Vanished Read Online Free Page B

she climbed up the front steps of her house, the door flew open. “I was so worried!” Mrs. Krishnan hugged her hard as Neela inhaled the scent of her mother, a mixture of cardamom, flour, and Lysol.
    Normally Neela would have cried at this moment, but she was distracted by the sight of her mother. “What are you wearing?” she asked.
    Mrs. Krishnan had on a neon green salwar kameez from India, the top in a checkered pattern with sequins and gold lamé, the pant bottoms puffing out like balloons. “I’m doing laundry. It was the only clean thing I had. But who cares about me? Go put on something dry.”
    After Neela changed, she found her mother in the living room holding a mug of cocoa. “What?” her mother asked, seeing Neela’s face. “I thought you liked cocoa.” She was looking around the room. “And where did you put the veena?”
    Neela had been dreading this moment. She sat on the couch and began to recount the awful story.
    Before she finished, her mother interrupted. “You followed a stranger to have cocoa?” She set down the mug as if it were poison.
    â€œWait,” Neela said. “It gets worse.”
    When she was done, Mrs. Krishnan had her hands up to her mouth in disbelief.
    â€œI should have known,” she said. “I should have known.” Neela wondered how her mother could have known, unless she was a mind reader. But she kept quiet because then her mother said, “It’s bad luck. I should have known .”
    Like strep throat or the chicken pox, or the Great Plague, which Neela had read about in social studies, bad luck was one of those things her mother tried at great lengths to avoid. She was training to be a pharmacist, and it was her belief that all human experience was the result of chemistry and luck, good and bad. But mostly bad. Neela’s father, who worked in a research lab at MIT, would always exclaim, That’s so unscientific. But there was no changing her mother’s opinion. Bad luck was an impenetrable force working against them all. Worse, it was contagious.
    Just then the back door jiggled as Mr. Krishnan came in. “Hello, mateys,” he called, using his standard greeting. He bit into a muffin he picked up from the kitchen.
    â€œYou’re home early,” Mrs. Krishnan said.
    â€œMeeting got cancelled,” he said, chewing. He looked at her curiously. “Why the clown outfit?”
    â€œCan’t a person do laundry here? And we’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
    When he heard Neela’s story, Mr. Krishnan stopped chewing. She wondered what happened to the piece of muffin in his mouth, whether he had swallowed it or it had spontaneously disappeared. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “In a church ?”
    â€œShe shouldn’t have done it,” Mrs. Krishnan said.
    â€œShe didn’t have a choice,” he said.
    â€œBut she did .”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Neela said miserably. It was so much worse when her parents were talking about her in the third person, as if she wasn’t there.
    â€œAre you going to tell your mother, then?” Neela’s mother asked.
    Mr. Krishnan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    Neela stared at the floor, wishing it would open up and swallow her. But the floor did no such thing. She was on her own.

    Dinner consisted of dosas , thin crepes made from rice and lentils, accompanied by sambar , a thick, spicy soup. Over their dosas and sambar, Neela and her parents discussed the missing veena.
    Mr. Krishnan tried to be hopeful. “Maybe it’s still there at the church.”
    â€œOr maybe it vanished,” Mrs. Krishnan said pointedly.
    Mr. Krishnan gave her a look. “Who would steal a veena in a church?” he continued. “No one would even know what it is.”
    â€œWait a minute.” Neela thought of something. “When Hal showed me the closet where I