his pradhan-papa bribes them. I wonder if somebody paid Quarter to make Bahadur disappear. But who would do such a thing?
Our queue shuffles forward.
I decide Quarter is my prime suspect. He and djinns, but I can’t question djinns. They may not be real.
When we get to the gate, I make myself brave and tell Quarter, “A boy in our basti has gone missing.” I have never talked to him before but now I stand straight as if I’m about to sing the national anthem at assembly. I watch Quarter’s face to see if he looks caught out because good cops and detectives can tell from the way someone blinks their eyes or tightens their lips if they are lying.
Quarter smiles an oily smile at a senior girl standing behind me. He strokes the hair sprouting above his lips and on his cheeks, too sparse to be a real mustache and beard even though he must be very old, like seventeen or something. Then he says “Chalo-chalo-chalo,” swatting me toward the gate.
“The missing boy, his name is Bahadur,” I say.
Quarter snaps his fingers too close to my ears, making their tips burn. “Chal-hut,” he growls.
I run into the school grounds.
“You mad or what?” Faiz asks. “Why were you talking to that fellow?”
“Quarter could have cut off your arm and thrown it into one of these bins,” Pari says, pointing at a penguin bin next to us.
The penguin’s yellow beak is open so wide that our heads can fit inside. Its white pot belly screams USE ME USE ME. Toffee wrappers sprinkle the ground around it because students toss stuff into the penguin’s mouth from a long way away and keep missing.
“I was doing detective work,” I tell Pari.
* * *
The next India-Pakistan war the news says will happen any time now has started in our classroom. It’s about who should win Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Li’l Champs. The Indian side says the best singer in the competition is Ankit, a plump boy everyone calls Jalebi because his voice is sticky-sweet. The Pakistani side wants Saira, a hijab-wearing Muslim girl who must be a head shorter than me at least, to win, because she goes to school in the mornings and, in the afternoons, sings in the streets of Mumbai for coins to feed her family. Pari and I try to tell everyone that Bahadur is missing. Half of my classmates know that already because they live in our basti. But they don’t care about Bahadur, not right now in the middle of a war.
“Saira’s people kill cows and they also kill Hindus,” says Gaurav, whose mother fingerprints a red tilak on his forehead every morning as if he’s going into battle.
Faiz will never kill me. He even forgets he is Muslim sometimes.
“Gaurav is a donkey,” I whisper to Faiz.
Our class has nine or ten Muslim children, besides Faiz. They are sitting quietly, holding textbooks open in front of their faces.
Faiz and I take our places at a desk in the third row. Pari sits next to us. She shares her desk with Tanvi, who has a backpack shaped like a slice of watermelon, pink with black pips.
“What if Quarter really snatched Bahadur?” I ask Pari. “Maybe stealing children is his new business. Maybe he supplies fake kids to parents the same way he rents out fake parents to us.”
“Quarter doesn’t even know who Bahadur is, why would he?” Pari says.
“I have seen Quarter make fun of Bahadur,” Tanvi announces, stroking her backpack as if it’s a cat. “He calls him Ba-Ba-Ba-Bahadur.”
Kirpal-Sir comes into our classroom. “Silence, silence,” he shouts as he turns to the blackboard, gripping a stub of chalk between the tips of his fingers. His hand is shaky because it was broken a year ago and hasn’t mended right. He writes MAPS at the very top of the board and INDIA below it, then starts drawing a squiggly map of India.
“Bachao, bachao,” I whisper to Pari. “I’m only a poor little chalk and this teacher is choking me to death.”
Everyone else is whispering to each other too but Pari’s face goes all frowny and she hisses, “Sshhhh, sshhhh.”
I curve my right hand as if it’s the head of a cobra and sink my fangs into her left shoulder.
“Sir, teacher-sir,” Pari cries.
I slink down in my seat until most of me is under the desk. Kirpal-Sir can’t see me now. The classroom is darker than usual because of the smog.
Pari stands up with her hand raised and