Chloe in India Read Free

head again.
    She frowned for a moment. “Broadway?”
    “I saw
Mary Poppins
once?” Something told me I probably shouldn’t mention that it was a middle-school production. And that I saw it in the basement of the Boston Public Library with my nana.
    Anvi grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the swings. “That’ll do,” she said.
    —
    Vijay was slowing the car down. We were nearing the drop-off point. We had only a few seconds to jump out before the traffic wardens would blow their whistles and wave Vijay on. The black SUV behind us was already honking, trying to get us to hurry up.
    I grabbed the door handle. “You’re just jealous,” I said to Anna. “You want to be friends with Anvi, too.”
    “Yeah, right—” Anna started to say, but I slipped out of the car and slammed the door before she could finish her sentence—and trip me up again.

Everything was going okay till art class.
    More than okay. Good, everything was good. During morning assembly, they skipped the national anthem, which is when I feel the stupidest because even though I’ve been at Premium Academy for two whole months already, I can hardly speak a word of Hindi. I just stand there, moving my lips while everybody else sings.
    Come to think of it, I don’t know why I should be singing the national anthem anyway. It’s not
my
national anthem.
    After assembly we had free reading time, which I love because I’m a really good reader and Ms. Puri put my name up on the Reading Wall.
    Ms. Puri is my class teacher. Compared to the other teachers at Premium Academy, she’s a little zany. She wears baggy
salwar kameezes
in bright colors, with patterns like polka dots and chevrons. (
Chevron
is my new favorite word. It’s those zigzaggy lines that go up and down like mountain peaks. You can look it up.) Ms. Puri has half a dozen different pairs of glasses, all with thick, candy-colored rims. Sometimes her glasses don’t match her outfits and then she throws her hands up in the air and says, “Well, I woke up feeling
gulabi
!” And that whole day she writes on the blackboard with pink chalk and marks our papers in pink ink. It’s a little kiddie for Class Five kids, but everybody secretly loves it.
    The other teachers at Premium Academy keep their black hair long, but Ms. Puri cuts hers short. Not porcupine short, but golden retriever short. And she’s the only female teacher I can think of who’s a “Ms.” All the others are “Miss” or “Mrs.”
    After reading, there was math and I got not one but two green check marks—Ms. Puri was wearing green glasses today—for excellent work. Then, instead of Indian breakfast, we got good old American cornflakes, so I took three helpings. And then, during first break, Anvi said I could be an alternate for the dance routine she was choreographing with her best friend, Prisha Kapoor. I got to sit on the steps and take notes.
    So you see, it was a pretty good day. I was so busy, I even forgot about my hair.
    That is, until art class.
    As soon as we stepped into the art room, Mrs. Singh announced that she was breaking us up into pairs.
    I crossed my fingers behind my back, but it didn’t help.
    “Chloe and Dhruv,” Mrs. Singh called out.
    I groaned.
    Mrs. Singh glared down at me. She is tall and skinny and has a nose with a crook in it, like a real live witch.
    “Do we have some problem, Chloe?” she asked.
    I looked down at the floor. “No, ma’am.”
    That was not true. I did have a problem. A
big
problem, and its name was Dhruv Gupta, the most annoying boy in all of Class Five. Dhruv’s nose is always runny. On my very first day at school, back in July, he danced around me, saying, “Ooh, look at me. My name is Chhole! I am from America!” When I tried to make him stop, I might have sort of pushed him a little. And then he tripped over his
own
feet and fell down and chipped his front tooth on the edge of the slide and Ms. Puri called my mom and when my mom picked me up from school at the