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each other.
    One night, my parents and Pankaj’s parents went out to dinner together, leaving Pankaj and me at his house with a pack of ramen noodles and a salad. School had started a month before—I was a freshman; he was a senior. We had never

    exchanged more than a few words before, but I had watched him from afar. I knew the location of his locker, I knew he brushed his teeth after lunch.
    Pankaj took me into the living room and told me his family had recently remodeled. I said it was nice, though it looked sterile. There was a fresh bouquet of yellow flowers on the coffee table, and Pankaj said his father had In Full Bloom, an upscale florist, send his mother an arrangement every week. That impressed me as much as it was supposed to.
    We sat on the couch. I had been instructed to remove my shoes upon entering the house, and I tried to look casual and quick as I lifted my bare feet to rest on the glass coffee table. But my heels fell against the surface harder than I’d intended, and the glass shattered and collapsed beneath their weight. Only the metal legs remained.
    Pankaj shot up.
    “Oh my God,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I reached for the tilted flower vase. The water was spilling, the petals scattering.
    “What were you thinking?” Pankaj asked. “I didn’t know it was so fragile,” I said. “It’s glass .”
    “I’m sorry, but there must have been a crack. I remember
    seeing one.” I was standing now, too. “My mom—she’ll be so pissed.”
    “ Your mom?” Pankaj said.
    “We need a garbage can. And a vacuum,” I said. I was holding the vase in front of me, as if offering it to him.
    “Are you okay?” he asked.�
    I looked down. “Yeah, I think so.”� “What time is it?” he asked.�
    “Six something. Maybe not even that. We got here before �
    six.”
    “Let’s go,” Pankaj said. “I know where they bought the table.” Pankaj drove a green station wagon. My seat belt felt too tight, but I didn’t want to adjust it. My big toe was bleeding,
    and I brought my right foot up to my left knee to examine it.
    Pankaj looked over. “Shoot.”
    “It doesn’t hurt,” I said, though suddenly it did.
    Pankaj asked to speak to the manager of the furniture store.
    I had never asked for a manager.
    “You’re in luck,” the manager said. He had another table exactly like the one I’d broken. He walked us to it.
    “I don’t have that kind of money,” I whispered to Pankaj. “I have a credit card,” he said.
    “I’ll pay you back,” I said, and he nodded. I knew I would have to ask Dad for the money. It would be our secret from my mother.
    We carried the table out to Pankaj’s car, stopping twice when I needed to adjust my hands. At his house, we picked up the glass and placed the pieces in a garbage bag Pankaj had lined with paper bags. “Careful,” he said, as I got to the smaller shards. We vacuumed. The old table’s legs had left small circles in the carpet, and we matched the new table’s legs to the indents. I placed the vase of yellow flowers in the center of the table.

    At nine, when our parents returned, Pankaj and I were sitting on the couch, watching TV. Pankaj had found a Band-Aid for my foot.
    “How was dinner?” Gita asked.� “Good,” I said. We had forgotten to eat.�
    —
    Pankaj graduated from high school that spring. I didn’t talk to him again until nine years later, when I was living in New York. One Saturday, a friend took me to a party in Brooklyn. I didn’t know the hosts. I walked in and saw Pankaj standing by a birthday cake.
    “Happy birthday,” I said.�
    “It’s not my birthday,” he said. “I play in the band.”�
    Pankaj played the sitar. I danced in a cluster with Pankaj’s � older sister, Archana, and her friends, all of them tall. Other women formed other clusters around us. The men stood by the tables of drinks. It was spring and hot in the loft, and I loved it all—the heat, Pankaj’s sister, and the loudness of