10 Things I Hate About Pinky - Sandhya Menon Page 0,43
fingers, looking offended. “Stop it!”
“No, you stop it!” He flicked her back on the shoulder, a distant, still-mature part of his brain horrified at the infantile way he was acting, at how quickly she could reduce him to this, a toddler version of himself.
But most of his brain was focused on flicking her faster than she could flick him.
They were in the middle of their flicking frenzy when Dolly poked her head out of her bedroom. “Guys? Everything okay?”
Immediately, and by mutual consent, they called a cease-fire and stood close together, smiling at Dolly. “Sure!” Pinky said, her voice not dissimilar to the one Samir had used to mock her. “Totally!”
Samir flashed her a thumbs-up. Giving them a curious look, Dolly disappeared back into her bedroom.
With one last, withering glare, Pinky held her chin high and stomped off to her own room, closing the door with more force than necessary. Blood boiling, Samir stalked off to his room.
Why did he let her get to him like that? He closed the door behind him, taking care not to slam it, unlike some other people. Pinky was clearly an immature, annoying little freak. He’d known this when he’d agreed to her proposition. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t realized just how annoying she would be in close quarters. The most frustrating thing was that he needed her. He couldn’t back out now.
Fuming, Samir walked to the window and then paced back to his bed. Technically, he supposed he could hop on a plane and head home. But being here with Pinky was still a more appealing prospect than going back to Atherton. He just needed to keep things in perspective, Samir realized, as he made his fourth circuit around the room. He needed to keep his eye on the prize at the end. And in the meantime, maybe he could find ways to express his frustration that wouldn’t cast suspicion on their fictitious relationship.
His eye fell on the planner and pen on his nightstand (he’d had to leave his planner behind for possible-water-damage reasons). Hmm…
Most people Samir knew had an amiable relationship with list-making. They knew lists were good at keeping you on track. But no one Samir knew loved, needed, breathed lists the way he did.
When his mom was going through all of her chemo treatments and could barely keep her eyes open, Samir had taken over their family event calendar/whiteboard out of necessity. Even at ten, when he had to use a stepstool to reach the top of the board, he’d used colorful markers to delineate every single thing she might need—painkillers, specific foods she could keep down during chemo, hourly reminders for her to drink fluids, appointments with the oncologist, the nutritionist, the physical therapist, the dentist, the social worker. He’d even taken to planning out his own meals. There had been no adult to take care of stuff like that; it had all fallen to him.
It didn’t take a shrink to see that planning every minute detail of his life also helped Samir feel like he was in control. And now… now it just made good sense. Lists helped him feel balanced, like drinking a green smoothie in the morning or going on a six-mile run.
Picking up his planner and pen, Samir kicked off his shoes and hopped on the bed. He tapped his pen on the planner, thinking for a moment. Then, flipping past the weekly calendars to the notes section at the back, he wrote:
10 Things I Hate about Pinky
She’s impulsive. Completely lets her heart dictate what her brain should do.
Impetuous.
Overly passionate about everything.
Short fuse: half human, half firecracker.
Doesn’t want anyone to be nice to her.
Hardheaded and bullish.
Doesn’t know how to relax. Everything’s a fight.
Completely nonconforming.
Magenta/teal/pink/green hair.
Habit of snorting derisively. (What is she, a horse?)
Tapping his pen against his chin, he looked at the list, already feeling 200 percent better. Sure, there was a small part of him that felt a little… uneasy about the list, a little bad at having written down Pinky’s undesirable qualities. But that part was very small. Almost nonexistent.
Samir filled his lungs with the lightly scented air of the room and then slowly let it out. Yes, he could put up with Pinky’s volatile weirdness for a few more weeks. Because at the end of it was a Harvard pennant with his name on it, waiting to be tacked up in a dorm room in Cambridge. And that would last the rest of his life.