THE NIGHT a fortuneteller outside KFC seized Radha by both hands and told her that little by little she was falling for an invisible man, she was confounded and kept me awake until dawn asking who on earth it could possibly be . . .
I couldn’t decide whether the Grimaldi boy was to be pitied, congratulated, or scolded. Granted, this was one way to have a secret love affair, but there was no telling what his own feelings were, or whether this was just a routine seduction for him. Put yourself in his place: You’re descended from generations of people who speak and have spoken primarily through puppets . . . as such you’re a kind of champion at psychological limbo. And you happen to like girls with brilliant eyes that see hidden things and dark hair from which they occasionally retrieve forgotten notes to themselves. Then you meet a new one. Wouldn’t you try and see how close you could get without her noticing?
—
RADHA TOOK to checking her phone constantly but with no clear objective—most of her messages were from Tyche Shaw, who she felt both jealous and protective of and would have preferred not to have to deal with at all. Tyche was in the Orkney Isles with Myrna and her father, and in addition to relying on Radha to keep her updated on puppet school assignments, the girl insisted on being friendly and requesting personal news. Unaware that she had any, Radha settled for sending pictures of herself sitting on the curbstone outside her house drinking homemade smoothies with her brother. I was in the photo too, sat on Arjun’s shoulders. I never spoke to him and so he viewed me as a kind of fashion accessory of Radha’s. At that time I was getting some of my best fun from being alone with him and sporadically opening and closing my mouth whenever he blinked.
Me, Gepetta, and A.J. on the corner drinking heavy juice all day long. What about you and my wife?
That was all the invitation Tyche needed to flood Radha’s in-box with angst that Radha unintentionally increased by responding only with emoticons.
Where do I begin . . . well, everything I do pisses “your wife” off
I keep answering her rhetorical questions & then not daring to answer her non-rhetorical questions
Oh and her specialty seems to be saying insanely awful stuff out of nowhere
The kind of things you have to forget in order to be able to go on living, you know?
This one comment about my hands made me want to cut them off & just throw them away. Has anyone ever spoken to you like that
Never mind, I just avoid looking at my hands now, hahaha sob
Never been good at comebacks, so I just pick up rocks and pretend to clobber her when her back is turned.
How’s it going with Gustav anyway
Radha, what exactly do you like about this WENCH?
Her dad genuinely thinks she’s human . . .
—
FOR EVERY TEN MESSAGES from Tyche there were perhaps three or four from Myrna (all in praise of Tyche) and one from Gustav. One night, just as Radha had lain down on her bed, he sent a photo of his glove puppet Cheon Song Yi wielding a tube of lipstick like a sword. Accompanying text: Somebody stop her. As for Gustav, all that could be seen of him was a full, shapely lower lip stained orchid pink from Song Yi’s lipstick attack. He was positioned behind the puppet, but it was one of those photos where the background very gradually becomes the foreground. At first glance Radha snorted and rolled her eyes. Then she tilted her head, took another look, and slowly crossed and uncrossed her legs. Still studying the photo, she absentmindedly traced the shape of her own mouth and sucked the tip of her index finger. The bedroom ghost and I looked at each other and silently agreed to vacate the room.
—
I MISSED DESIRE. And I was glad my friend’s heart had been given a puzzle to work on while it ached over Myrna Semyonova. Even if it became necessary to drop Gustav, Radha had other tutoring options. Her classmates were a friendly bunch, lacking in the competitive spirit their teachers would have liked to see. They worked on one another’s ideas. Their puppets swapped costumes, props, catchphrases, and sometimes even characters. This kind of camaraderie made the ostracization of Rowan Wayland all the more marked.