“Hello?” I called, my voice cracking. I eased a knife out of the countertop butcher block.
But as I took a quick turn around our small house, there was nothing else out of place. Even Ma’s small jewelry box was where it should be on her bedside dresser. I returned to the front hall, confused.
Where were my parents? How had they forgotten about my special day?
What I saw by the front door made me feel a little better. On a rickety folding table rested a covered tray of homemade rasagollas and sandesh with a note that read:
For the dear trick-or-treaters
(gluten-free, nut-free, and made with lactose-free milk obtained humanely from free-range cows)
Classic! I laughed shakily, putting down the knife. I was letting my imagination get the best of me. Nothing could be wrong if my mother had remembered to make homemade Indian sweets for the neighborhood kids. It was one of her Halloween traditions. The problem was, cloth grocery bags and old pillowcases aren’t made to carry around the syrupy, round rasagollas or molasses-sweetened cakes of sandesh she handed out to unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. But it would never have occurred to my parents to just give out store-bought candy. Another example of their overall cluelessness.
I was about to grab a sticky rasagolla myself when I spotted something else lying on the floor. A birthday card, half in and half out of an envelope. It was Baba’s typical sense of humor—a bright neon pink and sparkly card meant for a baby. On the front was, what else, a crown-wearing princess under the words Daughter, you’re 2! Only, Baba had taken a Sharpie and written a number 1 before the 2 so that it read 12. Har-dee-har. Again, typical Baba. But why was it on the floor like this? Wiping my syrupy fingers on my jeans, I picked it up.
Inside the card, under the words Have a Spark-a-licious birthday!, was a scrawled message, so unlike Ma’s normally precise handwriting.
Take heart, dear daughter.
We were hoping for the last dozen years that it would not come to pass. But it has happened—the magical spell protecting us all has been broken on this, your twelfth birthday. Forgive us for trying to shield you from the truth. Now there is too little time to explain.
Whatever you do, do not let any rakkhosh into the house. Trust the princes to keep you safe, but more importantly, trust yourself. We leave here some extra rupees and a moving map in case you find them of use.
But I beg you, do not try to find us. It is far too dangerous. We go now to that dark and terrible origin place where all spells meet their end.
(Oh, and make sure to take your gummy vitamins every morning.)
Darling piece of the moon, the first thing you must do is to find—
The note broke off there with a big, ugly inkblot, as if she’d been startled by something into stopping mid-sentence.
I shook the envelope, and out fell a small wad of colorful, unfamiliar bills—the rupees Ma had mentioned. But the other thing in the envelope wasn’t a map at all—just a yellowed piece of blank paper.
That was it. They had always been odd, but now my parents had totally gone off the deep end. I called their cell phones and the phone at the store. When I got only voicemail, I started to really panic. If this was some kind of a bizarre Halloween trick, it wasn’t funny. All that stuff about princes and rakkhosh—what planet did Ma and Baba think we were living on?
I felt myself start to tear up, and bit the inside of my cheek to stop the waterworks from spilling out. Along with dressing and acting in ways that were unnoticeable, it was another of my self-imposed rules for making it through middle school. There was no crying. Not ever. Tears were like a door to a scary room inside myself I’d most definitely rather keep closed.
I took a big breath and tried to calm down. Weeping is for wimps.
I was about to call Zuzu at her parents’ restaurant when the doorbell began to ring nonstop. It was the little kids—dressed as fairies and animals and superheroes—out with their parents before it got dark. In a daze, my head still swirling, I handed out the messy sweets.
“Gee, thanks!” said a little boy dressed as Robin Hood. “This is a lot better than the dentist lady next door. She’s giving out toothbrushes!”
I shut the door with shaking hands, my heart tight in my chest. Dusk was settling onto the neighborhood. Where were my parents? What had happened to them? Why had they told me not to try and find them?
Just then, the doorbell rang again.
Standing on the front porch were the strangest trick-or-treaters I’d ever seen: two boys, about my age, maybe a little older. They looked like brothers. The smiling one was so handsome he almost melted my eyeballs. The other one was taller and broader, and looked a little bored. The funny thing was the way they were both dressed—in flowing shirts and pants in the same sparkling fabrics as Ma’s saris. They were wearing silk turbans and shoes with curling-up toes. Each had what looked like a jewel-encrusted sword tucked into the sash around his waist. The handsome boy’s sash and turban were red, and the taller boy’s were blue.
“Blast you, little brother; she’s probably been eaten already,” the boy in blue was saying as I opened the door. “You just had to stop for that Giant Gulpie, didn’t you?”
“That Giant Gulpie is the only reason we made it here at all,” argued his brother. “You never want to ask for directions, you stubborn rhinoceros.”
But I didn’t have time to make sense of all that, because at that moment, the boy in red looked straight at me with his movie-star eyes.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those boy-crazy goobers whose rooms are wallpapered with posters of floppy-haired boy bands. And I don’t fill my school notebooks with my initials and the initials of some cute boy surrounded by a goofy heart. It’s not that Zuzu and I don’t have a few celebrities whose pictures we like to look up on websites like Cute Boys Do Dental Hygiene Too. (I mean, who doesn’t like to see their favorite TV star flossing his teeth for the cameras?) But until that moment when I opened the front door, I’d never met someone so handsome in real life.
“Are you ready, my lady?” the boy must’ve been asking, but something had gone all wonky with my hearing, so he just sounded like one of the teachers in a Peanuts cartoon—“Waa waa waa waa waa.” Boy, was he good-looking. I felt a shiver, the kind I might describe in a note to Zuzu with little asterisks around it. shiver
The boy looked at my dark jeans and black sweatshirt, furrowing his brows. Not that it made him any less pretty. “Brother Neel, I don’t believe the lady is ready.”
Then the other guy—whose name was Neel?—reached out for the tray of sweets in my hand. He popped at least two rasagollas in his mouth, not even worrying about the sticky sauce dripping down his chin. Gross.