Free The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani

“Hey, do you want to come over after school? You can ride home with me on the bus. It’s really not that far away. The bus just takes a while.”
    “Oh,” I say, surprised. It sort of seemed easier to have our friendship right here waiting for the bus, separate from class, separate from our houses, separate from Kate. “Let me checkwith my parents.” Her face changes from happy to serious. “I just need to make sure someone can pick me up.” She smiles again and I notice my heart’s beating a little faster. I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans.
    “Okay, call me tonight,” she says, and runs up the steps of her blue and white bus.
    Maybe it would be easier to just be Indian and not have to explain the Jewish part. Mom doesn’t seem to think being Jewish is that important, otherwise she would have done all the things Sadie does—belong to a temple, have Shabbat dinner every Friday night, and send me to Hebrew school. Why didn’t she do those things for me? Why couldn’t she have raised me really Jewish like Sam, so I wouldn’t have to think so much about it? Now it’s too late.
    When I get home I skip watching SpongeBob with Natasha and go to the phone in the kitchen. I hold the receiver until my hand gets stiff. I finally dial and Sam answers. We haven’t talked in two weeks, the longest we’ve ever gone since we’ve known each other.
    “I knew you’d call me today,” she says.
    I want to ask why she hasn’t called me, but I don’t. “Tell me everything I’ve missed,” I say.
    She sighs. “I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to remember.”
    “You can remember one thing, can’t you?”
    “One thing. One thing,” she repeats, thinking. “Okay, how about this: Jack picked me to be the lead in the play this year.”
    “Wow, that’s so great,” I say, feeling hurt. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
    There’s silence on the other end for a second. She clears her throat.
    “I just found out,” she finally says, but that doesn’t answer my question, or at least answer it in the way I want it answered. “So what’s going on with you? Have you made lots of new friends?” Her voice sounds squeaky.
    “A few, I guess. I tried out for cheerleading.”
    “Cheerleading?” she says, and laughs.
    “What’s so funny?”
    “I just can’t picture you as a cheerleader.”
    “Why?” I ask. “I’m pretty good at it.”
    “Do you have to wear some silly uniform?”
    “I don’t know if I’ve even made the team.” I hadn’t thought much about the uniform and whether it would be silly. “I’d better go, I’ve got a lot of homework,” I lie. But Sam lied too. She said it wouldn’t happen to us.
    All through dinner, the conversation with Sam sits like a rock in my stomach, along with the half-burned meat loaf Dad made. I eat the salad and rice and push the slice of brown mush around my plate. Dad is talking about the news.
    “This country’s in trouble,” he says. “Big trouble.” I want to ask him why, but I don’t. It scares me the way he says it,like he knows all these important secrets about the world that nobody else knows. Then he starts talking fast about gas prices, and terrorism, and the downturn in the economy.
    Many times Mom and Dad will debate what they heard on the news like a game of Ping-Pong. It’s fun to listen to them even if I don’t understand what they’re talking about. But now it’s like he’s talking to the air. Mom nods at him, but she doesn’t try to argue with what he’s saying. Her eyes squint like something’s hurting her. Natasha takes a big bite of her meat loaf, chews it up, and shows it to me.
    “Ick!” I shriek. Dad stops talking and jumps as if someone just slapped him. Normally Mom would tell Natasha to stop it, but instead she says quickly, “Sonia, how are you feeling about cheerleading? You’ll see the tryout results tomorrow, right?”
    “I feel good,” I say, and put my fork down. I didn’t think she had any idea that I would