Auntie Iyer rolled her eyes. “Spare us the theatrics. You have your chart read every year, but you’re too embarrassed by your own culture to own it. Arjun, at the very least, is proud to be here with me. You could learn a thing or two from him.”
“Mom!” Madhuri hissed, this time in English. Arjun couldn’t help but chuckle at how dramatic she was. As soon as the sound left his lips, Madhuri spun on her heel to face him. “And what exactly are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” Arjun said. “Maybe you should sit down with us. You’ve never missed our annual reading before, so why start now?”
Before Madhuri could explode into another temper tantrum, Arjun reached for her hand. Their palms connected and she fell to the floor soon after, leaning her head onto his shoulder. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Arjun smiled to himself. He knew her way too well. Her outbursts never lasted for longer than a few minutes, and they ended even quicker when he was there beside her. They were better as a pair, even if it would only ever be platonic.
Auntie Iyer flipped through her papers again and pulled out a bulky leather-bound book with a bow and arrow embossed on the cover in gold. Sagittarius in every way, Madhuri was her family’s miracle child—astrologically speaking, that was. Every single planet of hers had fallen into the embrace of the Archer.
“Do you want the honest truth?” Auntie Iyer sighed.
“Obviously,” Madhuri snapped.
Her mother averted her eyes back to the pages. “Your stars are conflicted. You, simply put, are going to crash and burn in your senior year. That’s how the teens say it now, correct?”
Arjun raised an eyebrow at the information. Madhuri never failed. She was the kind of person who’d win every game, ace every test, beat every bully—whether she tried or not. He’d always envied that about her, not that he’d ever admit it.
“Crash and burn? Is that really all you have to say about my chart?”
“Fine, I’ll move on to more tangible developments.” Auntie Iyer held up two air quotes when she said the word tangible. “You’re arrogant. You’re used to success and that comfort will result in your downfall. You’ll face a future where you can’t quite reach first place the way you used to.”
Madhuri scoffed and squeezed Arjun’s hand twice. A cry for help. They’d come up with the signal in fourth grade when Arjun was being bullied for spending all his free time with a girl.
This was the first time Madhuri had ever used it.
“You’re so full of it, Amma. I’m not going to fail. I never do.”
“That’s the exact arrogance I’m talking about.”
Madhuri ignored the snark. “What do you even mean by downfall? That’s awfully vague. Am I going to crash and burn in academics? In social activities? In romance?”
Arjun choked on air when he heard the last part. Neither of the women noticed him.
“You’re not going to fail, but you won’t succeed as easily as you’re used to.” Auntie Iyer removed a sheet of paper from the book and pointed to the different angles between each planet, their orbits drawn by hand. “All of your alignments are disastrously weak, which means your internal compass leading you toward growth is damaged. Expect mediocre grades, misunderstood emotions, and failed relationships.”
“I don’t believe you. This unevidenced magic of yours doesn’t fool anyone but Arjun, and he’s hopeless.”
“It’s Vedic astrology, not unevidenced magic. If you’re going to insult the craft, you might as well use the proper terminology.” Auntie Iyer didn’t even bother to comment on her daughter’s tone, sporting a poker face instead. “Besides, you and I both know that these readings are not meant to be a foolproof prophecy, but rather an opportunity to reflect on the elements highlighted in your chart. At the end of the day, your destiny is entirely in your control.”
Arjun cut in, his gaze lasered solely on Madhuri. “You think I’m hopeless? Believing in something larger than yourself is not hopeless. Bonding yourself to your culture is not hopeless, but it’s not like you would understand. You’re too busy whitewashing yourself to please the awful people in our town.”
Madhuri gasped, yanking her hand out of Arjun’s. “Take that back.”
“No. Someone needed to put you in your place.”
“You think you’re so high and mighty because you act more Indian than me,” Madhuri whispered, her once-playful voice now gaining an edge. “I watch the same Bollywood movies as you. I have my chart read annually. I eat Indian food three times a day, every day. I just don’t parade through the streets, waving my ethnicity around like a flag, like you do.”
Before Arjun could bite back with an equally heated retort, Auntie Iyer scrambled to her feet and clapped her hands. “My ears are bleeding. Will you two, for the love of Krishna, shut up?”
“But you started this!” Arjun exclaimed. “What about our horoscopes? Our senior year?”
“My world doesn’t revolve around you two, sadly.” Auntie Iyer was smiling, so he had a feeling she wasn’t that sad about it at all. She snapped the book shut, a burst of dust leaving the pages on impact. “You will figure it out. You always do.”
And then, much to Arjun’s dismay, Auntie Iyer winked at him.
CHAPTER TWO
Madhuri
Later that night at the dinner table, Madhuri curled her legs up to her chest as she flipped through a stack of graded schoolwork collected over the last semester. Her eyes landed on every A+ scrawled across the top of her exams and essays, often followed by a glowing message from her teachers. And yet, thanks to the unlucky prophecy looming over her head, academic validation no longer brought her any peace.
Madhuri sighed and tossed the assignments to the side, her once-steaming dosa forgotten on the plate in front of her. She watched as a gust of wind streamed through the open kitchen window, scattering her dirty crumbs across the table. Even the sound of her mother’s laugh as her father cracked another corny joke didn’t comfort her the way it normally would. She was much too preoccupied with her history of success, boldly stamped on her transcript despite her mother’s prediction otherwise. Madhuri couldn’t imagine a future where she lost her ability to succeed simply because of an unfounded, overdramatic, scientifically impossible prophecy. The thought alone was enough to send a spark of pain through her already twisted stomach.
“Why is she sulking now?” Josie Gregorec, Madhuri’s best friend of three years, asked aloud with a teasing lilt to her voice. Her mouth was stuffed with crispy dosa, the deep red of the crushed peppers staining her lips like an organic lipstick. “Did you put a curse or something in her chart this year, Auntie Iyer?”