Karma Khullar's Mustache Read online

  To my parents, who always believed I could

  Chapter One

  Dadima used to say I’d be as strong as a lion if I drank milk twice a day. She never mentioned I’d get as hairy as one too. There should have been a disclaimer—bold letters and a voice-over with a list of side effects scrolling along the side of my grandma’s face whenever she handed me a cup of hot milk.

  Daddy’s back was to me as he pried paratha dough off the rolling pin in a misshapen glob. The orange ties of his Karma Is Served apron clashed with the pale green of his turban. He loved that he’d found an apron with my name on it, but whenever he reminded me for the hundredth time that he was wearing my name, I had the urge to accidentally spill curry down the front of the apron.

  Once he had the paratha on the smoking pan, I tipped the milk he’d poured for me into a potted plant next to me.

  This entire summer the universe had been against me. The hair on my face just happened to be the most recent tragedy. The worst part was, I didn’t know how to get rid of it.

  Luckily for me, my best friend, Sara—a walking, talking guide to fashion and personality quizzes—had returned from vacation. She’d just called to figure out what time I should be at her house that afternoon to compare notes on our class placement lists, which had just arrived in the mail. Thank Babaji we were in the same block.

  Daddy flipped the paratha and turned to me. “Just like Dadima’s,” he said, grinning. “Am I right, beta?”

  The almost-burned smell of Daddy’s parathas on the roti pan that Dadima’d brought from India stirred a lump behind my heart, which I quickly tried to ignore. Parathas hadn’t been the same since Dadima had died last summer.

  I cupped my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone when Daddy turned back to the stove. “I’m serious, Sara. There are exactly seventeen of them.” I pinched the hairs above my lip, hoping no more had grown. I didn’t want to show up at orientation with a mustache, even if Sara would be there at my side.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Sara’s breath rattled through the phone.

  I pictured her blowing a loose strand of hair out of her eyes.

  This was the second time I’d brought up my mustache to her. She wasn’t paying attention. Again.

  Daddy pushed a hot paratha across the counter to me. It wasn’t exactly square-shaped like Dadima’s used to be, but anything tasted better than Mom’s freezer-burned casseroles. He reached across the counter and held out the carton of milk. I slid my hand over the mug and shook my head.

  “What about being strong—” Daddy started to say.

  “As a lion?” I went to the fridge and grabbed the orange juice.

  Overdosing on milk probably hadn’t given me my mustache, but Daddy had stopped buying organic now that he was a stay-at-home dad. I’d overheard Mom tell him that the hormones in non-organic milk weren’t good for girls. So, for the past two weeks I’d been dumping my milk into the nearest potted plant whenever Daddy wasn’t looking.

  “What about lions?” Sara asked.

  “Nothing,” I said as I poured my juice. Then I lowered my voice, even though Daddy was humming a Bollywood tune and most likely daydreaming he was the star, and not really paying attention to my conversation. “Well . . . don’t you think it’s odd? Maybe a hormonal imbalance or a gene mutation, or maybe I’m turning into—”

  “Oh. My. Gosh! Please don’t say what I think you’re about to say.”

  “What?”

  “A werewolf.”

  My breath stuck in my throat. I needed to swallow, but something was in the way—my heart. “I was going to say ‘a boy.’ ”

  Sara hadn’t said “werewolf” as an insult, but now that the idea had been verbalized, it was free to run wild. It existed now. I could imagine the boys at school saying it with smirks on their faces. Friday. At orientation, ruining the school year before I even had a chance to make my own first impression.

  “Oh.” Sara let out another sigh, but this one was a softer, I’m sorry kind that sounded more like the Sara from the beginning of summer, who I could tell anything to, and less like the Sara who ignored me. “Look, we’ll talk about it when you come over later. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. See ya later.” I tore off a piece of paratha and dabbed it into the stream of melted butter that ran through the middle of the rhombus-shaped bread.

  “Watch this, beta,” Daddy said, trying his hand at tossing another paratha into the pan with a flip of his wrist.

  He’d definitely watched too many cooking shows recently.

  I finished breakfast as quickly as possible. The phone call with Sara left me shaky. She’d only been on vacation for two weeks, but the space between us that had always been pulled together like we were two attracting magnets now felt like it was pushing us apart, as if her pole had flipped. Once I saw her, it’d probably all go back to normal. I mean, she did only come back last night, and it was a long drive from her cousin’s house in South Carolina.

  “Thanks, Daddy.” I kissed him on the cheek and rushed upstairs to claim the bathroom before Kiran.

  Once I’d locked the door, I leaned close to the mirror to get a good look at my face. I counted again. Yep. Seventeen. Seventeen hairs on either side of my upper lip.

  How many hairs made a mustache? At least twenty? I hoped it was at least twenty. Fifty or a hundred would be perfect. The further away I was from having a real-life mustache, the better. Best of all would be finding a way to get rid of it, especially before school started.

  The hairs around my mouth were dark enough that each strand was visible. When I stretched the skin, I could pinpoint each pore that a hair grew out of, the way grass sprouted out of a sandbox.

  My Horrible Histories books mentioned that ancient monks rubbed stones on their heads to make themselves bald. After reading that a couple of weeks ago, I started to rub the sides of my mouth in circles with my finger, in the hopes that the motion would work for my face. It wasn’t exactly scientific, but it was the only thing I had, considering Mom didn’t own a single pair of tweezers and she drew in her barely-there-blond eyebrows every morning, and Sara hadn’t been very helpful on the phone. But all that the rubbing had done was make the sides of my mouth red and chapped.

  I turned the water on to cover up my ritual. I knew it was silly, but at least everyone would think I’d brushed my teeth really well.

  “Hurry up!” Kiran yelled, banging on the door.

  I squirted toothpaste into my mouth and swished some water around. I also ran my toothbrush under the water so it looked like I’d brushed properly.

  Kiran stood outside the door when I opened it. His black hair stuck out at random places, and his breath stunk worse than the tennis shoes he’d been mowing in all summer.

  “You forgot to shave,” he said, and pinched the hair at the edges of my mouth.

  It annoyed me that he knew what I’d been doing, even though I’d left the water running. “Stop it, jerk.” I swatted his hand away.

  He was fourteen and probably wanted a mustache, so why was I the one with hair on my face?

  Chapter Two

  A woman’s shrill voice blasted through the speakers as Daddy started the car. I buckled my seat belt in the backseat, knowing exactly what he was going to say during the car ride. I could even make a mental checklist of his questions and annoying comments and put ticks next to them in my head once they’d been said. Sometimes I did.

  “She has the voice of a bird.” Daddy smiled at me in the rearview mirror.

  Annoying comment number one, tick. I imagined a bird being strangled, because that’s how Bollywood music sounded to me.

  “Main dhoondoo bichhade yaar ko,” blared out of the speakers as we drove toward the main road that
led across town to Sara’s house.

  Shriveled cornfields blanketed the ground on either side of the road. Way back beyond the field was the University of Creekview. I tried not to stare as we drove closer to where the top of the steeple from the University of Creekview’s chapel poked above the tree line—even though it was my favorite view in the entire town—because mentioning the university made Daddy pull his beard and breathe in and out of his nose.

  “Do you know what she’s singing, beta?” Daddy asked, drumming the steering wheel with his hands to the beat of the Bollywood music.

  Tick. Whenever Daddy heard a Bollywood song, that question always followed.

  “Hanji, Daddy.” I nodded. Even though he knew I understood, he’d still translate.

  “I’m searching for my lost love.”

  Tick, annoying comment number three.

  I silently chanted Satnam Waheguru over and over until I cleared my head of any negative thoughts. I’m only half Sikh—the other half of me is Methodist—but Dadima used to tell me to chant this when I felt myself getting annoyed.

  I loved Daddy, but now that he was a stay-at-home dad, his repetitive questions and mood swings crawled under my skin and made me itch the same way I did when I heard someone talk about bedbugs. Even Kiran had walked to his mowing job instead of letting Daddy drive him. And Kiran hated walking. And working outside, for that matter. The only reason he went was because he got paid for it and he was saving up for a phone.

  We passed the grocery store and the new high school, driving into the part of town where the houses were bigger and newer than in my neighborhood. Daddy drove the car through the short, winding streets that were named after different types of birds, like Falcon Drive and Cardinal Crescent. Sara’s subdivision had been a big field until two years ago but was now filled with rows and rows of almost identical-looking houses.

  As we turned left onto Sara’s road, the first thing I saw was a moving van parked across the street from Sara’s.

  In front of my house!

  Okay, so it wasn’t technically my house.

  Sara and I had made plans that my family would move there. It had been a pretty hopeless idea then, and was even more so now that Daddy had lost his job. Still, it took several Satnam Wahegurus to stifle the pang of jealousy that squeezed my chest. I had known that someone would move into that house, and I had known it wouldn’t be me, but it didn’t make the sight of that moving van any easier.

  Living across the street from Sara was one of the many things I liked to pretend could really happen. The same way I liked to imagine my mustache might disappear if I stopped thinking about it for long enough. Half nervous habit and half wishful hoping, I patted at my upper lip. The fuzz at the edges of my mouth was still there.

  When I’d first noticed my facial hair a week ago, I’d waited for someone to be like, “Hey, what’s that on your face?” If anyone had seen, they hadn’t said anything—except for Kiran, but brothers don’t count. Then again, it was summer. The only people I saw regularly were Sara, her family, and a few kids at the pool, and Sara’d been away for two weeks.

  Daddy tapped the car window with his finger toward the house.

  “Houses are a big investment. What ever happened to investing in the mind? Am I right, beta?”

  Double tick.

  “Hanji, Daddy.” If I agreed, he’d stop before the ranting really began. The one that went, “Khullars have always been frugal spenders with brilliant minds. Babaji tells us in the great word . . .” And by “frugal” Daddy meant “cheap.”

  I’d definitely inherited that trait from him. I couldn’t waste a thing and wore my clothes until Mom threw them out and made me shop for new ones. It’s not that I didn’t care how I looked. I just grew really attached to my favorite T-shirts and things. Spending money on new clothes I’d have to break in until they stopped being itchy didn’t really make sense to me when I had so many comfy clothes I liked. Mom had been too busy this summer to pay much attention to my ratty T-shirts and too-small shoes. She’d die if she saw how far my toes dangled over the front of my silver strappy sandals.

  Daddy stopped the car in Sara’s driveway. He got out and opened my door. I cringed as it made a loud groan before slamming shut.

  “I’ll have that fixed by the weekend,” Daddy said.

  I stared up at Sara’s house. My stomach did this kind of water balloon flip-flop when I saw Mrs. Green weeding the flower boxes on the front porch. It reminded me of how my life used to be. Over the summer the flower boxes on our porch had been replaced with recycling containers. Daddy didn’t have much of a green thumb and Mom was too busy, so the withered plants got thrown away and Kiran put the recycling on the porch because he’s too chicken to go into the garage at night. Not that he’d ever admit that.

  “Hello, Karma. Dr. K.” Mrs. Green had a smile that made you go as gooey and warm as the middle of a chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven. “Sara’s in the basement.”

  “Thanks.” I gave Daddy a sideways hug. “See ya later.”

  I ran inside and down the stairs. All the houses in Sara’s neighborhood had a fully carpeted basement with a mini-kitchen. It was our own miniature house when Sara and I were together.

  Sara sat on the floor and was taking clothes out of a big, black garbage bag when I got to the bottom of the steps. “Hey, Karma,” she said, smiling.

  Her younger sister, Ruthie, bounced over to me with streaks of blue, pink, and green eye shadow caked onto her eyelids.

  “You look just like Fancy Nancy,” I said, grabbing Ruthie under her arms and spinning her in a circle.

  Ruthie threw her head back and giggled. “Wanna makeover?” She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the corner where her toys and plastic play kitchen were.

  “Ruthie, that’s not the kind of makeover Karma needs.”

  So, I did need a makeover? A flash of embarrassment seared my cheeks. Maybe at least one good thing would come out of her new magazine obsession: helping me figure out a way to get rid of my mustache.

  Once upon a time I’d been the one with the ideas, but this problem was way out of my expertise. I guess Sara had listened to me earlier. I pushed that squirminess of doubt I’d felt this morning on the phone way down to where I hoped it’d disappear.

  Sara grabbed my other arm and pulled me down next to her on the floor. Something about her hair looked different, smoother than usual. Her lips were shiny, and I might have caught a hint of sparkle just above her eyes.

  I tried to send a sorry-shrug to Ruthie, but she’d already made it halfway up the stairs, yelling for a snack.

  “What’s all this?” I asked, taking in the piles of clothes littering the floor around Sara but still trying to see anything else new or different about Sara out of the corner of my eye.

  “My cousin Rachel’s clothes. They’re in really good shape. She told me she outgrew some of it really fast last year and only wore them a couple of times. She’s practically five nine. Not tall enough to model on the runway, but she could totally do magazines. I mean, look at this stuff,” Sara said, pushing a simple dark blue shirt close to my face. “She’s got the best style sense ever.”

  Sara grabbed another shirt from the pile and held it up to her chest. “This is going to be perfect for a first-day-of-school outfit. Teen Bop said that thrift finds are what’s in for fall.” She stood up and studied herself from several angles in the full-length mirror. “Why don’t you pick some shirts and shorts? There’s even a few pairs of sandals in there. We need a good orientation outfit for Friday and one for the first day of school.”

  If it hadn’t been for Sara and me always sharing clothes, I might have been offended at her telling me to take her cousin’s clothes. Sara knew about Daddy’s job, but I wondered if maybe offering me free clothes had more to do with her sudden interest in fashion, while I sported my usual “T-shirt chic” look, as I liked to think of it.

  I picked up a bright pink shirt from a pile close to me and started
to unfold and refold it. The top of the sleeves puckered and bunched over the shoulder. It was a small detail but something that would drive me crazy and make me self-conscious all day if I wore the shirt. Especially with the puckering sleeves being so close to my face. I didn’t want to draw attention to my upper lip.

  Sara talked about Teen Bop and held up different skirts and tops as she swished back and forth in front of the mirror.

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you folding and refolding that shirt, Karma.” Sara’s right eyebrow raised to a point, but her eyes stayed fixed on her reflection in the full-length mirror in front of her. “I just read this article that said the first step to a big change is to make a small change. You know, wear something daring. I plan on wearing a skirt on the first day of school. You know how much I hate how skirts ride up when I walk, but we’re going to be in the sixth grade, Karma. We’ve got to start taking some chances. It’s middle school, for goodness’ sakes.”

  “It’s just—” My cheeks burned, partly because Sara had noticed me refolding the shirt and partly because she scared me with all this “taking chances” stuff. I mean, I was all for trying new things, but too many new things were going on right now. Mom at work, Daddy at home, and hair on my face kind of put me over my “new stuff” limit. I didn’t need a spotlight on me in middle school, at least not until I figured out how to get rid of my mustache.

  “Let me guess.” Sara tossed the shorts in her hand onto the floor. “Is this like the time you thought you had a tumor and it turned out to just be your cheekbone?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, because the lump had been behind my ear, and it was definitely a weird bump that had no business being there. Sara threw her hand up to shush me.

  “Wait! Or that time you kept making me squeeze your elbow because the bone jutted out too much and you insisted your joints were swollen due to a tropical disease Emma had brought back from vacation?”

  “You know I had that weird cough and . . .” I knew better than to argue with Sara when she was goofing off. At least I hoped she was still goofing off.