Bright Lines Read Online Free Page A

was awake. She made her way around the side of the house to the backyard. She did a quick walk-through—the garden looked healthy; it was something she worried about at college. She circled back to the hibiscus tree that led into her cousin’s room. She stepped onto the tree’s lowest branch and climbed up to Charu’s second-floor window. Through the sheer curtains, Ella could see the selection of mood enhancers: a Virgin de Guadalupe pillar candle, burning sticks of Nag Champa, white Christmas lights framing the bed. And there was Charu, strutting around in a pair of lacy black panties and bra. Ella flushed, shamed by her spying. She blinked her eyes a few times to make sure what she was seeing. Her eyes weren’t so—reliable.
     * * * 
    It was hard coming home. Ella was drawn to her uncle’s rambling anecdotes and flower gardens, but she loathed her aunt’s curling iron and frills. She never quite felt she was in her aunt’s favor. She switched between calling Anwar “Uncle” or “Anwar,” and he didn’tseem to mind either way, understanding that if her mood permitted intimacy, she’d allow it. She never called Hashi “Ma.” But for Charu, words failed her. The word sister —in any language—missed the mark, though she knew Charu felt that they were sisters. Charu was the one person for whom Ella would do anything. She had been a bright-eyed bouncy toddler with an infectious laugh, and Ella, scrawny and nearsighted, had claimed the role of protector.
    As they grew up, Ella loved everything about Charu, even her contradictions: The same girl who despised capitalist materialism owned enough fine threads to open a used-clothing store; the same girl who scoffed at other girls for idiotic flirting was a clever coquette. She demanded an end to anorexic beauty ideals, but lamented her “third world body”: protruding belly, scrawny arms and legs. Charu, the unapologetic fashion chameleon—on certain days she dressed in plaid shirts and baggy khakis; other days, monochromatically. And once, when she was a sophomore and Ella was a senior, Charu channeled pop culture celebrity with short shorts and stilettos made to stab a man in the chest. She changed right back into jeans and a T-shirt when chided by the dour-faced Principal Jenkins.
    At Brooklyn Tech, Ella fell in line with the smart and lonely characters whose sights were set on the Ivy League. Her senior year she was known as the “hot Indian chick’s sister.” Charu’s entry into the school gave Ella an ounce of attention (and, she suspected, pity) for inheriting the short end of the genetic stick. She remembered once when walking home from school, a boy on the street said, Dang, you ugly , and Charu shouted, Shut the fuck up, mushroom dick! The boy let it slide the second his eyes made contact with Charu’s. Ella mumbled they should keep moving—he didn’t go to their school and they’d never see him again. Charu seethed the entire walk home. Ella knew that if she herself had said such a thing, the kid would harass her more. But he hadn’t done anything but laugh, for he, like Ella, was not immune to Charu’s charm. Charu aligned herself with outsiders, with fringe dwellers. She accepted the weird, the freakish, the perverse, the gothic, and the queer. She loved people different from her; Ella was a perfect complement. As Charu grew curvy, Ella’s muscles became long and limber. Ella refused the pains of contacts and was damned to thick glasses with plastic frames.
    During Ella’s senior year, two springs ago, while planting rosemary in the herb garden, she realized she was in love with Charu Saleem. From that day, Ella lived in constant suppression. She’d grinned at Charu in the hallway, and it was easy to avoid her in the twelve-floor behemoth of a school, since she had her schedule memorized. Charu never fathomed Ella’s infatuation, and remained free and uncomplicated with her cousin. Charu changed in and out of her clothes all the