I put on another sweater over my first sweater. Ma comes back and tells me she and chachi’s husband are going to the school to speak to Coach.
“I’ll go with you.”
“Jai, I can’t do this today.”
Ma leaves. I say sorry to Runu-Didi in my head. I ask her to come back. I promise her I’ll never bother her. Shanti-Chachi sits with me and rubs my back and tells me to breathe slowly.
“Where’s your ma, Jai?” I hear Papa ask. “Shanti, what’s going on?”
I pray hard. I hear Runu-Didi’s voice. She’s home! I look around. She isn’t here. My ears tricked me.
“What do you mean Madhu is looking for her?” Papa shouts. “Where is Runu?”
When he raises his voice in anger, he seems much bigger. I want to curl up like a millipede or go into my shell like a turtle and never come out.
“What exactly did Runu say to you?”
Papa is talking to me. I tell him everything, but I also don’t tell him everything, like how I said your coach-boyfriend’s balls to her.
“Runu wanted to talk to the coach?” Papa asks, grabbing me by the collar. “How long do you think talking takes? You couldn’t wait for her?”
“Don’t shout at Jai,” Shanti-Chachi says. “He’s just a child.”
“Didi isn’t snatched,” I say as Papa’s grip loosens. “Coach must have convinced her to stay on the team.”
Papa takes out his mobile and calls someone.
“I’ll go to the school right now,” I say. “I’ll bring Runu-Didi back.”
“Shanti, can you watch him?” Papa asks, his phone pressed to his left ear.
“Of course,” chachi says.
“Haan, Madhu,” Papa says into the phone as he runs out of the house.
I squeeze into the headstand corner of Ma’s and Papa’s bed and try to think like a detective, but I can’t think at all because of the noise around me. Neighbors keep wandering in to ask Shanti-Chachi and me if we have heard anything. They knock against Ma’s precious-things bundle and scatter our textbooks and clothes. They ask each other if a Muslim has taken Runu to avenge Buffalo-Baba’s beheading. At first they speak in lowered voices so I won’t hear them, but soon they forget about me in their excitement and their voices shoot up into the sky. Shanti-Chachi tells them not to speculate until we know more. When they don’t listen, she threatens to cut out their poisonous tongues.
I pinch my arms so that I’ll wake up from this bad dream, but I’m already awake. I ask myself the questions Pari and I asked Bahadur’s brother and sister. I decide Runu-Didi is hiding because Papa beat her, though it was just one slap and hardly matters.
Shanti-Chachi checks with Runu-Didi’s basti-friends if they know where Didi is. They don’t. “She was fine this morning at the water tap,” one of them says. “She didn’t look upset.”
A chachi asks me if Didi could have gone to a mall, or the cinema, but Didi doesn’t have the money to watch a movie and we never go to malls and mall security guards won’t let us in anyway. Shanti-Chachi calls Ma on her mobile. Ma says Didi isn’t at school, and she and Papa are now going to the homes of Didi’s relay teammates.
I try to think of where Didi might be. I would have hidden behind a pushcart in Bhoot Bazaar or in the kirana shop where Faiz works. But Runu-Didi can’t hide in those places because she’s a girl, and also, she doesn’t know any shopkeepers and they will just tell her to go home.
* * *
All night people search for Runu-Didi. She can’t be found. I believe it and I don’t believe it. Ma and Papa return home, Ma’s hair sticking to her cheeks, Papa’s eyes redder and bulging. I ask them if I can go out to look for Didi. My secret plan is to find Samosa and let him track Didi. Ma says I’m not to move.
I have been in this night before. This is the night Bahadur went missing, and also the night Omvir and Aanchal and Chandni and Kabir and Khadifa disappeared.
Pari and her ma turn up. Pari sits with me on the bed and Pari’s ma cries even more than my ma. Faiz visits with his ammi. “What are these mullah-types doing here?” a chachi asks, jutting her chin at Faiz’s ammi.
I’m floating above everyone, watching them cry, watching them trade gossip. Some people are here only to feast on our tears and words. They’ll carry our stories in