“You mean like chai?”
“Right. That’s what I mean.”
“Grande chai latte,” the barista says, writing it on the side of a cup. “And what’s your name?”
“Sanskrit.”
“Say again.”
“Sanskrit. Like the language.”
“Oh,” she says. “No wonder you ordered the chai.”
She passes my cup down to the coffee prep area, and I follow it.
“Grande chai latte for… Sanskrit,” a barista calls. Then he chuckles.
“Good one, dude,” he says, and passes me the drink. He’s got a long beard braided with a red ribbon at the bottom.
“Do I need to do anything to it?” I say.
“Like what? Buy it a birthday gift?”
“No, like put sugar in it.”
“It’s already sweet.”
“I’ve never had one before.”
“Drink it, dude. Live a little.”
I sit down at a table by the window. I take a sip of the chai. It’s spicy, creamy, and sweet at the same time. I take another sip.
I look out the window at traffic moving down San Vicente. I imagine I’m in a café in India watching traffic on a street in Mumbai.
I try to wrap my head around the idea. Mom, me, and the guru in India together.
A text chimes on my phone. It’s Sweet Caroline.
wht hpnd w/ guru?
A wave of guilt hits me. How can I even think of leaving Sweet Caroline here alone?
But then I remember she hates spicy food. She hates most food, except chocolate. She also hates being dirty. I don’t know much about India, but I know there’s lots of spices and dirt. That would be like two strikes for her.
I decide that Sweet Caroline would be miserable in India, but she wouldn’t be miserable here. It’s true that Dad is irresponsible, but one extra person at his place wouldn’t be so bad. Dad would take her to See’s Candies and call her Sweet McGeet a hundred times a day.
She might even be happier.
I text her back:
tell u later
Because I need some time to think this over.
Just then, Talya Stein and Melissa Rabinowitz sit down outside the window. They’re both friends of The Initials. Their table is maybe twelve inches from mine, only on the other side of the glass. I’m trying to ignore them, but they’re too close. Melissa does that thing where she takes her long skirt and tucks it between her legs so it’s out of the way. She’s wearing tights underneath with a speckled pattern, colored dots traveling up and down her legs. I peek through the window a few times. For some reason, they haven’t noticed me. Or maybe they have, and they just don’t care.
I go back to my chai, then a shadow passes across the window. The Initials sits down.
Judi. She’s not The Initials anymore. Just Judi.
She’s in the seat right next to mine on the other side of the window. If we were at the same table, we’d be sitting next to each other.
I glance at her, but she doesn’t see me. It’s like I’m invisible, even though there’s only a pane of glass between us.
I take a slug of chai. The spice hits my tongue, and it wakes me up. It was the old Sanskrit who looks at girls through windows and does nothing. What about this Sanskrit? The one who calls The Initials by her real name?
This Sanskrit knocks on the window.
That’s what I do now. I tap. The girls are startled. They peer into the window. It’s sunny out, so the reflection must make it hard to see inside. It occurs to me that they weren’t ignoring me. They really couldn’t see me.
Judi presses her face to the window and cups her hands around her eyes like she’s looking through binoculars.
“Sanskrit!” she says through the glass.
She says something to the girls, then hops up from her seat, takes her backpack and coffee, and comes into Starbucks.
“I can’t believe it’s you,” she says.
“I can’t believe it’s me either,” I say.
Judi laughs. I made Judi laugh!
“I need to talk to you,” she says.
“I need to talk to you, too,” I say.
She doesn’t laugh that time. Bummer. For a second I thought I was going to repeat everything she said, and she would love it. Now I see it’s going to be more complicated than that.
“This is perfect timing,” Judi says. “I mean, if you’re not in the middle of something.”
“I’m not. Well, I am. But I’m just thinking about stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Long story.”
“Can I ask you about your mother?”
“My mother?” I say, a little disappointed.
“If it’s not too painful,” Judi says. “I just need a little background. So we can write an introduction and everything.”
Judi puts a hand on my forearm.
“Of course,” I say. I’m hoping she’ll keep her hand on my arm, or even move it up to my shoulders, but she doesn’t. She sits across from me and takes a pad out of her backpack. She taps a quick text into her phone, then puts it into her bag and directs all her focus towards me.
“Tell me about her,” Judi says.
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me what she likes.”
“She likes yoga. And tofu. And music with chanting.”
“I thought you were Jewish.”
“We are. But you can be Jewish and do yoga.”
“Right, but the chanting? What’s that?”
“It’s nondenominational chanting.”
“Are you sure it isn’t Buddhism or something like that?”
“Mom doesn’t belong to any particular religion. She dabbles.”
“Okay, let’s change the subject,” Judi says. She clicks the pen and scribbles on her pad. “I’m going to say that your mom has a lot of interesting hobbies and she likes to exercise.”
“That’s true,” I say.
“Does she have any cool expressions? Like, if she was a sports team, what would her motto be?”
“Eat healthy.”
“That’s not really a motto.”
Eat healthy so you can poop well. That’s Mom’s real motto. But I’m not telling Judi.
I say, “I just remembered Mom’s favorite expression: Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.”
Mom doesn’t even know that expression, but I remember it from a B-Jew screening of Schindler’s List this year.
“That’s a beautiful one,” Judi says. “From the Talmud.”
Judi writes a few things, then puts the pad down. “This is just so weird talking to you,” she says. “I’m weird?”
“I mean like weirdly familiar.”
“How can it be familiar? We haven’t talked since second grade.”
“So you do remember!” she says.
“Sort of. It’s a blur.”
She crosses her legs under her long skirt.
“Maybe it’s not the time,” she says.
“We’re here, aren’t we?”
“We’re here,” she says. She looks out the window.
Talya and Melissa are gone. We’re alone.
Not alone. Together.
We’re together again. I dreamed about this so many times over the years, but now that it’s happening, it feels fake.
“To be honest, second grade was a tough time for me,” Judi says.
“You didn’t seem like you were having a tough time,” I say.
“I was only seven. How can anything be tough at seven, right?”
I think about my second grade. Tough.
“No, I get it,” I say. “But what was tough about it for you?”
“We had that mean teacher. What was her name?”
“Ms. Shine.”
“Right. She was so intense. She gave us, like, two hours of homework, even though we were supposed to have thirty minutes. I got a migraine my first day of second grade,” Judi says.
“I didn’t know that.”