Rahul Kanakia

Ken sat quietly in the front passenger seat, his face lit up with a sideways smile. Ken had really dense eyebrows and a broad neck. His arms and shoulders were huge, but his legs were puny, and Pothan loved to call him chicken legs. Ken always said legs didn’t matter; girls didn’t go for legs, but I was sure he regretted his gym choices—he never, under any circumstances, wore shorts. The problem was that if he suddenly added a leg day to his workout, everyone would know Pothan had gotten to him.

“Umm, didn’t Avani say to meet at the lake house?”

“Nandan, this is an intervention. You cannot keep trying to hang out with her.”

Part of me wanted to force Ken and Pothan to let me out and let me make my own way to the lake house. But if I showed up by myself, empty-handed, without a party in tow, it wouldn’t be fun: it’d be stilted and awkward.

I wasn’t like Pothan. I didn’t have that indefinable extra something that marked a person as a leader. A party isn’t an end in itself; a party is just a container for exciting things. It’s a place
where you bring together lots of people and heat them up and see what will happen. But in order to experience the magic and grandeur of a party, you need to hang around the right people. My presence brought nothing extra to a party, and I’d resigned myself to this. I was a follower.

“Are we going to the lake house?”

“What?” Pothan yelled.

I reached for the volume knob, but Ken swatted my hand.

“Are we going to the lake house?” I shouted.

“What?”

“Are we going to the lake house?”

“What?”

This went on absurdly long, until I realized Pothan was toying with me. I slapped the back of his head, and he jerked the car into the next lane.