From Twinkle, with Love
Page 6

Fidgeting with the edge of a couch pillow, I thought about making that movie with Sahil Roy. “Dadi … how do you know if a decision is the right one to make? Like, what if you could opt to keep the status quo or you could make a scary decision and shake things up? Which one would you pick?”
“Hmmm.” Dadi nodded and closed her eyes for so long, I thought she had fallen asleep. Then she snapped her eyes open and looked at me, her irises like shiny brown stones. “First you must ask, am I happy with the status quo?”
I took another bite of my banana and thought about it. “Not exactly,” I said finally, thinking about how, if things didn’t change, I’d never be able to share my stories with the world. And what if there was another girl coming up behind me? What if I could be her Ava DuVernay or her Mira Nair? “But … change is scary. What if I fail at what I’m trying to do?” What if no one likes the movie I make? I’ve never directed anything before. Making YouTube videos about Dadi or Maddie is totally different from managing an entire cast.
“You might fail, munni,” Dadi said, cupping my chin. “But when you’re off in college, will you wish you hadn’t taken this chance? Or that you had?”
I stared at Dadi, easily the wisest person I knew, just thinking of how many lives I could change if my movies went mainstream. You might say, Okay, but when has a working-class Indian-American girl with a kooky dadi and ripped jeans ever become a famous filmmaker? And you’d be right. It’s never happened. But there are people out there, people exactly like me, who need someone to come along and tell their stories. To explore all those different universes for them. So why can’t I be the one to do it?
Maybe Dadi’s not the only kooky one, eh?
That’s when I knew: I had to take this shot. I had to go talk to Sahil Roy tomorrow and then, unless he wanted to make a movie about people hurting baby pandas, I had to do it. Just carpe the freaking diem by its hairy chest.
Somehow, I think, Ava, that you would approve.
Love,
Twinkle
June 3
The Reel Deal Blog
Posted by: Rolls ROYce
My friends, Slide and A-man (names changed to protect the not-so-innocent), are constantly on me to seize the moment. Grow a pair. Grab life by the horns.
Quit being such a chump baby, essentially.
Well, I did it. Yesterday I walked right up to … um, Sparkle, and told her how I felt.
Okay, that’s a lie. But I asked her to work with me on something. And I think that’s a big step. I mean, I’ve pretty much had a crush on her since girls stopped having cooties. Dudes, I’m tired of my own basicness. This project? It’ll take us almost a month of working together. And even I, the supreme god of awkward, can make this happen in three and a half weeks.
Besides the whole Sparkle angle, I’m psyched to do something outside of the shadow of my superstar brother. Movies have always felt like my thing. This is one area where maybe I won’t be sized up against him. Maybe Sparkle and everyone else will see me for who I am and for once I won’t feel like this is some competition I’m losing before I’ve even begun playing.
Maybe?
In any case, if you guys pray or chant or speak in tongues, now would be a great time to do it.
(Okay, anyone who knows me would be able to break my code and figure out who I am instantly, but since Google Analytics tells me I had exactly 0,000 visitors this month, I think I’ll be all right.)
Wednesday, June 3
Homeroom

Dear Jane Campion, If life is a fairy tale, I’m pretty sure I’ve been cast as the princess. Huh? you might be asking yourself. What’s she blathering on about now? Well, let me tell you, my friend.
I got to school early because I was super excited about the movie thing, but also because Dadi kept asking if she could cleanse my essence, and there is not enough caffeine in the world for that ritual. So I was getting a few books out of my locker in the empty hallway when someone grabbed me around the waist.
I spun around, ready to karate chop the crap out of whoever it was, and found Maddie grinning at me. “Nice reflexes,” she said, nodding appreciatively.
I let my hands fall and stared at her for a long moment, waiting.
“What?”
An apology. That’s all I wanted. We were supposed to meet at my locker. You stood me up, I wanted to say. Do you honestly have nothing to say about that?
I shook my head, too much of a groundling to speak up. “Nothing. What are you doing here so early?”
She held up her AP calc textbook. “I have a test, so I thought I’d get an extra hour of studying in before school starts.”
“And you call me a nerd.”
Before she could respond, we heard footsteps behind us and turned.
That’s when I died.
Okay, not really, but almost. It was definitely an out-of-body experience. Because walking up to us, smiling, was Neil freaking Roy.
I don’t know what I did to deserve two close encounters of the Neil kind in less than a week, but I wasn’t about to question my good fortune. I gazed dumbly at him as he stopped a few lockers down from mine. “Hey, ladies,” he called breezily.
I shot Maddie a panicked look. Just like before, I locked up and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She shook her head at me and said, “Oh, hey, Neil. Aren’t you supposed to be at pre-Olympic training?” She looked and sounded casual, but she couldn’t fool me. Her voice was higher and squeakier than normal. Even Maddie was slightly starstruck, and her social stratus was adjacent to Neil’s. So what hope did I, a mere groundling, have?
He got a few books out of his locker, slammed it shut, and sauntered over to us. I stopped breathing. “I still have to keep up with my homework and tests and stuff.” He made a face and ran a hand through his perfectly spiked black hair. I kept darting surreptitious glances at him while also looking straight ahead, as if I had no business gazing directly at this perfect likeness of an Indo-Greek god, high school edition.
“So,” he continued, “who’s your pretty friend? It’s Rinkle, right?”
My eyes widening, I stared at him, full-on this time. Did he just say PRETTY?
“Um, it’s Twinkle,” Maddie said, coming to my rescue. “Twinkle Mehra.” She accidentally-on-purpose jabbed me in the kidney with her fingers.
“Right,” I said, thankful for the pain that broke my paralysis. “Twinkle.” Oh, great. What a genius thing to say. Just repeat your name like some half-brained parrot.
Neil snapped his fingers. “Twinkle, right. Anyway, I better get going. They make us do twenty extra laps if we’re late.”
“Ouch,” Maddie said, laughing freely. How did she do that? I, meanwhile, croaked out a laugh that sounded like a rhinoceros in heat.
Neil waved at us, spun on his shiny Nike-clad heel, and was gone.
“Oh my God,” I whispered at his retreating back.
Maddie grinned in my peripheral vision. “Did you hear that? He called you ‘pretty.’” She paused, frowning a bit. “And ‘Rinkle,’ which is slightly annoying.”
I turned unsteadily toward her. “Um, was that whole interaction real?”
Her grin returned, wider this time. “Oh, it was real. And you know what this means?”
I shook my head silently, but inside I was thinking, Look, it’s already happening. Maddie stood me up yesterday, but one small encounter with Neil and we’re bonding again. Imagine if shiny, future Twinkle was Neil’s girlfriend? I wasn’t worried about that Twinkle being struck silent in his presence. Once I was her, I wouldn’t be intimidated by someone like Neil. By then I’d fit seamlessly into Maddie’s circle. And then it would be like this all the time.
“This movie you’re doing with Sahil?” Maddie continued. “Like I said before, the bonus is it’ll get you closer to the hotter brother. The one you’ve had a crush on forever?”
I felt a tug of discomfort. It wasn’t about “hot” versus “not hot.” It was about taking a hammer to my life and completely rehauling it. It was about breaking apart Invisible Twinkle and putting her together again, only as a shinier, impossible-to-miss version this time. “They’re twins, Maddie. They look the exact same, so Neil can’t possibly be the hotter brother.”