it off. I even made myself laugh a little too, though it came out like “huh, huh,” not like a real-sounding laugh.
    Later that day, right at the end of science class, I heard Prisha telling Anvi the same joke all over again—balling up a worksheet and making her stupid Japanese eyes. This time I didn’t try to laugh. I closed my notebook quickly and took a different stairwell to PE.
    That afternoon, it was quiet in the house. Lucy was napping. Dechen was in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Mom was out reporting. Dad was at work. Anna had stayed late for some after-school committee or something. Lakshmi and I had met up in the park, but it was too hot, so we had retreated to my bedroom. Now we were lying on our backs on my bed, watching a lizard on the ceiling. He had skittered into one corner and was frozen there, waiting to catch a fly.
    Prisha had made her origami rock joke one more time, right at the end of school, which is I guess what made me do it.
    “Hey,” I said. “You wanna see something?”
    “Mmm-hmm,” Lakshmi said.
    I reached under my bed, pulled out one of the shoe boxes, and removed the top.
    Lakshmi’s eyes widened. She didn’t say anything at first, just reached into the box and picked up one white printer-paper crane. She held it in her palm, just inches away from her big black eyes, and inspected it carefully for a few minutes, turning it every which way. Then she placed it carefully on top of my night table. She picked up another crane and inspected it just as carefully before placing it next to the first one. She went on like this for a while: picking up each paper crane, inspecting it, then putting it down in a neat row on top of the night table.
    When she finally spoke, her voice was full of wonder. “You make this, Chloe?”
    I nodded.
    “You teach me?”
    I smiled. “Sure,” I said. And then I told her the secret of the cranes, that if you made one thousand of them, you would get your wish.
    Lakshmi listened quietly throughout the story. She never laughed at me, not once.
    “And you have one wish?” she asked when I got to the end.
    I nodded. She didn’t ask me what it was. Instead, she rubbed her hands together. “So what we waiting for,
na?
”
    —
    Dechen got quiet when Lakshmi was around. Sometimes she’d poke her head into my room unannounced, a scowl on her round face. She checked up on us a lot. Too much.
    That afternoon, when she opened the door and saw the paper cranes lined up on my night table, and Lakshmi and me sitting on the floor, folding the jewel-colored paper, Dechen frowned and closed the door without saying a word. I could tell she was upset.
    “What’s wrong?” I said after Lakshmi went home. “Why don’t you like Lakshmi?”
    Dechen didn’t look up from the ironing.
    “Why won’t you let her hold Lucy?”
    “She Indian girl,” Dechen said quietly.
    “So?” I said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, so is everybody else around here. So are
you.
”
    Dechen glared at me for a moment. She hates being called Indian.
    “Her hair dirty,” Dechen said. Her voice was low. “She having the lice?”
    I shook my head. I couldn’t believe this.
    Dechen went back to ironing. “Now I wash pillowcase every day,” she grumbled.
    The next day, when Lakshmi and I were sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, making origami cranes, I snuck a peek at her hair, but I didn’t see any specks.
    “Um, Lakshmi?”
    She looked up.
    “Maybe, um…maybe we could go to your house one day instead?”
    Lakshmi’s face twisted into a frown.
    “You no like my house,” she said. “It small. No TV.”
    “We don’t watch TV here,” I said. This was true. When Lakshmi came over, we mainly played in the park. When we came indoors, it was just to take a break from the heat. Neither of us were really indoor people.
    “What you want to see?” Lakshmi said. Her voice was tight and angry.
    She jumped up. Her hand