Madhuri felt her shoulders tense at the mention of a curse, and she resisted the urge to lecture Josie for her curiosity. “I’m right here, you know. You can ask me to my face.” Madhuri sent her mother a glare from across the dinner table. “Speaking of my mother, I hope she knows I’m not going to Arjun’s game tonight.”
It was Madhuri’s father who chimed in. “What’s with the change of heart? We always support him at his games as a family.” When Josie flashed him a wounded look, he offered her a smile. “You’re a part of the family, too, Josie, just like Arjun is.”
“Arjun will survive without me. He’s a big boy.” Madhuri gritted her teeth, bleeding sarcasm from the enamel of her incisors. When her dad sighed, obviously disappointed by her reaction, she urged herself to soften. “I’m sorry. That was mean of me to say, but my overall point still stands. I’m just not in the mood to watch a game tonight.”
“Oh, you can come up with a better excuse than that.” Her father lifted an eyebrow at her. “There’s something you’re not telling us.”
Before she could respond, Madhuri’s mother cleared her throat from her seat at the head of the table. Madhuri turned to her in anticipation of a snarky response, but she focused on the empty spot beside her mother instead. It typically belonged to Madhuri’s little sister, Raina, who’d ditched Arjun’s game for Bharatanatyam class. Madhuri hadn’t gone to a dance lesson since her freshman year, not since the harsh spotlight and quiet audiences scared her away. She envied Raina’s courage to continue even as her older sister jumped ship.
“Oh, you’re so in for it now,” Josie mumbled under her breath as she expertly tore into her third dosa with one hand, using the other to squeeze Madhuri’s shoulder in silent support.
“Didn’t you know, Dev? Madhuri’s convinced that her astrological reading is wrong, and she’s throwing a pity party with the sheer purpose of spiting us. Like always, she’s taking her emotions out on not only us, but Arjun, too.” Her mother was speaking directly to her father, but that didn’t stop her from shooting Madhuri a passive-aggressive smile. She was obviously irritated, but she wouldn’t fight Madhuri over it. In their family, banter was how they practiced conflict resolution. “What are you so scared of? Failure? Disappointment?”
“All of the above. I don’t like being told that I’m going to fail at everything and that there’s nothing I can do to stop it because it’s written in the stars, whatever that even means. I believe in my free will, but apparently that has no place in my future,” she retorted.
“That’s not true. You always have the ability to shift your fate, but running away from it does nothing.” Her mother’s eyes slowly softened. “And I hope you realize that, no matter what happens, you will always have us. Your family will never leave your side.”
“You’re not hearing me, Amma.” Madhuri caught Josie’s sympathetic gaze. Their friendship was already so comfortable that Josie was listening in on their most vulnerable discussions. Madhuri had never been more grateful for her presence. “I hate the idea that some unprovoked cosmic force can ruin all of my hard work. I don’t want to fail, and I don’t think I deserve to, either, not after everything I’ve done to succeed. I have an SAT score in the ninety-seventh percentile, a 4.0 GPA in the IB program, and attractive extracurriculars to boot. You can’t expect me to believe that the Universe is suddenly going to destroy all of that for no reason.”
“The Universe won’t destroy it. You will, whether you realize it in the moment or not.” Her mother swallowed a large bite of dosa before speaking again. “Are you sure this isn’t about what the reading predicted about the relationships in your life?”
Her father choked on his chai, the steam from the tea fogging up his reading glasses. “Relationships? You’re only seventeen. You don’t need a relationship with anyone beyond your family, Arjun, and Josie.”
Madhuri ignored her well-meaning father. “I’m not going to lie, that’s part of the issue. It doesn’t make sense that my prophecy thinks I’m going to be the victim of misunderstood emotions and failed relationships—not only is that claim incredibly vague, but it’s also too easy to refute. For example, let’s say I were to facilitate a positive experience with love despite the odds stacked against me. If that new relationship were to succeed, wouldn’t that inherently prove my prophecy wrong?”
“First of all, it’s not a prophecy. That implies perfect accuracy,” her mother corrected. When her father snorted, her mother elbowed him in the gut.
“You know what I mean, Amma.”
“You can’t create a perfect relationship whenever you feel like it,” her mother continued. “If that was possible, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with your father when I was still establishing my clinic in India.”
Her father shook his head. “You chose to follow me to the United States, Kamala. It’s not like I asked you to leave the clinic behind when we fell in love.”
Madhuri tried to imagine how it would feel to be touched by a love that wasn’t platonic. She wasn’t anything like her mother, who had the courage to leave her thriving medical clinic in India to start a family with her father in the United States, thousands of miles away from her own. Madhuri didn’t inherit the selfless gene, nor did she have faith in any power beyond her own immediate control.
“All I’m trying to say is that this prophecy is way too unbelievable. My life isn’t going to fall apart simply because the planets have decided it will, and nothing you say will make me believe otherwise,” Madhuri bit out, her eyes firmly trained on her floppy dosa.
Her mother sighed. “You’re thinking about the family curse, aren’t you?”
“What does that have to do with this conversation?”
“Madhuri, my love, you’re throwing a tantrum about how desperately you want to control your own destiny. You may be using the reading as the scapegoat in your argument this time, but I’m your mother, and I know that you always end up circling back to our curse somehow.”
Madhuri noticed Josie lean forward, suddenly intrigued. Her stormy blue eyes, much like the waves of the ocean during a high tide, widened as she glanced between Madhuri and her parents. “Your family has curses? You seriously never tell me anything, Madhuri.”
As Josie’s complaint registered in her ears, Madhuri felt a combination of guilt and anxiety creep into her throat. Was her prophecy stumbling into effect already?
Josie cocked her head to the side when Madhuri didn’t respond with an equally petty retort. “You know I’m kidding, right?” Madhuri shook herself out of her spiraling thoughts to offer Josie an affirmative, yet tired, smile. Her best friend nodded as if she’d understood her perfectly and turned back to Madhuri’s parents. “Tell me more about this curse.”