Vanished (15 page)

“My lesson's on Wednesday. Maybe Sudha Auntie will forget about seeing me in Harvard Square and telling my mom. She is kind of old.” But Neela knew this was wishful thinking. Her teacher never forgot anything.

“Yeah, she's definitely in the senility category.” Matt shook his hair back. In the evening light, it looked less orange and less like a mop. “And who knows,” he added, “maybe Lynne won the lottery.”

Neela grinned. “Maybe.”

The world seemed full of surprises, of strange secrets, hidden talents, and unexpected discoveries. Neela pictured Lynne on her way home with her shiny new package, all paid for and belonging to her, a present that no one knew anything about.

Or so she thought.

Next to her, Matt looked out the bus window into the darkening streets as they rode along the last stretch of Mass Ave into Arlington.

“Why are you whispering?”
Pavi asked.

“Because I'm in trouble and not supposed to be on the phone,” Neela whispered. “I was so late from school today, my mother totally flipped.” She told Pavi about Harvard Square and Lynne buying the expensive camera with her big wad of money.

“Sounds like crime money.” Pavi was excited. “Maybe she robbed a convenience store.”

“She didn't rob a convenience store,” Neela said. Pavi came up with ridiculous ideas sometimes. “I don't think it was stolen money.” She thought about the photographs in Lynne's locker and the big photography book Lynne looked at during recess. Maybe she wanted to be a photographer. “I don't even think it matters where she got the money. Maybe if we had followed her later, that would have helped.”

“
We
?” Pavi asked. “Who's
we
?”

“Oh, this guy in my class, Matt.” Neela tried to be casual. “He came along, too.”

There was a silence on the other end. Then: “Is he friends with Penny?”

“No. The worst part is that Sudha Auntie saw us together in Harvard Square.”

“Uh-oh. If my mom caught me alone with a guy in Harvard Square, she'd freak.”

“So would mine,” Neela said. “I guess.”

“Of course she would. Remember what happened to Shoba?”

Shoba was a friend of theirs that lived in the next town. Her parents had caught her going to the movies alone with a boy from her school, and Shoba had been banned from seeing movies with anyone for the rest of the year.

“That's different.” Neela remembered her parents talking about it when they thought she wasn't listening, wondering if Shoba's parents hadn't overreacted.

Her mother's voice floated up the stairs. “I hope you're not on the phone, Neela.”

“So, did you tell your parents about him?” Pavi asked.

“No. I mean, yes,” Neela said, flustered. “I mean, nothing happened.”

“So he came all the way to Harvard Square on a bus for no reason?”

“He came to help me.”

Pavi snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“I'm warning you,” Neela's mother called again from downstairs.

“I don't know why you're making a big deal out of it,” Neela said to Pavi. “I just hope Sudha Auntie doesn't say something stupid to my mom, that's all. You know how she is.”

“Maybe she'll forget about it.”

“You know she won't.”

“Well, maybe she has more important things to think about than you.” Pavi's voice was sharp.

Neela was taken aback. She waited for Pavi to say “kidding,” but she said nothing.

Until now they had never discussed boys. She knew Pavi's parents were a lot more strict than hers. That was one of the reasons why Pavi wore a bindi these days. But it went beyond that. Pavi's family saw themselves differently, as though it were
us
, the ones who were Indian, and
them
, the ones who weren't.

Neela's parents had never been this way. They had always made great pains to tell her she was Indian
and
American. “Take the best of both cultures,” they said to her. “Be
both
.”

By now, Neela's mother had appeared at the door. “Neela!” she said.

“I have to go,” Neela mumbled, glad to get off the phone. “Talk to you later.”

“First you're late to school,” Neela's mother said, “then you get punished for being late, and then you're late coming home from being punished for being late. Does anyone see the irony here?”

“We already went through this,” Neela said.

“I don't think so,” Mrs. Krishnan returned. “When you were late, what was I supposed to think? We
just
had a rock thrown against our house, and a note threatening you.”

“That was a month ago,” Neela said.

“Maybe that man was just waiting for a chance to get you alone,” Mrs. Krishnan said.

Neela rolled her eyes. “If Hal wanted to hurt me, he wouldn't have thrown a rock. He would have whacked me on the head when I walked to school.”

“Neela!” Mrs. Krishnan said. But she seemed to buy Neela's logic, because she changed tactics. “Anyway, I still don't understand why you got on a bus when we're two blocks from home.”

“My foot was hurting,” Neela mumbled. “I thought it would be faster. How did I know the bus would go downtown first?” Even to her ears, this sounded far-fetched, but she decided a half-truth was better than a complete lie. After all, she did ride the bus downtown. And her feet were kind of tired by the time she got home.

“Something's going on,” Mrs. Krishnan said. “The rock, these phone calls back and forth with Pavi, getting into trouble at school, and that boy who got in trouble, too. And don't tell me he's not involved. I have a note from Ms. Reese saying the two of you sit next to each other and are consistently late.”

“But that's crazy. I didn't
choose
to sit next to Matt. We were assigned. It's just a coincidence we're both late to school.”

“There are no coincidences,” Mrs. Krishnan said.

“Maybe you just have to trust me instead of thinking I'm up to no good.”

“I never said that,” Mrs. Krishnan said. “It's just…” Her voice trailed off.

They looked at each other, and in her mother's eyes, Neela saw something she hadn't seen before: a look of sadness. She tried to ignore the twinge of guilt she felt. She had done nothing wrong. Well, maybe she had done things without asking permission. But they had been for a good reason, an important reason. Her mother, on the other hand, had seemingly given up looking for the veena, and with no good explanation—unless it was because of bad luck, which was barely a reason at all, as far as Neela was concerned. So Neela looked away and sat at her desk to do her math homework. She kept her back turned, and focused on her work until she heard her mother finally leave the room.

“We're in for a real treat today,” Ms. Reese said. “You want to share, Amanda?”

Amanda stood up, twinkling in a powder blue sweater with glitter sewn in. “My mom's a photographer, and she's talking to us about what she does.”

Three seats down, Lynne suddenly started coughing, as if she'd swallowed something wrong. Neela turned, remembering the camera shop. Lynne was probably excited to see a real photographer now that she had a fancy new camera of her own. Except, as Neela watched her, excitement didn't seem to be the right word. If anything, Lynne looked as though she was going to be sick. She shifted around in her chair and then took her glasses off, rubbing them nervously on the front of her jeans. Without her glasses, her eyes were unexpectedly large, and reminded Neela of classical Indian dancers who wore
kajal
, a black eyeliner, around their eyes when they performed. A few moments later, Lynne put her glasses back on and looked like the old Lynne again. Except that she seemed on the verge of a heart attack. What was the matter with her?

Just then, Matt sat down next to Neela. It amazed her that even after their punishment, he still came to class late. Today he wore a T-shirt with the words def leppard on it, and orange sweatpants that matched his hair. “Check out my dad's old T-shirt. Def Leppard rules.”

“I've never heard of them,” she said coolly.

Ever since their bus trip last week, something strange had happened. The next day at school, apparently everyone seemed to know that Neela and Matt had been punished for late minutes. Maybe it was because it had never happened to anyone else before. A few kids even asked about it. Amanda came up to them and asked, “So are you guys like, BFFs now?”

Neela tried to think of a good comeback, but she drew a blank.

Matt kept it short and simple. “Bug off,” he said.

Still, Amanda had made them self-conscious. Neela suddenly remembered all the weird, space-alien stuff Matt was into, and maybe he remembered he didn't usually speak to her outside of class. Whatever it was, Neela and Matt didn't talk about Lynne, Harvard Square, or Sudha Auntie. It was as if the bus trip had never happened.

“Whoa, who's that?” Matt asked.

“Amanda's mom,” Penny said.

In front of them, Elizabeth Bones strode into class, wearing suede pants with tassels, a cream-colored silk blouse, a silver-buckled belt, and black leather riding boots. In one hand she carried a leather attaché, and in the other, an assortment of leather cases for her camera equipment. Her gear looked so complex and important that it seemed like Mrs. Bones was going on a safari or some other dangerous expedition instead of speaking to a bunch of sixth grade students.

As soon as she saw her, Neela recognized her. It was the blond photographer at Alfred Tannenbaum's concert!

“What is she, a supermodel?” Matt asked, gawking at her.

“She's too old to be a model,” Neela whispered, feeling catty. She hadn't noticed the other day at the concert hall just how gorgeous Amanda's mother was.

Elizabeth Bones pushed her straw-colored hair back. “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” she said. “Anyone hear that before?”

The class murmured yes, staring at her.

“In photography, beauty is in the hands of the photographer. The photographer controls what you see and how you see it.”

Neela had never thought of photography that way. But Amanda's mom did seem like the controlling type. Neela remembered her rudeness at the concert.

Her heart started racing. She also remembered that Elizabeth Bones was at the café with the Indian man, asking all those questions about Guru originals, as if she had seen one before. Did Elizabeth Bones know where her grandmother's veena might be? Maybe Neela could go up to her after class and ask, if she could only work up the nerve.

Elizabeth Bones snapped open one of the leather bags. “I'm passing around the latest
Boston Living
,” she said to the class. “You can look at my work while I'm talking.” She continued, describing photographs she had taken of sea life on a trip to Hawaii.

Meanwhile, Neela was trying to figure out why Lynne looked as if she were having a meltdown. Was it her imagination or was Lynne trying to slide under her desk? In just the last few minutes, Lynne had slumped down with her legs and lower body hidden away. Neela couldn't understand it, especially when Elizabeth Bones was talking about photography. Was Lynne jealous because she wanted to be a world-famous photographer but she was only in sixth grade? Or did she have food poisoning? It was hard to tell.

Penny poked Neela in the back and handed her the magazine from behind. “There's an India page,” she whispered.

“Really?” Neela whispered back. She flipped through the pages until she came to an article titled, “Rooms with a World View.” The photo shoot! Elizabeth Bones had gone ahead with the article. Just think, if her veena hadn't been stolen, it would be in the magazine right now. Neela went through the photographs of rooms from Italy and France and Spain, until she came to the one with Indian decor, and a full-length photo of a veena by itself. Only…Neela stared at the photo, dumbstruck. Only it was
her veena
staring right at her from the inside spread of
Boston Living
. Without thinking, she clutched Matt's arm.

“Huh?” he whispered. He was in the middle of sketching an electric guitar.

Neela wrote on his paper:
It's my veena
. She pointed to the magazine spread.

Behind her, Penny was trying to figure out what was going on.

Matt's eyes widened. He wrote:
R U sure?

Neela nodded.
Yes!!

OMG! What R U gonna do??

Talk to Mrs. B!

Penny poked Neela in the back again. Neela looked at her and shook her head mutely. It was too much to explain. For the next few minutes, she could hardly concentrate on anything. She kept staring at the photograph. There it was, the same dragon with folded wings and a tail, the same bronze frets, the same initials barely visible against the wood. At first, Neela felt a sense of outrage. Amanda's mother had known about the veena all along! Here was proof. Had she stolen the veena herself? Or did she have a secret connection with the person who did? Maybe they were in cahoots, as part of an elaborate scheme to…to what? Take a photo for a magazine?