Free Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins

staring for weeks now. “Oh, all right. Do what you need to do. Just don’t ever tell my mother we had this conversation. Or spoke at all. I’m already walking a thin line.”
    “Quite a thin line I’m walking over here, too,” he said. “My mother’s the kindest woman on the planet, so she doesn’t scold or nag much. She does, however, sacrifice so many flowers before the gods and goddesses for my sake that her prayer room’s turned into a botanical garden.”
    Asha had to smile; Grandmother’s prayer room was also well stocked with flowers and fruit in honor of Baba’s job quest. “They don’t want you to paint, do they?”
    “They think I’m insane. But it’s something I have to do. Something I was born to do. Can you understand that?”
    She nodded. “I have a dream too,” she said slowly.
    “You do?”
    “Yes.”
    He didn’t say anything, and she recognized the attentive silence she herself offered when someone was about to confess something important.
    The truth came pouring out before she could stop it: “I want to be a psychologist.”
    “I’ve heard of that, but tell me more.”
    “It’s a mender of the mind. Someone who helps people release their secrets so they can be free.” She laughed, amazed that she’d told him more than she’d even told Reet. “Doesn’t that sound like I need a mind healer myself?”
    “You’ll be perfect,” he said. “A confidante for those in trouble.”
    Asha shrugged, refolded the sketch, and flew it back to him. “All right. Paint away. Make sure this time she looks like me.”
    He caught and crushed the paper in his fist. “I’ll do my best. You won’t even know I’m here.”
    “I’m not going to wear the same clothes every day,” she warned.
    “You don’t have to. I’m going to paint you in the green salwar you wore the first afternoon you arrived. The one with the white flowers embroidered on the hem and sleeves.”
    He was talking about her traveling salwar, the one that she loved because Baba had picked it out.
    “And I’m not going to wear shoes,” she added. “I like being barefoot.”
    “You don’t have to. Your feet are beautiful; they were one of the first things I noticed about you. I love your high arches and the ankle bracelets you sometimes wear.”
    Reet insisted on Asha’s wearing the bracelets when she dressed up, and she’d grown to like the jangle of them herself. But why were her cheeks so hot? Was it because this was the first time anybody had used the word “beautiful” when talking about her?
    Settle down, he’s talking about your feet, not you. But still.
“My hair gets messy in the wind,” she said before she could stop herself. “I don’t always keep it in a braid.”
    “I like it loose. It glows in the sunlight like silk. In fact, I’m going to paint it like that.”
    The double thumps were becoming more regular; now, each time Jay spoke, her heart pounded out an extra beat.
    “Osh, time for tea!” It was Reet.
    Asha and Jay smiled at each other one last time across the gap, before Asha turned to go. Suddenly she was conscious of the swing of her long braid behind her, the way her feet landed as she took each step, and the melody of ankle bracelets accompanying her like dance music as she left the roof.

THIRTEEN
    A SHA CAME UP WITH TWO PLANS TO KEEP HER SISTER SAFE from the Y.L.I. She wasn’t happy about either of them, but they were all she had. Plan A: Confront the family, which required just the right timing.
    “The astrologer said they’re a good match,” Uncle said as the elders in the family discussed the proposal one afternoon.
    “He’s an only son
and
the eldest grandson,” Auntie added. “I don’t know if you’ll find any situation better than that.”
    “Like you,” Asha muttered to Raj in the corner where the two of them were drinking their tea. “That means
you'll
get your pick of girls, too. Just like the Idiot.”
    Raj frowned. “I would never pick a girl because of