Ma keeps Nabh home again because he’s still fatigued, and she says he has such heavy bags under his eyes he could go for a month-long trip to India. No fever, though. He’s well enough to be bored.
And … he’s going to miss the fire drill today. No big whoop, except Mrs. Reyes always gives free time if her students walk in an orderly fashion and stay together during the drill. Nabh and Kyle planned on making a prank video – gluing quarters to the floor and recording people trying to pick them up. He wonders if Kyle will do the prank by himself and get all the likes.
School is down the street from Nabh’s apartment. He hears the 7:55 bell ring while he’s curled on the couch with Krishna watching Unspeakable on YouTube. Nathan Graham is Nabh’s hero; he barely notices when Ma kisses him goodbye.
After a late breakfast – Nabh’s classmates have already started writing – Ajoba does the dishes and sweeps the floor, moving stiffly, hunched over with age. The skin on his hands is thin, bleeding in a couple of spots from washing. Nabh feels so guilty. Ajoba is old. He’s supposed to sip tea on the balcony, not clean and cook for his nine-year-old grandson.
Then Ajoba smiles at Nabh. “If you can’t go to school, you can at least further your education by reading.” His sparkling eyes are deep-set, surrounded by brown, wrinkly skin that drapes around them like the dhoti he wears when he does his asana.
Nabh needs no convincing. Ajoba clips a leash on Krishna, and they slowly walk to the library: an old man, a sick boy, and a rescue dog who marks his spot every few steps.
They push through the library doors at ten o’clock. His classmates are doing reading now, just like Nabh’s about to. Cosmic Symmetry, Ma would call it. Krishna pulls Ajoba to the front desk, where the librarian keeps a jar of Milk-Bones. Nabh disappears in the stacks.
After checking out their books, Ajoba suggests they read in the park. It’s a warm morning, sun glowing, dew on the green grass long evaporated. A couple of minutes in, and Ajoba is snoring, drool glistening in the corner of his mouth, book rising and falling on his chest. Krishna’s on his back, tongue lolling out, eyes rolled up so only the whites show.
“Ew.” Nabh giggles.
An empty school bus stops at the intersection before turning right toward school, two blocks away. The hiss of the airbrakes reminds Nabh of steam pushing out of Ajoba’s teakettle. He turns the page of his Percy Jackson book, startling when Ajoba starts talking in a sleep-husky voice.
“The shapes you see in clouds are possessions people leave behind when they die.” His eyes are opaque and inscrutable as he stares at the sky. “Ghosts of possessions.” Nabh puts his book down and inspects the sparse clouds. A rabbit, ears raised high. A leaping dolphin. An orange tree. No possessions.
“Not every shape, of course. But some.” Ajoba holds out a little packet of dried amla.
Nabh chews on the tart, salted gooseberries while he decides if Ajoba is teasing. This is, after all, the man who smashed a spider with a frying pan last night and pretended to cook it for Nabh’s dinner, both of them laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe while Ma threw her hands in the air, a smile breaking through the exhaustion on her face.
The bell rings for the end of morning kindergarten, and Nabh imagines the little kids climbing the steps of the awaiting bus, small hands grasping the handlebars to help hoist them up. The day is going by so much more quickly than it does when he’s actually in school. Pretty soon, the bell will ring for the upper grades to have lunch.
“Lunch,” growls Nabh’s stomach. He’s definitely feeling better because he’s really hungry for the first time in days. And he gets to eat sweets because he’s sick! Maybe today he can get a chocolate milkshake from Bomb Burger.
Before Nabh can ask, Ajoba clears his throat. “When my ma expired from breast cancer, I was a little older than you. Her bed was by the window, and I saw in the clouds her bangles, my lattu spinning as if it were on the table, a heart.”
Now Nabh thinks he also sees a heart, but it breaks in two, the pieces separating, elongating until they’re nothing more than wisps of clouds. A tear falls from Ajoba’s eyes and runs down his temple. Definitely not teasing.
Nabh feels something clench deep inside. He’s never seen Ajoba cry. If Ma died, what would Nabh see in the sky?
That clench gets heavy, a pressure in his chest, and he gasps. Krishna rolls over, his furry face inches from Nabh’s, concern in his eyes.
“It’s okay, beta.” Ajoba chuckles. “An old man looks backward while a young man looks forward.”
Nabh doesn’t understand what Ajoba means, but he’s relieved to hear Ajoba laugh. They watch the clouds for a while, calling out different shapes. Like Snoopy, Ajoba sees elaborate images, the Mahabharata War, and the Taj Mahal. Nabh is more like Charlie Brown. A horsey and a ducky.
An alarm goes off in the distance. The fire drill. In a few minutes, Kyle will probably be supergluing quarters to the ground. But suddenly, over the alarm, pop pop pop, like stepping on sheets of bubble wrap. At first, Nabh thinks it’s Kyle, doing a different prank. But the alarm and the popping feel wrong somehow. Something is wrong.
Nabh’s heart is pounding hard. He and Ajoba sit up. Just as they look toward the school, the sky over it erupts with bursts of clouds: a basketball, a flip-flop, a coffee mug, Legos, a recorder, an open book, a jump rope, a hula hoop, a lipstick, a tie, a pair of Nikes. And, over the alarm and bubble wrap, sirens screaming louder and louder.